[Note that the question and answer sequence has been rearranged into chronologic and topic order.]
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
For years I had been associated with my father's political activity. So at 17
I went to Tougaloo College which was a college that was being fought by the
state, the only biracial college in the state, the only college that was
really opened to political ideas even in 1957. That college was desegregating,
was — the President of that college would separate to the
point from every other black college that I know at that time was encouraging
and participating in the decision of which students would participate in
demonstrations. So I had that influence.
I also was able to learn very early that anything was possible. I mean, I had,
I'd seen prostitutes who had been able to organize that endeavor to the point
of becoming landowners. I had seen a lot of other things. I, in 1954 when the
[Brown v Board of Education]
Supreme Court decision came down, I was able to discuss that immediately with
a priest who was a political activist, who was openly supportive of
integration but at the same time was, later — in 1954 he and I
were friends and allies. In 1968 we were on different sides of who to support
because we were both in the same delegation to Chicago [the Democratic
convention].
So on the whole, I guess basically the reason I got involved, was because I
was very dissatisfied about a lot of things. I learned early that anything is
possible. And I learned that the correlation between information and power is
immediate. And I kept relearning that. I mean, I have never seen, in all of my
years of organizing and recruiting other people into organizing, I have never
asked anyone to do anything that wasn't in their self-interest, or something
that I wouldn't do.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Now, I say it was reorganized, but we prefaced the organization of that and we
understood when we were organizing it, that Aaron Henry would be the titular
head and the spokesperson. But that we, because SNCC provided more manpower
than anyone else, we would determine policy. We had that fight, that internal
friendly fight out in Clarksdale, Mississippi. We won. There was, Reverend
Slip from Jackson raised the whole question of Bob Moses, an outsider, heading
up the field direction. We had the troops; Wiley Brandon who now is the
President of — Howard University was the director of the VEP
funds, and while Wiley was superficially neutral, Wiley was quite supportive
of the right people on that question.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
The Council of Federated Organizations, COFO is an acronym for the Council of
Federated Organizations, made up of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Congress of
Racial Equality.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
I remember driving from Greenwood to Holmes County to get Mr. Hartman Turnbow
out of jail with Dorie Ladner, Dave Dennis, Medgar, myself, and we were
talking — and Colia Lidell — and we were
talking about how we were going to work together. Unfortunately, Medgar was
assassinated before that could really — before he could really
continue his role in COFO, but as far as his commitment to it, there was
absolutely no question about it.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
By "us" I mean the majority of people who were doing organizing in the streets
and and mobilizing, those of us who were committed and identified to the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Now I think one thing that is
significant about — well, later when we moved after the
1964 Democratic Convention in
Atlantic City, the NAACP broke with COFO. Their position was we didn't
understand the difference between protest and politics. Aaron Henry
disassociated himself from the NAACP, and um — from, I'm
sorry, from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). And that's that
simply was the way that was done.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
The national office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People made it very clear that Aaron Henry would, had a
choice — either remain with the NAACP or remain with the
Freedom Democratic Party. Because of the position taken by the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party, which I consider the highlight of black people in
this century, when they had a choice to make, they wouldn't accept a
compromise that was forged by white people and by supposedly their allies.
They said "No."
And as a result of their saying no, the NAACP, the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People said to Aaron Henry, "Get out." But, as a
direct consequence of the delegation saying "No," it led to the creation of
the Equal Rights Committee which desegregated the Democratic Party. There's no
question about this, about this association in this connection which led to
the desegregation of a lot of delegations and I think a lot of us may have
forgotten that when, when Julian Bond was fighting to have his delegation
seated, he wa — he had to fight a guy named Jimmy Carter.
