Lawrence Guyot, long time civil rights advocate, dies

Lawrence Guyot (July 17, 1939 – November 23, 2012) was a civil rights activist who was the head of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party from 1964

(Publisher's note: This story just came in. Lawrence Guyot was a longtime fighter for civil rights. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Philadelphia, Miss., on the steps of that infamous courthouse. He will be missed by many who care about civil rights and freedoms in this country. He was a person who followed his passions and dreams. SK)

Civil rights leader and D.C. statehood activist Lawrence Guyot died today at the age of 73, reports the Afro:

Guyot died at home after a long battle with diabetes and heart disease. Friends who had spoken with him in recent weeks said he was elated at having seen the reelection of President Obama, of whom he was an ardent supporter. He told the AFRO he voted early because he wanted to make sure his vote was counted as his health failed.

Guyot was born in Pass Christian, Miss., on July 17, 1939. He grew up in atmosphere where Blacks had more freedom than they did in other areas of Mississippi, however after enrolling in Tougaloo College at age 17, he discovered the depth of the discrimination that other Blacks suffered in terms of voting and exercising their full citizenship rights. He was one of the early volunteers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Working closely with activists like Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses and Dorie Ladner, Guyot was among the students, Black and White, who put forth their energy and risked their lives to register voters and protest discriminatory policies in everything from business to education.

He was jailed at the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary, known as Parchman Farm. more than once, suffered several brutal beatings at the hands of corrupt law enforcement officials and faced down death several times. But that did not reduce his resolve to help his people.

Guyot was also active in local politics, serving as a Ward 1 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and allying himself with a number of local campaigns.

During the fight for same-sex marriage in D.C., Guyot also bucked many from his own generation to argue that marriage equality was a matter of civil rights: "This is a fight whose time has come. There is no middle road on this. You either want liberty for everyone, or you want liberty for non-gays," he was quoted as saying in the Post.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@dcist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

Miss. provides $152K to restore 1950s service station connected to Emmett Till’s killing; Gallup civil rights author responds

Information from: The Greenwood Commonwealth, http://www.gwcommonwealth.com

MONEY, Miss. — The Mississippi Department of Archives and History is providing $152,000 to restore a gas station as part of the story of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was lynched for whistling at a white woman in August of 1955.

Ben Roy’s Service Station stands next to what used to be Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, owned by Carolyn Bryant — the woman Till is said to have whistled at — and her husband, Roy.

Several nights afterward, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, killed and mutilated Till. An all-white jury acquitted them of murder, but they later confessed to the crime in an article in Look Magazine.

The station will be restored as part of the Mississippi Civil Rights Historical Program, The Greenwood Commonwealth (http://bit.ly/qlcYAb) reported Sunday.

___

Gallup, New Mexico civil rights author, Susan Klopfer, believes the state of Mississippi is making “a good effort” to recognize its role in this civil rights event, and to help others know the story, as the 56th anniversary of Emmett Till murder moves closer.

“I am always surprised when a teacher, anthropologist, history professor, a John Grisham fan (this one always stops me) or some other person who should know this story gives me a blank stare when I mention my eBook on Till.

“And yes -- this important story was not being taught in high school history classes way back in 1966 when I was a student in Lakeview, Oregon. Most white people and white historians, especially in the North, had not heard the story and certainly were not teaching it. No one in my college U.S. history class touched upon the Emmett Till story, either,” Klopfer said.

"And from what I've observed, this story is still not being taught in most history classes, unless the teacher is particularly enlightened."

The Gallup resident is the author of two books on Till, The Emmettt Till Book, and Who Killed Emmett Till?, The latter book, published both in eBook and print format, was recently nominated for a Global eBook award through publisher Dan Poynter of Santa Barbara, Calif.

“The story goes that in late August of 1955, Mamie Till Bradley put her only son on a train bound from Chicago to Mississippi so he could visit relatives. Having instructed him to mind his manners and corral his quick tongue, Mrs. Bradley made sure the boy kissed her good-bye before watching him scramble to make his train.

“He was a fearless boy, Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old inner city kid who sparkled with an impish sense of humor. Such boldness, his mother feared, could get a young black boy into trouble in the heart of the Deep South. It ended up putting him into an early grave,” Klopfer said.

