Harold Titus's Blog, page 23

Civil Rights Events -- Chicago Freedom Movement -- Immediate Problems

Hoping to profit from economic opportunity and gain social justice, African Americans fleeing Jim Crow life in the South during the first half of the Twentieth Century had been systematically herded into and kept inside urban pockets of the industrial cities of the North.

One of the major problems that Dr. King and the SCLC had to deal with in the ghettos of Chicago was segregated housing. A black family arriving in Chicago was not permitted the freedom to choose where it might reside. The most notorious tactic used to restrict residence “was redlining, the refusal of banks and insurance firms to issue or insure mortgage loans in predominantly black neighborhoods, which would often get delineated on city maps with a red line” (Bernstein 8).


The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which was created to make homeownership accessible for all Americans, denied loan insurance to African Americans and even those who lived near them. … the FHA created maps that were marked with red ink in the areas where minorities lived to signify that the FHA believed that these neighborhoods were “undesirable” for investment.

Restrictive covenants – a second tactic -- were laws that prevented African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods. These policies were a deliberate attempt by the government to segregate blacks and whites. … African Americans were forced into low-opportunity neighborhoods. (Chicago 2-3).


In the greater Chicago-area, almost all homes and apartment buildings occupied by whites are covered by restrictive covenants written into the property deeds. These covenants prohibit nonwhites (and in some cases Jews) from buying or renting. For example:

"Said Property shall not be sold, conveyed, granted or leased, in whole or in part, to any Hebrew person or family, or any person or family not of the white race, nor shall any Hebrew person, or other person not of the white race, be permitted to occupy any portion of said property or any building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by the owner of said property."


Courts have ruled restrictive covenants illegal and unenforceable, but owners and brokers do as they wish. From time to time, a few Blacks manage to evade real estate industry discrimination and defy the covenants to actually move into a white neighborhood. They are met with harassment and mob violence.

Back in 1963, a local Chicago ordinance was passed outlawing racial discrimination in real estate. But it was never enforced, owners, brokers, landlords, rental agencies, and mortgage lenders simply ignored it. In '65, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) tried to promote "open occupancy" through moral suasion — without success (Focus 1).


Not only were African Americans limited to living in certain neighborhoods, they also faced discrimination when they tried to buy homes. Most financial institutions would not lend to African American families. Many white realtors took advantage of this exclusion through “contract selling.” In contract sales, African Americans made monthly payments on their homes to the seller, with the promise of receiving the deeds to the homes once they were entirely paid off, usually decades later. These families had all of the responsibilities of a homeowner but none of the security—they did not build equity and they could be evicted for missing a single payment. Additionally, the realtors often sold these homes for prices that were double and triple their value. African American families were forced into these exploitative deals because they had no options to buy homes in the traditional market. It is estimated that 90% of African Americans in Chicago bought their homes through contract sales during the 1950s. This practice resulted in black families having thousands of dollars of debt and sent many spiraling into poverty (Chicago 3).


As the black population grew, the Black Belt [Chicago’s ghettos] eventually loosened, and blacks started pushing into white neighborhoods (often paying double the market value for white-owned homes). “Realtors would sell a piece of property to a Negro, … and then they tell the white people, ‘The Negroes are coming!’” These blockbusters, as such real estate agents were called, fanned white panic, warning residents that the value of their homes would plummet. Many whites sold quickly and left, most often for the suburbs.


By the mid-1960s, on the eve of King’s Chicago campaign, the Harlem of Chicago, as Bronzeville was often called, was well on its way to becoming blighted. Many of its graystone blocks had been replaced by the two-mile stretch of bleak concrete towers known as the Robert Taylor Homes or by the eight massive apartment blocks of Stateway Gardens. These public housing complexes would become, arguably, the country’s most notorious (Bernstein 8-9).


The Chicago Freedom Movement focused on homeownership and rental injustices facing black families. Dr. King and his staff visited tenants in apartments with atrocious conditions. Many of the apartments were rat-infested, without heat, dangerous, not regularly repaired by the landlords, and extremely overpriced (Chicago 3). … so long as Blacks have no alternatives because segregation walls them into the ghetto, there is no economic incentive for slum-lords to maintain their properties or charge market-rate prices because they have a captive customer base with no other choices (Focus 2). These unsafe and unaffordable housing conditions became the focus of tenant organizing over the course of 1966 (Chicago 3).


Job Opportunity was another problem that needed to be addressed. Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket was designed to open employment in companies that had previously employed whites only. Picket lines and boycotts were planned “to force businesses in black neighborhoods to hire black workers, use black-owned banks, and stock black products and brands” (Bernstein 32).


Then there was the absence of movement support from youth.


In the South, young protesters are the backbone of Freedom Movement campaigns. In the communities where they live, significant and influential segments of the Afro-American population support nonviolent strategies; both for religious reasons and because they understand that Black violence against white interests would result in ferocious and devastating repression. So SCLC can mobilize young people through the church, from Black college campuses, and by recruiting high school student-body officers, prom queens, athletes, cheerleaders, and other natural youth leaders. In the South, marching for freedom has become a respected badge of honor and those who defy Jim Crow by going to jail are by now respected by their peers and praised as heroes by many adults and community leaders.


In the North, not so much. Religion has less influence, the practical political rationale for nonviolence is not so clear, community solidarity is weaker, frustration is greater, and rage less focused. While CORE activists in the North who picket and go to jail are honored by some in the ghetto, they are also derided by others as "chumps," "suckers," "fools," and un-manly, nonviolent wimps. And in Chicago, as elsewhere in the North, it is the swaggering, macho gangs who have glamour and prestige among restless angry teenagers ….

…

Most of Chicago's Black gang members are antagonistic to authority — any authority, regardless of race. They disdain religion and clergy, are hostile to whites in general, and are openly contemptuous of nonviolence. Rival gangs hate each other and have little interest in mutual cooperation (Ghetto 1-2).


Additionally, King and the SCLC had to overcome influential individuals motivated less by empathy, more by self-interest.


King and his people would need to “force a local victory with local forces against an array of powerful economic interests all of which have supporters and allies within the Black community. Elements of the CCCO coalition itself are closely aligned with the Democratic Party which in turn is thoroughly entwined with the corporations, institutions, and associations that are deeply involved in ghetto segregation and exploitation.”


Moreover, radical solutions for economic injustice favored by CORE, SNCC, and SCLC activists are anathema to some (though not necessarily all) of the ministers, some of the business-oriented NAACP & Urban League leaders, and some of the labor unions (Chicago 5).


Dr. King’s most powerful opponent was Chicago’s mayor.


Richard J. Daley made known his displeasure that “outside troublemakers” were coming to the city and told all who would listen there were no slums in Chicago. He also declared that he would not meet with King, thus drawing a line in the sand.


For those who were to lead the summer campaign, these statements were ominous. The nation and the world were to soon learn what they already knew — that the likes of Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and George Wallace had their counterparts in the Richard J. Daleys of Chicago and other northern cities (Black 5).


Dorothy Tillman, 17, was part of the advance team that came to Chicago in the fall of 1965 to help prepare for Dr. King’s forthcoming activist movement.


She related how a lot of Chicago’s black ministers—even a few who had marched with him down south—rebuffed King. Far from rolling out the welcome mat, they told him in plain terms—in front of TV cameras, no less—to butt out and go home. “We were rejected by most of the black leadership,” says Tillman. “Dr. King could hardly get into a church to speak. We never experienced that before. And I told Dr. King, I said, ‘If they don’t want us to be here, I don’t want to stay. I want to go back home.’ ”


Back then, she says, Chicago’s black politicians, as well as nearly all of the city’s black ministers, were in the stranglehold of Mayor Daley’s Democratic machine. “Dr. King said that Daley’s plantation was worse than the plantation in Mississippi,” says Tillman. “He’d say, ‘Those Negroes was in deep.’”


Ministers who backed the administration’s policies got rewarded with patronage and political favors—$1 city lots for church expansions, say, or federal money for social service programs. Those who didn’t play ball got punished with visits from city building or health inspectors, or Sunday parking tickets, or permit and zoning denials. Tillman likes to tell the story of the South Side pastor Clay Evans. In 1964, Evans defied Daley and let King preach at his church, which happened to be under renovation. The next day, the lending institutions that were bankrolling the construction withdrew financing, and the crews stopped work. Evans continued to support King throughout the Chicago Freedom Movement; his church addition stood unfinished for eight years (Bernstein 16-17).


A key Daley supporter in the Black community is the Rev. J.H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, a large and influential organization of Afro-American ministers. He and King have long been adversaries. Jackson staunchly opposes protests and civil disobedience, favoring instead the NAACP program of litigation and legislative lobbying. In 1961, his "civil rights through law and order" stand, and his enmity to the direct action and civil disobedience strategy of SCLC, drove King and many others to form a new, rival organization, the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Now King and Jackson confront each other again in Chicago. Afro-American ministers are a mainstay of Daley's political machine, and as SCLC tries to mobilize Black clergy in support of direct action for social justice, Jackson and his conservative allies maneuver against them (Chicago 2).


Walking the streets of the neighborhood where he resides, King has yet to comprehend the magnitude of the difficulties he must surmount.


Works cited:


Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...


Black, Carolyn, Appelhans, Bill, and Gaboury, Fred. “The Chicago Freedom Movement: Summer 1966.” People’s World. January 18, 2002. Web. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/...


“The Chicago Freedom Movement.” National Low Income Housing Coalition. October 23, 2018. Web. https://nlihc.org/resource/chicago-fr...


“A Focus on Housing.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...


“Ghetto Youth Gangs.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...

Civil Rights Events -- Chicago Freedom Movement -- Daunting Objectives

… the slums and ghettos of the mid-1960s are not accidents of fate. They are the inevitable consequences of local (and not so local) power structures practicing covert segregation and overt hypocrisy to benefit their own wealth, power and privilege. …

CORE, NAACP, Urban League, and scores of local civil rights, reform, and economic justice groups have long struggled — with little success — in northern ghettos against racist civic policies and entrenched economic interests. Freedom Movement victories in the South have had little impact in the North, and by mid-1966, impatience and fury in the nation's inner-cities are rising fast.

In Washington, Congress is in no mood for new civil rights or economic justice legislation — its focus is "law and order" and "White Backlash" politics. President Johnson's priority is the Vietnam War, not the War on Poverty. Instead of increasing funds to ameliorate urban misery, money once earmarked for social programs is being diverted to the military budget.

And even if Vietnam were not draining national wealth, by now it is clear that federal poverty programs are mainly benefiting private businesses in the form of grants, subsidies and tax breaks. And it is middle-class professionals who are being employed by the research firms, bureaus, agencies, and training centers that are paid for by the federal poverty programs. Few poor people are being hired for anything, and even fewer are being helped to actually lift themselves out of poverty. LBJ's grand and ballyhooed "War on Poverty" is proving to be an underfunded fraud.

Ever since Birmingham, Movement supporters in the North have been pressing Dr. King to apply his nonviolent direct action strategies to the festering problems of northern ghettos, pleas that become even more insistent after the Selma success. Watts forces the issue (After 1-2).

The world sees Dr. King as a political leader of social/political movements, but in his own heart he is a pastor. The misery and suffering of those imprisoned in the urban ghettos cry out to him. Since his student days he has been powerfully drawn to the social ministry, to the poor, the downtrodden, the dispossessed and disempowered. He passionately believes that nonviolent resistance is the answer to oppression, exploitation, injustice, and despair — not just in the American South, but everywhere.

Yet for "everywhere" to actually be everywhere, it has to include northern slums. He tells his SCLC colleagues, "I realize I must more and more extend my work beyond the borders of the South, and become involved to a much greater extent with the problems of the urban North."

But except for James Bevel and Andrew Young, SCLC leaders and key advisors all oppose expanding out of the South. They argue that SCLC has no base of churches or affiliates in the North, little experience with issues of defacto rather than dejure segregation, and no strategy for addressing pervasive covert discrimination or urban poverty. …

SCLC's southern affiliates all face urgent local problems with scant resources, and the ministers & community groups who make up the organization's Board of Directors desperately need help and support from Atlanta. They know the organization can barely fund its southern programs, it can't possibly finance a struggle on two broad fronts. Moreover, most of SCLC's income now comes from northern white liberals, some of whom have already turned against the Freedom Movement because of Harlem and Watts. How many more will fall away if the Movement begins to confront racism in their own backyard?

…

It also means confronting white-only trade unions and long-standing hiring and promotion standards that are deeply embedded in labor contracts. These issues are all far more complex, and enormously more controversial, than segregated lunch counters or denial of voting rights. And when economic injustice becomes the focus, old allies may turn out to be fierce new adversaries.

Dr. King is well aware of the difficulties and risks inherent in a northern campaign focused on poverty and economic justice. But the Movement has to establish that racism and poverty are national issues — not southern exceptions. Referring to Watts, he says, "[The] ghetto Negro has been invisible so long and has become visible through violence." Nonviolence has to effectively meet that challenge. "We must find the real issues and examine our structure to determine what we can do. ...

For several years, the Freedom Movement in Chicago has been fighting against rigidly segregated, deeply unequal schools, and an adamant school administration committed to the old order and the old ways. They urgently need substantial aid from King and SCLC. Over the course of many months and many meetings, Dr. King eventually convinces a very reluctant SCLC to answer Chicago's call (North 1-2).

It is the policy of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) to build public housing only in Black and Latino communities, usually in the form of high-rise "projects" that in reality are vertical ghettos for the very poorest. On a plot of land in the heart of the South Side ghetto, for example, are the Robert Taylor Homes — the largest public housing complex in the nation, consisting of 28 towers, each 16-stories high, containing 3,340 apartments.

Such intense concentrations of extreme poverty foster despair, vandalism, and crime. They overwhelm neighborhood elementary schools, and quickly prove catastrophic for residents, the surrounding area, and society at large. Nevertheless, CHA insists on building more of them. In the view of many housing activists, the real reasons for large-scale, tower-based projects are racist attitudes on the part of white neighborhoods who refuse to accept nonwhites into their communities and schools, and the lucrative construction and maintenance contracts that go to politically well-connected businesses — and the graft they kickback to the controlling politicians.

Chicago is the home and political base of Mayor Richard J. Daley, a major power within the national Democratic Party who ruthlessly controls one of the strongest urban "machines" in the nation. His Cook County election apparatus is a sophisticated organization of ward bosses, district and precinct captains, business interests (both white and nonwhite), union officials, favored clergy, ethnic leaders, and organized crime. All of whom reliably deliver overwhelming Black, Latino, and white working-class majorities for Daley's candidates and policies. So long as the machine can reliably mobilize Afro-Americans at the ballot box, he can curry favor with white "ethnic" voters by opposing civil rights initiatives such as school desegregation and open housing.

… SCLC strategists believe that confronting Daley is self-defeating. "I don't consider Mayor Daley as an enemy," publicly avows Dr. King who hopes that nonviolent direct action can persuade (or pressure) the Mayor to support civil rights related reforms (Segregation 1-3).

In August of 1965, Dr. King sends Rev. James Bevel and a dozen or so members of SCLC's small field staff to begin working in Chicago. There they join Bernard LaFayette, Bevel's Nashville & Freedom Ride "roll buddy," and a former SNCC organizer, who is working for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the city's West Side ghetto.

Their assignment is to assist the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) build a powerful, nonviolent, urban mass movement. The CCCO is a loose coalition of 40 or so community and civil rights groups who have been opposing Chicago's rigidly segregated school system. …

Led by Al Raby, the CCCO has fought for years against School Superintendent Benjamin Willis and his policies of defacto segregation. In 1963 and '64, they organized two huge school walkouts with some 200,000 students boycotting classes. Yet despite its efforts, CCCO has had little success. Willis is backed by Daley. And the Johnson administration in Washington is unwilling to offend or upset Daley by enforcing the school desegregation provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which Willis is violating. …

At an SCLC-CCCO strategy meeting in October of 1965, SCLC Project Director James Bevel defines the ultimate, long-range goal as, "Getting rid of slums. [Our task] is not to patch up the ghetto, but to abolish it."

Dr. King later recalled:
When we first joined forces with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, we outlined a drive to end slums. We viewed slums and slumism as more than a problem of dilapidated, inadequate housing. We understood them as the end product of domestic colonialism: slum housing and slum schools, unemployment and underemployment, segregated and inadequate education, welfare dependency and political servitude. Because no single attack could hope to deal with this overwhelming problem, we established a series of concurrent projects aimed at each facet.

…

Over three days of meetings in early January of 1966, SCLC and CCCO leaders hammer out their strategy. At the urging of Bevel, and after long and contentions debate, the CFM [Chicago Freedom Movement] decides to shift focus from school segregation to a much broader, more general, "War on Slums."


In a 13-page strategy document, they outline a three-phase plan: Phase One (already underway) is organizing tenant unions and forming other community groups, educating supporters and opinion makers, recruiting and training nonviolent demonstrators. Phase Two, expected to begin in March, is to consist of creative nonviolent protests exposing the agents of discrimination and exploitation and educating the public about poverty and suffering in the ghettos. Phase Three, scheduled for May, is large-scale direct action and mass civil disobedience to achieve a "direct confrontation [between] the power of the existing social order and the newly acquired power of the combined forces of good-will and the under-privileged."

…

King tells reporters, "Our work will be aimed at Washington," for an expanded War on Poverty and open-housing legislation. But so long as "Law & Order" ideology and the Vietnam War dominate politics and budgets, the chances of prodding the nation to, "rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed," are poor (Chicago 1-5).


It was bitterly cold on January 26, 1966, the day Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, moved into a $90-a-month railroad flat on the top floor of a rundown building on the corner of Hamlin Avenue and 16th Street. The North Lawndale tenement, which stood two blocks from a pool hall that served as headquarters for the Vice Lords street gang, had no lock on its front door and a packed-dirt floor in the foyer.

…

King’s decision to come to Chicago owed in large part to the efforts of two men: Albert Raby [of the CCCO] … and James Bevel [who] … had recently moved to Chicago with his wife, Diane Nash, a native South Sider, and started working at the West Side Christian Parish, an outreach ministry across from Union Park.


Raby and Bevel convinced King that Chicago would be the ideal beachhead: It was a huge city with a substantial black population, and unlike New York and Philadelphia, where influential black leaders let it be known to King privately that they didn’t need or want him, Chicago had a coalition—led by Raby and Bevel—ready to welcome him with open arms. And then there was Chicago’s mayor. Richard J. Daley controlled virtually every lever of power in the city. Persuade Daley of the rightness of change, Bevel and others argued, and the whole city would change along with him. Change Chicago, and the rest of the country would follow.

“We’ve got to go for broke,” Bevel told King. After the Watts riots, King didn’t need much convincing.


The task of finding King a place to live fell to his assistant, Bernard Lee. King had expressed a desire to live on the West Side. “You can’t really get close to the poor without living and being here with them,” King told reporters. “A West Side apartment will symbolize the slum-lordism that I hope to smash.”