So I think the impact of what that group of black Mississippians said in
Atlantic City, even those biracial — there was a small number
of whites, some of them who were later to play a key role in the
Freedom — Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Ed King, the
chaplain of Tugaloo when I was a student there, was involved in that
delegation, was later to run in the Freedom election and continues to this day
to be supportive of that kind of politics.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Once we were in Amzie's house, we were in the [Mississippi] Delta. We had made
the conscious move not to participate in lunch counter demonstrations. We were
gong after the vote, because that's where the power was. The thing that has
always fascinated me about the early history of Mississippi's organizing was
that Mississippi is a state where politics is very immediate. I mean, there
were — everyone, people who can't read and write can define
most of the roles and duties of the Board of Supervisors, because they
immediately impact on their lives. So our question was, once we had gotten
over the question internally of
Freedom Ballot in MS whether or
not
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
And what I want to talk about, and the reason I want to preface that question
with this, is because to me this is the most important thing... I knew Malcolm
X personally. I knew James Farmer personally. I knew Martin Luther King
personally. I knew Bob Moses personally. And what I want to stress is the
commonality of those people. They were simply people. They identified a
problem. They wanted to become expert in — experts in
mobilizing and organizing. There's no one who's listening to this who can't do
the same thing. So we organized people at their frame of reference, what they
were interested in, and we asked them to work in their, work with us in their
self interest. You can do that today, just like Malcolm did.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Leflore County was 80% black but there was only one black registered voter.
And none of us could find him. So we concentrated where we would make the most
mileage out of the energy and out of the sacrifice that we asked people to
join in us with. Because we mobilized around the vote which separated us from
other states; other states would, segregated, were at mobilizing around the
lunch counter. Our position was everything that was involved, that was a
problem for us was political. The one thing that politicians listen to is
votes.
So we went out early at — mobilize — we
organized for the right to organize in the political arena. And once we'd won
that fight, and once we'd assisted in forcing, in educating the Department of
Justice for the need to the — for the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
we helped write the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the state of Mississippi.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
When we started attempting to register people in Leflore County, the board of
supervisors cut off the food
supply. So Dick Gregory started providing us with money and with food so
we were able to set up an alternative food system. But the vote in Mississippi
from 1961 to today means everything because of a suit that we filed, a
reapportionment suit that we — Peggy Jean Connor, God bless
her — filed it in 1963 at a COFO meeting. That suit has been
held in abeyance because of the brilliance of J.P. Coleman, a former governor
from Mississippi, and now a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, but now the
Supreme Court has ordered the state of Mississippi to desegregate the state
legislature.
There will be more blacks in the state legislature in Mississippi than in any
of the 50 states. And the black people in Mississippi made that happen. We
didn't wait for someone to help us. We helped everybody — the
beautiful thing about my being in the movement and that I'm most proud of is
we saw a problem, we asked — forced people, we convinced
people about the righteousness of our position, and we went ahead and did what
seemed impossible at the time. And black politics will never be the same
because we changed it.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
And because we were — James Bevel did most of the talking at
the first meeting that Mrs. Hamer attended. Bevel was a great
speaker — is a great speaker, and was a minister. So, I would
have been able to use the church as a meeting place and have a minister speak
the social gospel about the right — why we should register to
vote, what impact that would have on our lives, influenced Mrs. Hamer and 21
other people, so she decided to go with us the next day [August 31, 1962] to
Indianola to register to vote.
Now, registering to vote at that time meant that you filled out a
21-question questionnaire. One of the
questions was, interpret any of the 286 sections of the Mississippi
Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. Now, you have to bear in
mind that some of those registrars couldn't read or write. But that didn't
matter; they could still determine who should be registered if that person
happened to be black because all whites who attempted to register were
registered.
After we went through the process of filling out the questionnaire we knew
that all of the applicants name would be posted in the newspaper to serve
notice to their creditors and to their employers that here's someone who had
done something wrong. On [driving back] from Indianola, we were arrested, some
of us were, the bus driver was arrested, others of us went to see about him,
this sort of thing, but that was the only arrest.
From that day on, Mrs. Hamer, upon returning to the plantation she was told
that she had a choice. She could take her name off [the application to vote],
and stay on the plantation, or she could leave her name on and she'd have to
leave. She told the person that she'd been working to for 18 years, "That I
didn't register for you; I registered for me."
And I think that the act of registration and making that statement was the
beginning of a history that changed the South. Fannie Lou Hamer was a great
woman who influenced the Civil Rights Movement, who influenced the Democratic
Party, who influenced Lyndon Johnson to the point of
saying — of him calling directly while she was speaking the
television networks and saying look, "Get these niggers off." I'm speaking
specifically about her testimony at the 1964 Democratic Convention.
