From Carson,et.al., Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (N.Y.: Penguin, 1991)
1. Mississippi: 1961-1962"
During
the 1950s, NAACP members in Mississippi had faced fierce opposition to their
efforts to encourage black voter registration, and in 1955, Reverend George Lee
had been ambushed and killed after protesting against black disenfranchisement.
Another early pioneer was Amzie Moore, a World War 11 veteran who, after the
war, organized blacks to resist a series of racist killings designed to
ensure that returning black soldiers did not disrupt the "southern way of
life." In 1960, Moore invited Robert Moses to bring students to the state
in order to launch a voting rights campaign, and in 1961 Moses returned
to McComb, population thirteen thousand.
Robert Moses:
... I first came South July, 1960, on a field trip for
SNCC, went through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana gathering people to go to
the October conference. That was the first time that I met Amzie Moore. At that
time we sat down and planned the voter registration drive for Mississippi. I
returned in the summer of 1961 to start that drive. We were to start in
Cleveland, Mississippi in the delta. However, we couldn't; we didn't have any
equipment; we didn't even have a place at that time to meet. So we went down to
McComb at the invitation of C. C. Bryant, who was the local head of the NAACP.
And we began setting up a voter registration drive in McComb, Mississippi.
What did
we do? Well, for two weeks I did nothing but drive around the town talking to
the business leaders, the ministers, the people in the town, asking them if
they would support ten students who had come in to work on a voter registration
drive. We got a commitment from them to support students for the month of
August and to pay for their room and board and some of their transportation
while they were there.... This means that we went around house-to-house,
door-to-door in the hot sun evervdav because the most important thing was to
convince the local townspeople that ... we were people who were responsible.
What do you tell somebody when you go to their door? Well, first you tell them
who you are, what you're trying to do, that you're
working on voter registration. You have a form that
you try to them to fill out....
Now we
did this for about two weeks and finally began to get results. That is, people
began to go down to Magnolia, Mississippi, which is the county seat of Pike
County and attempt to register. In the meantime, quite naturally, people from
Amite and Walthall County, which are the two adjacent counties to Pike County,
came over asking us if we wouldn't accompany them in schools in their counties
so they could go down and try to register also. And this point should be made
quite clear, because many people have been critical of going into such tough
counties so early in the game.... The problem is that you can't be in the
position of turning down the tough areas because the people then, I think,
would simply lose confidence in you; so, we accepted this.
We planned
to make another registration attempt on the 19th of August. . . . This was the
day then that Curtis Dawson and Preacher Knox and I were to go down and try to
register. This was the day that Curtis Dawson drove to Steptoe's, picked me up
and drove down to Liberty and we were to meet Knox at the courthouse lawn, and
instead we were to walk through the town and on the way back were accosted by
Billy Jack Caston and some other boys. I was severely beaten. I remember very
sharply that I didn't want to go immediately back into McComb because my shirt
was very bloody and I figured that if we went back in we would probably be
fighting everybody. So, instead, we went back out to Steptoe's where we washed
down before we came back into McComb. Well, that very same day, they had had
the first sit-in in McComb, when we got back everybody was excited and a mass
meeting was planned for that very night. And Hollis [Watkins] and Curtis
[Hayes] had sat down in the Woolworth lunch counter in McComb the town was in a
big uproar. We had a mass meeting that night and made plans for two things:
one, the, kids made plans to continue their sit-in activity, and two, we made
plans to go back into Liberty to try to register some more. We felt it was
extremely important that we try and go back to town immediately so the people
in that county wouldn't feel that we had been frightened off by the beating and
before they could get a chance there to rally their forces.