Lee and a young secretary named Diana Smith, who had grown up in North Lawndale, posed as a house-hunting couple and, after a week of looking at apartments in and around that neighborhood, settled on the flat at 1550 South Hamlin Avenue. Lee signed the lease before the landlord realized who the real occupant would be. Once he did, he promptly sent over a crew of plasterers, painters, and electricians to fix up the apartment.


“For a long time there was a joke that all Martin Luther King had to do was to move from one building to another on the West Side, and the whole place could get cleaned up in a hurry,” recalls Mary Lou Finley, who co-edited a recent book on the Chicago Freedom Movement. Finley, who is white, was just out of Stanford in 1965 and was given the job of picking out furniture from a church-run thrift shop for the Kings’ two-bedroom apartment. She remembers clearly the tiny kitchen with the refrigerator that didn’t keep food cold and the dilapidated gas stove that didn’t keep it hot.


Coretta Scott King recalled the flat in her memoir, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Our apartment was on the third floor of a dingy building, which had no lights in the hall, only one dim bulb at the head of the stairs. … As we walked in … the smell of urine was overpowering. We were told that this was because the door was always open, and the drunks came in off the street to use the hallway as a toilet.”



The Kings’ apartment was right off a violent stretch of 16th Street, in a part of North Lawndale nicknamed the Holy City—holy because it was where the Vice Lords, one of Chicago’s largest and fiercest gangs, had gotten its start. “In all of my time in the movement all across the South, the only time I was scared was in that neighborhood, going to my apartment at night,” recalls Andrew Young, the former congressman, U.N. ambassador, and mayor of Atlanta, who as a young activist accompanied King to Chicago to help launch the campaign. “I said, ‘I don’t mind giving my life in the civil rights movement, but damn if I want to have a knife stuck in me for 20 dollars in a dark hallway.’ ”


Most of the businesses in this part of the West Side—grocery and liquor stores, payday loan shops, and the like—were owned by whites, many of whom had lived in the neighborhood before blacks moved in. (In 1950, North Lawndale was 87 percent white. A decade later, it was more than 90 percent black.) Customers in these neighborhoods almost always paid more for less. Says Finley: “I remember going to a grocery store and finding Grade B eggs. Never in my life had I seen Grade B eggs anywhere! And they cost the same as Grade A or AA eggs in other grocery stores.” One day, she recalls, a colleague followed a delivery truck that picked up boxes of expired potato chips from a suburban supermarket and brought them to grocery stores on the West Side. “The ghetto was a dumping ground,” says Finley.


After getting settled in the Hamlin Avenue flat, King established a routine of strolling around the neighborhood. On his walks, he saw up close the sense of hopelessness, despair, and anger—what he referred to as an “emotional pressure cooker”—to which the Watts riots had so violently borne testament (Bernstein 10-12).


Works cited:

“After Watts.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...

Bernstein, David. “The Longest March.” Politics & City Life. July 25, 2016. Web. https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Ma...

“Chicago Freedom Movement.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...

“North to Chicago.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...

“Segregation – Chicago Style.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...


“The Chicago Freedom Movement.” National Low Income Housing Coalition. October 23, 2018. Web. https://nlihc.org/resource/chicago-fr...

Civil Rights Events -- After the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- Watts Riot

For the Freedom Movement, SCLC, and Dr. King, the year 1965 begins in triumph. For many, the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, March to Montgomery, and passage of the historic Voting Rights Act are the Movement's crowning achievements.

But just days after the Act is signed into law on August 6th, the Watts ghetto in California explodes in a massive uprising that dwarfs the Harlem revolt of the previous year. For six days, Watts is a tornado of arson, violence, and looting that leave in its wake 34 dead, 4,000 arrested, and $40,000,000 in property damage (equal to $300 million in 2014) (After 1).

It was Aug. 11, 1965, that Los Angeles police officer Lee Minikus tried to arrest Marquette Frye for driving drunk in the city’s Watts neighborhood—an event that led to one of the most infamous race riots in American history. By the time the week was over, nearly three dozen people were dead. TIME’s coverage from those incendiary days offers insight into why Watts erupted–and lessons for the current charged moment in America.

Fifty years ago, Watts was a potent combination of segregation, unemployment and racial tension. Though legally integrated, 99% of students at the high school that served Watts were black, and the school—like many of the services available to the neighborhood—was not serving them well. “Watts is the kind of community that cries out for urban renewal, poverty programs, job training. Almost anything would help. Two-thirds of its residents have less than a high school education; one-eighth of them are technically illiterate,” TIME noted in a cover story about the riots. “Only 13% of the homes have been built since 1939—the rest are decaying and dilapidated.”

Jobs, meanwhile, were scarce. The federal government’s Office of Economic Opportunity, run by John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, called out Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty for running the only major city in the United States without an anti-poverty program, and for being one of only two big city mayors to refuse a confidential offer of federal money meant for job programs. TIME credited a federal program that created 4,000 jobs for helping keep Harlem calm that summer, despite unrest the year before. Yorty, in turn, accused Shriver’s agency of withholding funds.

Nor were tensions calmed by police, as TIME’s piece a week later —headlined “Who’s to Blame?”—made clear. L.A. police chief William Parker was a divisive figure who compared Watts rioters to “monkeys in a zoo.” Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as saying that in Watts “[there] is a unanimous feeling that there has been police brutality” despite the fact that a 1962 Civil Rights Commission investigation was unable to pin down specific instances.

Seeking to explain the underlying causes of the riots as they were happening, TIME surveyed leading civil rights figures of the day. The magazine found most shared a common sentiment—one that may be familiar to current readers. “I think the real cause is that Negro youth—jobless, hopeless—does not feel a part of American society,” said movement leader Bayard Rustin. “The major job we have is to find them work, decent housing, education, training, so they can feel a part of the structure. People who feel a part of the structure do not attack it” (Rothman 1-2).

Let us delve into the specifics of the riot.

On Aug. 11, 1965, California Highway Patrol Officer Lee Minikus responded to a report of a reckless driver in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Shortly after 7 p.m., he pulled over 21-year-old Marquette Frye near 116th Street and Avalon Boulevard. Frye failed sobriety tests as a crowd of about 50 people began to gather nearby.

Police were going to tow Frye’s car, so his older stepbrother, Ronald [who had been in the car with Frye and who had left it to walk home two blocks away], brought their mother, Rena, to the scene to claim the vehicle. When she got there, Rena Frye began berating her son for drinking and driving, according to police and witness accounts.

Marquette Frye had been talking and laughing with Minikus and other officers who had reported to the scene, but after his mother’s arrival he began “cursing and shouting that they would have to kill him to take him to jail,” according to a report later issued by a state panel.

With tensions rising, the CHP officers attempted to handcuff Marquette Frye, but he resisted. His mother jumped onto an officer’s back.

An officer swung his baton at Marquette Frye’s shoulder, according to the state report, but missed and struck him in the head.

Frye was bleeding. Witnesses told others in the crowd that police had abused Rena Frye (who later told The Times that was not true). The crowd soon swelled to nearly 1,000, as Marquette, Ronald and Rena Frye were all taken away in handcuffs (Queally 1-2).

Forty years later The Times interviewed nine eye-witnesses. Arresting California Highway Patrolman Lee W. Minikus recalled:

It was at Avalon and El Segundo when I saw the suspect make a wide turn. A black gentleman pulled up [to my motorcycle] and said the guy was drunk. So I went after him. I pulled [Marquette Frye] over at 116th and Avalon.

It was his mother who actually caused the problem. She got upset with the son because he was drunk. He blew up. And then we had to take him into custody. After we handcuffed him, his mom jumped on my back, and his brother was hitting me. Of course they were all arrested.
…


Everything was going fine with the arrest until his mama got there. He was saying, "Oh, I'm drunk." It was like this was an everyday affair.


Interviewed, Rena Frye Price, (Marquette’s mother) said this:


Marquette and Ronnie were coming home from seeing friends. The police pulled them over. One of the neighbors came and got me. I went out to see what was going on. They took us down. They handcuffed us and took us to the station.
…


[The arresting officers] lied. They said he was drunk driving, but he wasn't drunk driving.


Nobody would hire me after the arrest. Before that I was a domestic. I kept kids and I worked in a lot of homes. But because of the riots, nobody would hire me. We survived because my husband worked at a paper factory. He died about 22 years ago now.


It affected Marquette a lot. It took a lot out of him. He was a nice guy, very smart, good at making things with his hands. I did my best to educate him.


There's a whole lot of worse things going on now. Like killing kids for no reason. It's terrible (Reitman 2-3).


After the Fryes were detained, police arrested a man and a woman in the crowd on allegations that they had incited violence. A rumor quickly spread that the woman was pregnant and had been abused by the arresting officers.


That claim was untrue, according to the 101-page McCone Commission report, issued months later. But on that hot summer night, the crowd was furious.


People began throwing rocks at police cruisers, and the crowd broke off into smaller groups. White motorists in the area were pulled out of cars and beaten. Store windows were smashed open (Queally 3).


The following morning, there was a community meeting helmed by Watts leaders, including representatives from churches, local government and the NAACP, with police in attendance, designed to bring calm to the situation. Rena also attended, imploring the crowds to calm down. She, Marquette and Ronald had all been released on bail that morning.

The meeting became a barrage of complaints about the police and government treatment of black citizens in recent history.
Immediately following the statement by Rena, a teenager grabbed the microphone and proclaimed that rioters planned to move into the white sections of Los Angeles (Watts History 5-6).

A second round of riots erupted on the night of Aug. 12, as 7,000 people took to the streets and spread chaos in Watts and surrounding South L.A. neighborhoods. About 75 people, including 13 police officers, were injured and dozens of buildings were burned along Avalon Boulevard.


Reports surfaced that rioters were stealing machetes and rifles from pawnshops. Firefighters attempting to douse blazes throughout the neighborhood were forced to take cover.


Some rioters had begun shooting at them.


Anger and distrust between Watts’ residents, the police and city officials had been simmering for years.


Between 1940 and 1965, Los Angeles County’s black population had grown from 75,000 to 650,000. Most black people in the county lived in Southeast L.A., a section of the city that was home to failing schools and little or no access to public transportation.


…


… witnesses to the arrest of the Fryes said they had heard officers using racial slurs as they clashed with residents. Many said the arrests highlighted the type of police misconduct they considered rampant in the area.


“My husband and I saw 10 cops beating one man. My husband told the officers, ‘You’ve got him handcuffed,’” one woman, who said she witnessed the Fryes’ arrest, told The Times. “One of the officers answered ‘Get out of here, [expletive]. Get out of here all you [expletives]’” (Queally 3-5).


With riots escalating, Los Angeles police chief William H. Parker asked for assistance from the California National Guard and compared the situation to fighting the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War. On August 13, about 2,300 National Guardsmen arrived in Watts, and, by nightfall, nearly 16,000 total law enforcement personnel had been deployed to maintain order. Blockades were established within the riot zone, with signage indicating that law enforcement would use deadly force. Sergeant Ben Dunn, one of the National Guardsmen deployed in Watts, said, “The streets of Watts resembled an all-out war zone in some far-off foreign country, it bore no resemblance to the United States of America,” furthering the comparison of the riots to an act of war, which was a common view held by white people at the time, and often how riots like these are remembered in the public collective memory. A curfew was declared for all black-majority neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and a policy of mass arrest was enacted. Nearly 3,500 people were arrested solely for curfew violations.


In addition to looting and arson, participants in the riots engaged in physical confrontations with law enforcement, with some hurling bricks and pieces of pavement at Guardsmen, police, and their vehicles, and others participating as snipers and targeting officers from rooftops. Rioters also beat white bystanders and motorists and prevented firefighters from performing their duties, as well as targeted white-owned businesses for the acts of arson and looting. The riots had died down by August 15. Approximately 35,000 adults had participated in the rioting, while about 70,000 people had been “sympathetic, but not active.” When all was said and done, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 people had been injured, 3,438 people had been arrested and an estimated $40 million in property damage had been sustained (Case 3-5).


Interviewed forty years later Tommy Jacquette commented:


I actually participated in the revolt of '65, not as an onlooker but as a participant. I grew up with Marquette Frye, and I heard about what happened.


After they took Marquette away, the crowd began to gather and the police came in and tried to disband the crowd. The crowd would retreat, but then when the police left, they could come back again. About the second or third time they came back, bottles and bricks began to fly.


At that point, it sort of like turned into a full-fledged confrontation with the police. A police car was left at Imperial and Avalon, and it was set on fire. The rest was history.


…


… I was throwing as many bricks, bottles and rocks as anybody. My focus was not on burning buildings and looting. My focus was on the police.


I was arrested, but I was released the same night with a promise to get off the street. [Instead,] I rejoined the struggle. The Police Department was at that time supposedly considered one of the finest police departments in the world. I know it was one of the most racist and most brutal departments.


People keep calling it a riot, but we call it a revolt because it had a legitimate purpose. It was a response to police brutality and social exploitation of a community and of a people, and we would no more call this a riot than Jewish people would call the extermination of the Jewish people 'relocation.' A riot is a drunken brawl at USC because they lost a football game.


People said that we burned down our community. No, we didn't. We had a revolt in our community against those people who were in here trying to exploit and oppress us.


We did not own this community. We did not own the businesses in this community. We did not own the majority of the housing in this community.


Some people want to know if I think it was really worth it. I think any time people stand up for their rights, it's worth it.


Lacine Holland had witnessed the start of the riots. She had gone to pick up her children from her mother’s house on her way home from work.


I went to the corner to see what was going on and saw a large crowd.


The police were there. They were making an arrest of a young man. I remember that they took him and threw him in the car like a bag of laundry and kicked his feet in and slammed the door.


We have a lot of officers in my family. I'm not against [police], but at that time I thought it could have been handled better than it was.


We were standing there, and a policeman walked by and someone spit at him. The crowd got very upset. When the person spat, the policeman grabbed a woman so strong that her hair rollers fell out. She looked pregnant because of the smock, but I think she was actually a barber. She wasn't the one who spit on them. I got in my car and left the scene. [Soon after,] the rioting started.


At Shoprite, where my husband used to work, they burned the market. You could hear people shooting, you'd witness people running with furniture, food, liquor, anything they could grab. It was just horrific.


One of my neighbor's friends was killed. They had the Guards up, and blocked off streets. They told her to halt, and they opened fire and she was killed.


My children were frightened. They were 7, 10 and 12 then. Of course, we had to explain what was going on. We watched the news. After it was all over, it looked like a war zone


Betty Pleasant, a student at Freemont High School, was working part-time and during the summer as youth editor of the Los Angeles Sentinel, then the major paper serving the city's black community. This is what she told The Times years later.

I was in the newsroom when people began calling us. We were the voice of the black community, and if anything happened, people would call us. Most of the editorial staff was at the print shop because we came out the next day. So Brad [Pye Jr., the sports editor,] decided that he was going to go check it out, and I said, I'm going with you.


We drove down Central Avenue. At some point a bottle was thrown at us, and it sailed across the hood of the car. It didn't strike us, but it woke us up to the fact that something was happening.


The farther south we got, the more people we saw massing on the street and throwing things at white motorists. Some black people got caught in the crossfire.


At 103rd Street, we came upon a real bad situation involving Nat Diamond's furniture store, which was being attacked. A guy walked out with a sofa on his shoulder. They ultimately burned it, with screams of "Burn, Baby, Burn!" Then they progressed east on 103rd Street and burned everything in their wake.


The crowd got bigger and more frenzied as it progressed, until it got to the department store. You know, in those days there were a lot of stores. The problem, as far as the residents were concerned, is that they were white-owned stores, selling substandard stuff for high prices.


The mob progressed to about Compton Avenue, [to] the one department store in the neighborhood, and they attacked it. They busted out all the windows and walked in and started throwing merchandise out of the broken windows.


A guy threw me a blouse. He said, "Here, little sister, this is for you." I was just standing there with my mouth open. So he threw me this really cute, peach colored blouse, which I looked at and immediately dropped to the ground, because I couldn't very well cover the story and follow the group while holding loot in my hand. Then they threw a Molotov cocktail and burned it to the ground. I asked one of the guys who was throwing the Molotov cocktails why he was doing it, and he said it was to get back at whitey. And I said, "I can dig it."


They moved to the big supermarket on 103rd street that was notorious for selling awful food. Several months before, I covered a demonstration there where people were trying to get them to sell better meat, better baked goods, better produce. They burned it to a fare-thee-well. Burned it down. I don't think they even bothered to loot that sucker.


On the corner of 92nd and Wilmington, was a very small, tiny grocery store owned by an elderly black couple. Their store was untouched, because word went around not to touch this one because it was black-owned.


There were no cops on Day 1. I don't think there were many on Day 2. It was unbelievable. There was nothing to restrain anybody. No attempts to quell anything. Nobody to put the fires out, so it was just raging.


On what must have been Day 3, because everything was in ruins by now, I understood that they were getting ready to do something else on 103rd, so I went over there to check it out — and got caught in the middle of a shootout between the residents and the cops.


That was the first and only time I was afraid. I was caught behind a boulder, which had been a building, but had been reduced to a piece of [rubble]. There was a cop a few yards away from me. He started moving toward me. I said, "Get away from me! Don't come near me! They're shooting at you, and I don't want them to miss you and shoot me."


He told me I had to get down on my hands and knees and scoot along the ground behind what was left of this building. He said he'd cover me. But I was too scared to move. I started crying. I just lost it. He was trying to get me to pay attention. Finally he screamed at me, "Go! Go! Go!" And I did what he said. I got away. I cried for the rest of the day. After that, the bullets didn't scare me.


I hated [the National Guard] like dogs, and I still do. I wanted to interview them, so a photographer and I came upon this massive barricade. I felt something whiz past my ear, and I said to the photographer, "What was that?" It was a bullet. By this time I'm used to it, I said, "Oh, that old thing."


We walked on up to the guy who was shooting at us, and I asked him if it was his policy to shoot first and ask questions later. And he said, "Yeah," and for us to get our black asses away from there. I said, "But we're with the press." And he said, "I don't give a damn if you're press or no press." So I've hated the National Guard ever since.


I didn't like the cops either, because being a child of the '60s, you don't like the cops. But I didn't hate them. They didn't call me names. They didn't shoot at me. And one of them did save my life. But the National Guard were surly, nasty, ugly and mean, and I was surly, nasty, ugly and mean right back (Reitman 4-10).


On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas.


By the time King arrived on Tuesday, having cut short his stay in Puerto Rico, the riots were largely over and the curfew was lifted. Fueling residual anger, however, police stormed a Nation of Islam mosque the next night, firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition into the building and wounding 19 men.