Mrs. Hamer was involved in the peace movement long before anyone else with the
exception of Andy Young who was in the Civil Rights Movement was. She traveled
with him to involve certain segments of the National Council of Churches early
in the civil rights — in the peace movement. She was early
involved in the, in the women's question. Sissy Farenhold and Mrs. Hamer was
the co-chairpersons of one of the first groups that was organized around,
involving political activity to bring about peace and a unification of the
women's question.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Mrs. Hamer attended a meeting that was held in a church. [Bob] Moses attended
that meeting, I attended it, Charles McLaurin attended it. We sort of
conducted the meeting. James Bevel did most of the speaking. Bevel, like most
of the initial mobilizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in
Mississippi was a minister. Adding the fact that he was a minister and could
speak about the social justification for registration, despite the state's
position against it, and the fact that the meeting was held in a church, which
gave that speech much more legitimacy than if it were held any place else.
Mrs. Hamer agreed, because of her role in the church...
Mrs. Hamer went to register. As soon as we left the courthouse in Indianola,
the bus driver was arrested. He was charged with driving a bus that was too
yellow. This was a school bus. They — it was a frivolous
charge but that's what he was charged with at the time.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
So I got some money and I went over there and tried to get them out and as
soon as I was brought in I was beaten. I was taken into a room, beaten by
eight people with guns — a fire was lit and
then — and pushed in the area of my genitalia. I was knocked
out. A doctor was then brought in who tried to convince me to sign a statement
that I had been drinking, I had been driving. I've never driven in my life.
They didn't know that and I didn't sign any of this.
Then the, the most significant thing about Winona to me is that if Roberta
Galler hadn't kept calling the jail to ask for me I would have been dead. I
would have been killed in that jail. But there were two things that happened.
Roberta calling from New York and getting people to call from California
wanting to speak to me because they were moving me from jail to jail and the
fact that Medgar Evers was assassinated while I was in Winona. So the, the
need to not remove me at that time was something I didn't plan but I'm glad to
be here.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
So we were able to — move. Then there became the question of
why don't we — we conducted the
freedom election and one of the
lessons we learned from the freedom election in 1963 was that the FBI was
very, very concerned about providing protection and public cover to all of the
volunteers who were white, who were northern and who were well, relatively
well educated. We learned pragmatically that the way to bring protection to
our people was to bring whites in.
We wanted to bring national attention to what we were doing, to protect people
who we could not protect — we never lied to
anyone — we never said come register to vote with us you won't
get shot, you won't get fired from your job, your social security won't be cut
off. It — despite the fact that social security is a federal
payment, a federal fund, I saw a notice in the social security check sent out
from Jackson, Mississippi, a warning to everyone — if you
register to vote, your check can be cut off. The pervasiveness of that state
in preventing political activity even of that nature was so complete it is
very hard to recapture for people who wasn't involved in it.
The fight about, the, the internal debate about whether or not to accept
volunteers turned on the question of we had recruited people who for all
practical purposes weren't very well [educated], but they could mobilize, they
could talk to people, they could get people to do things in their interest,
they could do everything that a, anyone who is supposed to be a trained
organizer could do, they did and did well.
But then when you start talking about bringing in white college students who
can type, who can drive, who are very fluent, that is competition. That is
competition for turf, that is the way it was dealt with and the first day [of
the Greenville meeting] the vote was not to have volunteers. Bob Moses put his
reputation with us on the line saying — Dave Dennis chaired
the meeting the first day in Greenville. Bob Moses came into the meeting the
second day and said, "Look I'm not going to be a part of anything that's all
black." This was a position that Bob would later change, but that is a
position that he took and because of the weight that he, his his strength and
personality he carried in that group the position was changed, the vote was
changed, and the summer project became a reality.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
There was no law that dealt with party registration. I could, you could be a
member of any party.
