Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Definitive History Book on Emmett Till Set for August Publication -- 60th Anniversary of Till's Death in Mississippi


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(NOTE -- Devery Anderson's fascinating notes on the family and major players involved in the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, and of those involved in the trial of his murderers, appear at the end of The Emmett Till Book, by Susan Klopfer.)


Author Devery Anderson: Photo by Emily Hatch

Author Devery S. Anderson has announced that his newest book, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement, is set for publication in August 2015 by the University Press of Mississippi, and features a forward by civil rights icon, Julian Bond.
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[My new Emmett Till book] is based on hundreds of hours of archival research, sifting through dozens of newspaper stories, as well as original interviews with those who witnessed the case unfold, including Emmett Till’s family members who were with him in Mississippi, trial witnesses, and newspaper reporters who covered the story in 1955. It also brings the case up to the present, including the recent FBI investigation. Julian Bond, civil rights legend and former chair of the NAACP, has written the foreword.

(Quote From Anderson's website,http://www.emmetttillmurder.com)
***

CIVIL RIGHTS AUTHOR DEVERY ANDERSON TELLS website followers that he first became acquainted with Emmett Till in the fall of 1994, as a student at the University of Utah,  after watching the first segment of the PBS documentary series on the Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize.

"Emmett’s murder and the subsequent acquittal of his killers left me full of questions. What happened to the killers after their acquittal? What happened to Emmett’s mother? Was she alive, or had she died somewhere in obscurity? Why was I not already familiar with this case?" Anderson was soon asking himself.

It was several months later, that Anderson discovered at least one book on the subject in print, "and so I purchased Stephen Whitfield’s A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till."'

BUT THEN, CLENORA HUDSON-WEEMS, professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia, soon came to speak at the University of Utah in May 1995. Her lecture was on another topic, yet the school newspaper noted that she was the author of the book,Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Right’s Movement, Anderson tells his followers on his Emmett Till website at http://www.emmetttillmurder.com/.

Anderson attended Hudson-Weems' lecture, purchased her book and soon was full of questions. "I read both of these books and wanted to learn more. Both were written at a time when research, writing, and a renewed interest in the Till case was in its infancy, and I eventually discovered that they contained many factual errors, but they did whet my appetite for more."



OVER THE ENSURING YEARS, the Utah resident found that this case consumed him "... in ways I could not quite explain."

In 1996, while still a student at the University of Utah, Anderson took a class on racism. Students were given a major assignment, due at the end of the quarter, "that we would each present to the class. I decided that I would put together a scrapbook on the Emmett Till case and include an original interview with Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother."

Surprisingly, Anderson found it was not difficult to locate Till-Mobley in the Chicago telephone directory and he wrote her a letter and arranged a time for a telephone interview. Their two-hour conversation took place on December 3, 1996 and was followed by "dozens" more, over the next six years up until a month before her January 2003 death.


***

Anderson's fact-filled website allows him a way to contribute to the spread of knowledge about the Emmett Till murder. The author researched and wrote his new book between 2004 and 2014; he lives in Salt Lake City, and is the father of three children, Amanda, Tyler, and Jordan. Anderson holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Utah.
***
From reviewers

"The manuscript is balanced, clearly organized, exhaustively researched, and well written. The narrative flows logically and will hold the attention of readers who are otherwise unfamiliar with the case. Right now, and probably for decades to come, it will be the definitive work on this subject. The manuscript will not only be of interest to a general readership but historians in such fields as civil rights history, the history of the South, and legal history. It offers much that is entirely new to our understanding of this topic and/or sheds an original light on old questions. This book will deserve a place in any good library."

—David T. Beito, co,author, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power

"Much has been written about the Till case in the past decade, but what has been missing is a definitive history of the case. This book provides that definitive history. The author gives a thorough account of the case from almost every angle. I am very familiar with the scholarship on Emmett Till, and the author has left no stone unturned. ...A reader coming to the case for the first time will get the best account we have of the case; scholars familiar with it will learn new details from new sources, and will be persuaded by how well the author settles long debated controversies about what happened and when. The author knows where the historical record is murky or contradictory, and he never rushes to judgment. When he does settle a controversy, he marshals the requisite evidence. When he is not able to settle a controversy, he presents the contradictory evidence and leaves it unresolved. Anyone interested in this case will find this book a valuable guide to the full story of Emmett Till."