While deploring the riots and their use of violence, King was quick to point out that the problems that led to the violence were “environmental and not racial. The economic deprivation, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands of Negroes teeming in Northern and Western ghettos are the ready seeds which give birth to tragic expressions of violence.” Although California Governor Edmund Brown hoped King would not go to Watts, King went to support those living in the ghetto who, he claimed, would be pushed further into “despair and hopelessness” by the riot. He also hoped to bolster the frayed alliance between blacks and whites favoring civil rights reform. He offered to mediate between local people and government officials, and pushed for systematic solutions to the economic and social problems plaguing Watts and other black ghettos.


King told reporters that the Watts riots were “the beginning of a stirring of those people in our society who have been by passed by the progress of the past decade.” Struggles in the North, King believed, were really about “dignity and work,” rather than rights, which had been the main goal of black activism in the South. During his discussions with local people, King met black residents who argued for armed insurrection, and others who claimed that “the only way we can ever get anybody to listen to us is to start a riot.” These expressions concerned King, and before he left Los Angeles he spoke on the phone with President Lyndon B. Johnson about what could be done to ease the situation. King recommended that Johnson roll out a federal anti-poverty program in Los Angeles immediately. Johnson agreed with the suggestion, telling King: “You did a good job going out there.”


Later that fall, King wrote an article for The Saturday Review in which he argued that Los Angeles could have anticipated rioting “when its officials tied up federal aid in political manipulation; when the rate of Negro unemployment soared above the depression levels of the 1930s; when the population density of Watts became the worst in the nation,” and when the state of California repealed a law that prevented discrimination in housing. (Watts Rebellion 1-4).


Throughout the crisis, public officials advanced the argument that the riot was the work outside agitators; however, an official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the riot was a result of the Watts community's longstanding grievances and growing discontentment with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Despite the reported findings of the gubernatorial commission, following the riot, city leaders and state officials failed to implement measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood (Watts Digital 1).


Marquette Frye’s arrest was not the principal cause of the Watts Riots, but rather the spark that set the fire on already poured gasoline. In addition to previous riots inspiring unrest, such as the Harlem Riots in 1964, the Watts district of Los Angeles was a deeply impoverished predominately black neighborhood. African American citizens were growing embittered due to a lack of opportunity in the job market, substandard and segregated housing, inadequate schooling, and the prevalence of police brutality, all of which had led to a low standard of living. Impoverished black people felt constant frustration, because they saw the civil rights acts being passed and heard the promises for a good future coming from politicians, but they were still living in inferior conditions when compared to their white counterparts.


The riots also stemmed from the Second Great Migration, in which African Americans from the South moved northward and westward from 1941 to 1970 in an attempt to escape oppressive Jim Crow laws. The influx of African Americans to the cities, such as Los Angeles, pushed whites to the suburbs in what was coined “white flight,” draining cities of vital resources and taxes. Urban areas, such as the Watts district, became nearly the same as the South, as African Americans were being denied jobs by white employers, housing became strictly segregated and scarce, and police brutality skyrocketed out of white fear. African Americans uprooted their lives to escape systemic racism only to fall even deeper into poverty and still experience institutional racism on the same scale as they had in the South. When black people began to speak out about the injustices they faced during the Civil Rights Movement, white Americans living in these areas were horrified by what they thought they saw, and what they saw was the work of a lawless black mob incited to riot by the war on poverty that had been initiated by President Johnson. This mindset gave way to a resurgent politics of race, which pushed the falsehood that most people living in poverty were people of color, as well as the ideology of zero sum gain, which was the belief that when black people gain, everyone loses, especially working class whites. These frustrations culminated in riots, much like the Watts Riots, in predominately black neighborhoods across the country. The resurgent politics of race that emerged from this era has continued today, bringing to light the fact that memories of the past can influence the modern political landscape (Case 6-7).





Works cited:

“After Watts.” Chicago Freedom Movement & the War Against Slums. Civil Rights Movement History 1966 (July-December). Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim66b.htm...


“The Case for Civil Unrest: The Watts Riots and Institutional Racism.” Black Power in American Memory. Web. http://blackpower.web.unc.edu/2017/04...


Reitman, Valerie and Landsberg, Mitchell. “Watts Riots, 40 Years Later.” Los Angeles Times. August 11, 2005. Web. https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-w...


Queally, James. “Watts Riots: Traffic Stop Was the Spark that Ignited Days of Destruction in L.A.” Los Angeles Times. July 29, 2015. Web. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...


Rothman, Lily. “50 Years after Watts: The Causes of a Riot.” Time. Web. http://time.com/3974595/watts-riot-19...


“Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles).” Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Web. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/en...

Civil Rights Events -- After the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- The Murder of Jonathan Daniels -- Part Two

The suddenly released prisoners are tense. … SNCC veteran Jimmy Rogers urges caution, something ain't right, the streets are too empty, it's too quiet. Ruby Sales recalls:

It was afternoon. And the street was very eerie. There was a quietness over that downtown area that made us feel really, really eerie. ... What really prevailed that day was that we were thirsty and needed — wanted something to drink. And so we decided that everybody shouldn't go to the store just Morrisroe, Daniels, me, and Joyce Bailey. ... As we approached the store and began to go up the steps, suddenly standing there was Tom Coleman. At that time I didn't know his name; I found that out later. I recognized that he had a shotgun, and I recognized that he was yelling something about black bitches. But my mind kind of blanked, and I wasn't processing all that was happening.

[Daniels yanks Ruby out of the line of fire.] Jonathan was behind me and I felt a tug. The next thing I knew there was this blast, and I had fallen down. I remember thinking, God, this is what it feels like to be dead. I heard another shot go off and I looked down and I was covered with blood. I didn't realize that Jonathan had been shot at that point. I thought I was the one who had been shot.

Morrisroe was running with Joyce Bailey ... he's holding her hand and he's not letting it go for nothing. And he's running with her, and he did not let go of her hands until he was shot in the back, and she kept running and he fell. ... I made a decision that I would just lie there, and maybe if I lie there, then Coleman would think that I was dead and then I could get help for the other people. He walked over me and kicked me and in his blind rage he thought I was dead.

Joyce Bailey had escaped and she ran back around the store to the side near an old abandoned car. ... very close to where I had fallen. And to her credit she did not leave until she could determine who was alive and who was dead. So she started calling my name, "Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby." I heard her and I got up. I didn't stand up, I crawled, literally on my knees, to the side of the car where she was, and when I got to her, she picked me up and we began to run and Coleman realized that I wasn't dead. At that point, he started shooting and yelling things, ... because you have to understand that this man's rage was not depleted. [He] is over Morrisroe's body, standing guard over this body, because [Morrisroe] is calling for water and he'll be damned if he's gonna let anybody give him water. Jimmy Rogers comes over and tries to give Father Morrisroe water, and the man threatens to blow his brains out. So he is not finished. He is on a rampage.

It was a setup. They turned us out of jail knowing that somebody was going to go to that store. It was a setup (Ambush 1-3).

The rest of the group scattered and ran, knocking on doors as they passed homes. “Nobody would let us in; people were so terrified,” Sales said (Schjonberg 7).

Thomas Coleman, a 55-year-old road-construction supervisor, part-time deputy sheriff, and a member of one of the oldest white families in Lowndes County then strolled to the county courthouse where his sister is Superintendent of Schools and calls his friend Al Lingo, head of the State Troopers in Montgomery. "I just shot two preachers. You better get on down here" (Ambush 3).

A black doctor with combat experience saved Father Morrisroe’s life, removing his lung and spleen in an 11-hour operation. It took two years before Morrisroe could walk again—and he still feels pain daily (Troy 6).

When other SNCC workers went to look for Daniels’ body, they could not find it, Sales said. “The streets had been swept clean, and you could not tell a murder had taken place.”
Meanwhile, back in Keene that morning, Daniels’ mother, Constance, did not know that her son had even been in jail. She worried when the day’s mail did not include a birthday card for her from Daniels, who never forgot such things. Aug. 20 was her 60th birthday.

Two months before his murder, Daniels wrote this about living with and advocating with blacks in what was known as the so-called Alabama Black Belt: “I lost fear in the black belt when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I have truly been baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.”

President Johnson ordered a federal investigation of the shooting. The next day, his chief civil rights aide, Lee White, told Johnson that Daniels’ mother was having a hard time getting her son’s body returned from Alabama. Johnson told White to handle the transportation of Daniels’ corpse.

Carmichael traveled to Keene for Daniels’ funeral at St. James Episcopal Church, the parish that sponsored Daniels for ordination. Carmichael and a group of mourners sang a tearful We Shall Overcome at Daniels’ grave near his father’s at the edge of the Monadnock View Cemetery.

King called Daniels’ death “brutal and bestial,” but said that he had performed “one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry.”

Alice West, with whom Daniels and Upham lived in Selma, said that Daniels had been a part of her family. “We all loved him and trusted him,” she told a website for veterans of the civil rights movement. “He taught my family all about the wonders of God’s love. His death took a toll on my family as well as all the black people in Selma, Alabama” (Schjonberg 7-9).

In less than 12 hours Coleman is released on minimal bail. An all-white Lowndes County grand jury charges Coleman with manslaughter rather than murder. Alabama Attorney General Richmond Flowers, a racial "moderate" and a political foe of both George Wallace and the Ku Klux Klan, calls the manslaughter charge "shocking," and assumes charge of the prosecution. But as the trial date approaches, a flood of death threats dissuades Flowers from personally showing up in Lowndes County. He sends a deputy to Hayneville rather than appear in court himself.

The short trial takes place on Wednesday, September 29, little more than a month after the shooting. The Hayneville courthouse is crowded with Coleman's friends and supporters, among them Imperial Klan Wizard Robert Shelton, Grand Dragon Robert Creed, and the three Klansmen who murdered Viola Liuzzo. Circuit Judge Werth Thagard denies the motion from Flower's deputy to raise the charge to murder, denies the motion to change the trial venue out of Lowndes County, and denies the motion to delay the case until Father Morrisroe is recovered enough from his wounds to testify (since the jury trying Coleman will be made up entirely of white men, Flowers considers Morrisroe, the only surviving white witness, crucial to his case). Thagard then removes Flower's deputy and assigns local prosecutor Arthur Gamble — a personal friend of Coleman — to handle the prosecution.

Coleman admits he brought his loaded shotgun to the store that day, but claims he killed Daniels in "self-defense" after the seminary student threatened him with a knife. White friends of Coleman allege that Morrisroe was armed with a pistol, Daniels had a knife, and that "unidentified Negroes" stole the weapons from the crime scene after the shooting. With steadfast courage, Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales defy intimidation from the hostile crowd and testify that Coleman murdered Jonathan Daniels and tried to kill Father Morrisroe without any cause or justification.

Most civil rights activists familiar with the events are convinced that the shooting was a planned ambush. They believe that the abrupt eviction of the incarcerated protesters out of the jail into the street was not a coincidence, but rather an action pre-arranged between Coleman and the jailors. When he was ready with his loaded shotgun, they set up his targets. As soon as he saw the mixed group of Black and white, he charged out of the store and opened fire. But the possibility of police collusion and conspiracy is not raised or explored in the trial.

The jury confers in front of the Confederate soldiers monument across from the courthouse. Despite the nonviolent history of Daniels and Morrisroe, the obvious fact that there was no way prisoners just released from jail would have had access to any weapons and that no weapons were found at the scene, they accept Coleman's "self-defense" lie and quickly return a verdict of "Not Guilty." All 12 jury men then shake Coleman's hand and congratulate him.
Nationally, the verdict is roundly condemned by political leaders and the major media as a perversion of justice. And in a sign that at least some change is finally coming to the Deep South, the Birmingham News describes it as "an obscene caricature of justice," and the Atlanta Constitution, which had refused to even cover the The March to Montgomery 6 months earlier, writes that the verdict "has broken the heart of Dixie." Attorney General Flowers is blunter, stating that the verdict represents the, "democratic process going down the drain of irrationality, bigotry and improper law enforcement. ... now those who feel they have a license to kill, destroy, and cripple have been issued that license. Die-hard white racists agree with one thing he says, they plaster "License to Kill" bumper stickers next to their Confederate flag plates. (Trial 1-2).

“I would shoot them both tomorrow,” Coleman insisted years later. After all, they were “outsiders from the North.” (Troy 6).

Then-Presiding [Episcopal] Bishop John Hines said that what Coleman’s acquittal showed “about the likelihood of minorities securing even-handed justice in some parts of this country should jar the conscience of all men who still believe in the concept of justice in this land of hope.”

Instead of attributing Coleman’s release to the price a free society pays for the jury system, Hines said it was “the fearful price extracted from society for the administration of the system by people whose prejudices lead them to sacrifice justice upon the altar of their irrational fears” (Schjonberg 9).

Looking back, Stokely Carmichael related: Jonathan's murder grieved us. His wasn't the first death we'd experienced. But it was in some ways the one closest to me as an organizer. I'd thought they might have been gunning for me that night when they shot Silas McGhee in my car. That brother survived. But this one. ... Now I knew the kind of pressure I'd watched Bob Moses endure. I don't mean I understood or sympathized. Everyone had understood. But, now I felt what Bob must have been feeling, the pressure, the weight of the responsibility, the sorrow. But we couldn't let that stop the work. That's precisely what the killers intended. However, from then on, a little too late, the project staff took the strong position, nonnegotiable, that to allow whites in would be tantamount to inviting their deaths. That became our policy. And we armed ourselves (Trial 3).

Today, America’s Colemans are disgraced, while people like Daniels are canonized. The ESCRU launched a campaign, Operation Southern Justice, to integrate Southern juries. Twenty-five years ago, in 1991, the Episcopal Church added Jonathan Daniels to the Church Calendar, marking his martyrdom every Aug. 14 (Troy 7).


Works cited:

“Ambush!” Murder of Jonathan Daniels. Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Schjonberg, Mary Frances. “Remembering Jonathan Daniels 50 Years after His Martyrdom.´ ENS. Episcopal News Service. Web. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/...

“The Trial of Tom Coleman.” Murder of Jonathan Daniels. Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Troy, Gil. “Jonathan Daniels: The Forgotten Civil Rights Preacher Killed by a Cop in Alabama.” Daily Beast. August 21, 2016. Web. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jonatha...

Civil Rights Events -- After the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- The Murder of Jonathan Daniels -- Part One

The murder in cold blood and in broad daylight of a religious leader is horrifying enough. Especially in America, we associate our preachers with words not swords and expect them to be immune from violence. But merely a half-century ago, someone could brazenly kill an Episcopalian seminarian and shoot a Catholic priest without being punished. It happened, in August 1965, in racist Alabama (Troy 1).

On Saturday morning, August 14, a long line of Blacks wait patiently in sweltering heat at the tiny Fort Deposit Alabama post office where federal examiners are registering voters in compliance with the recently passed Voting Rights Act. Fort Deposit is a Klan stronghold and angry white thugs mingle with local cops to harass and intimidate. For some rural Blacks standing in line, this is the first time they've ever dared venture into Fort Deposit because of its long history of racist violence. Now their only protection is a small contingent of FBI agents present to record violations of the Act.

Under the shade of a nearby tree, a small band of 25 or so teenagers are hand-lettering picket signs. Ever since the Movement first came to Fort Deposit a week earlier in the form of a mass meeting, they have been working up their courage to take a stand for freedom by defying segregation. Despite passage of the Civil Rights Act more than a year earlier, the town grocery store is still segregated. They and their parents are barred from entering, they must make their purchases through a back window without examining the goods or seeing the posted prices. The amounts they are charged are often more than what white customers pay and vary from person to person and day to day according to the whim of the white owner.

SNCC field secretary Jimmy Rogers and other SNCC organizers try to talk them out of demonstrating. A protest will be terribly dangerous and if white violence breaks out it might prevent the adults from registering. A pair of FBI agents warn them that white men are gathering in an angry crowd, and they, the agents, can only "observe," they can provide no protection at all. The Black teenagers are not intimidated. "I don't want to scare the older people away from voter registration, but we need this," says one (Picketing 1-2).

Many [of the students] had been involved in an unsuccessful boycott earlier in the year of their segregated black high school after its superintendent refused to consider a list of demands aimed at improving their education. And the county school board blocked their attempt to integrate the all-white high school in Hayneville about 18 miles away. They wanted to find a niche in the civil right movement in Lowndes County, often called “Bloody Lowndes” for the way violence enforced segregation.

Just eight days earlier, President Lyndon Johnson had signed the historic Voting Rights Act. Most of the young organizers who gathered on Aug. 14 were too young to vote, but they wanted to be part of the movement so they proposed the protest against businesses in Fort Deposit (Schjonberg 1-2).

The SNCC organizers are torn. Their prestige among Black youth is enormous. If they forbid the demonstration the teenagers will reluctantly obey. But should they block the protest? Or should they support the young militants, some of whom are the same age they themselves were when they first defied adult caution and took their own stands.

…

Project Director Stokely Carmichael finally accedes to the young militants insistence on defying white racism with direct action, but only on condition that they pledge commitment to nonviolence. "If that's what you want to do, he tells them, "don't take anything they can call a weapon. Not even a pencil." Purses and pockets are emptied of nail files and knives. Jimmy Rogers and some of the other experienced SNCC veterans are assigned to join them. Assuming all protesters will be arrested, SNCC members Jean Wiley and Martha Prescod make lists of names and family contacts.

A car from Selma arrives with freedom school teacher Gloria Larry House and two white supporters, Father Richard Morrisroe and seminary student Jonathan Daniels. Tuskegee student and volunteer organizer Ruby Sales later recalled:

One of the things that we were very conscious of is that, sometimes in that kind of situation, white presence would incite local white people to violence. So there was some concern about what that meant, ... to jeopardize the local black people. The other question was who should be in the forefront of the movement. People like myself thought it should be the people themselves in Lowndes County, the local black people, who should be in the forefront. I had some serious concerns about what it meant to allow white people to come into the county and what kind of relationship that set up in an area where black people had historically deferred to white people, and whether or not that was in some real ways creating the very situation that we were struggling very hard to change. More fundamentally, I was very afraid of unleashing uncontrolled violence because of Lowndes County's history ... and the fact that since I had been in the county I had encountered more than one violent incident ... but ultimately it was decided that the movement was an open place and should provide an opportunity for anyone who wanted to come and struggle against racism to be part of the struggle" (Picketing 2-3).

Born in 1939 in Keene, New Hampshire, Jonathan [Daniels] had deep roots in New England. He was a typical kid: going to music camp, attending church, falling in love, and enjoying the company of a steadfast group of friends who still remember him with laughter and fondness. He was not a perfect child by any means. He smoked, stayed out too late, and snuck a beer now and then.

But Jonathan showed a contemplative side as well. His reading list included Camus, Kierkegaard, church fathers, and in an article for his high school paper he lamented young people’s disconnect with the spiritual world. His favorite book, The Chain, portrays an Episcopal Priest who stands with the marginalized in his town and loses his life in the process. After high school Jonathan attended the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, where he thrived under the rigorous academic and physical discipline.