I remember the debate when we met in Jackson to organize the Freedom
Democratic Party. It was Frank Smith, Bob White, George Raymond, myself, and
Bob Moses. Moses' position was why don't we organize the Freedom Democratic
Party, that's the logical extension of everything we've done around the vote,
and if we're not successful in Atlantic City, let's disband it. My position
was, because of the fact that we don't have a party registration in the state
and because of the fact that there's a need to redefine what is politics and
what is acceptable political activity, to cover the whole thing, just as is
done in African political parties, why don't we continue it regardless of
whether or not we're successful in Atlantic City? Because I was chairman of
it, we continued it. I think it was a master stroke, and I think it created
changes within the Democratic Party nationally that wouldn't have occurred for
black people but for our existence.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Two days before the convention, because of the fact that local citizens in
Hattiesburg had posted bond for me, and I had to go to jail rather than go to
the Atlantic City delegation, uh, despite the fact that I was chairman of the
party that went to Atlantic City.
Despite the fact that I was state chairman of the Executive Committee of the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, when its delegation went to Atlantic
City, because of the fact that I was arrested two days before that convention
in Hattiesburg, I either had to go to jail at that time or people who had put
up local residents and political supporters of mine from Hattiesburg would
have lost some of their property because they'd put up some bond for me. There
was no question of my ever being able to organize in Mississippi again if I
did that so I had no choice but to go to Hattiesburg jail.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
President Johnson feared that seating the MFDP would alienate white voters in
the South to the detriment of his reelection campaign. Liberal leaders of the
national Democratic Party engaged in ruthless political maneuvering to block
the MFDP. Over the objections of MFDP supporters, a "compromise" was rammed
through that seated the regulars as the representatives from Mississippi,
appointed Aaron Henry and Ed King as "at-large" delegates, invited the other
MFDP delegates to be nonvoting "guests" of the convention, and committed the
party to end racial discrimination in delegate elections for future
conventions. The MFDP delegates then had to decide whether or not to accept
this "compromise." They refused to do so. See
MFDP Challenge to Democratic
Convention for details.]
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
The congressional challenge succeeded because it forced the Congress to take
the least — the least radical of two, I think, plausible and
logical alternatives. They could have unseated the Mississippi delegation, but
once they did that they would have to unseat the Texas delegation, the
Louisiana delegation, the Alabama delegation. They didn't want to do that. We
were right on our Constitutional argument and I am very proud that
congress — that Arthur Kinoy and William Kuntsler did such an
excellent job on the challenge.
But, as a result of that challenge, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. As
a result of the 1965 Voting Rights Act being passed, 3,000,000 black people in
the state of Mississ — [that is,] in the South, are now
registered to vote that weren't registered to vote. Mississippi now has more
black elected officials than any other state. And when we win the Connor
reapportionment case, it will have more state legislators than any other
state.
Interviewer:
Lawrence Guyot:
You know, all we have to do is look at the congressional record in which
Congressman McClellan, a liberal [Democrat], said on the House floor the day
that the vote was taken, we should unseat the Mississippi delegation, but we
don't have to. As an alternative let's let this challenge die and let's give
black people in the state of Mississippi what they have always been fighting
for: the right to vote. We can do that by passing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
I think the connection between the congressional challenge by the Freedom
Democratic Party — and that wouldn't have been possible if we
didn't have the support of people in that state to fight for their self
interest and Arthur Kinoy and Bill Kuntsler, both of the National Lawyers
Guild.
After Atlantic City, after our victory in Atlantic City, Allen Lowenstien,
Bayard Rustin, the NAACP, and quite a few other Civil Rights Organizations
began to raise the whole Communist scare. That we were dealing with Communist
associates and this was foolish. It didn't mean a thing to us. We had, we had
dealt with that question earlier. We were concerned about the best legal
representation. We got that and we did not respond to the whole question of
Communist infiltration. We thought that was foolish, irrelevant, and we went
about our business of mobilizing our people to their interest. And there's a
need to do that to — and there will always be as long as black
people are in this country.
CITATION: Interview with Lawrence
Guyot, conducted by Blackside, Inc. on May 15, 1979, for "Eyes on the Prize:
America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965)." Washington University Libraries,
Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection.
Eyes on the Prize Interviews
Copyright ©Joining the Freedom Movement
CAN YOU TELL ME, HOW DID, HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT. NOT NECESSARILY IN THE MFDP, BUT HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN
ORGANIZING. AND WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR SOMEONE IN THE SOUTH TO GET INTO THAT?