“While looking for something to do on a hot and humid Mississippi Delta day, Emmett and his cousins ambled into the tiny town of Money, Mississippi, which boasted little more than a general store run by Roy Bryant and his wife, Carolyn, a young white woman.

“Carolyn actually lives today in Mississippi, and could shed more light on what really happened next, but she continues to refuse to talk. Even to the FBI.”

What exactly happened in the store is still unclear; there have been accounts that Emmett made a pass at Carolyn Bryant, whistling at her and calling her "baby" before his terrified companions pulled him out of the store and fled the inevitable consequences of disrespecting a white woman, Klopfer says.

“And there are still other stores that continue to float around the Delta. One story goes that Emmett was mentally challenged. Bryant tried to help him, and because he was African American, her racist husband heard about this and went ballistic.”

Three days later, Emmett was dragged from his bed at his uncle's house by Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam. His body was later found floating in the Tallahatchie River, tied to a seventy-five pound fan and brutalized beyond recognition.

According to the Gallup civil rights author, Mississippi authorities wanted Mrs. Bradley to keep the world from seeing "images of the grotesque waxen features that dripped from her son's bones, to allow no sunlight to pass through the hole in his skull, or reveal the eyeball that lolled upon his cheek."

But Emmett Till's mother showed great courage, especially for those horribly racist times in this country. “She pried the lid open from her son's coffin to show the world exactly what hatred looked like.”

One person deeply affected by photos of Till appearing in the national and international press, was Rosa Parks who was living in Montgomery, Ala.

“Parks had been planning her act of civil disobedience, to sit at the front of a city bus on her way home from work. After she learned the two men were found innocent of killing Till (and they later confessed to this murder), Parks decided to take a stand.

“Thus, Till’s murder is seen by today's historians as an important spark that ignited the modern civil rights movement.”

Klopfer said she has spent further time researching the life of a civil rights lawyer, Cleveland McDowell, “who was the same age as Till and lived in the small town of Drew, Miss., near the site of Till’s murder.”

McDowell, who Klopfer said she is currently writing a third book about, “was murdered in 1997 – after spending most of his life investigating civil rights murders and brutalities, including the murder of Emmett Till.

“There are many questions remaining about his murder that I will try to answer.”

Radio Show Features Story of Elaine, Arkansas Race Massacre Of 1919; Black Holocaust

Media Release
Subject:
(7/27/2011)*9pm c/10pm e/7pm p*Elaine, Arkansas Race Massacre Of 1919
Message:
W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio
Air Date: Weds. July 27, 2011
E-mail: r2c2h2@gmail.com
Time: 9 PM C/10 PM E/7 PM P
Call-in Number: 646-652-4593

Topic: "Black Holocaust: The Elaine, Arkansas Massacre Of 1919"

Show Promo Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z213GdCoYDY

Show:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/weallbe/2011/07/28/tha-artivist-presentswe-all-be-radio

Summary:
http://weallbe.blogspot.com/2011/07/we-all-be-radio-black-holocaust-elaine.html

---
Publisher's Note: I just received this notice from this radio station about the upcoming program on the Elaine Massacre, an event that reads like a John Grisham novel.

In the morning hours of October 1, 1919, urgent calls went up and down the Mississippi River from the heart of the Arkansas Delta: blacks in Phillips County are rioting. No one seemed to be clear about what had touched them off, but a shoot-out at a church in a hamlet called Hoop Spur in the southern part of the county had left one white man dead and others wounded.

More historians are beginning to write about this tragedy, and Ron's program should be very interesting. I urge you to tune in.

Susan Klopfer, publisher
Civil Rights and Social Justice News
Author, Who Killed Emmett Till, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited

P.S. If you are interested in reading more on this historical incident (once called a "race riot", here is information on a recently written book by an Arkansas historian --

Blood in Their Eyes is a relentless examination of one of the bloodiest American racial repressions of the 20th century. In retelling the story of the Elaine massacres of 1919 with moral fervor and canny reinterpretation of sources, Grif Stockley has written a study of collective barbarism in real time that deepens our knowledge of the psychodynamics of white supremacy.