Graduation found Jonathan at a cross roads. Although he wished his classmates “the joy of a purposeful life” in his valedictory address, his own life lacked such purpose. His father had died two years before, and there was pressure on him to return home to support his mother and sister. He decided, however, to pursue a graduate degree in English at Harvard University. After a year of study he realized that Harvard was not for him, just when Harvard had decided that he needed to seek his degree elsewhere.

And then he had an epiphany. He never shared what he experienced during the 1962 Easter Sunday services at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill, but it changed his life forever. He later called it a “reconversion”; after an on again off again relationship with the church, he had come home. Within a year he was enrolled in seminary at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jon’s textbook margins were well marked with his thoughts and reactions, but he learned his most important lessons from fieldwork in inner city Providence, Rhode Island, where his eyes were opened to the realities of poverty and injustice.

… In March 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King called on American clergy for assistance after the brutal attack on activists at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. At first Jonathan was not sure – “could I spare the time? Did I want to spare the time? Did He want . . . ?”– but after evening chapel he resolved to go south (Bell 1-3).

Daniels and fellow seminarian Judith Upham … had come to Alabama in March … They arrived on a Thursday, intending to be home in Cambridge in time for classes Monday morning. They stayed nearly a week and returned with the conviction that they were called to return to Alabama as witness to the ongoing struggle for equal rights.

“Something had happened to me in Selma, which meant I had to come back,” Daniels once wrote. “I could not stand by in benevolent dispassion any longer without compromising everything I know and love and value. The imperative was too clear, the stakes too high, my own identity was called too nakedly into question … I had been blinded by what I saw here (and elsewhere), and the road to Damascus led, for me, back here.”

Daniels and Upham returned the following week to spend the semester. “Sometimes we take to the streets, sometimes we yawn through interminable meetings … Sometime we confront the posse, sometimes we hold a child,” Daniels wrote, describing their daily work.

He said Selma in 1965 was like the entire world, ambiguous and filled with doubt and fear. Into that world must come saints, he said. And Selma “needs the life and witness of militant saints” (Schjonberg 3-4).

While managing to complete his seminary coursework, he plunged into what he called “living theology”: he helped with voter registration, photographed segregated conditions, worked to integrate a church, and lived with local families. Rachel West Nelson, whose family Jonathan stayed with, remembered that “he was part of our family. . . . In a way, he was a part of every black family in Selma in those days” (Bell 4).

When Daniels wanted to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Lowndes County, the group refused, according to legendary SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael.

“We had no base in Lowndes County, so there was no way to protect him, and if he were working with us, he would be clearly a target of the Ku Klux Klan and our work then would be just protecting him rather than doing our work,” Carmichael recalled during a 1988 interview that was a followup to the PBS series Eyes on the Prize. Daniels accused him of being racist, he added.

Daniels, instead, joined some Lowndes County work being done by the Southern Leadership Christian Conference, whose first president was King. Meanwhile, Carmichael and Daniels got to know and like each other that summer. Carmichael later said he came to realize that Daniels was “more interested in lasting solutions rather than the temporary ones” (Schjonberg 5-6).

Bloody Lowndes’s … violent bigotry shocked the earnest, decent New Hampshire native, who wasn’t naïve, having proved himself tough enough to graduate as valedictorian of Virginia Military Institute. In an article published posthumously, he described his travels in the land of “whites only.” One night, buying coffee at a truck stop, he encountered a sign: “ALL CASH RECEIVED FROM SALES TO NIGGERS WILL BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA.” Sickened, he recalled, the “nausea rising swiftly and savagely…. It was lousy coffee. But worse than chicory was the taste of black men’s blood.”

Another day, while in Selma’s post office “a redneck turned and stared: at my seminarian’s collar, at my ESCRU button.” The man exclaimed: “Why, he’s a white niggah.” As everyone stared at Daniels, “deep within me rose an affirmation and a tenderness and a joy that wanted to shout. ‘Yes!’” Daniels called this, “the highest honor, the most precious distinction I have ever received. It is one that I do not deserve—and cannot ever earn. As I type now, my hands are hopelessly white.” But, he added, “my heart is black.”

This was the poetic and pious voice of Jonathan Daniels, humbled by his privilege, by his black friends’ suffering, and by the efforts required “to confront a people with the challenge of freedom and a nation with its conscience.” Hurt by the racism otherwise good people expressed, despairing, with King, of “the neutralists who cautiously seek to calm troubled waters,” Daniels concluded that our crazy world “needs the life and witness of militant Saints” (Troy 1-3).

August 14 – Jonathan Daniels joins the 30, mostly student protesters. They walk to Fort Deposit's miniscule "downtown" in three groups of 10 (so as not to be arrested for "parading") and begin to picket McGough's Grocery with their hand-made signs carrying slogans like "No More Back Doors" and "Wake Up! This is Not Primitive Time." Fifty hostile Klansmen armed with clubs and guns quickly close in on them. A deputy sheriff shouts that they're all under arrest (the protesters, of course, not the KKK). "For what?" asks Jimmy Rogers. "For resisting arrest, and picketing to cause blood."
Some of the protesters manage to evade arrest, but 20 are forced into a waiting garbage truck. In addition to local youth, among those arrested are SNCC members Jimmy Rogers, Willie Vaughn, Scott B. Smith, and Stokely Carmichael, freedom school teacher Gloria House, Tuskegee student Ruby Sales, and Father Morrisroe and Jonathan Daniels. The two whites are particularly singled out by the cops for special abuse (Picketing 3).

The arrestees are taken to the new county jail in Hayneville. Bail bonds are set high, far more than SNCC can scrape up (Hayneville 1). Daniels shared a cell with Carmichael … The group spent six hot August days in the jail without air conditioning. There were no showers and no toilets. Daniels led the group in hymn singing and prayers, boosting morale and combating the bleakness of the situation (Schjonberg 7).

Stokely and Scott B. are bailed out [August 20] to continue organizing and to arrange lawyers and bond for the others. The remaining prisoners agree they will all remain together, no one else will bail out until everyone can be freed. Seventeen year old Tuskegee student and SNCC volunteer Ruby Sales lies about her age so they won't incarcerate her as a juvenile delinquent without trial (as Mississippi did to Brenda Travis and Florida did to the "St. Augustine Four"). As usual, women prisoners are separated from the men. There are four women in the filthy, cramped, roach and lice-infested cell: Joyce Bailey and Ms. Logan from Fort Deposit, Gloria House, and Ruby Sales who later recalled:

You know, growing up in the South, — or growing up in America — only "bad" women went to jail. That was the last thing your mama raised you to do was to find your butt in jail. There I was in this place that my mother had told me only bad women went to. So that was a really important moment, the transformation of that space. It moved from being a space of disgrace to being a space of honor to be there.

Now you have to understand what it means for four Black women — it was terrifying, psychologically terrifying because they engaged in psychological warfare. By telling the women that if we didn't stop singing that they were going to make the Black trustees — the Black prisoners — come into the cell with us and rape us. And they threatened that they would have the Black prisoners beat the men. So [they used] this whole notion of psychological warfare, turning one Black person against another.

And you know there was a lot of singing going on. People were afraid, and the singing had a lot to do with just maintaining our courage, giving us something to hold on to, and stand in. But, I have to say despite those tortuous conditions, it didn't feel like we were being tortured ... it was because of the spirit of just being there and standing up for something you believed in. And for those young people — and even for myself — I had never been arrested, so that was a powerful moment that even their threats couldn't defeat. And that was really based on the power of the people to really take one space that had been something else and to turn it into something positive and transformative. And that therefore it no longer belonged — even though the white Sheriff and other people thought it still belonged to them — in a way it didn't anymore (Hayneville 1-3).

Despite suffering in Alabama’s summer heat, Daniels refused to be bailed out before the others. He wrote a 60th-birthday message to his mother: “The food is vile. And we aren’t allowed to bathe. Phew…. As you can imagine, I’ll have a tale or two to swap over our next martini.” That drink would go forever unmixed (Troy 5).

On Saturday, August 21, the day after Carmichael and Scott Smith are bailed out, the guards suddenly announce that everybody is being released without having to post bond.

Of course we were suspicious of this. No one from SNCC had been in touch with us. We had not been told that bail had been raised; we had no information from anyone, and we thought, this doesn't sound right. But they forced us out of the jail at gunpoint. Being forced out of jail at gunpoint — you know something worse might be waiting for you outside, so you sort of hang on to that jail. Well, we did. We were standing around outside the jail and they forced us off the property onto the blacktop, one of the county roads, again at gunpoint. …

The suddenly released prisoners are tense. They have no base in Hayneville and for some reason no other Blacks are in sight. Willie Vaughn is sent looking for a Black home with a phone, but few Afro-Americans have telephone service and many are afraid to even answer their door. Nearby is the small white-owned Cash Store where Movement people have bought snacks in the past during voter registration days. After a week in a hot, fetid cell, eating foul jail food and drinking tainted water some want to slake their thirst with a cold soda. SNCC veteran Jimmy Rogers urges caution, something ain't right, the streets are too empty, it's too quiet (Ambush 1-2).


Works cited:

“Ambush!” Murder of Jonathan Daniels. Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Bell, Mike. “Jonathan Daniels, Forgotten Hero of the Civil Rights Movement.” Plough. Web. https://www.plough.com/en/topics/fait...

“In the Hayneville Jail.” Murder of Jonathan Daniels. Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...
“Picketing Fort Deposit.” Murder of Jonathan Daniels. Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...
Schjonberg, Mary Frances. “Remembering Jonathan Daniels 50 Years after His Martyrdom.´ ENS. Episcopal News Service. Web. https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/...
Troy, Gil. “Jonathan Daniels: The Forgotten Civil Rights Preacher Killed by a Cop in Alabama.” Daily Beast. August 21, 2016. Web. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jonatha...

Civil Rights Events -- SCOPE Project -- Recollections

It was hope that took them south in June 1965. They were idealistic college kids, many still teenagers, clutching hard to an outsized hope and a belief that they could change the world. …

With a characteristically rousing oratory, King welcomed them, some 350 students from universities across the country who had enlisted in the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) project. It was a new effort of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to register and energize black voters as the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 wended its way through the legislative process.

Coming on the heels of the historic march in Selma, Alabama, SCOPE was a follow-up to, and extension of, the well-known Freedom Summer a year earlier. The hope for the new initiative was not only to register voters but also to seed and grow lasting social change by galvanizing poor black communities.

“How happy I am to see you here in Atlanta, in such enthusiastic and spirit-filled numbers, to become a part of what I believe will be one of the most significant developments ever to take place in our whole struggle for freedom and human dignity,” King said to kick off a weeklong orientation and training in nonviolent action. “You are here because history is being made here, and this generation of students is found where history is being made.”

Among the crowd of students that day was a contingent from UC Santa Barbara. The seaside campus was a stop on a SCOPE recruiting tour headlined by noted activist, SCLC leader and trusted King confidant Hosea Williams.

“When I heard him speak, I was ready,” recalled Lanny Kaufer, who was a freshman at UCSB in 1965, when Williams spoke on campus. “That feeling that things I’d taken for granted, I suddenly realized, were not the way I thought they were. The feeling that somebody should do something about this, about civil rights, and I realized I am somebody. I can do something.”

Sussex County, Virginia, was a far cry from Santa Barbara. Rural, extremely poor and completely segregated, it was a world away in geography and ideology alike.

The UCSB group arrived in Sussex with hopeful hearts and open minds. They were welcomed into the black community where they were to stay with kindness, enthusiasm and no lack of wonder.

“During dinner on our very first night, the young son of the family that hosted me kept staring and staring,” Kaufer, of Ojai, said recently. “His mother noticed and told him it wasn’t polite to stare, and he said, ‘But Mama, he eats just like we do.’ That moment I will never forget — that realization of what racial segregation does to people. To go out on the street the next day with the kids all around us — them wanting to touch my arm and commenting that my skin felt just like theirs — it was a revelation.”

Just hours into their assignment — the SCOPE volunteers were dispatched in clusters to similar counties across the South — Kaufer and his fellow students were already seeing, on a small scale, how King’s bold prediction could come to pass.

“You will do far more this summer than teach literacy, canvass for voters, educate Negroes in community organization,” King had told them in Atlanta. “You are going to make the entire nation a classroom. You’re going to teach tens of millions that ugly facts of injustice exist — and yet they can be overcome by a passionate zeal for decency and brotherhood.”

…

“From a young age I had a very deep belief, which I hold to this day, that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and equal opportunity,” said [Peggy Ryan] Poole, who sought out and joined SCOPE on her own as an 18-year-old freshman at Chico State University. She was assigned to travel and work with the UCSB chapter during the orientation week in Atlanta.

“My parents kept all my letters from that summer and in one of them I say, ‘I’ve never been happier,’” Poole recalled recently. “It was because I had a sense of purpose and solidarity. And there was so much courage. There was dignity. These were poor people living in incredibly difficult circumstances, and a lot of them weren’t educated or politically savvy at all. But they believed in what was right. That made a huge impression on me.

“People really put their lives on the line for basic things — for their right to vote — and it’s not exaggerating to say that,” she added. “It was a very happy time for me. I was doing something meaningful, with people who were very inspirational. We were seeing people at their finest. What I learned is that you treat everyone with dignity and you can make a difference, one person at a time” (Leachman 1-10).

Joyce Brians (later known as Maria Gitin), a freshman at San Francisco State College, was assigned to work in Camden, Wilcox County, Alabama. She wrote about her immediate experiences in a July 9 letter she sent to her family.

I had a rather narrow escape today & when I got back to The Academy [an all black Presbyterian private school in Camden that was used as our headquarters after the church was damaged and closed by the police] & got your letters it made me so happy I wanted to cry. I sure think about you all often.

I was with a Negro boy, girl & one other white boy today walking down the highway when a man in a pickup truck tried to run over us; we jumped across a ditch but he kept coming back to try for more. He had a shotgun pointed at us, too. We finally decided to try to get to a phone. We went into a Negro cafe & tried to call the Academy (now SCOPE headquarters) but the line was busy. Our white Klan friend kept cruising up & down in front of the place while we two white folk hid in the outhouse. The woman who owned the place got scared & made us leave. We hid in the woods & tried to plan what to do. Finally the Negro boy went to try to find another phone. It took him over an hour. At last someone from the Academy came to pick us up & we made it safely back to town. I wasn't scared — just mad. Now our chances are blown in that community — Arlington, 'cuz the folks are scared of us.

I'm so tired of living in constant danger that I can't be afraid anymore. Every nite when I go to bed I just say "Thank God no one got killed today." We are getting people registered, tho' the Klan is trying its damndest to see that we don't.

To answer your questions:

It is very hot. It rains & thunders & lightenings for about an hour every day — usually while we are out canvassing. We seldom get cars. I have walked as much as 25 miles in one day.

I move from house to house, nite to nite. Everyone is afraid to keep us longer than that. They won't let me stay at The Academy anymore except in emergencies like tonite (there are Klansmen at the gate to the Academy but they can't come up here) cuz we didn't get that letter yet [from Rev Hosea Williams approving me for this housing]. I usually share a double or single bed with another girl. I've never had a room or bed to myself. Few of the homes have running water or electricity. I've never stayed in a place with indoor toilets.

We eat on the run — ice cream bars, milk — whatever we can find. Few people can feed us because they are so poor. When they do — it is usually fried chicken, grits, corn, beans, etc. I seldom get vegetables or meat and never get any kind of fruit. I guess I miss that the most. I'm losing weight slowly but we have to eat when we can, as much as we can cuz we never know where our next meal is coming from.

I seem to survive on the sleep I get. Considering I had pneumonia 2 wks ago I'm in great shape. I do get tired quicker than the others but the doctor said he's never seen anyone shake it so quickly.

I haven't been to church at all since I've been here cuz we aren't allowed in the white one and the Negro one has been closed by the sheriff. But I pray constantly & read my Bible every nite. Whenever a few of us gather for meals I ask grace. I feel in God's hands more than I ever have before.

My work right now is mainly going from shack to shack trying to convince people to get off their behinds & get down to register. We usually split up and get local kids to show us around. We never work in white pairs cuz the people are still scared of us. [Note: these comments pain me today; the local people were courageous beyond belief — just living there was a constant struggle. I was echoing the talk from leaders who were frustrated with the pace of registration.] We get all sorts of reactions and excuses, but we also get the rewards of seeing people stand in line at the courthouse all day & finally walk home with a new kind of pride that says "I'm a registered voter." We have what we call Mass Meetings where we give pep talks. They are rather like football rallies. I've never gotten to really 'preach' but I've given a couple of short talks.

… I am getting pretty tan. I wish I could get really black & blend in more-- I feel so conspicuous — I'm so white. I've almost caused more near accidents. White folks just about drive off the road when they see me walking down the street carrying a Negro child. But I'd say they are just going to have to get used to it.

…

… By late July it felt more like the locals were protecting us in emergency impromptu freedom houses on a night-by-night basis than that we were being helpful to them. We felt bad, guilty that we weren't giving the locals more and instead, were taking from them: food and bed space mostly. But worst of all, that we were bringing them into even greater danger (Gitin Letter 1-5).

Maria Gitin (Joyce Brians then) wrote separately about two local black activists that assisted her.

One of the local young men who canvassed with me was 16 year-old Robert Powell, a well-spoken good looking student who had a smile that charmed doors open for us. I'd stand back and he'd knock. Then he'd introduce me or sometimes we'd both stand at the door. Robert had good ideas about what would work best with which residents. If they only saw me, sometimes the door wouldn't open or we'd be quickly asked to leave. Often women were working at home farming, doing laundry and ironing, cooking. Sometime we got lucky. A woman would open the door with a wide smile and look of near disbelief. "My, my, my, Lawd have mercy — look at them!" A heavy set lady with her housework rag wrapped around her head waved me in, "You is the first one of them to ever to set foot in this house by invitation. We had the sheriff come out once and break everything up after my son was in the march but that were no invite. You are most welcome here young lady, most welcome."

As soon as I began working in my assigned areas, Coy, Boiling Springs and Gees Bend, locals told us why they had not yet registered. They repeated stories of lynching in the too near past, recent beatings and being fired from scarce decent-paying jobs at the okra canning or box making factory.

One afternoon Robert wanted to stop at one of the little country stores for a soda. We weren't supposed to go into any place where whites might see us together but I didn't want to show Robert my fear. There was a white man in there. He threw one glance at me before he started for Robert who took off running. I ran the opposite direction. I wasn't quite sure how to get back to where I was staying but growing up in the country did me some good. I walked along the red dirt road until I saw trucks where the highway might be, then I got oriented back to my host's house. A few weeks later, in nearby Haneyville on August 21st, Rev. Jonathan Daniels, a white minister, was walking out of a small store after buying sodas with Ruby Sales and Jimmy Rogers of SNCC. He was shot and killed by a racist incensed at the integrated trio of civil rights field workers.

