Mass Meeting
The program included a twelve-year-old girl who had been arrested for boarding the front seat of a bus, and was presented as follows:
Program
Guest: Lillian Smith—Author, “Whiteman and his Conscience”
Devotion by: REVEREND PAUL BROOKS
Prayer Song: WE SHALL OVERCOME
Introduction of young Ms. Jessie Divins: STORY OF HER ARREST
Ms. Jessie Divins, age 12, a student at Campbell High School, was arrested for boarding a bus in Mississippi for an unknown destination. She was asked by the bus driver and eventually the police to move to the back. She did not. She was placed under arrest, removed from the bus, and taken to jail. At trial, Ms. Divins explained to the judge that she had boarded the bus and sat in the front seat. The judge told her that if she came before him again, he would send her to “Oakland” [Oakley Training School]. She informed the judge that she did not mind going to Oakland, and every trip that she would make would be made sitting on the front seat of a bus.
Announcement
Ruben Martin, twenty-two-year-old polio victim, was arrested and charged with drunkenness. Needs help.
Speaker: MINISTER R. L. T. SMITH
Three-part Subject:
1] One God and his Holy Word—“Our Bible”.
2] The Constitution of the United States of America
3] I Love Mississippi, but I love first class citizenship best.
We as a people have been denied the rights of the constitution too many times. Segregation teaches “hate and inferiority.” The Mississippi Citizens Council is a “dog council” organized by two ministers. We owe it to God, state, and country to help to “find” ourselves. Whites in this country feel superior to all other races.
We must love them if we expect them to love us. This task requires faith, courage, and love. Segregation must go. Citizens must be protected. We must use our selective buying and selling power. God can help us destroy hate, bigotry, and segregation. Become aware of your rights as citizens of the United States. We want to walk in dignity. Walk like a man. Talk like a man. Get all the education that’s possible. Our forefathers worked very hard for this country. Their money was taken to help build medical and law schools. Please join hands, hearts, and intelligence. Their ministers are speaking from a theological throne. They never come down and say, “You must love everybody.”
We must examine ourselves first. We must act “first class.” Stop jumping and hollering. Leave all the old bundles at home. Sit down and shut your mouths. Leave your lunch buckets at home. Who wants to sit beside someone who is salivating and chewing tobacco? If we keep Christ in our hearts, we can’t fail. Be mindful that God is no respecter of persons. He loves Governor Ross Barnett just as well as you. We need men to tell the world what we want. How can three people tell what all Negroes want? Everybody needs to speak up. So many people haven’t done anything to support the Cause. It’s always that faithful few. If they can create laws to help bring factories to Mississippi, then they can help bring peace to Mississippi. Pick up posters today at 6 PMfor 8:00 am tomorrow, Saturday.
At another mass meeting later that fall, I stayed afterward to meet Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary for the state of Mississippi.
During the program, he had read some familiar names of people I knew back home in Jefferson Davis County—some of my relatives and family friends—and other places, saying they were among hundreds of eligible black voters who had been arbitrarily stricken from county voting rolls.
Until that moment, I had been unaware of the 1956 catastrophe that had occurred in my home county. I also learned of the unprecedented federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi’s voting eligibility laws. It had been filed in 1958 while I was still in high school, by a man who resided on the campus of black Prentiss Institute, Rev. H. D. Darby.
Hearing all of this for the first time, after another powerful boost of singing freedom songs, prompted me to respond to Evers’s call for volunteers to stay after the meeting. He was seeking organizers to go into Jefferson Davis County and other areas where black disenfranchisement had been occurring. The job would entail organizing blacks to return to their county clerks’ offices and re-register to vote, or register for the first time, as was more often needed.
This was a pivotal moment in my young life of seventeen years. Here was my chance to turn my thoughts and feelings about the need to improve conditions for blacks in Mississippi toward a specific action: in this case, fighting voter disenfranchisement. I reasoned that if anybody could do something about it, I could, and here was my chance.
The job would require me to confront the laws under which my worldview had been formed. The result would be a personal transformation so dynamic that neither I, nor Mississippi, would ever be the same again.
I did not go out seeking a “Cause.” The Cause found me, placed itself at my feet, and said, “I’m all you got, boy, I’m yours.” I decided that I was going to fight for the freedom of mankind.