-— David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author

Meticulously researched and compellingly argued, Blood in Their Eyes is the definitive history of the Elaine, Arkansas, massacre . . . [which] was the bloodiest race war of the Red Summer of 1919. Compounding the violence by rampaging white mobs and army troops was the torture of black survivors. Grif Stockley, a lawyer, has told the whole story, and in doing so, he has deeply enriched our understanding not only of America's violently racist past, but also of the challenges which that history poses for the future.

William M. Tuttle, Jr., author of Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (1993) and Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (2nd ed., 1996)



Awards for Blood in Their Eyes
American Association of State and Local History, 2003, Certificate of Commendation

Civil Rights Author Speaks Out on FBI Investigation of Civil Rights Martyrs Murders; Medgar Evers Murder Investigation Reopens?

Civil rights author, Susan Klopfer (Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, 2005 ) said she is not "at all surprised" the FBI is taking a second look at the murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Killed in the summer of 1963 in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi home, "Evers was a beloved man whose murder struck hard on those who worked with him, and on so many others outside of Mississippi who knew of his bravery,” Klopfer said.

The FBI announced Monday it is examining claims by Byron De La Beckwith Jr. of a conspiracy to kill Evers nearly a half century ago. Beckwith’s father was found guilty of the murder in 1994 and later died in prison.

"We're pursuing every avenue that comes up" in connection with killings from the civil rights era, said Tye Breedlove, spokesman for the FBI in Jackson. "We're looking under every stone," Breedlove told Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion Ledger.

Beckwith, in an interview with Mitchell, stated he “might need to get ready for a visit. It won't be the first time they visited me, and it won't be the last."

In 2006, Justice Department officials announced an initiative to look into killings from the civil rights era in which suspects had gone unpunished. Since then, the FBI has examined more than 100 killings, some of which remain under investigation, including the murder of Emmett Till.

The June 12, 1963, assassination of Evers has not been reinvestigated because of the 1994 conviction of Byron De La Beckwith Sr. The former Marine, who received a Purple Heart in World War II, was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.

Klopfer said that when researching this murder in 2004, she spoke with several people living in Mississippi, including a prison guard (now deceased) and a waitress “with interesting stories to tell” about Evers’s murder. “It was always whispered around the Delta that others were involved, and that Beckwith may not have even been in Jackson when this assassination took place." Beckwith, at the time, resided in the small Delta town of Greenwood. 

In a recent six-hour interview with The Clarion-Ledger, Beckwith Jr. insisted to Mitchell that his father is innocent and shared purported details about the killing that never emerged in his father's first two trials in 1964 in which the white Citizens' Council raised money to pay for his three attorneys.

“I sincerely hope the FBI will take this new information seriously and that they have more success than with the re-investigation of the murder of Emmett Till, who was also killed in Mississippi. Most of us who know the Till story still wonder why Carolyn Bryant was never called before the grand jury. It’s most likely she was on the scene when Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home.

"So why won’t the investigators demand she finally tell what she knows before she dies?”

Bryant, who now resides in Greenwood, was married at the time of Till's murder to one of the two men found innocent of killing the 14-year-old Chicago school boy in 1955. Both men later confessed to the brutal murder that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Klopfer researched and wrote two Mississippi civil rights books while living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary with her husband, Fred, who at the time worked as the prison’s chief psychologist. She wrote a third book on the topic in 2010.

“Our living at Parchman put me only a few miles away from where young Till was murdered in August of 1955. Some of the people who were living at the time of his and Evers’s later murder seemed eager to tell me what they knew, and several had interesting information to share – stories that were quite different from what had been reported in the news at the time," Klopfer said.

“Many more civil rights era murders need to be put under the FBI microscope, and this includes the murder of Cleve McDowell, a Mississippi lawyer who was killed in 1997. McDowell spent much of his professional life investigating these and other murders. He was mentored by Evers when he first went to college in Jackson and worked for Dr. Martin Luther King after he completed law school. McDowell was raised in the same small town of Drew, near the site of Till's murder, and was the same age as Till. All of McDowell's research papers were destroyed or taken away when a fire broke out in his vacated office, only six months after McDowell was murdered under suspicious circumstances.