Well, I had two forces operating that led me immediately into the Civil Rights
Movement. The Catholic Church, I happened to be born in a part of the state of
Mississippi that was very Catholic, very labor union. And it coincidentally
is, it is the county in which the former Governor Bilbo lived in, in the
adjoining county to the one I was born in. So, early in life, my father was a
political leader on a small scale in that town because it goes to the question
of the mathematics. In Harrison County there were 119,000 inhabitants at that
time (I'm talking about 1957). 100,000 of 'em were white, 19,000 were black.
We could have [each] voted five times [and] it would have made no difference.
But because of the Catholic influence, because of the labor influence, blacks
were not only allowed to vote but they were encouraged to vote and white
candidates sought our votes.
[Harrison County is on
the Gulf coast. It's the second most populous county in the state (after Hinds
County). The two biggest towns are Gulfport and Biloxi. In the 1960s, major
employers included military bases and Navy shipbuilding & repair. Because
of federal fair-employment rules and regulations, Blacks had a better chance
of landing decent-paying jobs and joining labor unions in Harrison County than
in most other areas of the state.]
Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT HOW COFO GOT ORGANIZED? AND WHO WERE THE KEY PLAYERS IN
THAT?
COFO got organized twice. COFO was organized in 1954 and then it was
disbanded — quite quickly because the, the governor attempted
to co-opt that organization and was quite unsuccessful. It was disbanded until
1963. It was then re-established by
Medgar Evers, Dave Dennis, Bob Moses, and Aaron Henry, who was made the
titular head of it. And the rest, the other line of leadership was the
congressional district directors.
CAN YOU TELL [AGAIN] ABOUT HOW WAS COFO ORGANIZED?
COFO was organized twice. In 1954, it was organized to deal with the 1954
Supreme Court decision. It was disbanded, and remained dormant, until 1963. In
1963, because of the work and the respect that everyone had for Bob Moses, who
had been working since 1960, he was able to pull together Annell Ponder from
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Aaron Henry from the NAACP, Dave
Dennis from the Congress of Racial Equality, and he was the unquestioned
leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi. He had
earned that respect because of his work in
Southwest Mississippi and because
of the fact that he was successful in recruiting
thirteen — that's an apocryphal and coincidental
number — thirteen native Mississippians and myself, Luvaugn
Brown, Jesse Harris, Jesse Davis, Colia Lidell, , Joyce and Dorie Ladner, Emma
Bell — some of the names escape me. But these were people who
were young, who were tired [of white supremacy], with relentless energy, who
were committed to changing that state, and we did.
WAS MEDGAR EVERS INVOVLED IN COFO AT ALL?
Medgar Evers was
instrumental — int — integrally involved and
was very definitely supportive. It is amazingly — Medgar
became convinced when we invited Medgar to a meeting in Greenwood,
Mississippi. We were — see, for some thirty-two years, the
NAACP had existed in Mississippi, before COFO was established and before SNCC
became active. Activism, on a statewide basis, and involving people other than
paid personnel of civil rights organizations, we started that. Medgar could
identify with that, when he saw what we were — the kind of
support we got from people in the Delta, Greenwood specifically.
CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONAL
INTERRELATIONSHIP — THE POLITICS BETWEEN THE ORGANIZATIONS IN
MISSISSIPPI THAT WERE INVOLVED IN COFO, AND WHY IT WORKED ON THE STREET LEVEL,
BUT IT DIDN'T WORK ON A HIGHER LEVEL.
The relationship between the individuals that made up the Council of
Federation of Organizations worked because this was an individual relationship
that was representative of an organizational representation. I mean it was
Dave Dennis, it wasn't CORE. It was Aaron Henry instead of the NAACP. It was
Bob Moses instead of SNCC. But, that small number of people, you didn't get
into the national controversies or differences on turf, differences, as it
relates to direct action. We were committed to that direct action. Anyone who
came in with us would by definition be committed to direct action.
IN TERMS OF THAT, WHO INITIATED AARON HENRY'S BREAK WITH THE PARTY?
The national office of the NAACP.
Organizing in the Mississippi Delta
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT [ORGANIZING IN 1962 AND 1963]?
