Sweet Land of Liberty? by Robert Cook

Author:Robert Cook [Cook, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138837607
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2015-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Mobilising Mississippi blacks, 1961–63

When Bob Moses returned to Cleveland in July 1961 Mississippi had a well-earned reputation for being the most bigoted state in the country. One contemporary observer famously described it as ‘the closed society’ because of its stifling commitment to the racial status quo.13. Economic change – particularly mechanisation – had begun to transform the Delta region in the northwestern part of the state in the late 1940s and 1950s, throwing increasing numbers of black farm folk off the land. This ongoing process did not undermine local whites’ entrenched devotion to Jim Crow and the few white liberals in the region such as the Greenville newspaper editor, Hodding Carter, were effectively marginalised by the rapid growth of massive resistance in the mid-1950s.14. Politically active blacks like Amzie Moore in Cleveland and Aaron Henry in Clarksdale lived in fear of their lives during this period and many local branches of the state NAACP were effectively neutralised. At the end of the decade Medgar Evers, a former army veteran passionately committed to the freedom struggle, had begun the difficult task of re-energising the NAACP from his base in Jackson. With some notable exceptions, however, Mississippi’s adult and predominantly middle-class black leadership remained wary of the kind of direct-action tactics supported by Evers and students from all-black Tougaloo College in the early 1960s. They believed that sit-ins and boycotts worsened interracial relations and merely provoked yet more white supremacist violence.

Voter registration, however, was generally regarded by the state’s African-American leaders as a more acceptable form of civic action and when C.C. Bryant, a railway worker in McComb, asked SNCC to initiate a mobilisation campaign in the state’s southern hill country, Bob Moses, with the blessing of Amzie Moore, agreed to help. The McComb campaign (which took place during the second half of 1961) proved to be a baptism of fire for Moses and his organisation.15. At the outset of the campaign Bryant, head of the Pike County branch of the NAACP, introduced the young SNCC worker to other black activists in the vicinity – men like E.W. Steptoe, a landowning farmer in rural Amite County. Aided greatly by such contacts and sensitive to the wishes of his hosts, Moses proceeded cautiously, opening up a voter registration school on Steptoe’s farm with the aid of some local high-school students and receiving invitations to speak from a number of black ministers in the community. His incremental, inter-class strategy, however, was blown apart by the arrival in McComb of a group of SNCC workers, released from jail after their participation in the Jackson Freedom Ride. Several of this group, including Marion Barry, were enthusiastic supporters of direct action and had little patience with the slow business of organising. They immediately embarked upon a sit-in at the Wool-worth store in McComb and founded the Pike County Nonviolent Movement to instigate further demonstrations. Moses, aware that civil disobedience was unpopular with most members of the town’s black middle class, responded coolly to the new turn of events for they threatened to undermine his credibility in the community.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.