Sometimes on Sunday afternoons, the black churches in Jackson would conduct “citizenship training,” another method used to mobilize people in the struggle. At these meetings, Medgar Evers or another knowledgeable SNCC person would set the agenda for the coming weeks. Many such meetings were held. I remember one very well.
It took place on November 26, 1961. We selected committees to help blacks in the area pay their $2 poll tax. Various citizens of Jackson in attendance committed to recruiting 3,000 people for a Poll Tax march.
Other questions and mandates discussed at that meeting were as follows (from the printed agenda and my personal notes):
Sunday Citizenship Training
1] Do we continue to travel to McComb, Mississippi? “Yes”
2] Send letters to all churches. “Do”
3] Do we allow young ladies to participate in Voter Registration classes in McComb? “Yes”
4] We need to create better plans for Unity Conference with Mississippi officials. “Plans will be developed by Committee.”
5] Encourage all citizens to pay Poll Tax.
6] What facilities in Jackson do we integrate next?
Will get the word out real soon.
There is some concern about bail money for students.
We need to contact CORE. We need all the bail money we can get.
7] Do we need a “Newsletter”? “Yes. Committee selected”
8] We need a conference with officials to see what can be done about the seating arrangements at the stadium in Jackson, Mississippi. If the response is not favorable, let’s sit-in next weekend.
The eligibility requirements for voting in Mississippi were among the most stringent in the South. In addition to a poll tax, there was a two-year residency requirement and a provision in the state constitution, referred to as the “understanding” clause, which stated a prospective voter must be able to read any section of the constitution, or as an alternative, be able to understand it when read to him, or give a “reasonable interpretation” of it.
As anti-black attitudes were then common, most county registrars, or circuit clerks, insisted that black applicants be able to read and interpret the constitution.
To help blacks counter this deterrent, I trained as a field worker, first with the NAACP, and later with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
At CORE, I worked under the directorship of Richard Haley, a field secretary. It was my understanding that Haley had been a music instructor at Florida A&M University for five years, and was released from that position because of his civil-rights activities. He would later be arrested in Jackson on July 19, 1961, for picketing a Southern Governor’s conference.
Within each organization, my job was the same: to provide voter-registration training to blacks in the southern half of Mississippi, and get them to at least attempt to register to vote.
After my own short training session under the NAACP’s leadership, I was assigned a rental car that had been leased by the organization and sent to southeast Mississippi. A fellow campaign worker would deliver the car to us. It worked that way with all of the civil rights organizations for which I volunteered, although sometimes we’d pick it up ourselves. What I could not understand, and really did not like, was the fact that some of the rental cars were the same make, model, and color, making them easy targets.
Medgar would make the decisions about who would be sent where. Usually, he’d call the general number at Tougaloo and someone would relay the message. Students from Tougaloo and Jackson State College also helped man his office and make phone calls.
Medgar would have already made the connection with a minister or NAACP person in the community, had them set up a secret location to hold classes, and start getting people to participate. The ministers would sometimes announce during a service that a “voter registration meeting” was going to be held at a particular time, and encourage people to attend.
The other workers and I would then contact Medgar’s lead person and arrange to gain access to the secret location. Blacks from all walks of life, of different ages, education, and status would come to the classes that were held after the work day.
Fear was prevalent. If word got out to the white business establishment, any one of the participants could lose his or her job, or suffer worse.
Driving the lone highways through the Mississippi woods, you didn’t know if you were going to be stopped by the police or some gang of idiots clamoring to beat you up or kill you. We took the main roads as much as we could, but back in those days, there were a lot of gravel roads in the rural areas where most of the blacks lived.
As the organizers, we would introduce ourselves at the meeting and tell how and why we became interested in the freedom movement. We were there because we studied the history of the state, and we knew the only thing that was going to change Mississippi was the vote.
We did believe it. The perception among those early participants was that their actions would help educate other black Mississippians and lead to change for the better.
Participants would sometimes lament abuses they had observed, or experienced themselves, in a culture that excluded them in every facet of society. Our response was to explain the registration process so they knew what to expect. We had to teach them the constitution of Mississippi because they would be tested on that.
“We will go and attempt to register,” we’d tell them, “and more than likely, they won’t let us, but we want them to refuse to allow us to vote, rather than do nothing and just say we couldn’t vote.”
Then, we would schedule a day to go to the courthouse. Sometimes I would drive them, or Medgar’s lead person would. The whole group might go in at one time, or we’d stagger them, so one arrived about every five minutes. Other times, they would attempt to register without our help.