—Christopher Metress, ed., The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary Narrative



***

ONE FINAL NOTEI am really looking forward to reading this new book. From time to time I have been in contact with Devery throughout his research process. I know that he has traveled to Europe and elsewhere in search of latest information on this civil rights crime that helped spark the modern civil rights movement. In the future, I will ask him to answer some of my questions, and to tell us more about the book. sk

Monday, February 9, 2015

MLK's Mother Was Assassinated, Too: The Forgotten Women Of Black History Month

(Editor's note: On June 30th, 1974, Alberta Williams King was gunned down while she played the organ for the “Lord’s Prayer” at Ebenezer Baptist Church. As a Christian civil rights activist, she was assassinated...just like her son, Martin Luther King, Jr. But most people remember only one I certainly DID NOT KNOW this story, until I read an article by Aurin Squire. I've put up a link so that you can read his article, too. He makes a number of interesting statements about his acquisition of black history. It's a wonderful article to read during Black History Month. Read it, and share your comments, please.)


Alberta Williams King, victim of assassination

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Anne Moody's Former College Professor Recalls This 'Gifted Mississippi Activist and Writer'

* * *
(Editor's note: Sociologist John R. Salter, Jr. is a well-known civil rights and labor activist. I am proud to publish this following piece he has written on Anne Moody, his former student at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. On a personal note, I never met her, but Moody's book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, gave me powerful insight into the civil rights struggles of her times. It is a wonderful book, and a "must read." Moody died at the age of 74 on Thursday, Feb.5, 2015. Susan Klopfer)

* * *


Mississippi author and civil rights activist, Anne Moody 

... we shall always remember a brave and plucky and committed 
human being who, despite the many and various vicissitudes, 
continued toward the Sun.   

John R. Salter, Jr.

I and my good spouse, Eldri, knew Anne Moody from the point that we and Anne arrived at Tougaloo Southern Christian College in late summer, 1961, myself as a professor and she as a student. We were in contact with her from about that point until late summer, 1994.

She was a fine student of mine in a number of courses, and became a close friend of Eldri and myself.  Passionately committed to social justice, Anne was a strong supporter of our Jackson civil rights movement which began very actively in latter 1962 as the economic boycott of the downtown Jackson area and which feathered out into our massive Jackson Movement in the spring of 1963.  
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If Anne often distrusted some components of government, she was an essentially trusting person when it came to human beings.
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Her role in our historic Woolworth Sit-In at Jackson Mississippi on May 28, 1963, is very well known. After the active demonstration phase of the Jackson Movement, she lent her valuable efforts as a CORE representative in other most challenging Magnolia [Mississippi state flower] situations. Her fine writing abilities are very well exemplified in her classic work, Coming of Age in Mississippi, and in a number of other pieces.



Moody's Coming of Agein Mississippi, a "must read."

In addition to being a very good friend, she was also, as a great many of my students and former students often are, an advisee of mine, and I her advocate, at many points. (From that perspective, I am ethically constrained from discussing any details in any personal challenges she may have faced.  I maintain confidences.  There is no chronological statute of limitations for me on those.)

But I will broadly mention two matters.  If Anne often distrusted some components of government, she was an essentially trusting person when it came to human beings.  In almost all of those cases, that trust was eminently justified.

But not all.  In 1991, she was significantly enmeshed – through no fault of her own –- in a bureaucratic/medical situation in New York City where she resided. She was able to contact me.  I extricated her from that mess pronto.
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Her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, guarantees her immortality.
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In the earlier part of 1994, and not of her making, "something" tangibly occurred in which she had very good reason to fear for her personal liberty in New York City.  A faithful neighbor of hers, an elderly Jewish man, worked with me (I was in North Dakota) to put her on a fast track to our university town of Grand Forks in that rather remote state.  For about three months, in the spring of 1994, she and her son, Sasha, lived in a motel quite near our home. We assisted her in a number of ways, as we had on earlier occasions, and continued that for a time into the summer after she and Sasha moved on back East and contact with other writers. Then, we lost touch with her.

Her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, guarantees her immortality.  But more than that, we shall always remember a brave and plucky and committed human being who, despite the many and various vicissitudes, continued toward the Sun.

