We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja

Author:Akinyele Omowale Umoja [Umoja, Akinyele Omowale]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, United States, General, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Discrimination & Race Relations
ISBN: 9780814724248
Google: jGEsngEACAAJ
Amazon: 0814725244
Barnesnoble: 0814725244
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2013-04-22T05:00:00+00:00

“Let the Spirit Ride”: Boycott Rudy in Yazoo County

Yazoo County was another community that was inspired by the Meredith March. The year after the historic march came there, in 1967, Father Malcolm O’Leary was assigned as an associate pastor and teacher at the predominantly Black Saint Francis Parish church and Catholic school in the county seat, Yazoo City. Saint Francis’s head pastor, White priest Father John Gist, was sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement, and Saint Francis was the meeting place of the NAACP in Yazoo City. O’Leary would assume the role of head parish priest in 1968. Born to a Black landowning family in neighboring Madison County, O’Leary had developed a strong sense of racial consciousness. The priest was concerned over the lack of employment for Blacks in municipal civil service positions. No Blacks were employed in the fire or police departments in the majority-Black city and county. O’Leary decided to remedy the exclusion of Blacks in the local public sector by running for alderman. O’Leary requested and received permission from the regional bishop to run for political office.69

O’Leary became the first African American to run for office in Yazoo City. After receiving the most votes in the primary, he was defeated in the runoff. A significant factor in O’Leary’s defeat was the fact that the majority of Yazoo Black residents remained unregistered. Blacks were a slight majority out of a total population of nearly eleven thousand in Yazoo City and 53 percent of approximately twenty-seven thousand in the county. Even Blacks who were registered stayed away from the polls due to fear of economic or physical reprisals.70

The election loss did not deter O’Leary. He decided to join with the local NAACP in calling a boycott in Yazoo City with five demands, including employment of Blacks in civil service. A boycott was called in 1967 by Father Gist and local NAACP members, but was unsuccessful. A meeting was called at the Saint Francis gymnasium in May of 1969. To the surprise of O’Leary and the other organizers, approximately one thousand Yazoo County Black residents attended the meeting and overwhelmingly endorsed the call for a boycott. The initial demands included requests for two Black police officers, two Black firemen, two Black clerks in the city government, and employment of Blacks in White-owned stores in the city and county.71

Rudy Shields appeared in Yazoo City shortly after the call for the boycott. Yazoo County NAACP president George Collins invited the boycott organizer to Yazoo to play his typical role of enforcer and to provide leadership. Speaking of Shields’s role, O’Leary remembered,

As soon as we put it [the boycott] on, somehow Rudy Shields came on the scene…. Rudy Shields was supposed to be the marshal … the enforcer. If he caught you downtown, you’re in trouble. He was not going to be brutal. But he was to confront you…. He was just going to confront the people [violating the boycott].72

As had been seen previously in Natchez, Port Gibson, Crystal Springs, Hazlehurst, and Belzoni, after a few weeks, the Yazoo boycott proved to be effective.

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