"The brutal murders of so many civil rights heroes, including not only Till, Evers and McDowell, but also Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett -- two elderly civil rights advocates from Charleston -- have not been given the attention they deserve," Klopfer said.

"Maybe this new information coming from Beckwith's son will make a difference. I hope so. These important civil rights stories must be told. These heroes must not be forgotten."

Come to Jesus Time: Curtis Flowers trial, day four; in Winona, Mississippi, Civil rights History Takes Place

Dr. Alan Bean, a forensic historian, covers the ongoing murder trial of Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississipi. It's history in the making. Here is Dr. Bean's report from day four (posted on Dr. Bean's Friends of Justice website:

The record-setting sixth trial of Curtis Flowers will be tried by eleven white jurors and one African-American juror.

It could have been worse. At the conclusion of the jury selection process, only ten black jurors remained standing. The state had fifteen peremptory strikes. Had DA Doug Evans so chosen, we could have had an all-white jury.

Doug Evans did not so choose. A jury bereft of black jurors in a county that is 45% black would have looked . . . tacky. When the prosecutor in question has a well-earned reputation for racial bias you need at least one African-American in the judicial mix.

In Flowers 3, Evans had to use all fifteen peremptory strikes on African-Americans to get eleven white jurors. This time, Winona’s black community did Evans’ work for him by stampeding, lemming-like, over a cliff. They claimed they were too convinced of Flowers’ innocence to be fair and impartial. They said they couldn’t consider the death penalty under any circumstances. They couldn’t judge a fellow human being under any circumstances.

Several of the ten black jurors left standing at the end of voir dire were barely rescued by skilful rehabilitation work from defense attorney Ray Carter. “You don’t have to commit to the death penalty,” Carter explained, “you must simply be willing to consider it, to think about it, to weigh it as an option. Do you think you could do that?”

More often than not, black jurors answered in the negative. They simply didn’t want to be on a jury with ten or eleven white-people-on-a-mission.

There was an eloquent sadness in Carter’s eyes as he returned to his chair.

Black jurors have been reluctant to serve in previous trials held in Montgomery County–but nothing like this.

Don’t get me wrong, most black jurors are perfectly sincere in their disavowal of the death penalty. In Flowers 4, the state didn’t ask for capital punishment and five black jurors were seated. All five held out for acquittal.

But something new is in the works in Flowers 6. The brutal treatment of Flowers 5 juror, James Bibbs sent a tidal wave of fear through Winona’s black community. Judge Joey Loper pitched a conniption-fit when Bibbs held out for acquittal.

The judge has a nasty temper. He doesn’t just overrule defense motions; he buries defense counsel under a great heap of pejoratives, as in: “That has to be the most bizarre motion I have ever heard.”

But the honorable Mr. Loper has nothing but praise for the perspicacity and prudence of his legal tag team partner Doug Evans, as in: “Once again, I find myself concurring entirely with the state of Mississippi”.

Ideologically, Loper and Evans are joined at the hip. Defense counsel was uncomfortable with a juror who had an opinion regarding the guilt or innocence of Mr. Flowers and had Googled the case the moment she received her summons.

“I don’t see a problem with that,” Evans said. “I mean there are liberal blogs out there and then there are legitimate blogs.” Judge Loper beamed appreciatively.

I got the feeling that the Friends of Justice blog was being consigend to the illegitimate category.

With eleven white jurors and an unabashedly pro-prosecution judge is a conviction inevitable?

Precedent isn’t promising.

Not a single white juror in five prior trials has voted to acquit Curtis Flowers.

Juries in trials with a single black juror have convicted and imposed the death penalty.

But there are positive signs. Defense counsel was able to strike most of the people with intimate ties to murder victims and a firm conviction that Curtis Flowers is a mass murderer. Again and again, jurors of this type swore they could “set aside” their feelings and opinions if the judge asked them to. This emotional naïvete was stunning.

William James, the nineteenth century American philosopher, explained why “older truths” are rarely abandoned. “Their influence is absolutely controlling,” he wrote. “Loyalty to them is the first principle – in most cases it is the only principle; for by far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.”