Well, let me tell you. I described the band of us, earlier. By this time,
Charlie Cobb had been added to that number. And we went to Amzie Moore's
house, in Cleveland, Mississippi. Amzie, if there — other than
Bob Moses, if there was one person who's responsible for the change brought
about in Mississippi, it would have to be Amzie Moore. Because but for Amzie
Moore being able to influence a local NAACP leader to invite Moses to
Mississippi, he wouldn't have been invited. Had Moses not been invited to
Mississippi, a lot of things would not have happened. I mean, there's just no
question about that.
we were going to register people who couldn't read and write, then we
came out down on the position that people, regardless of whether or not they
could read and write ...
UH, AMZIE'S MEETING.
Right. We lived in Amzie Moore's house: fourteen of us. That was our outpost
in the Delta. That was where we launched out from there.
CAN YOU TELL ME HOW EXACTLY DID YOU ORGANIZE?
To me, this is the most important part of this interview because I am a, I was
invited here today not because I'm a man of power, not because I have a lot of
money, but because I am identified with certain events and certain people who
have changed the South and that's why I'm here. I understand that.
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT ORGANIZING IN THE DELTA?
We were concentrating in the Delta because there was a heavy church population
there, there was an extremely heavy black population there. The Delta had been
a natural congressional district for quite some time. And, to me, Leflore
County was an example of what we found in the Delta.
WHAT DID THE VOTE MEAN TO PEOPLE? HOW WAS IT SO EASY TO ORGANIZE? WHAT DID IT
MEAN TO PEOPLE?
The vote in Mississippi meant everything. It meant, it determined whether or
not your road would be paved, it determined whether or not a hospital would be
established in your county, of — your supervisor, had 28
responsibilities. See, every — 82 counties in the state of
Mississippi. Each county has five supervisors. Those supervisors determine
life and death. If someone's going to be pardoned from the jail sentence, if
someone's going to get a job, if someone's going to get a scholarship. You
talk about an infrastructure that delivers — well just as it
delivered positively, it could deliver negatively.
Mrs. Hamer
CAN YOU TELL ME HOW YOU MET MRS. HAMER.
From Amzie Moore's house on Chisolm Street in Cleveland, Mississippi, we moved
into Sunflower, [Ruleville], a couple of other people moved into Mrs. Hamer's
town, and once we began the whole, well the first meeting that Mrs. Hamer
attended she attended because it was held in a church, because she was a great
gospel singer and a natural leader. She flowed out of the plantation system,
she was a time keeper, a position of trust and honor if there's such in the
plantation schema.
TELL ME ABOUT THAT BUS AGAIN. NOW WHY, WHY DID THE BUS, WHY DID YOU ALL GET
ARRESTED?
The bus was too yellow.
[See
Charlie Cobb Oral History: Ruleville for
a more detailed description of the bus incident.]
The Poll Tax
TELL ME WHAT IS A POLL TAX?
A poll tax was simply the payment of a certain amount of money by a certain
date which allowed you to participate in elections providing you were already
registered. Now, the poll tax was knocked out in 1966. But until we had a, we
had quite a few counties in the upper part of the Delta that even when they
were forced to register black people, they were not forced to accept the poll
tax. So there were, there was two ways to prevent a person who should have
been allowed to vote. OK, you're registered, but you didn't pay your poll tax.
OK, I want to pay my poll tax. No, I'm not going to accept it.
Role of the FBI
CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT THE ROLE OF THE FBI WAS IN MISSISSIPPI
AT THAT TIME?
Well the, the role of the Justice Department was quite supportive. John Doar
had represented a lot of us who were arrested in Greenwood around the question
of registering people to vote. But later that role shifted. Just before the
'64 summer project I met with Burke Marshall, John Doar, Arthur Schlessinger
and their role then, the shift was around us getting rid of certain, the
lawyers from the National Lawyers' Guild, Ben Smith, William Kuntsler, and
Arthur Kinoy, who had represented us beautifully. We didn't have a problem.
The Department of Justice had a problem. And we didn't care to deal with that.
[National Lawyers Guild
(NLG) attorneys had defended Communists. And some self-acknowledged Communists
and former-Communists were NLG members. NLG attorneys also defended labor
unions, peace activists, abortionists, beatniks, homosexuals, and others
deemed undesirable by the establishment. Those leftist associations made the
NLG politically unacceptable to the Kennedy administration and some of the
more conservative elements of the Civil Rights Movement.]
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE FBI IN THE SUMMER PROJECT?