Hunter Gray/ John R Salter Jr. / Hunter Bear, Pocatello, Idaho, February 6 2015


... at the Mississippi lunch counter

* * *
(From Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion Ledger, Feb. 7, 2015):

Born in 1940 in Wilkinson County, she attended segregated schools and worked to help her poor family.

While attending Natchez Junior College, she became involved with the civil rights movement. She then attended Tougaloo College, where her involvement grew deeper.

On May 28, 1963, she took part in the sit-in at Woolworth's in downtown Jackson. A mob attacked her, Joan Trumpauer and Tougaloo professor John Salter Jr. and others, hitting them and pouring flour, salt, sugar and mustard on top of them.

It was the most violent response to a sit-in in the 1960s in the U.S.)


* * *
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari' . Check out our massive social justice website:
www.hunterbear.org

Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Core dimensions of my Community Organizing course:
http://www.labornet.org/news/0000/hbear.htm

Some early personal activist history / good people and issues:

http://civilrightsnewsreleases.blogspot.com/2015/01/hinter-bear-maintaining-normally-high.html

My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000
word introduction by me. Covers much of my
confrontational social justice organizing life to
date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing
methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

See this for mini-bio, efforts to prevent JM’s appearance in
Mississippi, a wide range of its many reviews, and some
photos: http://www.amazon.com/John-R.-Salter/e/B001KMEHWY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Photos) 



Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Hunter Bear -- Maintaining 'Normally High' Optimism: Notes From a Street-Smart Activist

(Editor’s note: Hunter Gray (Hunter Bear, John R. Salter, Jr.) is a well-known and successful civil rights and labor advocate. He is a retired professor who enjoys sharing his stories with those who strive for equality. He recently sent out this note, and has given his permission to share it with others. Be sure to read his Organizer's Book, JACKSON MISSISSIPPI! Hunter has been an inspiration to me, and so many others, and I hope you enjoy the following. Susan Klopfer, author, Who Killed Emmett Till)


'Maintaining My Normally High Optimism'

This is a kind of selective mini-memoir, reaching back into the latter 1950s and the earlier part of the 1960s – embracing a number of diverse and good people of strong social justice feelings, much of this in the Red Scare epoch.  I could write much more on that and comparable periods but am keeping this within the limits stirred by a very recent letter from a long ago student of mine at a small college, Wisconsin State at Superior, in northern Wisconsin.
Hunter Bear (Hunter Gray, John Salter, Jr.), accomplished activist and professor