Defense counsel in the Flowers is trying to convert eleven white jurors to a novel reassessment of long-accepted fact. In Winona’s respectable white community the guilt of Curtis Flowers is an “old truth”, a maxim so well established that it passes for common sense. Getting a single juror to re-evaluate the state’s case is like trying to convert a Baptist to Islam. The new idea, if accepted, would impact an entire web of social relationships. Friendships would be lost. Business opportunities would vanish. The doors and windows of polite society would slam shut.

How much easier to ignore this new truth while abusing those who bear witness to it. This explains the contempt Judge Loper has been heaping on Ray Carter and Alison Steiner this week. They represent a new truth which, if accepted, would reduce Winona’s white civilization to ruins.

In the next few days we will be witnessing a form of spiritual warfare in the courtroom. Loper and Evans will be reassuring the jurors that the old truth deserves their continued trust. Carter and Steiner will be preaching a new truth. At least one juror must experience a Damascus Road conversion in the next few days.

The challenge is formidable but not hopeless. Several of the jurors in this case were children back in 1996 when four people were killed execution-style in Winona Mississippi. Several other jurors are relatively new to Montgomery County. One juror is African American. Half the jury lives outside the comforting rhythms of the white mainstream. If we see a come-to-Jesus moment, it will likely come from this half of the jury.

If opening arguments are any indication, Curtis Flowers’ attorneys will be preaching for conversions.

Link to Friends of Justice --

Winona Black Community Fears Jury Duty in Murder Trial of Curtis Flowers; Winona -- a Culture of Violence

Dr. Alan Bean, a forensic historian, covers the ongoing murder trial of Curtis Flowers of Winona, Mississipi. It's history in the making. Here is Dr. Bean's report from day two (posted on Dr. Bean's Friends of Justice website:

While Winona’s black community runs scared, would-be jurors are running a scam.

It started early. District Attorney Doug Evans was working through his standard voir dire questions. “Anything you’ve heard outside the courtroom needs to be dropped at the door,” he told the six dozen jurors remaining in the jury venire. “Does anyone think they couldn’t do that?”

An earnest-looking white woman raised her hand. “I don’t think I could,” she said. She had formed an opinion about the case, she explained, and no evidence she heard in the courtroom could possibly change her mind.

A black woman’s hand shot into the air. “I don’t think I could either,” she reported.

Seconds later, three more black jurors were saying the same thing.

Then the prosecutor asked if there was anyone who didn’t feel they could stand in judgment of another human being.

Eleven hands were raised, two white and nine black.

Ray Carter, Mr. Flowers lead counsel, used all his lawyerly skills to rehabilitate most of these people—if only for the time being. Most of them were desperate to avoid jury duty.

“Mr. Flowers is not guilty,” Carter told his captive audience. “In fact, Mr. Flowers is innocent.”

“This is improper,” Doug Evans roared, his voice dripping with indignation.

Carter was undeterred. He had expected this response.

“Judge,” he explained calmly, “I don’t want anyone to think that just because Curtis Flowers has been tried over and over again, that he’s guilty.”

Then the black attorney turned his attention to the jurors who claimed they couldn’t stand in judgment. Carter knew what they were thinking. Most of them didn’t believe Curtis Flowers was guilty, but they feared a powerful backlash from leading lights within the white community if they voted their conscience.

Almost all the “couldn’t-sit-in-judgment” people are economically dependent on influential white people, but it goes deeper than that. They wonder what would happen if their children or their grandchildren got cross-ways with the law. Would the authorities retaliate against the-guy-that-hung-the-jury-in-2010? Maybe not, but how can you be sure?

“I know some of you are uncomfortable being here,” Carter said. “But sometimes in life we are asked to do things we don’t like to do.”

Carter called one of the jurors who used the can’t-sit-in-judgment dodge by name. “Did you tell Mr. Evans you couldn’t sit in judgment, or did you just say you didn’t want to?”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t,” the woman explained, “I said I didn’t want to.”

Several black jurors adjusted their earlier comments, but others refused to budge. “I couldn’t do it,” one woman explained. “The ones who are in there, the decision that they would make, I couldn’t agree with it.”