Coy quickly became one of my favorite places to work because it was where Ethel Brooks lived. Ethel was only five years older than me but I looked up to her as one of the most active, progressive and exciting adults.

Ethel was an attractive, high-energy twenty-four year old with medium brown skin, dimples, a huge grin and thick unruly hair. She had a seven-year old son that her mother watched while she and her Dad were out doing community organizing. Ethel had encouraged and "carried" (the local term for drove) students to participate in the Selma marches. She had already been in the Camden jail several times and kept a pair of old paisley pedal pushers that she called her "jail pants" in the back of her car.

I wasn't the only person attracted to Ethel's fiery brand of leadership. She had convinced dozens of high school students to join her on the infamous "Bloody Sunday" march in Selma — a march many of you were in — and the folks we just were with three weeks ago of back there still recall surviving with pride.

Once we were driving back from her place in the bend area of Coy to Camden. A Lane Butane (local Klan leaders) pickup truck started chasing us. Ethel tried to outrun them, driving faster and faster over the bumpy one lane road. At the crossroads where Harvey's store is, she pulled onto a sidetrack in back and hid until the pickup passed us. Whew!

Then, to my horror, she pulled out behind them and started tailgating them with her window rolled down, yelling and laughing wildly. Another worker and I were screaming at her "Ethel stop! Stop!" We were laughing, but at the same time we were scared half to death. Finally, she backed off. The white men glared back at her with faces that said "Crazy lady. We'll get you next time." before they roared on. She wasn't always nonviolent, but her reckless courage sure made us feel braver (Gitin Story 1-5).

The passage of the Voting Right Act August 6 did not stop hard-line segregationist intimidation and violence. Sherlie Labedis’s excerpt from her book, You Came Here to Die, Didn't You? provides context and emotional consequence.

During the summer of 1965, I was a 125-pound natural blonde, eighteen years old, and I was absolutely committed to equality. I was a voter registration worker for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. My project was SCOPE, or Summer Community Organization and Political Education project. …

Friday, August 20, Pineville, South Carolina. I need to pee, but I can't walk down the outside stairs to the toilet. I'm scared! In the loft of the Freedom House past midnight, soaked in sweat, our sheets thrown aside, Nellie, Carol and I pray for relief. Relief from fatigue, heat and constant nagging fear that drains our energy. Our bodies crave sleep. Can't. I'm frightened to death listening for the sinister crunch of gravel in front of the Freedom House and the crash of a Molotov cocktail smashing the storefront window setting the building on fire with us in it. The past two months here have taken their toll on me, on all of us. For Herb and Henry, who live here, that toll has been life-long.

I need to pee, but night frightens me most. Secrets happen in the dark. We can't escape in deep slumber, but occasionally there might be a tattered dream of home, the fleeting face of a boyfriend or the memory of sleeping in. Not tonight. A legion of mosquitoes plagues us, whining in the oppressive darkness. And when they land, a smack follows.

I feel the world is about to explode. Something waits in the night. I know it as I drift off.

"Fire!" a male voice yells below.

I jump up to look out the window expecting the male workers' rooms to be engulfed in flame, but a dull red glow highlights the horizon across the street accentuating silhouettes of loblolly and yellow pine.

"It's not here," I cry. "Looks like it's over near Redeemer."

Scrambling for our clothes in the dark, we fly barefoot down the stairs. Mrs. Simmons waits next to her car her black face fierce in Herb's headlights as he, Carol and Henry peel out of the parking lot spitting gravel against us. Nellie and I jump in Mrs. Simmons' car and she races after Herb toward that ominous glow. John stays behind next to the phone.

My voice quivers when I blurt out, "Could it be Redeemer?"

Mrs. Simmons worships there. We consider it our "home" church.

"Do you think it's the Klan?" I exclaim.

"You jus' hush now, you hear?" Mrs. Simmons hisses, both anger and resignation in her voice.

It's our fault. If we weren't here, there wouldn't be a fire. Then I look at Mrs. Simmons, her jaw set, her lips tight. Is she thinking the same thing? Or does she feel responsible? I don't have the guts to ask her so I never find out.

We round the bend and a blazing Redeemer fills our view.

"Lord, have mercy," Mrs. Simmons whispers. She steers the car onto the grassy shoulder and stops behind Herb.

"We are so sorry," Nellie breathes. And we are.

Redeemer has been a base for our voter registration drive. Rev. Gadsden and many of the congregation support white civil rights workers in their midst. On registration day folks meet here at Redeemer to catch the bus to the county seat. The church, surrounded by cotton fields on a rural road, obviously offered too tempting a target to those who would rid the community of outside agitators: Us.

We leave the cars only to shrink back from the blast of heat.

"Is that a fire truck?" Carol asks in disbelief as a truck passes us and pulls up to two houses on the right of the church.

"It belongs to Robert Bobbitt," Herb says. "He owns the cotton gin near Day Dawn Church. He's white, but he's wanted a local fire department as long as I can remember. The St. Stephen Fire Department is at least ten minutes away so he has his own truck."


Bobbitt runs out the hose. Henry and other neighbors hurry to help him. Even though there's no hope for the church, the houses might be saved.

"How'd it start?" Nellie asks.

"Fire bomb," Herb angrily picks up a hand full of sand and hurls it against the air.

"White guys in a pickup truck."

A pine tree explodes in a spray of sparks as flames reach its branches, fence posts char and suddenly the second story of Redeemer collapses with a horrifying whoosh and thud. Mrs. Simmons shudders.

"Why did it burn so fast?" I demand. "It's brick."

"It's veneer," she says simply. "We jus' finished it last year. We passed that collection plate lots of Sundays to pay for this rubble. It was built in 1911, jus' an old frame church."

Oh, my God, we're not playing I realize as we stare, hypnotized while flames die down and the fire is reduced to hot coals.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform," Mrs. Simmons says as she turns away from the fire and strides back to the car as we hurry to follow. "Some folks is gon' be mad with me, but most gon' be mad about our church. We need to plan a mass meetin'. The Lord's will be done."

She seems resigned, but I am far beyond the outrage I felt watching televised burning churches in Mississippi or Alabama. The Civil Rights Movement means Martin Luther King Jr., sit-ins, marches and Negroes voting for the first time. Outrage would be a relief from the guilt I now feel.

This is no longer an adventure or an opportunity to help others. Someone destroyed this House of God because we are here. Pineville is just a rural area, literally a wide spot on the road. Martin Luther King didn't come here. It isn't part of a Supreme Court case changing the way people interact in the world. No news cameraman captures this devastation. We four came and the most obvious proof of our arrival lies blackened before us. And tomorrow, we canvass for voters again (Labedis 1-5).


Works cited:

Gitin, Maria. “Letter From Wilcox County, Alabama.” Remembrances of the SCOPE Project. Civil Rights Movement Articles & Speeches by Movement Veterans
Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project, 1965-66. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/gitin2.htm

Gitin, Maria. “Story From Wilcox County, AL.” Remembrances of the SCOPE Project. Civil Rights Movement Articles & Speeches by Movement Veterans
Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project, 1965-66. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/gitin2.htm

Labedis, Sherie. “Fireball in the Night.” Remembrances of the SCOPE Project. Civil Rights Movement Articles & Speeches by Movement Veterans
Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project, 1965-66. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/gitin2.htm


Leachman, Shelly. “For Freedom and Human Dignity.” The Current. April 14, 2015. Web. https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015316...

Civil Rights Events -- SCOPE Project -- Everything Different, Nothing Granted

On Saturday, June 19, the volunteers begin dispersing to the 50 or so counties in Alabama, Georgia, North & South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida, where they will work for the next ten weeks. In some cases, the locations of SCOPE projects fluctuate over the course of the summer. Most are in rural counties, a few are in towns like Selma Alabama, Albany Georgia, Orangeburg and Charleston South Carolina.

…

As SCOPE begins working across the South, Hubert Humphrey's promise has failed to materialize, the Voting Rights Act is still stalled in the Senate by a southern filibuster. This means that county voter Registrars — all white, of course — can still use their power to prevent Blacks from registering just as they have for generations past. SCLC has provided little training and few materials for this contingency

The day to day experiences of SCOPE workers parallel those of other summer volunteers from previous years in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Southwest Georgia. Tired from their journey, the northerners reach their counties late in the day or after dark, usually arriving at a church if one has opened its doors to the Movement or the home of a local leader if not. There they are sorted out to the places they will stay — the home of a Black family if they're lucky, a group "freedom house" or church basement if not.

The volunteers are honored and welcomed by the Black folk who first greet them. Often those put up in homes are offered the parent's own bed. Usually the volunteers manage to decline that privilege and sleep on couches, the floor in sleeping bags, or share a bed with the children. Food, much of it unfamiliar — collard greens, corn bread, grits, okra, gravy-biscuits, pan-fried chicken — is offered and shared as a bond of friendship, trust, and acceptance. It is only later that the northerners begin to realize that this warm embrace comes only from the most courageous members of the community, other local Blacks hesitate to talk with them, and many are afraid to even be seen in their company. Unlike so many of the adults, however, most Black teenagers are eager supporters of "the Movement." Some Black college and high school students sign up as local SCOPE volunteers, more would do so if not prevented by their parents, or forced to work long hours at low-wage jobs to save money for their next semester of college.

Some of the homes where volunteers stay are well-built and have phones, refrigerators, indoor toilets, and even showers — but many do not. Living rural, living poor, requires a sharp adjustment for some northerners — sleeping three or four to a creaking bed with a sagging mattress, outhouses, water from a handle-pump, showers made out of tin cans with holes punched in the bottom, cockroaches so large you can hear them skittering across the floor at night, mice beneath the weathered floorboards, hens scratching in the packed-earth yard.

Canvassing door to door by teams of northern and local volunteers begins in the hot, muggy heat — proselytizing the gospel of freedom one porch and front-room at a time — come to a meeting, the importance of voting, a better life for your children, voter registration procedure. The work is hard, the going slow. Many are still afraid — and justifiably so. Defying generations of white-supremacy can — and often has — led to being fired, or evicted, or suffering various forms of violent retaliation.

Within hours, or at most a day or two, the northerners are accosted by cops and sheriffs who identify, harass, and threaten them. For many middle-class college kids being treated as an enemy by the uniformed guardians of "law and order" is something new — and frightening. So too are their encounters with Southern whites, some of whom berate them, curse them, threaten them, and demand that they leave. Before coming south, few volunteers have ever been subjected to a white hate-stare — an unnerving experience — but one they learn to deal with as have "uppity" Blacks for generations (SCOPE-ing 1-3).

Upon his arrival in Williamston, North Carolina, June 23, Dartmouth University freshman Peter Buck witnessed police harassment. Soon after his arrival he wrote:

Tonight we went up to a real wild prayer meeting at Mt. Zion Holiness Church.

Police have been coming by at night trying to bait us out. Yesterday they tried to pick up Joe on a vagrancy charge, but we all took the trouble to keep money on us. The cop resorted to profanity and threatened bad things if he caught Joe out in the county alone. Today a couple car loads of red necks came by and talked to the boys out front. Told them how good they were to their negroes (Buck 8).

Lessons are learned. Northerners discover they have to talk slower and listen harder to unfamiliar southern accents. In towns, it's usually easy to identify where Blacks live because their streets are unpaved and often behind the railroad tracks or in some other undesirable area. In the rural farmland, piney forests, and mosquito swamps it's harder because all the roads are dusty (or muddy) and the shacks of poor whites — who are usually hostile — look little different from those of Blacks.

…

Sometimes no one is at home, other times someone is home, but they're afraid to come to the door lest snitches report to employers, landlords and sheriffs that they talked to "race-mixing agitators." Often the bewildering complexities of race and fear complicate encounters between white northerners and Black southerners. Some folk are afraid not to talk to the white volunteers because saying "no" to a white person, any white person, violates engrained codes of social subservience. So white northerners have to find a delicate balance between urging Movement participation and avoiding traditional patterns of white dominance — not an easy task. More lessons are learned — Listen! Listen! Listen! Hear what folk are saying, understand the difference between a "Yes, I'll come to the meeting" of real agreement, and the "Yes, I'll register" said only to appease these white strangers so they'll go away.

Volunteers — both white and Black — learn that conversations are the heart and soul of organizing. Soon they come to understand that real teaching is not lecturing, but sharing — both ways. Many of the Black men and women the volunteers meet have been kept ignorant of even the most basic elements of democracy: what voting is, what registering is, what political offices are and why they're important — but they are well-schooled in the realities of race, exploitation and power, brutal realities that often stun white northerners but are familiar outrages to Black volunteers, northern and southern alike (SCOPE—ing 4).

Brandeis University volunteer Lynn Goldsmith Goldberg described what she witnessed on voter registration day, July 12, in St. Matthews, Calhoun County, South Carolina.

At two o'clock I began helping inside the registration room. The registrars found we were more help than bother, and we began the exhausting job of laboring with the people over the ridiculous form. Many people could barely write, and labored over each blank as we told them what to write; sometimes letter by letter. It was sweltering in the room as the sun came out. I was about to faint as five o'clock approached. The registrars were nice enough to finish with all the people who were in the room at five. Anyhow, about sixty people were turned away at the end. The last people who go through at quarter to six had come at about noon. People waited about six hours and were not registered. I felt very distressed as these brave people, most of them hardly knowing what was going on, standing in that heat so patiently. I couldn't believe them. They want so little, and no one will give it to them. I wanted to cry. What poor, poor people (Goldberg 10).

Larry Butler, working in Barbour County, Alabama, had a similar reaction. A student from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, Butler wrote about the first voter registration day that he witnessed.

Our first registration day in Clayton was a success; we had between 200-250
people there to register. About 90 were processed and 21 were registered. The old
literacy test disqualified all but the well educated from registering. A special ―treat for
us while in Clayton was the presence of Gov. Wallace who watched us all afternoon from
an auto body shop. The SCOPE workers were aglow. We were in the Governor‘s home
town working for the fall of his kind of government and he was there to witness the
crumbling of white supremacy at his home. He made one comment the whole time---
―That‘s the best dressed group of civil rights workers I‘ve ever seen. In Eufaula, about
150 persons showed up, 92 were processed and 16 were registered. It went like that for
the rest of the week. In all, about 112 people were registered that week. It was a battle
for that number considering the test and that everyone waited for many long hours.
White men from town came and sat in the jury box and mocked us, made cruel jokes as
children and men, who have never grown up, are prone to do. One old man, 74 years old,
got there very early and was one of the first to go to the registrars‘ table. He worked on
his test from 9:00 in the morning until 4:15, no lunch and no breaks. The registrars
treated him as they would have a cute child or a playful puppy. He took their attitude in
good humor, submitted to their disrespect for his age and also passed his test. One more
black man was registered and the next time the joke would be on the registrars.

The only trouble that week was a man who tried to run us over with a truck (Butler 5).

And soon northern volunteers are experiencing those brutal realities for themselves. Churches, offices, and schools associated with the SCOPE project are bombed and burned. So too are the homes and businesses of local activists. Some summer volunteers, northern and local, are arrested, some for engaging in constitutionally-protected free speech such as passing out leaflets or picketing, some for behavior made lawful by the Civil Rights Act, some on trumped up charges such as "vagrancy." In a number of places, northern and local activists are beaten by white thugs, or chased, or shot at. Fortunately, over the summer of '65 there is only one Movement-related murder — the Assassination of Jonathan Daniels on a SNCC project in Lowndes County Alabama. But fear — fear of arrest, fear of danger, fear of sudden unexpected violence, is constant, pervasive, and exhausting (SCOPE-ing 5).

Lynn Goldberg’s arrest occurred August 2. She wrote:

We were arrested today. I was not scared. I cried when a two ton policeman stood on Al's neck while hauling another limp body (Lenny's). I am hoarse from singing and yelling.
Why were we arrested — no charge. We were pulled from the courthouse.

Yesterday Orangeburg had a record registration day — so did we! — they registered 350 people and had three registrars (even a fourth). They were allowed to use the courtroom — so everyone could sit down. It was cool, quick, and comfortable.

Today was another registration day. Mary Ann and Alan went down to help since we didn't have extra days. At three the rest of us got a call — come down by four. There had been only two registrars, and one left because he didn't want to register any more niggars'. People were being asked to read. Those bastards!! No — we won't put up with it. At five we would stay. Calhoun was asked to support the sit-in — of course we would.
We talked to the people, telling them to stay. We sang songs and marched around the courtroom when the officials left. We opened the windows and let the city hear us. There were posters with slogans — they went up on the windows. All the adults left except three because they couldn't be arrested. Our decision meeting was short we would stay 'til 9:00 tomorrow, or be arrested. …
Sheriff Dukes came in. Suddenly, on both sides of the room husky men in uniform poured in. they stood on each side as we announced our decision. They rushed on us as we sat and sang, jumping over the seats. …
I was picked up and thrown. Then I was grabbed and dragged outside. As I passed Earl he encouraged me to try to walk. In front of me John and Al were dragged by the hands down the stairs and thrown into the car in a heap. My picture was taken. Al's hands were bent til they almost broke. Dozens of cars pulled up to the courthouse, with all of us singing. We were piled, pushed and thrown into the jail. Then we were split, and some of us were led around another way. We stood and sang songs while we waited for them to get our names. Fifteen girls are together in a revolting dirty cell with three beds. There is a toilet in the room that is disgusting. Also a sink and bathtub. We were finger printed and photographed. Juveniles were led out if they wanted. … (Goldberg 11-12).

In some of the most dangerous areas, local Blacks armed with rifles and shotguns guard the SCOPE volunteers as they sleep at night. Some volunteers initially question this departure from strict Gandhian nonviolence, but SCLC leaders and staff make it clear that while participants in public Freedom Movement activities must be nonviolent — and everything northern volunteers do is in essence a public activity — nonviolence as a way of life for southern Blacks is a personal choice — and so is self-defense of home and community from attack by night-raiding Klansmen (SCOPE—ing 5).

SCOPE policy at the beginning of the Summer is to concentrate on voter registration & political organization — and avoid direct action protests. Though many northern volunteers are eager to participate in marches and sit-ins, doing so diverts from SCOPE's primary objectives. Moreover, protests often provoke an increase in retaliatory white violence and cause police to mobilize around town centers both of which could deter people from going to the courthouse to register. And demonstrations will certainly result in arrests and expensive bail bonds that drain money needed for registration and organizing work. But with the Voting Rights Act still stalled by southern filibuster in the Senate, registration efforts show scant result. Frustrated at lack of visible success, some volunteers — local as well as northern — argue that direct action to protest continued denial of voting rights, to demand immediate passage of the Act, or to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will inspire and encourage registration efforts, not detract from them.