Accordingly, on Thursday, August 31, there was more activity in Liberty
and McComb. In McComb, there were more sit-ins, ill Liberty, another
registration attempt coupled with an attempt by us to find the person who had
done the beating and have his trial. Well, it turned out that we did find him,
that they did have his trial, that they had a six-man justice of the Peace
jury, that in a twinkling of an eye the courthouse was packed. That is, the
trial was scheduled that day and in two hours it began and in those two hours
farmers came in from all parts of the county bearing their guns, sitting in the
courthouse. We were advised not to sit in the courthouse except while we
testified, otherwise we were in the back room. After we testified, the sheriff
came back and told us that he didn't think it was safe for us to remain there
while the jury gave its decision. Accordingly, he escorted us to the county
line. We read in the papers the next day that Billy Jack Caston had been
acquitted.
To top
it all off, the next week John Hardy was arrested and put in jail in Walthall County.
He had been working there for two weeks and they had been taking people down,
and finally one day he had taken some people down to the registrar's office,
had walked in, they had been refused the right to register, and he had asked
the registrar why. The registrar recognized him, took the gun out of his drawer
and smacked John on the side of his head with a pistol. John staggered out onto
the street and was walking down the street when he was accosted by the sheriff
who arrested him and charged him with disturbing the peace....
... A
couple of days before John Hardy was arrested, we had gone back into Amite
County to Liberty. This time I was not beaten, but Travis Britt was. I think
that was on the 5th of September, and I stood by and watched Travis get
pummeled bv an old man, tall, reedy and thin, very, very, very mean with a 1(;t
of hatred in him.... At that particular occasion, Travis and I had been sitting
out front of the courthouse and then decided to move around back because the
people began to gather out front.
Finally,
everybody, about 15 people, gathered around back and Travis and myself.... They
were asking him was from and how come a nigger from New York City could come down
and teach people down here how to register to vote and have all those problems
up there in York City, problems of' white girls going with nigger boys like
that.... Well, the Travis Britt incident followed by theHardy incident in
Walthall County just about cleaned us out. The farmers in both those counties
were no longer willing to go down; people in Pike County and McComb were in an
uproar over the sit-in demonstrations and the fact that Brenda Travis, a a
sixteen-year-old girl, was in jail, and for the rest of the of September we
just had a tough time. Wasn't much we could do. The kids were in jail; people
were in jail on the sit-in a $5,000 bail over their heads, and the problem was
to raise that money and get them out of
jail, and then sit down and see if we couldn't collect the pieces together.
Well, we
got through September aided in great measure by of the lawyers from the justice
Department who finally began to come in investigating the voting complaints.
They stayed about a two-week period and while they were there they lot of
support and confidence to the people of the Negro and allowed us to go back
into Walthall and Amite Counties and to interview all the people who had been
involved the voter registration campaign and raise some hope that something
would be done.
And then,
finally, the boom lowered, on September 31: Herbert Lee was killed in Amite
County.... The Sunday before Lee was I was down at Steptoe's with John Doar
from the Justice Department. and he asked Steptoe was there any danger in that
area, who was causing the trouble and
who were the people in . Steptoe had told him that E. H. Hurst who lived across
him had been threatening people and that specifically he, Steptoe, Herbert Lee
and George Reese were in danger of losing lives. We went out, but didn't see
Lee"that afternoon. At night John Doar and the other lawyers from the
Justice Department left. The following morning about 12 noon, Doc Anderson by
the Voter Registration office and said a man had been shot in Amite County....
I went down to take a took at the body and it was Herbert Lee; there was a
bullet hole in the left side of his head just above the ear...
Our first job was to try to track down those people¼who had been at the shooting, who had seen the whole incident.