The result would always be the same: Registration would be denied. “You didn’t pass the test” was usually the reason given, but no matter what answers black applicants gave, the circuit clerk would fail them. Our applicants would prepare to leave. The clerk, or other county workers present, would typically spout back anti-black insults: “Gon’ on otta here antie. You need to be in da field. Do your boss know you’re here? I’m gon’ tell him now.”
There were rare instances when one person might be allowed to register; that was more likely when movement workers were not present. However, the conservative political establishment was so dead set on not allowing us to succeed, they were more than likely turning away 99 percent of the people.
Those hardworking, law-abiding residents had one of the most despicable crimes committed against them. Their own state was denying them one of their basic rights, rights they were guaranteed as citizens born in this country.
Although I was only seventeen years old and not old enough to vote, I would, from time to time, attempt to do so. On one occasion, after I had completed the “Sworn Written Application for Registration,” the circuit clerk just threw the form back at me. That wasn’t bad. Some of the people were physically harassed, even beaten, for attempting to register to vote.
I had to ask myself, was I ready to accept the harassment? Was I ready to accept the beatings? Most of all, was I ready to accept death for my beliefs? I knew that I had already answered those questions in the affirmative. I knew that segregation was wrong and had to be stopped. I felt I had no other choice but to try to stop it.
A couple of us students at Tougaloo would sometimes leave for an assignment on a Saturday morning. When we returned on Sunday evening, the janitor would grant our request to lock us in the science lab, where we could study uninterrupted until the building reopened Monday morning. The janitors doubled as security guards. They were our friends.
I had many conversations with Medgar Evers about what was going on. He’d coach me on how I should present myself in various situations and with various types of people. He was never too busy to talk to me or anyone else. He taught me to be true to myself and to know who I was. He felt that if I wasn’t “for real,” it would surely come across in the form of mistrust. Most of all, he taught me that the civil rights struggle was not a game. It was a life-and-death struggle, and if I must die, then I should die with dignity while trying to help my people.
Sometimes, I called him, or he would ask me to come down to his office on the top floor of the black Masonic Temple in downtown Jackson to discuss a project, either one-on-one, or in a group. Other times, we talked on the phone. It was usually a reporting of how many classes, or how many had agreed to vote, and I’d let him know how many people I found willing to work with me, or who they were—if they agreed to reveal their identity.
As early organizers, we had few resources. We had no protection. On occasion, knowing full well that our small group was vulnerable to attacks by hateful mobs, I would ask for cover from law enforcement personnel, to no avail. The federal investigators, with their dark suits and skinny ties, stood out. None of us was opposed to walking up to them, particularly the FBI agents, and requesting their defense, even though the response was usually no.
If media personnel were at the public demonstrations that came later in Jackson, they often endured harassment and beatings, just as the civil rights workers did.
Even decades later, it’s painful to speak of the experiences of my early civil rights years. I have to believe there must be something in a young man’s DNA, something in his composition that steers him in the direction of a Medgar Evers. What is it that enables one to function while in the midst of such immense hatred? Somehow, somewhere, there has to be a blueprint deeply embedded in some of our souls that we are mandated to follow.
Some of my friends from the sixties and I get together occasionally. We ask ourselves why we created and participated in a particular protest. We don’t really have an answer. Many situations were more than life-threatening. Some protests that we participated in were of such a nature that we were 100 percent certain that we would not survive. What made us do it? When a situation presented itself to us with a need to have our souls heard, we responded with sincerity. There was no hesitation. We not only participated “from the now,” we participated from our souls. I would continue organizing black Mississippians to register to vote for the next four years.
On occasion, I shared voter registration training duties with white Yale and Bryn Mawr college students who had come to Mississippi to see “what the environment was like.” This arrangement, quietly made by Medgar Evers, Tougaloo College, and the NAACP, was intended to send a message to the segregationists that we no longer would be intimidated, as blacks and poor whites usually were in Mississippi.
Two months before I finished high school, a black man by the name of Charles Mack Parker was arrested and charged with the rape of a young lady whose car malfunctioned on the highway near Lumberton, Mississippi. Lumberton is located less than seventy miles from my home, and news traveled fast. On April 24, 1960, Parker was taken from his Poplarville jail cell, beaten, murdered, and his body thrown into the Pearl River.