The role of the FBI has always been simply to take notes and report incidents
of violence, period. Martin Luther King was quite accurate in his accusations
about a lot of the FBI members in the South at that time being natives of the
South. And, you know, its quite significant to me [that] the FBI agent who did
most of the investigating in Greenwood left the FBI in 1966 and became the
prosecuting attorney. He's still the prosecuting attorney in Greenwood,
Mississippi.
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THAT INCIDENT?
I think one indication of what the FBI's activity was like was in Greenwood,
Mississippi. We called the FBI and told them that some people were circling,
circling around our office with radios and were communicating by radio and
they had guns sticking out of their car windows. And the FBI told me to call
back if anything happened. Before anything happened, I went out of the window,
across two roofs, and down a television antenna. At the time I weighed about
250 pounds but I, I was more concerned about safety than how I looked
athletically going down that television antenna...
Winona Mississippi
TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WINONA.
Winona is a very simple case of unbelievable
horror and terror. Mrs. Hamer,
and a couple of other people were returning from a workshop [in early June of
1963]. They stopped in Winona. They were arrested. When I found out that Mrs.
Hamer was arrested I called over to the jail to find out did they have Mrs.
Hamer. They said "No, we don't have em, we don't have 'em." Then, the sheriff
came over and said, "Yes we have them, we got the niggers over here." I said,
"What's the bond?" And he said, "Well, why don't you come over here and find
out?"
White Volunteers & the Summer Project
WHAT WAS THE DEBATE ABOUT OVER VOLUNTEERS IN GREENVILLE, OR WHETHER TO BRING
IN VOLUNTEERS, INTO MISSISSIPPI?
[Referring to the COFO
staff meeting held in Greenville MS in November of 1963.]
It was, it was a debate of turf. Here was people, we had worked together. We
had recruited new people and had brought them into the fold. We were
organizing in Greenwood, we were catching hell in every form. People being
arrested. People were being threatened. People were bring kicked off farms.
People were being beaten. People were being fired if they even associated with
us. But despite all of that we were able to get people to go down and attempt
to register to vote in the Delta where there'd been a whole history of
violence and deprivation and peonage really. It wasn't slavery but it
certainly was peonage.
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
WHY WAS THE MFDP ORGANIZED?
We had conducted years of registration. We had found that our enemy was
twofold; everywhere we moved and tried to move in that state, the Democratic
Party was the enemy. Ever since 1877, the whole question of white domination
of the political apparatus in the state was very immediate. I mean, the
people — blacks, when reconstruction was moved out of the
state of Mississippi, it was moved out with blood, and with guns. Blacks were
removed from office. All of our enemies were in the Democratic Party. We had
no friends in the Republican Party.
[Because the Supreme
Court had outlawed explicit "White Primaries," the Missisippi voter
application no longer asked registrants for their party affiliation and the
state did not keep any records of who were members of the different political
parties. That left it up to party officials in each county to determine who
were members of their party — and therefore who could vote in
their primary elections. This ploy effectively circumvented the ruling against
White Primaries.]
CAN YOU TELL ME, YOU WERE THE CHAIRMAN OF THE [FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC] PARTY, WHY
YOU DIDN'T GO TO THE [DEMOCRATIC] CONVENTION?
I'm very proud to be able to say I was elected chairman of the state
convention, state committee, state executive committee, of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party. I ran, I defeated Aaron Henry in that election. And
I'm even more proud of the fact that Joseph Rauh, who was later to become a
representative of the Freedom Democratic Party at that Convention, was
supportive, was openly supportive of Aaron Henry, even though he was supposed
to be supporting us. I had the support of people and the reason I'm proud of
that election, most proud of it, is I had the support of Fannie Lou Hamer,
Victoria Gray, Annie Devine, Peggy Connor, and others. They were the people
who made it possible.
[Joseph Rauh was chief
counsel for United Auto Workers (UAW), a leader of Americans for Democratic
Action (ADA) the liberal faction of the Democratic Party, and a personal
friend and ally of Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-MN). In the summer of 1964 he
was acting pro-bono as the main MFDP attorney in regards to the legal
establishment of the MFP and relations with the national Democratic
Party.]
WHY WEREN'T YOU AT THE [DEMOCRATIC] CONVENTION?