Essentially, the story was this: they were standing at the cotton gin
early in the morning and they saw
Herbert Lee drive up in his truck with a load of cotton, E. H. Hurst following
behind him in an empty truck. Hurst got out of his truck and came to the cab on
the driver's side of Lee's truck and began arguing with Lee. He began
gesticulating towards Lee and pulled out a gun which he had under his shirt and
began threatening Lee with it. One of the people that was close by said that
Hurst was telling Lee, "I'm not fooling around this time, I really mean
business," and that Lee told him, "Put the gun down. I won't talk to
you unless you put the gun down." Hurst put the gun back under his coat
and then Lee slid out on the other side, on the offside of the cab. As he got
out, Hurst ran around the front of the cab, took his out again, pointed it at
Lee and shot him...Hurst was acquitted. He never spent a moment in jail. In
fact, the sheriff
had whisked him away very
shortly after the crime was committed. I reading very bitterly in the papers
the next morning, there was a little arrticle on the front page of the McComb
Enterprise journal, that the Negro had been shot in self-defense as he was
about to attack E. B. Hurst. That was it. You might have thought he was a
bum. There was no mention that Lee was
a farmer, been that he had a family, that he had nine kids, beautiful kids. Now
we knew in our hearts and rninds that Hurst was attacking him because of the
voter registration drive, and I felt guilty and felt responsible, because it's
one thing up and it's another thing to be responsible, or to some way in a
killing.
DOCUMENT 2
From Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, editors, NonViolence in America: A Documentary
History , p. 243-249
Document on Voter Registration, Mississippi and Georgia
The
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed in 1960 to coordinate
sit-in activities, decided in 1961 to concentrate on voter registration. The
areas selected for registration drives were rural regions with Black
majorities: southwestern Georgia and the state of Mississippi.
The persistence and self-sacrifice of
SNCC workers in these "hardcore areas of the South called forth an
answering courage from local Black communities. In Pike, Walthall, and Amite
counties of southwestern Mississippi, white Mississippians pistol-whipped John
Hardy and murdered Reverend Herbert Lee, local leader of the registration drive
(see Document 31A). Two students at the Burliand High School in McComb,
Mississippi, were expelled for attempting to integrate the Greyhound bus
station. Their expulsion led to a boycott of the school by their
fellow-students with strong support from parents (see Document 31B). SNCC
workers Robert Moses, Charles McDew, and Dion Diamond taught mathematics,
science and history -to the expelled and boycotting students at
"Nonviolent High, " the first Mississippi "freedom school,
" in a room above a McComb grocery store. Late in October 1961 the entire
SNCC staff was imprisoned; unable to pay bail, their spirit remained defiant
(see Document 31C).
SNCC's southwest Georgia project led to
the Albany, Georgia demonstrations of 1961-1962, in which local police made
more than 1,000 arrests. After the great wave of marches, the heroic everyday
routine of voter registration continued (see Document 31D).
Except for Document 31A, all the following documents were copied from originals on file at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee office in Atlanta, Georgia.
A. Mississippi Violence vs Human Rights
From Committee for the Distribution of the Mississippi Story, Mississippi Violence vs Human Rights [Atlanta: 1963].
CHRONOLOGY OF VIOLENCE AND INTIMIDATION IN MISSISSIPPI 1961
... AUGUST 15, AMITE COUNTY: Robert Moses, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) registration worker, and three Negroes who had tried unsuccessfully to register in Liberty, were driving toward McComb when a county officer stopped them. He asked if Moses was the man " . . . who's been trying to register our niggers." All were taken to court and Moses was arrested for "impeding an officer in the discharge of his duties," fined $50 and spent two days in jail.
AUGUST 22, AMITE COUNTY: Robert Moses went to Liberty with three Negroes, who made an unsuccessful attempt to register. A block from the courthouse, Moses was attacked and beaten by Billy Jack Caston, the sheriff's first cousin. Eight stitches were required to close a wound in Moses' head. Caston was acquitted of assault charges by an all-white jury before a justice of the peace.
AUGUST 26, MC COMB, PIKE COUNTY- Hollis Watkins, 20, and Elmer Hayes, 20, SNCC workers, were arrested while staging a sit-in at the F. W. Woolworth store and charged with breach of the peace. They spent 36 days in jail.
AUGUST 27 and 29, MC COMB, PIKE COUNTY- Five Negro students from a local high school were convicted of breach of the peace following a sit-in at a variety store and bus terminal. They were sentenced to a $400 fine each and eight months in jail. One of these students, a girl of 15, was turned over to juvenile authorities, released, subsequently rearrested, and sentenced to 12 months in a state school for delinquents.