As a seventeen-year-old college freshman, I had the opportunity to take three Yale University students with me to Poplarville to help with voter registration classes. While driving west on Highway 26 toward our destination, I noticed the student sitting in the front seat with me had rolled down the window and extended his obviously white arm out for comfort. With a stern voice, I instructed him to place his arm back inside the window immediately! I explained that I did not want the opposition to see us sooner than necessary, and that I wanted to die after the meeting, not before the meeting. He had no idea what I meant.
We arrived at the prearranged meeting place only to find that it was not set up for class. When I inquired about this, I was told that the police had just left, and they had asked if any NAACP people had been there. People at the site no longer wanted the class to be conducted. I was reminded that only a few months earlier, on April 24, 1960, Charles Mack Parker was murdered in Poplarville. It was time to travel back to Jackson.
I had descended deep into the underbelly of Mississippi’s decrepit soul. Like any man, I wanted to live to see the arrival of freedom for all, but I never expected to survive. This was the Mississippi that allowed lynching of its black people. The same Mississippi that allowed the lynching of black soldiers of World War I, some still wearing the uniforms they wore in battle while fighting to keep Mississippi Klansmen free to murder and create mayhem.
Sometimes I would call my mother and inform her of some of my travel plans for the weekends. I believe that she thought that I was “brave,” but I believe that most of all she thought I was “right.” Dad was a different story. He thought that I was right, but he also thought that I was reckless and asking for trouble. He thought that I had a death wish: “They will kill you, son!”
Years later, Joyce and Rose Parkman, two young ladies who were originally from our Lucas community, would visit my home in Illinois. Of course, their family knew my family well. They began to tell me how afraid my mother had been for me. That was the first time I had heard that. I had never known my mother to express fear concerning my civil rights organizing activities.
On some occasions, I was told by law enforcement officials to leave some of the small towns that I visited. Many times we were jeered at and threatened. I considered my state of Mississippi to be the most viciously racist in the United States, but because we believed in what we were doing, no threat or harm could stop us.
I knew that nonviolence was the only way for me. I had to make the segregationist understand that love is more powerful than hate. No matter what he did to me, I had to exert only passive resistance. I had to continue to show only love. I had to reach his “inner self ” to show him that he was diminishing his self-worth by his actions.
As I walked through the shadows of hatred from others, I found strength and light in that old Negro spiritual by Thomas A. Dorsey, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” My mother would sing that song after I’d relate to her one of my civil rights experiences. At times, when I thought that there was no way out, when I thought, “this might be my last day,” I would walk with tears in my eyes, fear in my heart, and remember her singing the words to “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”
Some of my Caucasian brothers from the North who came to the aid of the foot soldiers fighting for freedom in Mississippi would tell you that nonviolence was being used in the South as a tactic. I submit to you that nonviolence was a way of life for black Southerners. It was not only a source of spiritual sustenance, but a method of survival. We knew that we were children of God. We knew we could prevail over persecution.
Use of the Ghandian mode of nonviolence as a tactic became increasingly prevalent in the movement. It was not difficult for most of us from the South to try to change the hearts and souls of the segregationists by following the path of nonviolent, passive resistance. We had been taught the art of passive resistance most of our lives.
Medgar Evers was one of the bravest men I have ever known. He did more for the state of Mississippi than anyone. After his tour of duty as a soldier in World War II, when he experienced a more tolerant, racially integrated society in Europe, he returned to Mississippi and the injustices of Jim Crow, and he became so angry he wouldn’t stand for it anymore. Medgar fought tirelessly against discrimination in the laws and culture of the South; however, he rejected any use of violence as a means to improve our plight.
I would sometimes get tired of the organizers from the North who claimed to know how we blacks felt about our situation in Mississippi. Many organizers from the North thought that black Southerners felt that because they had been in the muck and mire of segregation for so long, they were “stuck,” and that there was nothing that could be done. That is far from the correct analysis.
There were two completely different points of view among black Southerners when it came to speaking out against segregation. One segment of the black population told the organizers that they didn’t “want to be bothered.” This type of reaction was precipitated by fear. This was the segment that perhaps had more to lose if their association with the organizers became known—that job that held everything together and was the means of survival for themselves, their children, or other dependant family members. That position was not easily understood by some of our Northern organizers.
The other segment of the black population was willing to listen when approached by organizers. They had been looking for a leader or leaders. They wanted someone to provide some direction. As Jane Pittman said when the organizers approached in the movie Miss Jane Pittman, the people wondered: Is he the one? Is he the one?