Many in Eastern Idaho, including our family, have been hit by the nationally notorious flu. We all weathered that, some with anti-biotics, but in my case a troubling cough persisted.  My domestic responsibilities considerably increased of late, and thus not inclined to take chances, I went to a medical outpost where I was given a chest X Ray. The doc told me I had pneumonia and, when I asked -- was there anything more serious, such as COPD which had taken one my best friends some years ago, I was looked at like I was a high school kid and told pneumonia was very serious.  In the end, with an array of medicines, I threw that off handily.  I may have had it for some time.
The letter came from Mark, now retired from a long and successful teaching career.  It said, in part, “You inspired me then and although I could never be as strong and as tough as you, I have done a few good things in a life filled with luck.  The memory of you inspires me still.”
Drinking black coffee and smoking my tobacco pipe for several hours very early this morning, I traveled back into time.  I wrote Mark later this morning, saying in part:
I very much appreciate your good words – and glad to know my role at Superior, as activist and teacher, was encouraging in those challenging days and circumstances.
It’s been a hell of a challenging period for literally everyone we know. One of my major struggles these days is to maintain my normally high optimism and faith in most of Humanity.  So far, I think I’ve been successful.
The fact is, in that ‘way back time that doesn’t seem that long ago, it was “you students” who certainly inspired me!  I have always remembered you all – with the greatest appreciation and Eldri feels exactly the same way.  We handled some very tough challenges effectively and well. You, yourself, were certainly a major figure in that struggle.
The age difference between myself and you all was obviously pretty minimal. (I note you are 78 and I am virtually 81.)  At Superior, as at my one year of high school teaching in the Nebraska Sandhills country a couple of years before I got to Wisconsin, I felt no social distance between myself as a teacher -- and my students – from whom I always learn much whatever the setting and times.
In fact, that’s been basically my ethos everywhere I have gone as a “professor.”  I’ve often told classes, “I’m not really a professor, just pretending to be one.”
+ + +
I wrote a long letter to the paper attacking HUAC, the film, and praising the student activists.
+ + +
I arrived at Superior State College as it was often known, as an instructor, in late summer, 1960, fresh from a few months on super isolated Bear Mountain Fire Lookout in extreme eastern Arizona and armed with a fresh M.A. from Arizona State, Tempe.  I had been hired at the last minute. I was already a reasonably experienced organizer, militant labor and student rights, and my own kind of radical, but its president, Jim Dan Hill knew nothing personal of my background, save that I was a good part Indian, a veteran and an Arizonian.
No sooner at that college, I learned it was the super authoritarian fiefdom of its president, General Jim Dan Hill, best described as a Texas Bircher. My  sociology teaching load was very heavy, fine with me. Hill and I clashed early on when, in his weekly newspaper column, “Let’s Look At The Record” he praised the witch hunting House Un-American Activities Committee, and the purely awful red-baiting film, “Operation Abolition, which attacked the student protestors and their militant organization – SLATE – who had challenged HUAC during its hearings in the Bay Area early in 1960 via very vigorous demonstrations.
(Decades later, I met the good Bill Mandel, then about 90, on our discussion lists He had played a very constructive and centrally activist ant-HUAC role in those very events.  We found we had crossed trails many times in our lives.  I was about the last person interviewed by Bill on his weekly radio program at Berkeley – KPFA – on Native concerns in late 2005.  Shortly after that, Bill was struck by a car, badly injured, and became inactive.  He remains much missed.)
I wrote a long letter to the paper attacking HUAC, the film, and praising the student activists. It was published.
And I found I was an instant celebrity in Superior where few, and certainly virtually no faculty, ever criticized General Hill openly.  I also learned there was a long extant movement against Hill out in the community – but it had lost a good deal of steam.
Early on, the college Ski Club, all male, saw me and recognized the kind of faculty sponsor they’d like – not a fussy professorial and intrusive type.  Though no ski buff – I am a snowshoes guy – I agreed to be their faculty cover.  Soon thereafter, the Ski Club had one of its big parties – no females and pretty tame by today’s standards.  But, perhaps because of my role as sponsor – I wasn’t at the affair – the Dean of Students, a classic Hill sycophant, officially abolished the Club.  We talked to Student Government which protested the Dean’s action.  The Dean and General Hill then abolished  Student Government in total.
I and a good number of students, some Ski and many others, then had a large mass protest meeting in the college auditorium.
And the War against Hill was on.  Mark, my good and very recent correspondent, was among the first to join the effort.  It was then that I learned that Mark’s uncle, a resident of Superior, was a national VP of the American Federation of Teachers – and an old friend of Bill Karnes, also a national VP of AFT, and president of Phoenix Local 1010 of AFT. Among my several active union affiliations was my at-large membership in 1010.
+ + +
We began systematically contacting potential allies – e.g., political, labor, and general community members.
+ + +
Bill was one of a great many AFL-CIO unionists in Arizona and elsewhere who politely and firmly ignored the flow of attempted mandates from the Federation’s top level – most generated by the predatory Steel Union – seeking to prevent contact with the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, widely seen by its critics as “Communist.”  My own relations with Mine Mill were very close indeed. Bill Karnes and other teacher unionists had always appreciated Mine Mill’s considerable assistance in organizing AFT locals in the mining towns.  AFL-CIO craft unions were much involved with Mine Mill in fighting the copper companies.  And, in any case, Mine Mill, with 10,000 plus members in Arizona – the largest union in the state which, in 1956 and 1957, had won bargaining rights at two major Magma Copper properties – could hardly be ignored.
One of Bill’s best high school students, Rodney, eventually went to UC at Berkeley where he immediately connected with under-grad and grad students who were forming the radical campus political party, SLATE. One of the latter was the older economics student Clinton Jencks, always a widespread and beneficial influence, and late of Mine Mill, Salt of the Earth, the Jencks Case.  They were all involved together in the anti-HUAC fight.
Back at Superior, our student movement, mostly Anglo but some Native, mushroomed fast.  We put out a regularly issued and fiery but rational  mimeographed protest journal, focused on many education issues and certainly student and faculty academic freedom – and, too, faculty and staff salary discrimination. We began systematically contacting potential allies – e.g., political, labor, and general community members. The somewhat dormant, broad and very diverse anti-Hill community movement began to stir – then came vigorously alive.
But the students, Mark and many others indeed, who often didn’t see themselves as activists, were the consistent spear-point.  General Hill attacked me as an atheist and an advocate of free love (the latter for my support, voiced in my Marriage and Family course, of the Swedish system of trial marriage.) Only a little more surreptitiously did he and his cohorts attack me consistently as a Communist.  FBI documents of concerning me, secured many years later via FOIA/PA, indicate Hill brought the willing FBI into it all as an ally very early on.
The fight went through the entire spring semester of 1961.
+ + +
Thus I met Eldri, and we were married a few months later at a very well attended wedding.
+ + +
Mark’s AFT uncle introduced me, at an AFT conference, to Governor Gaylord Nelson (later U.S. Senator).  We had a short but very productive discussion.  Soon after that, the Gov appointed a member of the Board of Regents as a kind of college overseer.  At the end of that spring term, Hill was given only three or so more years and his powers were sharply limited.  He was required to get Regents’ approval for any significant policy and fiscal appropriations decisions.
Eldri, then employed on campus by several Lutheran churches as their student counselor, had come to my attention when a member of the still functioning Ski Club (however unofficial its status) and an Irish Catholic, told me that “a Lutheran girl” had a phonograph record of SLATE’s anti-HUAC protests. Thus I met Eldri and we were married a few months later at a very well attended wedding.  We left Superior in the summer of 1961 for Mississippi teaching and organizing -- and my later organizing with the leftist Southern Conference Educational Fund in the Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt. We finally left the South in 1967 and went on to many other tough campaigns, and college/university teaching – often an activist endeavor in its own right.