AUGUST 29, MC COMB, PIKE COUNTY: Two Negro leaders were arrested in McComb as an aftermath of the sit-in protest march on city hall, charged with contributing to the delinquency of minors. They were Curtis C. Bryant of McComb, an official of the NAACP, and Cordelle Reagan, of SNCC. Each arrest was made on an affidavit signed by Police Chief George Guy, who said he had information that the two were behind some of this racial trouble."
AUGUST 30, MC COMB, PIKE COUNTY: SNCC workers Brenda Travis, 16, Robert Talbert, 19, and Isaac Lewis, 20, staged a sit-in in the McComb terminal of the Greyhound bus lines. They were arrested on charges of breach of the peace and failure to obey a policeman's order to move on. They spent 30 days in jail.
SEPTEMBER 5, LIBERTY, AMITE COUNTY: Travis Britt, SNCC regis- tration worker, was attacked and beaten by whites on the courthouse lawn. Britt was accompanied at the time by Robert Moses. Britt said one man hit him more than 20 times. The attackers drove away in a truck.
SEPTEMBER 7, TYLERTOWN, WALTHALL COUNTY: John Hardy, SNCC registration worker, took two Negroes to the county courthouse to register. ne registrar told them he "... wasn't registering voters" that day. When the three turned to leave, Registrar John Q. Wood took a pistol from his desk and struck'Hardy over the head from behind. Hardy was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace.
SEPTEMBER 13, JACKSON, HINDS COUNTY: Fifteen Episcopal minis- ters (among them three Negroes) were arrested for asking to be served at the lunch counter of the Greyhound bus terminal. They were charged with inviting a breach of the peace. They were found not guilty of the charge on May 21, 1962, by County Judge Russell Moore.
SEPTEMBER 25, LIBERTY, AMITE COUNTY: Herbert Lee, a Negro who had been active in voter registration, was shot and killed by white state representative E. H. Hurst in downtown Liberty. No prosecution was undertaken, the authorities explaining that the representative had shot in self-defense.
OCTOBER 4, MC COME, PIKE COUNTY- The five students who were arrested as a result of the August 29 sit-in in McComb returned to school, but were refused admittance. At that, 116 students walked out and paraded downtown to the city hall in protest. Police arrested the entire crowd, but later released all but 19, all of whom were 18 years old or older. They were charged with breach of the peace and contributing to the delinquency of minors and allowed to go free on bail totalling $3,700. At the trial on October 3 1, Judge Brumfield, finding the students guilty, and sentencing each to a $500 fine and six months in jail, said: "Some of you are local residents, some of you are outsiders. Those of you who are local residents are like sheep being led to the slaughter. If you continue to follow the advise of outside agitators, you will be like sheep and be slaughtered."
B. A Statement from the Burgland High School Students
We the Negro youth of Pike County feel that Brenda Travis and Isaac Lewis should not be barred from an education for protesting against injustice. We feel that as a member of Burgland High School they have fought this battle for us. To prove that we appreciate them for doing this, we will suffer whatever punishment they have to take with them.
In school we are taught democracy, but the rights that democracy has to offer have been denied to us by our oppressor: we have not had the right to vote; we have not had a balanced school system; we have not had an opportunity to participate in any of the branches of our local, state and federal government.
However, we are children of God, who makes the sun shine on the just and unjust. So we petition all our fellowman to love rather than hate, to build rather than tear down, to bind our nation with love and justice without regard to race, color or creed.
C. Robert Moses, Message from Jail
We are smuggling this note from the drunk tank of the county jail in Magnolia, Mississippi. Twelve of us are here, sprawled out along the concrete bunker; Curtis Hayes, Hollis Watkins, Ike Lewis and Robert Talbert, four veterans of the bunker, are sitting up talking-mostly about girls; Charles McDew ("Tell the story") is curled into the concrete and the wall; Harold Robinson, Stephen Ashley, James Wells, Lee Chester Vick, Leotus Eubanks, and Ivory Diggs lay cramped on the cold bunker; I'm sitting with smuggled pen and paper, thinking a little, writing a little; Myrtis Bennett and Janie Campbell are across the way wedded to a different icy cubicle.