In a number of locales, the ban on direct action is either lifted by SCOPE Director Hosea Williams or simply ignored by those on the ground. When SCOPE volunteers are arrested and beaten in Taliaferro County GA, SCLC leaders organize picket lines, marches, and a boycott of white merchants. In Crenshaw County AL, local Black students volunteering with SCOPE convince the project to implement the Civil Rights Act, and a white mob attacks them when they sit-in at a local cafe. After two churches are burned and Blacks are fired and evicted for trying to register in Hale County AL, 500 are arrested on a mass march to protest continued use of the so-called "literacy test."

After four weeks in Americus Georgia where the Washington State University SCOPE team has been assigned and SNCC has been organizing since 1963, only 45 new voters are registered. On July 20, four Black women are arrested for standing in a "white-only" voting line during a local election. Benjamin Van Clark and Willie Bolden, two of Hosea Williams' field leaders from the Savannah Movement, are sent from Atlanta to organize and lead protests. Hosea Williams of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC issue a set of demands: release of those arrested, longer registration hours, Afro-American voter Registrars, formation of a biracial committee to discuss race issues in Americus, and that a new election be called because separate voting lines are inherently unconstitutional. The white power-structure remains adamant, and a boycott of white-owned stores commences. Under pressure, the county agrees to hire a few Afro-American clerks to register voters. Within two days 647 Blacks are added to the rolls. Within a week there are 1,500 new Black voters in Sumter County GA.

Sussex County in Southeast Virginia is rural, poor, and small (total population 12,000). Blacks outnumber whites two to one. The voter registration office is open only two hours per month. The SCOPE project requests that hours be extended — request denied. They circulate and submit a petition signed by those who want to register — petition denied. More than 100 Blacks march in protest to the courthouse and daily picketing commences. On the one day the office is open, more than 140 line up to be registered, but few are processed and fewer added to the rolls. A delegation drives up to Washington and meets with Justice Department officials. Under threat of federal registrars, additional hours are added (Direct 1-2).

Larry Butler’s SCOPE group decided to resort to direct action.

The SCOPE workers became frustrated. All their energy was spent in canvassing and mass meetings. Little was being accomplished and we were becoming a Boy Scout chapter whose special project was voter registration. Many people were afraid of the workers because we were white and the old fashion attitude of ―Yas sir, Mr. Charlie was evident. Often in our canvassing we ran across old people in the backwoods who had heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, but thought he was the United States President. Freedom had not come to Barbour County, only civil right workers had.

We knew something was wrong and we were bored and disappointed. … (Butler 6).

The Voting Rights Act does not become law until August 6, 1965. So for seven long weeks SCOPE projects must try to register voters under the old "literacy test" system specifically designed to deny Black voting rights. It's slow going. Before the March to Montgomery, attempting to register at the courthouse was essentially an act of protest. It was a demand for federal enforcement of the Constitution and a cry to the nation for justice. But now that the Voting Act is on the verge of passage, few Blacks are willing to endure the danger and humiliation of applying to register knowing they will most likely fail, when if they just wait until the new law takes effect they can actually succeed. Nevertheless, dedicated SCOPE activists — local and outside both — manage to ensure that there's a line of applicants waiting at the courthouse on each registration day.

In Selma Alabama, which is still under a federal injunction, 1470 applicants go to the court house between June 20 and August 6 — but only 56 are actually registered (4%). In Crenshaw County Alabama, on the nine days the registration office is open before the Voting Rights Act is passed, 318 Blacks go to the courthouse to register, 242 are "processed," but only 58 are actually registered (18%). In Hale County Alabama where more than two-thirds of the population are Black, it's the same old story, voter applicants are fired and evicted, churches are burned, and almost no one is actually registered.

After the Voting Rights Act is signed into law on August 6, some county Registrars comply with it, and in those places SCOPE manages to register a good number of Black voters during the project's last three weeks. But elsewhere, particularly in the Deep South, white resistance to both the spirit and letter of the Act is adamant and Registrars continue to use their power to deny Afro-American voting rights (Voter 1-2)

Racists in St. Matthews, South Carolina, act out their anger. Lynn Goldberg revealed the following August 18 diary entry.

Some time between 8:00 and 9:00, when no on was home — our house had been shot at with a shotgun. Ulp! I was suddenly nervous. I ran back to the other SCOPE house and told Earl. He did not believe it had been a shotgun. However he hurried and offered to accompany us home. Three cars went to St. Matthews, filled with people.

What a sight! A hole about a foot in diameter was in the front picture window. The whole glass was cracked in all directions. The shade was drawn, and splattered with shot holes. But that was nothing — the inside was utterly unbelievable. Shattered glass was strewn over every inch of the room. Not a place was left uncovered. The back wall was dotted with holes. The whole place was a shambles. Everyone stood around — amazed.

The police had been by and looked things over. They said they would return with the sheriff in the morning. F.B.I. was contacted, and also U.P.I. We called Chief Strom for protection during the night. Matthew Perry was also informed of everything. It was still scary. Earl and the Orangeburg kids left us making precautions for night. Our beds were moved and windows blocked. Pleasant dreams (Goldberg 13-14).

In most Alabama counties, for example, registration continues to be limited to two days per month. August 16 is the first Alabama registration day after the Act goes into effect (and for most SCOPE volunteers returning to college in the Fall it's the last registration day they will see before leaving Alabama). Some 600 applicants line up to register at the Barbour County courthouse, but only 265 are processed and few are actually registered. In Butler County 568 line up, but only 107 are registered. In other states it's not much different. In North Carolina, the voter registration offices in counties with large Black populations simply close down until October. Georgia and South Carolina also continue to deny voting rights in predominantly Black rural areas.

The new law empowers Washington to send federal Registrars (called "examiners") to non-complying counties. Despite a widespread pattern of continued denial of Black voting rights, the Department of Justice assigns Registrars to only six of Alabama's 24 Black Belt counties. None are sent to any of the other SCOPE states. In the few places where federal Registrars do operate they are effective and Black voters are added to the rolls in large numbers.

…

Dr. King demands that federal registrars be sent to every county covered by the new Act. Attorney General Katzenbach refuses. Instead he lauds what he claims is widespread "voluntary compliance" with the law by white officials, and he attributes the slow increase in Black voters to lack of local registration campaigns. SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and NAACP registration workers toiling in the field see little evidence of "voluntary compliance" in the deep South, and most of them are convinced that Washington is dragging its feet in a forlorn effort to somehow appease southern whites and keep them loyal to the Democratic Party. As of August 1966, a full year after the Act goes into force, federal registrars have been sent into less than one-fifth of the southern counties that need them.

…

SCOPE's reported registration statistics are therefore to some degree estimates. By the end of the summer, at the high-end an estimated 70,000 Blacks attempted to register in the six states where there are SCOPE projects. Of that number, a bit under 50,000 succeeded (mostly during the three weeks after the Voting Rights Act goes into effect). Other estimates report somewhat lower numbers, particularly the number of new voters added to the rolls. Regardless of how many actually got registered, there are several hundred thousand Blacks of voting age in the counties where SCOPE has projects, and while 50,000 new voters is a good start, a start is all it is (Voter 3-5).

Throughout the remainder of 1965, and then 1966, the Johnson administration continues to drag its heels, refusing to supply federal registrars to places that clearly need them. Registrars are only sent into those counties that practice the most extreme — and overt — methods of denying voting rights to Afro-Americans. The locales that use more subtle and covert forms of resistance are able to avoid direct federal intervention and therefore delay, retard and minimize Black electoral power. But if Washington hopes that appeasement will keep southern whites loyal to the Democratic Party those dreams are dashed as the majority of white Democrats become white Republicans.

But slowly, as Black voting strength grows to the point where they can begin to swing close elections, and then eventually elect Black candidates in towns and counties with Afro-American majorities, overt white resistance to the Voting Rights Act begins to fade and politicians of all races seek Black votes — even George Wallace the (formerly) arch-segregationist Governor of Alabama, who by the 1980s is not only campaigning for Black votes but actually getting them when he runs as a Democrat against a right-wing Republican.

The results of SCOPE's community organization and political education efforts vary from place to place. SCLC's SCOPE volunteers support existing — or help local leaders organize new — voter leagues and improvement associations across the South. Like similar efforts by CORE, SNCC, and the NAACP, some of these local groups falter and die, others struggle on, and some thrive, providing an organizational form for Black political power for decades to come (Going 1-2).

Works cited:

Buck, Peter. “Transcript: Journal of a SCOPE Volunteer.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/buck65.htm

Butler, Larry. “A Short History of the Freedom Movement in
Barbour County, Alabama.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/buck65.htm

“Direct Action.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“Going Forward.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Goldberg, Lynn Goldsmith. “Diary of a Young Civil Rights Worker.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/goldberg.htm

“SCOPE-ing.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“Voter Registration.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Civil Rights Events -- SCOPE Project -- Getting Started

The Selma Voting Rights Campaign and March to Montgomery are victorious — a voting rights bill has been introduced in Congress and with LBJ's backing it is certain to eventually pass. But SCLC as an organization is in disarray. Dr. King is physically and emotionally exhausted, and the savage murder of Viola Liuzzo, mother of five, hits him hard. And like soldiers after a long, hard-won battle, SCLC's small field staff in the Alabama Black Belt is worn down from three months of intense and brutal action.

On the plus side, the organization is flush with money and as Spring evolves towards Summer contributions remain steady. With this new influx of cash, the field staff of a few dozen is now swelling towards 200. Half of SCLC's income is personally raised by Dr. King through his speaking engagements and appeals in the North. Most of the rest comes in the form of modest mail-in contributions averaging around $10 (equal to $70 in 2012) — primarily from New York City and other urban areas of the Northeast, the Chicago area, Southern California, and the San Francisco Bay region. But this means that SCLC is becoming financially dependent on northern whites rather than its original financial base of southern Black churches.

A week after the march ends in Montgomery, SCLC leaders meet in Baltimore to plan what the organization should do next. There is dissension, disagreement, and fierce rivalry among the Executive Staff directly below King. Three quite different strategies are proposed and argued:

Undertaking a new initiative in a northern urban ghetto.

Extending and expanding the Alabama campaign with direct action and an economic boycott.

A massive, multi-state voter registration effort.


There is no consensus. Unable to agree on a single strategic direction, all proposals are approved in one form or another even though everyone knows they don't have the necessary staff or funds for three major initiatives (Now 1).

One unintended result of the Selma victory is that Black communities in the North are now intensifying their calls (demands, in some cases) that Dr. King and SCLC apply their magic touch to the festering misery of urban ghettos. King, himself, had previously said, "I realize I must more and more extend my work beyond the borders of the South, and become involved to a much greater extent with the problems of the urban North." At the Baltimore meeting, Andrew Young proposes that SCLC answer those calls.

But many SCLC leaders oppose any move North. SCLC's southern affiliates all face urgent local problems with scant resources. They desperately need help and support from Atlanta. Some board members argue that SCLC has no base of churches or affiliates in the North, little experience with issues of defacto rather than dejure segregation, and no strategy for addressing pervasive covert discrimination or intractable urban poverty. Many question how — and whether — nonviolent strategies and tactics can be applied in the North, and what support they will find among the bitterly alienated urban poor (Go 1).

…

James Bevel, architect and field commander of the Birmingham and Selma campaigns, passionately argues for continuing and intensifying the freedom struggle in Alabama with both an economic boycott of the state and a return to the original Alabama Project concept of mass direct action and civil-disobedience in Montgomery. "We want the federal government to come in here, register Negroes, and throw out the present government as un-Constitutional," and then hold new elections in which everyone over the age of 21 is allowed to vote.

Dr. King has already announced the boycott as necessary to halt Alabama's "reign of terror," and at the Baltimore meeting he lays out a strategy of three successive stages. First, applying pressure on Washington to enforce the laws denying federal funds to programs practicing discrimination while simultaneously issuing a call for northern corporations to halt new investments in the state. Second, mobilize unions, businesses, churches and other organizations to withdraw their investments from Alabama. Third, organize a massive consumer boycott of Alabama products.

Public opposition to the boycott is immediate and intense. The Johnson administration condemns the idea. The New York Times calls it "wrong in principle ... and unworkable in practice." Sympathetic politicians like Governors "Pat" Brown of California and Mark Hatfield of Oregon reject it. Labor unions who had supported SCLC in the past come out against the boycott. …

There are also practical problems. Business and consumer boycotts are difficult at best and require a massive commitment of organizational time and resources. Corporations are rarely amenable to altering their investment strategies to meet social concerns ….

… Ultimately, the Alabama boycott proves unworkable and withers away. By Summer it has been effectively dropped ….

The direct action component of Bevel's campaign also encounters problems. … Many of those arrested had been bailed out on property bonds, but people willing to put up their homes and farms for bail have already done so, and property that was used to bail someone out in February cannot be used for someone else in May. Without assurances that SCLC will bail them out of jail, it will be difficult to mobilize thousands of protesters to deliberately court arrest by engaging in mass civil-disobedience. …

SCLC's local affiliate is the Montgomery Improvement Association and its leaders — mostly ministers and businessmen — have little enthusiasm for Bevel's radical plans. After the March to Montgomery, with finals and term papers now on the horizon, a form of protest-fatigue sets in among the students who had earlier filled the jails. … The direct action campaign sputters out and is quietly shelved (Alabama 1-3).

Hosea Williams, leader of the powerful Savannah Movement and the "Bloody Sunday" march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, argues for a Summer Community Organization & Political Education (SCOPE) project focused on voter registration. He calls for recruiting 2,000 volunteers — mostly northerners, mostly white, mostly college students — to register voters in 120 southern counties across six states. He and Bevel are SCLC's main direct action leaders. They are also bitter personal rivals. At the Baltimore meeting, SCOPE and the Alabama campaign are pitted against each other.

In some respects, the SCOPE proposal is similar to SNCC/COFO's Mississippi Summer Project of the previous year, but SCOPE advocates assume there will be one huge difference. Despite the courage and dedication of Freedom Summer's local and outside activists, only a few new voters had been added to the rolls. But now Vice-President Hubert Humphrey (who presides over the Senate) has assured Movement leaders that the filibuster will be broken and the Voting Rights Act passed before the end of June. This means that Afro-Americans in the Deep South will be able to register in large numbers. A massive registration effort under the new law could actually begin to shift the balance of political power in the southern Black Belt.

Hosea Williams is noted for his defiant courage, passionate oratory, direct action creativity, and hair-trigger temper, but not so much for administration. Some SCOPE opponents question his ability to fund and coordinate thousands of volunteers and staff across multiple states. For the 1964 Freedom Summer, SNCC/COFO had five and a half months to plan, recruit, train, and prepare projects for 1,000 volunteers working roughly 40 counties in a single state under guidance of a field staff that had been organizing in Mississippi for almost three years. The initial SCOPE proposal calls for twice as many volunteers spread over six states in 120 counties many of which have had no organizers preparing the way at all. And SCOPE must come together in two and a half months. It's bold, it's ambitious, and the Baltimore meeting adopts it as SCLC's major focus for the coming months (Summer 1-2).

Meanwhile, tension between SCLC and SNCC continues to fester. Many SNCC workers oppose the entire concept of bringing white volunteers to work in Black communities, and they want nothing to do with SCLC. "It will be the same shit as Selma, the SCLC executives are gone and have left the flunkies — mainly white northern students left there," says Alabama project director Silas Norman. In the opinion of Annie Pearl Avery, a SNCC field secretary working in rural Hale County, "SCLC will come in after SNCC does the ground work. All SCLC has is King and Reverends."

But others in SNCC are coming around to a different view. In mid-April, the SNCC Executive Committee meets in Holly Springs MS. Says former SNCC Chairman Marion Barry, "What we have to do is to try to radicalize King. Those of us who have been around for awhile can see the great change in King, and there are members of SCLC who are pushing for the same thing." He urges SNCC to work with SCOPE. A week later Harry Belafonte mediates a sit-down in Atlanta between leaders of SNCC and SCLC. Coming out of that meeting, Stokely Carmichael reports: "In terms of overall goals, SCLC is very radical. King said economic problems were the real issue of the country, but didn't know how to get to them. I think the cats are honest." He argues that SNCC should cooperate with SCOPE and use King's mass appeal, pointing out that SCLC has access to churches in places like Hale County that SNCC does not. "The students coming down with SCOPE will have to come to the SNCC workers. The same holds true for King. ... The people will follow King, but he'll still have to go through the SNCC workers."

At the end of April, a joint statement is issued by Dr. King and SNCC Chairman John Lewis stating that SCLC and SNCC will work together on a program of voter education and political organization across six Southern states. As a practical matter, there are significant numbers of SNCC staff in only two of the states where SCOPE plans projects — Alabama and Southwest Georgia. In some areas over the summer there is tension, distrust, and occasional open hostility between SCLC/SCOPE and SNCC, in others they work separately but without overt rancor, and in some counties there is close cooperation — in a few instances so close that they form what is, in effect, a joint project. (Meanwhile, over the summer of 1965, SNCC projects continue in Mississippi & Arkansas and CORE organizes its own summer project for Louisiana.) (SCLC/SCOPE 1-2).

Recruitment gets underway in April. Learning from the Freedom Summer experience, emphasis is placed on creating campus-based SCOPE chapters with volunteers who already know each other, will work together in an assigned county, and be supported by their college community. The goal is to create an ongoing connection between that campus and the Freedom Movement in the "adopted" county. …

…

Many northern colleges have active Friends of SNCC and CORE chapters and often a cadre of Freedom Summer veterans. Within SNCC there had been proposals and discussion of SNCC mounting a major summer project for 1965, but that does not occur. At some colleges, the SNCC chapters cooperate with and support the SCOPE recruiters, at others less so. … at some of the most politically-aware campuses, committed activists are beginning to turn their attention away from civil rights towards Vietnam. Above all, time is short — too short for SCOPE to recruit the number of northern volunteers originally hoped for. As April turns into May, expectations are scaled back from 2,000 in 120 counties to 500 or so working in roughly 80 counties.

Meetings are held with local Black community leaders from some, though not all, of the counties where there will be SCOPE projects. It is these local leaders who will direct SCOPE activities, arrange meals and housing for the northern volunteers, and provide somewhere for the project to meet and work. They are also responsible for recruiting the team of local volunteers — primarily Black high school and college students — who will partner with the northerners in canvassing and organizing (SCOPE 1-3).

Maria Gitin (known at that time as Joyce Brians) was one of the white college students recruited to work as a SCOPE project volunteer. She wrote about her experiences in her unpublished book 1965 This Bright Light of Ours: a Memoir and Stories of the Wilcox County Freedom Fight.

In 1965, I joined hundreds of other college students in a voter education and registration drive aimed at supporting disenfranchised African Americans in poor rural counties across the Deep South in their long struggle to register to vote. …

On March 8th I saw Dr Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time. He pointed his finger directly at me and what I heard him say was, "We need you white northern students to come down this summer and join our nonviolent struggle, become part of The Movement and help our people fight for our rights."