Make no mistake: these two segments watched out for each other. The first segment would often say, “I’ve got your back” to the second segment. They often ran interference for the second segment. They often distracted the enemy away from their activist brothers. They provided a sometimes invisible and sometimes aggressive line of defense. One should never discount that first segment of blacks. They are partly the reason that the second group succeeded. They made us a part of their community. They “covered” for us, and what a job they did. I salute them.
The success of the civil rights movement would not have been possible without the heroic efforts of the ordinary black men and women of the South. These were the “Little People”—a term coined by Medgar Evers—who fought the actual battle. When I speak of the “Little People,” I lift up the sharecroppers, tenant farmers, cleaning women and cooks, teachers and students, and small business people of the South. They are the foot soldiers who made history.
Most were not photographed, and their voices were seldom heard. They spoke not to the glare of television cameras, but to the hearts and souls of the black masses.
It was difficult for leaders to come up through the ranks of the “Little People,” when they had all they could handle, just trying to stay alive. This was Mississippi, man! So this other segment said, “I’m willing to take a chance; I’m willing to listen. What is it that you as an organizer wish me to do?” And the answer was “We want you to stand up for what you believe is right. We want you to fight your best fight against segregation. We want you to be willing to die with us for the cause.” These organizers often taught the Fannie Lou Hamers and others who developed into great leaders.
In 1960, black Mississippians were aware of the public protests taking part in other parts of the South. We were not yet ready to make that move; however, we were floating the idea of public protests at mass meetings. Medgar was worried that those tactics just might not work in Mississippi. He was concerned that we did not have enough legal and financial support in the state. There were very few black lawyers in Mississippi.
Another factor working against us was the Jackson Advocate, the largest black-owned newspaper in the state of Mississippi. Movement people thought founder and owner Percy Green was a black segregationist.
He was indeed a conservative black man. However, if one viewed his work only through the window of history, one might conclude that he was a racist segregationist; should by no means take away from Percy’s original intentions for the newspaper, which was conceived to give a voice to oppressed people in Mississippi. Founded in 1938, the newspaper was the pride of the black community in the 1940s.
It was in the 1950s that Green lost the backing of most of the black community. During that time, he profusely criticized the efforts of black leaders. Later, Green printed editorials criticizing the efforts of the Freedom Riders: “Many (Negroes) have been heard to express the opinion that Negroes of the city (Jackson) would be better off if the Freedom Riders had never come to Jackson.” Thirty-two Mississippi natives who would join the Freedom Ride proved that opinion to be wrong.
In addition, to the dismay of blacks, Percy Green began accepting money from the Sovereignty Commission, the state agency whose aim was to destroy the civil rights movement. Even Green’s civil rights leadership in the 1940s and 1950s and his determination to make a contribution to the struggle of African Americans in the South was all overshadowed when he became critical of the movement. He allowed his newspaper to become a tool of the white segregationist power structure.
Because of the black newspaper’s political position, in the spring of 1960, Medgar embarked on another tactical promotion for the civil rights of blacks: economic boycotts. However, he felt that the Jackson Negroes needed to be educated about what a boycott really meant. At various mass meetings, we began calling for area students to join us in the education of the Mississippi Negro. It was estimated that more than 600 students from various schools and colleges showed up for duty. In early April, 1960, these students began visiting the homes of more than 5,000 blacks in the city, informing each household of boycott, plans for an Easter week and advising them not to shop at stores that discriminated against them. Some of the blacks contacted were indeed pessimistic about the boycott, and some were puzzled. It was as if we (the students) had to tell them things that they knew so well. We had to remind them that those were the same stores that would not let them try on a pair shoes because they were Negroes. The same stores that would not hire them or let them eat at the lunch counters located within the stores. We had to remind them of the things that had been happening to them all their lives. Most blacks were ready to boycott and wondered, “What took you so long to get here?”
The Easter week boycott (April 10 to 17, 1960) of Jackson’s downtown businesses was a huge success. Once we started, our determination was that we would never turn back, even though some blacks who continued to shop at the white-owned stores were harassed by other blacks. On occasion, their purchased items were taken and destroyed. Organizers never knew if they would return home from these actions. When we planned them, we prepared ourselves to die.
Meanwhile, voter registration campaigns remained constant throughout the state. That summer, I was sent by the NAACP to many small towns in southern Mississippi to train and register black voters. I always thought if I remained in my home state after the summer of 1960, I would be killed.