Eldri
Over the years, Eldri and I kept in touch with as many of our old friends and fellow combatants as we could.  In the fall of 1965, I carefully wrote the basic draft of what became the first edition of my book on our massive Jackson Movement of 1961-63.  When that was finally published in 1979, it did OK sales-wise – but I also sent over 100 copies as gifts to as many of our old fighting friends I could locate.
During the civil rights period, I went on a few speaking junkets. Bill Karnes, in Arizona, played a key role, along with Harry Stamler, a veteran radical, in setting up speaking engagements for me in Phoenix metro.  Aware that my only life insurance was my GI/VA policy which I had continued, and that I couldn’t get one in Dixie, Local 1010 quickly provided a good one for me.
+ + +
In the old days – going back in time a good ways – it has always seemed to me that friends and foes alike were much more candidly open in their positions, often duking it out, mostly nonviolently but sometimes not.
+ + +
The Arizona Mine Mill Council was as pleased to have me as its major speaker on the civil rights movement as I was to appear before that very large gathering of its many Arizona local unions.
General Hill returned to Texas.  In 1981, a good friend, Duane Hale, Creek Indian and an academic historian, ran across Hill at the West Texas Historical Conference.  He reported that the Old Dragon was old and frail.
Many years after all of this, I learned from our good friend, Stephen Zunes, who we have known since he was a precocious seven year old, that Bill Karnes was his cousin on his mother’s side.  Not surprised at all.

In the old days – going back in time a good ways – it has always seemed to me that friends and foes alike were much more candidly open in their positions, often duking it out, mostly nonviolently but sometimes not.  Nowadays, all sorts of disingenuous stuff, often covert back-biting and back-knifing, seem much more common on the part of our adversaries, and occasionally even a few of our ostensible allies.
The people I have mentioned fondly and well were, and those who remain still, are very fine people.  I wouldn’t try ideological analysis on any of them and their productive contributions -- or their multitude of interesting inter-connections.  As my old cowboy/artist and radical mentor, Frank Dolphin, was sometimes prone to trenchantly note:
“Like pulls to like.”
Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ and Ohkwari' . 

Check out our massive social justice website:

www.hunterbear.org 

Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
Core dimensions of my Community Organizing course:

http://www.labornet.org/news/0000/hbear.htm

My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word introduction by me. Covers much of my confrontational social justice organizing life to date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

See this for mini-bio, efforts to prevent JM’s appearance in Mississippi, a wide range of its many reviews, and some photos: http://www.amazon.com/John-R.-Salter/e/B001KMEHWY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Photos)