In an era when there were only three channels, the images on the small black and white TV at my friend Jeff Freed's parents' house were grainy, but unforgettable. Jeff kept trying to explain the political significance, but I could only watch in horror as masses of white Alabama state troopers and Selma policemen attacked peaceful primarily black marchers from the safety of their horses. Tear gas canisters were launched from huge guns. Troopers beat hundreds of people including young children as they scrambled for safety, just because they had assembled to march to Montgomery for voting rights. …

I headed to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) office on campus [San Francisco State College] because I had heard that their effective Mississippi Freedom Summer got the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed. There I was told I could only belong to Friends of SNCC, the white support group, so I joined that and began to get some instruction in the role of whites in the Freedom Movement. …

While I was trying to figure out what I could do specifically to respond to Dr. King's call for action, down in Atlanta SCLC's Rev. Hosea Williams and SNCC Chairman John Lewis, an SCLC board member, were planning an ambitious voter education and political organization program named the Summer Community Organizing and Political Education (SCOPE) Project, spearheaded by SCLC.

During the spring, the 1965 Voting Rights Act that was supposed to fix the remaining voting exclusion loopholes left in the 1964 Civil Rights Act was making its way through Congress. The SCOPE project was timed to coincide with what SCLC strategists had good reason to believe would be the first summer that the new Voting Rights Act (1965 VRA) would be available as a tool. The 1965 VRA was expected to become law before the project began in June.

…

… Wilcox County, where I was assigned, was selected as one of the Alabama counties for the SCLC-SCOPE voting rights campaign and for continued filing in federal courts.

…

SCOPE training materials said that this project planned to meet three objectives: local recruitment of potential elected officials from the black community, voter registration, and political education. SCOPE activities were expected to build on grass-roots community organizations that had been carrying the burden for a long time, bringing in fresh student "troops" who would hopefully return summer after summer to volunteer in school integration efforts, the new federal War on Poverty initiative and to support the education and election of new African American leaders.

The project resulted in over 1,200 SCOPE workers, including 650 college students from across the nation; 150 SCLC staff members, mostly scarcely paid field workers ($5 a week was a typical stipend), and 400 local volunteers, working in 6 southern states to organize, educate and assist African Americans in registering to vote. As soon as I heard about the project from SNCC and got more information at the Ec House, I signed up.

In order to join the project, I had to raise $200 for my travel and living expenses, a huge sum of money for me in those days, get my parent's permission, and attend intensive briefing sessions in Berkeley every Saturday for a month. …

Since I was under 21, I had to convince my father to sign an affidavit swearing that he wouldn't sue SCLC if I were injured or killed, which I did by telling him that I would forge his signature if he would not sign. My parents knew that they had already lost what little control they had over me by not supporting me financially through college because I disobeyed their dictum that their children must live at home and attend a local community college to gain their financial support.

…

The Saturday SCOPE briefings emphasized history and nonviolent theory along with updates on current events in the southern Civil Rights Movement. The instruction we received from professors, ministers and activists was based in a genuine belief in strict nonviolence and the benefits of integration. We were informed that SCOPE was the brainchild of brilliant civil rights strategist Rev. Hosea Williams, an SCLC Program Director who they told us organized the Selma to Montgomery marches.

…

SNCC was born with these stated ideals, however a rapidly emerging philosophy of self-determination and black liberation was permeating the organization as I already understood from being denied membership in the "real" SNCC on campus. SCLC leaders were still staunchly pro-integration and believed that we mostly white SCOPE student volunteers would bring media, money and perhaps safety although the increasing violence towards whites and blacks working together in The South did not auger well for that outcome. Some SNCC leaders anticipated that we would bring more violence because white racists go crazy when they see white women with black men. They also anticipated that we would bring superior attitudes that disrespected their sacrifices and achievements. Dr. King believed strongly that integration of all races and faiths would result in equal justice and opportunity for all. I took careful notes and wondered what it would be like in the trenches; how things would play out in whichever county I was assigned.

…

I eagerly looked forward to each of the briefing sessions during which they tried to teach us the entire history of segregation, the status of past and pending civil rights legislation, how The Movement worked, how to control our own unconscious bias, what to expect and how to behave when we went South. Much of it was a blur, but I remember feeling that it was a great turning point for me and for the United States. The leaders made it very clear that we were to be white allies to an entirely black led organization, which was just fine with me.

The person who stands out most clearly from the briefing sessions is Rev. Cecil Williams, the dynamic young African American preacher from [San Francisco’s] Glide Memorial Methodist Church who exhorted us to make the South safer for black voter registration with our young, white, eminently newsworthy, federally- protectable bodies. One fact that stood out in my mind was that we could be killed but, worse, girls could, had been and probably would be raped by jail guards and Ku Klux Klan members.

We reviewed footage of the beatings and tear gas canisters fired at marchers during Bloody Sunday in which Rev Williams himself had been injured. We listened to stories from people who had been on the big successful Montgomery to Selma march and heard about the recent murders of Jimmy Lee Jackson, Viola Luizzo and Rev. James Reeb in Alabama as well as the previous summer of 1964 assassinations of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman while they were working with SNCC to establish Freedom Schools in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The message I got was that this was risky business; the stakes were high but the cry for justice was more important than any of our lives (Gitin 1-14).


Works cited:

“Alabama Boycott & Montgomery Direct Action?” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Gitin, Maria. “SCLC/SCOPE Project.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/info/scope1.htm

“Go North?” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“Now what?” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“SCLC/SCOPE and SNCC.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“SCOPE Recruitment and Training.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“Summer Community Organization & Political Education (SCOPE)?” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

Civil Rights Events -- Voting Rights Act 1965

In 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, which provided specifically that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. This superseded state laws that had directly prohibited black voting. Congress then enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight.

As a result, in the former Confederate States, where new black citizens in some cases comprised outright or near majorities of the eligible voting population, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps one million -- recently-freed slaves registered to vote. Black candidates began for the first time to be elected to state, local and federal offices and to play a meaningful role in their governments.

The extension of the franchise to black citizens was strongly resisted. Among others, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other terrorist organizations attempted to prevent the 15th Amendment from being enforced by violence and intimidation. (Before 1-2) The withdrawal of federal troops from former Confederate states following the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877 allowed state legislatures to pass discriminatory voting laws that effected disenfranchisement of virtually every black citizen.

Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for "crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively (Before 3)

Civil rights events in the 1950s and early 1960s eventually galvanized the nation. Congress passed Civil Rights Acts in 1957, 1960, and 1964. None were strong enough to prevent voting discrimination by local officials.

On March 7, 1965, peaceful voting rights protesters in Selma, Alabama were violently attacked by Alabama state police. News cameras filmed the violence in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Many Americans and members of Congress began to wonder if existing civil rights laws would ever be properly enforced by the local authorities. The question before Congress was whether the federal government should guarantee the right to vote by assuming the power to register voters. Since qualifications for voting were traditionally set by state and local officials, federal voting rights protection represented a significant change in the constitutional balance of power between the states and the federal government (Congress 1).

Democrats have a 2-1 majority in the Senate, but the southern wing of the party — the "Dixiecrats" — are bitterly opposed to any legislation that will increase the number of Black voters. The inevitable southern filibuster cannot be overcome without substantial Republican support. [Attorney General] Katzenbach negotiates with Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL). Then he meets with Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT). Soon Katzenbach, Justice Department lawyers, Republican and Democrat Senate leaders, Senate staff, and civil rights leaders are all involved in negotiating a bipartisan voting bill that can effectively end racial voting barriers yet still gain enough Republican support to defeat a southern filibuster.

Though the protests have focused on Black voting rights, Freedom Movement leaders insist that the bill address all forms of vote-related racial bias. Latinos trying to register or vote in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and parts of California have long faced discriminatory procedures, intimidation, and economic retaliation; as have Native Americans throughout the West, portions of the Northeast, and Alaska.

Feeling the heat both domestically and internationally, LBJ pushes them to move fast, the voting rights issue is diverting attention from his "Great Society" legislation and undermining his Vietnam strategy. He now wants a bill and he wants it now. Katzenbach is ordered to come up with something the President can present to Congress on the weekend of March 13-14, just days away. By Friday the 12th, the negotiators have agreed that the bill must include some provision for suspending the so-called "literacy tests" and also federal authority to register voters in counties that continue to systematically deny voting rights. But there is no agreement on the formulas or thresholds that would trigger such "drastic" action. …

In the South, Blacks who attempt to exercise their rights as citizens face terrorism by white racists. …

A general clause outlawing threats and intimidation is added to the draft bill. But "Law and order" Republicans (and Democrats) adamantly oppose any kind of specific restriction on police actions, or any sort of oversight of local police behavior on the part of Washington. Movement activists recall the criticisms that John Lewis made of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: "... there's nothing to protect the young children and old women who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South while they engage in peaceful demonstration. In its present form this bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear of a police state. It will not protect the hundreds and thousands of people that have been arrested on trumped charges." Their pleas for police-specific remedies are ignored.

Economic retaliation — often organized by the local White Citizens Council — is another method of suppressing voting rights. … But pro-business Republicans and Democrats oppose legislation that might grant any arm of government authority to "intrude" on the "business decisions" of private enterprise or to investigate or regulate the motivations behind individual business actions. A bill that contains any such restrictions on "free enterprise" cannot possibly pass. Economic barriers to voting are not included in the draft bill.

With specific restrictions on police conduct and economic retaliation off the table, poll taxes emerge as the main bone of contention. …

In 1964, the 24th Amendment outlawed poll taxes in elections for federal offices, but all southern states except Maryland still retain poll taxes for state and local elections. (Vermont is the only non-southern state with a poll tax.) Senator Ted Kennedy proposes an amendment to eliminate poll taxes in all elections and that is added to the draft. Conservatives object. In their view, a state's right to levy taxes must be held sacrosanct from federal "meddling." …

In a televised address to the nation on March 15th, President Johnson presents the proposed Voting Rights Act (VRA) to a joint session of Congress. Many southern congressmen boycott the session. Johnson condemns the denial of fundamental rights based on race, and the nation's failure of to live up to the promise of its creed. "There is no Negro problem, there is only an American problem, and we are met here tonight as Americans ... to solve that problem. ... it is not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And—we—shall—overcome."

Dirksen and Mansfield jointly submit the Voting Rights Act to the Senate on March 18. It goes to the Judiciary Committee for consideration, with an April 9 deadline. Civil Rights leaders and Congressional liberals want a stronger bill, conservatives want a weaker one. Shortly before midnight on April 9, the Judiciary Committee sends the bill to the full Senate. In some respects, the intense lobbying of liberals has made it stronger than the original Dirksen-Mansfield draft — but it's still weaker than what Freedom Movement leaders and activists had hoped for.

Senate debate on the VRA begins on April 22. The southern Dixiecrats argue that it's an unconstitutional intrusion on the right of states to impose their own voting procedures and requirements. Their filibuster takes the form of a flood of weakening amendments, each of which have to be debated and voted on separately. The battle continues for weeks. The filibuster can only be broken by passing a cloture motion which requires at least 20 Republican votes to pass. But conservative Republicans oppose expansion of federal authority into areas traditionally reserved to the states. To win over Republicans, the poll tax ban is watered down so that it only applies to six states: Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The states of Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas are exempted. (In 1972, Texas is added back in during the Nixon administration.) The cloture vote takes place on May 25th. It passes 70-30.

The next day the Senate passes the full bill by a vote of 77-19.

The House then becomes the focus, and again poll taxes emerge as the critical issue. Liberals from districts with large numbers of Black and Jewish voters don't want to be seen as laggards on civil rights, so they fight for a total ban on all poll taxes — everywhere. …
By a vote of 333-85 on July 9, the House passes a Voting Rights Act containing a complete ban on all poll taxes. Because the Senate and House versions of the bill don't match, it's sent to a conference committee to resolve the differences. The House negotiators refuse to budge — repeal all poll taxes now! The Senate negotiators refuse to budge — the Senate won't accept a bill with a total ban. Deadlock.

Impatient at the delay, President Johnson forges a compromise and rams it through. Accept the Senate's poll tax language, but add a "declaration" that poll taxes abridge the right to vote, a directive ordering the Attorney General to immediately move against poll taxes in federal court, and instructions that the courts are to expedite hearing the cases at "the earliest practical dates." He asks Dr. King to support the compromise. With hundreds of SCLC summer volunteers in six southern states waiting for the Act to become law, King assures the House negotiators that the new language is acceptable. They come to agreement on July 28. The final bill passes the House 328-74 on August 3rd, it passes the Senate 72-18 on August 4, and is signed into law on August 6th with King, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, and other civil rights leaders in attendance.

The Justice Department immediately files suit against poll taxes in four states. Eight months later, the Supreme Court rules in Harper v Virginia Board of Elections that poll taxes in state and local elections are unconstitutional (Passage 5-12).

“This law covers many pages,” Johnson said before signing the bill, “but the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, States and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down” (Voting Rights – Stanford 2).

Section 2, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition of the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color.

Section 5 of the act required covered jurisdictions to obtain "preclearance" from either the District Court for the District of Columbia or the U.S. Attorney General for any new voting practices and procedures (Voting 1965 1-2). The Justice Department could now send examiners to any state or county where a literacy test or a similar deterrent to black registration had been in effect as of the 1964 presidential election and where turnout or registration for that election had fallen below 50% of the voting age population (Cobb 1-2).

Stated more succinctly, the legislation outlawed literacy tests and provided for the appointment of Federal examiners (with the power to register qualified citizens to vote) in certain jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination. In addition, these jurisdictions could not change voting practices or procedures without "preclearance" from either the U.S. Attorney General or the District Court for Washington, DC. This act shifted the power to register voters from state and local officials to the federal government (Congress 2).

Initial implementation of the VRA falls far short of Freedom Movement hopes. Many county registrars continue to use now-illegal schemes and procedures to deny Black voting rights. Klan terrorism and Citizens Council economic retaliation also continue in many areas. Federal enforcement of the Act's criminal provisions is weak and often half-hearted. Black voters and civil rights workers see little immediate change (Passage 13).

Nevertheless, it was only eight days after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6 of 1965 that federal voting examiners speedily dispatched to Selma, Ala., proceeded in a single day to register 381 new black voters, more than had managed to register in Dallas County over the last 65 years. Local Sheriff Jim Clark’s hair-trigger resort to physical violence against would-be black registrants had left little doubt of his determination that such a day would never come for his town. Yet, ironically, he had actually helped to assure that it did, when, back in March of that year, he led the charge in the savage “Bloody Sunday” beating and maiming of voting-rights marchers, an event that had sparked national outrage and spurred demands for stronger federal intervention. By November, the county had 8,000 new black voters—and, not coincidentally, after the next May’s primary elections it would have a new sheriff as well, leaving Jim Clark to try his hand at selling mobile homes (Cobb 1).

Initially, the voting rights act’s provisions applied to every Deep South state except Florida, plus Virginia and some 40 counties in North Carolina. And they worked, nowhere more obviously than in Mississippi, where the percentage of eligible black voters registered ballooned from 7% in 1964 to 67% just five years later (Cobb 2).

By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered [nationally], one-third by Federal examiners. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote (Voting 1965 4).

As the number of African American voters increased, so did the number of African American elected officials. In the mid-1960s there were about 70 African American elected officials in the South, but by the turn of the 21st century there were some 5,000, and the number of African American members of the U.S. Congress had increased from 6 to about 40 (Voting Rights – Encyclo. 5).

Because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the Federal and state governments in the area of voting since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, it was immediately challenged in the courts. Between 1965 and 1969, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices for which preclearance was required (Voting 1965 3-4).

Only 12 years ago, in 2006, a unanimous Senate and a nearly unanimous House of Representatives re-authorized Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the crucial provision that prevented jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices from implementing any changes in voting without federal preclearance.

Nevertheless, a scant seven years later, a deeply divided Supreme Court handed down a decision that, in the words of Congressman John Lewis, "put a dagger in the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965." Shelby County v. Holder overturned Section 5. This left Section 2 as the Voting Rights Act's sole remaining prohibition of racial discrimination in voting. But since January 20, 2017, the DOJ has not filed a single suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Clarke and Rosenberg 3-4).

As a result of that case [Shelby County v. Holder] and a prior one legalizing so-called “Voter ID” laws, along with other anti-voter moves such as shutting polling places in African-American areas, voter intimidation by so-called Republican “observers,” curtailed balloting hours and high-cost registration requirements, lawmakers may have to pass a Voting Rights Act all over again (Gruenberg 2-3).


Works cited:

“Before the Voting Rights Act.” The United States Department of Justice. Web. https://www.justice.gov/crt/introduct...

Clarke, Kristen and Rosenberg, Ezra. “Trump Administration Has Voting Rights Act on Life Support.” CNN. August 6, 2018. Web. https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/06/opinio...

Cobb, James C. “The Voting Rights Act at 50: How It Changed the World.” Time, August 6, 2015. Web. http://time.com/3985479/voting-rights...

“Congress and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” The Center for Legislative Archives. Web. https://www.archives.gov/legislative/...

Gruenberg, Mark. “Voting Rights Act of 1965 May Have to Be Passed Again.” People’s World. Web. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/...

“Passage of the Voting Rights Act (Mar-Aug).” Civil Rights Movement History: 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm...

“Voting Rights Act of 1965.” Stanford: The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. Web. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/en...

“Voting Rights Act (1965).” Our Documents. Web. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?...

“The Voting Rights Act.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. https://www.britannica.com/event/Voti...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Murder of Viola Liuzzo

It's late afternoon when the marchers begin to disperse after the freedom rally at the Alabama Capitol. From the moment they leave Brown Chapel in Selma to the end of the program in Montgomery, the U.S. Army and federal law enforcement agencies keep everyone safe — no one has been seriously injured. But now the elaborate protection system begins to wind down just as tens of thousands of people head home. Unfamiliar with Montgomery streets, thousands of northern supporters, who came directly to the city, need help finding the homes and churches where their luggage is waiting and then transportation to airports and bus depots. Since passage of the Civil Rights Act, Black-owned taxis are now legally permitted to carry white passengers, but they are overwhelmed and white taxis want nothing to do with "agitators" and "race-mixers." Thousands of Blacks need to return to Selma, and thousands more to Wilcox, Perry, and other Alabama counties and communities. What little money SCLC has left is used to charter some buses, but most people have to be ferried back along US 80 in hastily organized carpools (Murder 1).

In the winter of 1965, Viola Liuzzo had two children by a previous marriage and three with her husband Anthony, an official with Teamsters local 247 in Detroit. Born in Pennsylvania, she had been raised in blinding poverty, mostly in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Viola was an observant girl, however, and one of the things she noticed was that however tough life was for her family, blacks in Chattanooga seemed to have it worse. She had a big heart, her kids recall to this day, and her everyday activism ranged from taking in stray cats and dogs to going back to school at Wayne State University to get a degree in sociology. She also contributed to social causes championed by her congregation, the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit.