Later on, Hollis will lead out with a clear tenor into a freedom song, Talbert and Lewis will supply jokes, and MeDew will discourse on the history of the black man and the Jew. McDew-a black by birth, a Jew by choice, and a revolutionary by necessity-has taken on the deep hates and deep loves which America and the world reserve for those who dare to stand in a strong sun and cast a sharp shadow.... This is Mississippi, the middle of the iceberg. Hollis is leading off with his tenor, "Michael row the boat ashore, Alleluia; Christian brothers don't be slow, Alleluia; Mississippi's next to go, Alleluia." This is a tremor in the middle of the iceberg-from a stone that the builders rejected.
D. Statement by a High School Student
My name is Roychester Patterson, II. My age is seventeen (17), and I am a high school senior. I live at 601 First Avenue, S.E. I went to Carver High School. I was an honor student for (10) years. My mother's name is Mrs. Carolyn Daniels. My father's name is Mr. Roychester Patterson.
The school I attended was unequipped and incapable of furnishing a qualified education for students who plan to go out to college. It is incapable of giving students the necessary knowledge with which to compete with other students from better schools. Our school needs typewriters, science equipment, library books, text books, home economics equipment, more buses, maps, and math facilities. We also need an auditorium and gymnasium. These are the things that three other students and I went to the principal, E. E. Sykes, and asked for. He told us, there was nothing he could do, so we went to the Supt. Frank Christie, who said that he did something for the colored schools every year. We then mentioned the funds that the State Department of Education sends to every County to supply the school needs. He then told us there was nothing he could do. So the next day we criticized the administration for its inefficiency. One day after that, the Supt. Christie came to the school and called me in a conference and threatened me, "Patterson if you don't change your attitude, you'll have to leave Terrell County. You're sitting on a keg of dynamite whether you know it or not."
A few weeks later P.T.A. meeting was coming up, so we went around and got the parents to come out to P.T.A., we tried to explain to them what the school needed, but the Principal, E. E. Sykes, exploaded and wouldn't let us finish, so we made a house to house campaign.
We later told the State Department about these lack of necessary facilities and they threatened to send in the Fact Finding Committee and the Supt. ordered thousands of dollars worth of facilities for our school.
Then SNCC came into Terrell for Voter Registration and asked for our help, so we gave him our support, we tried to get all of the students who were eligible to register and vote. I made a speech to this affect to an assemblage of students trying to get the students to register, I made the speech to a group of students during lunch hour on the basketball court when the principal came out and tried to break-up the meeting, but the students refused to go to class unless they be given the priviledge to listen to my speech. So he allowed me to finish, meanwhile he called the cops, four of them came. The sheriff, L. T. Matthews, the deputy, Mathis, the chief of Police, Cherry, and the Revenue, Hancock. They came to the school and threatened us with vulgar language. Later that day I went to Albany, while the demonstrations were going strong. Upon seeing several of friends in the line I immediately joined the march, because I felt very close; I had been a student at Monroe High during my junior year.
I spent two days in jail, on Friday I went to school only to find that I had been expelled from school. Because the students thought that they had me in Dawson's jail, they boycotted the lunchroom, wouldn't go to class, and wouldn't participate in school activities.
So I dropped out of school and went to work for SNCC on Voter Registration and no violence had erupted until on Saturday, February 3, 1962. A friend and I took a lady up to register and a white brother decided as long as no one did anything to me, I would be an obstacle in the way of their racket. All of this happened because almost everybody said, to crack Terrell County was impossible and I've always wanted to do the impossible. I did what I did because I have a conviction that each man should be judged by his personal worth and not for the color of his skin. I admire men like M. L. King, Roy Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall.
I did this because I am deeply attached to my people and I want them to know freedom and enjoy rights as human beings. All of this happened between September 7, 1961 and February 3, 1962.