I was the chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party but I could not
participate in the Atlantic City delegation because I was in jail in
Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I had been arrested for interfering with an officer
because I was picketing in front of the Hattiesburg Courthouse for the right
of black people to vote.
MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention
CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT, WHAT WAS SO OUTRAGEOUS ABOUT
THE — ABOUT THE REGULAR PARTY?
[The term "Regular" was
used to distinguish the all-white Democratic Pary of Mississippi from the
predominantly Black Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]
Well, just its very existence. Its platform was "Segregation Now, Segregation
Forever." Its practice was that whites had any rights that they could define.
And blacks were not even to be tolerated. That's the way it operated. So we
were not prepared to be good, loyal Democrats under that kind of banner.
CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT AARON HENRY AND ED KING? WHAT HAPPENED TO
THEM AROUND THE COMPROMISE? WHAT WAS THEIR POSITION ON THE COMPROMISE
PROPOSAL?
[At the Democratic
Convention in Atlantic City, the MFDP challenged the legitimacy of the
Mississippi regular delegation on grounds that Blacks had been systematically
excluded from the delegate election process in violation of party regulations
and that there had been numerous violations of federal law. The MFDP
delegation had been elected in strict accordance with official party
procedures and therefore the MFDP asked the convention to seat them as the
officially-recognized Mississippi delegation.
Well, I wasn't there, but Mrs. Hamer tells me that Aaron Henry was prepared to
accept the compromise and Ed King was prepared to accept the compromise. But
that Mrs. Hamer was not going to allow them to state to the press that the
compromise had been accepted. And I believe Mrs. Hamer, of the three of them,
she's no longer living, but I believe Mrs. Hamer...
LET'S GO THROUGH THAT JUST ONE MORE TIME. I THINK THAT WHAT'S NOT CLEAR IS THE
FACT THAT ALL THE [MFDP] DELEGATES HAD VOTED TO TURN DOWN THE COMPROMISE.
THAT'S NOT CLEAR IN WHAT YOU SAID.
Mrs. Hamer described a meeting to me between herself, Aaron Henry, and Ed King
in which Aaron Henry and Ed King proposed to Mrs. Hamer that the three of
them, after the [MFDP] convention delegation had voted not to accept the
compromise, that they simply go out to the press and announce that the
delegation had accepted the compromise at last and the convention could move
on with this business. Mrs. Hamer could not allow that. I believe that her
description of the meeting was accurate. I of course wasn't there.
MFDP Congressional Challenge
[Unintelligible background conversation]
Now which challenge are you talking about? The congressional or the, or
[convention]...
ON WHAT BASIS WERE THE CHALLENGES MADE, BOTH THE [CONVENTION] SEATING
CHALLENGE AND THE CONGRESSIONAL CHALLENGE?
[After the November
election, the MFDP filed a challenge in the House of Representatives to the
legitimacy of Mississippi's five Congressmen on grounds that their election
was fraudulent because Blacks had been denied the vote and access to the
process. They called for the five to be blocked from taking their seats and
that a new, fair, election be held to choose who would represent Mississippi
in the House. See MFDP
Congressional Challenge for details.]
Both of them were made on the same basis — that it was the
Democratic Party that had not allowed black people to participate in the
affairs of the party as it related to the promulgation and implementation of
policy for the Democrats — and depriving black people of the
right to vote. Every, the state legislature was entirely controlled by the
Democratic Party. If we were to bring about any change, we had to have access
to that party. We now had it.
WHY WAS THE CONGRESSIONAL CHALLENGE MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN THE [CONVENTION]
CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE CHALLENGE?
To me, if we look at history, despite my personal involvement, they were both
a — astronomically successful. The convention challenge in
Atlantic City changed the entire party apparatus as it related to allowing
black people in. No other group did that. No other group could have done that.
We did it. So that, to me, in pragmatic politics, that's success.
Why did you say that the Voting Rights Act was passed because of it?
If the Freedom Democratic Party had not challenged the congressmen from the
state of Mississippi, I am convinced that the 1965 Voting Rights Act would
have never passed. A lot of people, a lot of historians, L.B.J. included, like
to include the Selma march as the only
justification for the passage of that act. I think that's foolish.
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