That February and March, she had been watching television coverage from Alabama, as Selma turned increasingly violent. In February, state troopers clubbed and fatally shot Jimmie Lee Jackson. In early March, James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston was beaten to death.

Liuzzo had watched television as the March 7 demonstration turned into a violent attack on the marchers, an event dubbed “Bloody Sunday.” That month, she attended a sympathy rally in support of the Selma protesters, and when some Wayne State study partners told her they were planning to go to Alabama, Liuzzo decided to join them. She volunteered to take her own car, a 1963 Oldsmobile, which proved fateful. She left Detroit on March 16, telling her husband she hoped he’d understand (Cannon 1-2).

Driving alone in her big Oldsmobile, it takes her three days to reach Selma where she volunteers with different work teams including the transportation committee (Murder 2).

Liuzzo joined thousands of fellow protestors in the first leg of the historic Selma to Montgomery march on March 21. However, state officials only allowed 300 marchers to continue the journey along the section of Highway 80 known as "Big Swamp" where the road narrowed from four to two lanes, and Liuzzo was not among the chosen group. Instead, she served at the Brown's Chapel hospitality desk in Selma until she rejoined the selected group on March 24 at City of St. Jude just inside the Montgomery city limits, where she provided first aid to many of the marchers. While waiting for the final leg of the march to start on the morning of March 25, Liuzzo had a premonition that somebody was going to be killed that day; she thought it might even be Alabama Governor George Wallace. After spending time in prayer, Liuzzo felt better and joined a swelling crowd of thousands of protestors who triumphantly walked to the steps of the capitol building.

After the rally at the capitol ended, Liuzzo returned to City of St. Jude where she met up with Leroy Moton, a young [19-year-old] civil rights worker who had been using Liuzzo's car to shuttle marchers back and forth between Selma and Montgomery. Liuzzo drove a group of marchers and Moton to Selma, where Moton retrieved a set of keys for another car in Montgomery that was to be used to transport additional groups of marchers. Liuzzo offered to drive Moton back to Montgomery and to bring any remaining marchers back to Selma before leaving for Detroit. … (Baumgartner 1-2).

By now it's dusk. Loitering in Selma's Silver Moon Cafe is a Klan "action team" of four KKK members from Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham. The four are William Eaton, Eugene Thomas, Collie Wilkins, and Gary Rowe. They're hard-core Klansmen, well experienced in violence and brutality. Though the first three don't know it, Rowe is also a paid informant for the FBI and has been so for many years. All day they've been in Eugene's Chevy Impala trying to get close enough to kill Dr. King, but Army security has been too tight. As night falls, they are disappointed and discouraged

Elmer Cook, one of the three men who killed Rev. Reeb, stops by their table. "I did my job," he says, "now you go and do yours." They return to their car and go hunting for someone to kill. On Broad Street, they spot an Oldsmobile with Michigan plates heading for the bridge. A white woman is driving. Her passenger is a Black man. They have their target. The four Klansmen follow her over the bridge, hanging back until they clear the state troopers and Army jeeps still patrolling the four-lane segment of Highway 80 leading out of Selma.

Out on the dark, two-lane stretch of US-80 in Lowndes County, Liuzzo and Moton suddenly realize they are being chased. She floors it, hoping to outrun their pursuers. The Klan car is faster. Slowly it gains on them. On a long straight section with no oncoming traffic, Thomas manages to draw up alongside. The other three open fire with pistols. Mrs. Liuzzo is shot through the head, killing her instantly. She slumps over, her foot no longer on the gas. The attackers surge ahead. The Oldsmobile swerves off the road into the shoulder ditch and then up the slope of a small embankment. Moton, unwounded but covered in Viola's blood, grabs the steering wheel and manages to bring the careening car to a stop.

The Klansmen turn around and come back. They shine a light though the shattered window glass. Moton feigns death. The Klansmen drive off. Moton flags down a truck carrying marchers home from Montgomery. They take him back to Selma. The cops arrest him.

News of Mrs. Liuzzo's murder is flashed to Washington. FBI Director Hoover informs President Johnson and Attorney General Katzenbach that an informer was in the Klan car. Though he has not yet received any report from Rowe, he assures them that his unnamed operative had no gun and did no shooting — which he later learns is not the case. Hoover echoes and validates segregationist slanders and slurs, falsely accusing Mrs. Liuzzo of having needle marks on her arm from taking drugs, and "necking" with Moton who, he claims, was "snuggling up close to the white woman."

What he does not reveal to the President (or anyone else outside the Bureau) is that Rowe's FBI handlers had known in advance, and granted permission, for him to ride with the KKK "action team" that intended to kill Dr. King. And that the Bureau made no effort to place them under surveillance or prevent them from committing murder.

Nor does Hoover reveal that for the past five years while working as a paid FBI informant, Rowe has simultaneously been an active and aggressive Klansman. The Bureau knows that he shot a Black man in the chest during turmoil over school integration and, though never charged, he was suspected of complicity in the Birmingham Church bombing that killed four little girls. They also know that he participated in the savage mob attack on the Freedom Riders in Birmingham. Rowe had warned the FBI in advance that the beating was going to take place — but the FBI did nothing to prevent it. Neither did they use Rowe's information to arrest the perpetrators. Nor did they ever act on any of the other racial crimes he participated in and reported to them.

All of this is kept hidden until 1975, three years after Hoover's death. Idaho Senator Frank Church leads investigations by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Regard to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee) that publicly reveal the concealed story of the FBI's relation with Rowe. A history that is then confirmed by a special Justice Department investigation report titled, The FBI, the Department of Justice, and Gary Thomas Rowe.

On Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after Liuzzo's death, Johnson, Hoover, and Katzenbach announce the arrest of the four Klansmen. Charges against Rowe are dropped and he is given immunity in return for testifying against the other three. Murder is a state crime, and Alabama immediately releases the killers on bail. Segregationist whites now add "Open Season" bumper stickers to accompany their Confederate-flag license plates. Other than the assassins themselves, Leroy Moton is the only eyewitness to the murder. When he is released from jail, he is sent north for safety so the Klan can't murder him before he testifies (Murder 2-5).

Within a day of Viola’s murder, FBI agents, following their director’s dictates, prepared a report declaring that Liuzzo had been on drugs while she had been driving. Hoover himself sent a memo saying she had been “sitting very, very close to the negro in the car; that it had the appearance of a necking party.” An autopsy subsequently revealed no traces of drugs in her system and she had not had sex recently before her death.

Liuzzo and her family were smeared by the FBI, Selma officials, and the media. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover attempted to divert attention from the fact that Rowe had tipped off his handler that there might be trouble the day before Liuzzo was killed. Hoover created a file depicting Liuzzo as an unstable woman with unsavory motives and also painted her husband, Jim, who was a member of the Teamsters union, as a thug. Hoover had his agents leak these reports to the media, who ran numerous articles questioning Liuzzo's character and reasons for being in Selma. Additionally, Selma Sheriff Jim Clark obtained and widely shared a file, known as the Lane Report, from the former chief of detectives in Detroit, who also questioned Liuzzo's mental stability. The Report bolstered … J. Edgar Hoover's self-serving portrayal of Mrs. Liuzzo as a drug-taking middle-aged adulteress with a black teenage lover … Finally, at a time when gender roles and stereotypes reflected and reinforced considerable gender inequality in American society, many Americans, both men and women alike, believed Liuzzo should have stayed home and tended to her family rather than advocating for voting rights for blacks (Baumgartner 5-6).

… the July 1965 issue of The Ladies' Home Journal published a poll that asked if readers thought Liuzzo was a good mother. Fifty-five percent didn't. ("I feel sorry for what happened," said one woman in a focus group convened to talk about the Liuzzo story, "but I feel she should have stayed home and minded her own business.")

The smears took an awful toll. Anthony Liuzzo became a heavy drinker and later died. The Liuzzo children all moved away. Sally Liuzzo-Prado, the youngest, was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. …

She remembered that her mother "called us every night. I learned how to cursive write and she was so excited. She told me to write my name and put it on her dresser and she'd see it when she got home” (Bates 1).

… two years ago, Liuzzo-Prado elected to return to her hometown.

"The older I got, the more I realized there was a lot of work to be done in Detroit still," she says. "And, you know, it's not so much just for her to have recognition. It's to right the wrongs done to her by J. Edgar Hoover." (Bates 3-4).

Martin Luther King attended Viola’s funeral and comforted the family. A group of people tried to break down the Liuzzos' door, and a cross was burned on their lawn. What [daughter] Sally Liuzzo-Prado remembers most vividly is the morning she returned to first grade after her mother's death.

She was wearing her saddle shoes, which her older sister, Penny, had polished.

"It was pouring rain that day. And I looked down at my saddle shoes and the white polish was coming off," she says. "These people — grown-ups — lined the street and were throwing rocks at me, calling me 'N-lover's baby.' I didn't know what that meant. I thought it was because of my shoes."

Anthony Liuzzo … withdrew his daughter from the school and had her transferred. For years, he drove her to and from school every day. Liuzzo-Prado says her father also hired two armed guards to watch their house day and night for two years (Bates 2-3).

Washington Post reporter Donna Britt interviewed Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe and her four siblings in 2016. She asked Mary who her mother was.

Mary answered: Everything you’d want a mom — and a hero — to be. She and her siblings were only too happy to discuss their mother with me recently, “not as a martyr,” as eldest daughter Penny put it, “but as this wonderful human being who loved every living creature.”

[Mary] Lilleboe was a 10th-grader in 1965. Her book report on “To Kill A Mockingbird” was in the car in which her mom died. The intolerance for suffering that had led Liuzzo to enroll in nursing classes made her acutely aware of black Americans’ feelings of invisibility. During a visit to a department store’s elaborate Christmas display, she asked Lilleboe, then 13, how she’d feel if every Santa she saw was black instead of white. When Lilleboe was 16, Liuzzo asked her how she’d feel “if the magazines I loved never put pretty white girls on their covers.” The questions saddened Lilleboe, now 69, of Grants Pass, Ore., but offered “a glimpse into a world totally different than the one I was living in.”

By any measure, the life Liuzzo gave her children was an enviable one. The wife of a Teamsters business agent, she was the nature-loving mom, whose Tennessee roots inspired barefoot strolls and an insistence on exposing her kids to planetariums, rodeos, circuses and even watching their dog giving birth, so they’d appreciate the natural world. She was the caring mom who cured son Tony’s terror of the noisy trucks spraying pesticides on the neighborhood’s trees by visiting City Hall and arranging for him to ride in one. “I’m sitting on this big truck, helping [workers],” Tony, 62, of Milwaukee, recalls. “I was never afraid after that.”

She was the fun mom, says Penny, 71, of Irwin, Tenn., describing the night she and a friend watching a scary movie were terrified when Viola — wailing ghoulishly in a fright wig, greenish makeup and Tony’s black altar-boy robes — materialized from around a dark corner.

What possessed Liuzzo to respond to her husband’s assertion that civil rights “isn’t your fight,” with, “It’s everybody’s fight,” and to join the hundreds flooding Alabama to protest?

Liuzzo’s instantaneous response to King’s appeal didn’t shock [Mary] Lilleboe. “If Mom saw a wrong . . . she took action,” she explains. When a neighbor’s house burned down one Christmas eve, her mother pounded on the door of a toy store owner’s home, insisting he open his shop so she could buy presents for the displaced family.

Her empathy was so reflexive, Lilleboe wonders, “Was Mom born with it?” As a child in Chattanooga, Liuzzo despised how cruelly she and her sister Rose Mary were treated as poor kids living in one-room shacks — yet she couldn’t help noticing black kids were treated even worse. Lilleboe never forgot her mom’s grief when the baby Liuzzo was carrying was stillborn — and her outrage when her Catholic church refused to bury her infant because it wasn’t baptized. If her love was too deep to discriminate against a baby, Liuzzo reasoned, God’s had to be immeasurably deeper, so she left Catholicism. Viola’s best friend in the world was Sara Evans, a black restaurant worker whom Liuzzo asked to care for her kids if anything befell her. After Liuzzo’s death, Evans became the brood’s second mother, especially when their dad — devastated by his beloved wife’s murder — drank too much or retreated.

…

Changing the world takes grit, grinding effort, unrelenting faith. In the journal the Liuzzos obtained from the FBI, [Viola] … wrote, “I can’t sit back and watch my people suffer,” about folks who looked nothing like her. Explains Lilleboe: “She actually believed it when Christ said that the suffering and needy are our people. Mom saw all other human beings as her people” (Britt 7-13, 21).

On Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after Liuzzo's death, [President] Johnson, Hoover, and Katzenbach announce the arrest of the four Klansmen. Charges against Rowe are dropped and he is given immunity in return for testifying against the other three. Murder is a state crime, and Alabama immediately releases the killers on bail. Segregationist whites now add "Open Season" bumper stickers to accompany their Confederate-flag license plates. Other than the assassins themselves, Leroy Moton is the only eyewitness to the murder. When he is released from jail, he is sent north for safety so the Klan can't murder him before he testifies.

On May 3rd, six weeks after the murder, Collie Wilkins is put on trial for Liuzzo's murder. Whites jam the Lowndes County courthouse in Hayneville to show their support for a KKK killer. Blacks dare not attend. The jury, of course, is all white. And in accordance with southern tradition, the jury is also all male (white women being considered too pure, fragile, and delicate, to face the brutal underpinnings of the southern way of life).

The prosecution presents an irrefutable case of first degree (premeditated) murder, laying out both forensic and investigative evidence, and the eyewitness testimony of both Leroy Moton and Gary Rowe, who is now revealed under heavy guard as an FBI informant. During cross examination, Matt Murphy, the Klan's lawyer (or "Klonsel"), accuses Moton of shooting Liuzzo after having "interracial sex" with her, "under the hypnotic spell of narcotics." Robert Shelton, Imperial Wizard of the Alabama KKK, sits with Wilkins at the defendant's table. After the prosecution rests its case, Murphy offers a cursory 20-minute defense. Then he attacks the prosecution and the victim. He characterizes Mrs. Liuzzo as, "A white nigger who turned her car over to a black nigger for the purpose of hauling niggers and communists back and forth." And he accuses Rowe of being a liar, "... as treacherous as a rattlesnake ... a traitor and a pimp and an agent of Castro and I don't know what all," for violating his Klan oath of loyalty and secrecy.

Though Wilkins's guilt is obvious, reporters and white onlookers assume the local white jury will quickly acquit him — as is the southern custom in racial cases. But to everyone's surprise, the jury fails to bring back a swift verdict of innocent on all counts. Instead, their deliberations are carried over to the next day. A mistrial is declared when the jury reports they are hopelessly deadlocked 10-2 for conviction on a manslaughter charge. This means they've chosen not to reach a guilty verdict on first or second degree murder, but 10 of them are willing to convict on the lesser charge of manslaughter (killing in the heat of understandable passion without premeditation or malice aforethought).

Some reporters believe that 10 Lowndes County whites willing to convict a Klansman of anything is a sign of racial progress. But most Movement activists assume it's because the victim was both white and a woman. In their opinion, if it had been Leroy Moton shot in the head, or a white male activist like Mickey Schwerner, a quick verdict of not guilty would have been returned.

Syndicated journalist Inez Robb is the only reporter who dares raise a fundamental question:

What sorely troubles me, if we accept the prosecution's account of the slaying, is the moral aspect of Rowe's presence in the car ... Under what kind of secret orders did Rowe work? [Was he expected to join in crime, strictly observe, or try to prevent murder?] It is one woman's opinion that the FBI owes the nation an explanation of its action in the Liuzzo case. — Inez Robb.

No explanation is ever forthcoming from the FBI. Bureau Director Hoover's personal vindictiveness against anyone who questions or criticizes either himself or the Bureau is notorious. … (Murder 5-8).

Viola Liuzzo's murder prompted a variety of responses from both the government and the American people. President Lyndon Johnson ordered an investigation of the Ku Klux Klan and petitioned Congress to make it legal to file federal murder charges against killers of civil rights workers. Additionally, Liuzzo's murder, like James Reeb's murder in Selma only two weeks prior, increased support for the Voting Rights Act, which Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law in August 1965 (Baumgartner 7).

On October 20, Wilkins is placed on trial a second time. Again, Leroy Moton and Rowe testify. Replacing Murphy as defense counsel is former FBI agent and Birmingham Mayor Arthur Hanes. Like Murphy, he vilifies Mrs. Liuzzo and smears Moton, asking, "Leroy, was it part of your duties as transportation officer to make love to Mrs. Liuzzo?" This time the all white, all male, Lowndes County jury requires just 90 minutes to return a verdict of not Guilty on all charges.

In December 1965, Collie Wilkins, William Eaton, and Eugene Thomas, are tried by John Doar in federal court before Judge Frank Johnson. They are convicted of violating Mrs. Liuzzo's civil rights and sentenced to the maximum term of 10 years in prison. Rowe is given a $10,000 bonus by the FBI (equal to about $73,000 in 2012) and disappears into the secrecy of witness protection.

…

In 1977, the Liuzzo children manage to obtain her FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act and discover that the Bureau had orchestrated a covert slander and smear campaign to vilify their mother. They file a lawsuit claiming that the FBI knew Rowe and the other Klansmen were out to kill, and that by failing to take action, the Bureau effectively conspired in her murder. A judge dismisses their case in 1983, ruling there is no evidence of an FBI conspiracy to kill Mrs. Liuzzo specifically, and that the FBI could not be held liable for failing to prevent a crime.

When subpoenaed by a grand jury, Wilkins and Thomas testify that it was Rowe who actually shot Mrs. Liuzzo. They pass a lie-detector test and two Birmingham cops testify that Rowe bragged to them that he was the one who killed her. Rowe is indicted for her murder in 1978, but the federal government quashes the case on the basis of his immunity deal for testifying in the 1965 trials. Without an impartial investigation and actual trial, it is impossible to determine who is telling the truth — Rowe, a violent Klansman and informer, or the two convicted killers and police witnesses from a department known to be infiltrated by the KKK (Murder 9-10).


Works cited:

Bates, Karen Grigsby. “Killed For Taking Part In 'Everybody's Fight'.” NPR. August 12, 2013. Web. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswit...

Baumgartner, Neal. “Viola Gregg Liuzzo.” Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Ferris State University. Web. https://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jim...

Britt, Donna. “A White Mother Went to Alabama to Fight for Civil Rights. The Klan Killed Her for It.” The Washington Post. December 15, 2017. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/r...

Cannon, Carl M. “From Detroit to Selma: Viola Liuzzo's Sacrifice.” RealClear Politics. January 2, 2018. Web. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...

“Murder and Character Assassination of Viola Liuzzo.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...