Translation: “All those white folks are going to convict, I wouldn’t be able to go along, and I’m afraid I’d pay dearly. Either that, or I’d cave in to pressure and hate myself for the rest of my life.”

Most of the remaining white jurors are sincere Christians struggling to do the right thing. Everyone in their social world believes Curtis is guilty. It’s settled orthodoxy, like believing in God. A healthy percentage of white jurors freely admit that, from where they sit, Curtis Flowers looks guilty and no amount of evidence is going to change that belief.

Another subset of white jurors is capable of maintaining an open-mind on the guilt-innocence issue. They live on the borders of Winona’s social mainstream and haven’t been directly affected by the wagon-circling and the rush to judgment.

Then we have the smiling members of the juror class. These folks are desperate for a conviction but know they can’t admit as much. They attend church with the victims’ families, they see them socially, and, back in the day, they went to school with them. Nonetheless, they could put all that aside. They could wipe their minds of all prejudgments and remove every twinge of empathy and compassion from their hearts.

These men and women are perjuring themselves to get on the jury.

But the slightest suggestion that these folks might be less than sincere is greeted with howls of protest (literally) from Evans and Loper. If white jurors claim to be fair and impartial, they are.

At one point, Ray Carter tried to explain to the jurors that white people sometimes have trouble identifying black people, and vice versa.

Doug Evans bellowed his objection and Judge Loper sustained. “This trial isn’t about black and white,” Loper sermonized, “it’s about right and wrong and it’s about guilt and innocence.”

Really? Does the Judge believe his own rhetoric?

On some level, I think he does. Loper spent most of Day Two defending the white con artists working the room. Loper and Evans worked like experienced tag team partners.

There is something unnerving about DA Evans and his pet judge. Joey Loper lives in a world of legal platitudes and fair-and-impartial jurors who know instinctively when the state has passed the threshold of reasonable doubt.

Race is never an issue in Loperland. All-white juries are fine and dandy because race doesn’t matter. State witnesses can be trusted because they’re just doing their civic duty (at $30,000 a pop).

In Loperland, jurors work in pristine isolation from their peers—there is no such thing as jury psychology or a herd mentality, just earnest citizens motivated by persuasive evidence.

In Loperland, race is a myth and social class is a mirage. There is no history and no sociology.

In Loperland, prosecutors always operate in good faith, defendants are always guilty and defense attorneys (if they know what’s good for them) yield gracefully to the inevitable.

But while Judge Loper and DA Evans turn a blind eye to the obvious, I am beginning to wonder if a credible jury can be selected from this kind of venire.

Politicians Should Pay Heed to History; Boycotts Work Says Civil Rights Author, Susan Klopfer

Contact: Susan Klopfer
http://susanklopfer.com
sklopfer@gmail.com


Politicians Should Pay Heed to History; Boycotts Work

Boycotts make a definite economic impact for groups seeking social justice, says a civil rights author.

Responding to Arizona's law cracking down on illegal immigration and the resulting national protests, including threat of boycott to Arizona’s tourism industry, Susan Klopfer, author of three books on civil rights in the Mississippi Delta, argues that "such economic embargoes have retained their role as a strong and successful tradition in modern civil rights history."

Klopfer's remarks come as protests have already taken place in more than 90 cities in the U.S. "reminding politicians of the size of the immigrant community."

This week, Jorge-Mario Cabrera from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, California, told reporters if Republicans and Democrats "do not take care of this albatross around our necks, this will in fact be the undoing of many, many years of civil rights struggle in this country."

In Cabrera's city, more than 60,000 reportedly people turned out for a downtown rally.

“Cabrera knows what he is talking about,” Klopfer responds, giving as example "a particularly strong but little known boycott" that took place in the Mississippi Delta nearly fifty years ago:

As 1961 came to a close, "Some white folks in the Mississippi Delta were dreaming of a White Christmas when they decided to keep their black customers away from the city of Clarksdale's annual parade."

But their tune changed dramatically when Coahoma County's NAACP chapter led by civil rights activist Aaron Henry sponsored a major boycott over the Christmas shopping season of 1961, according to Klopfer.

"Clarksdale's downtown stores were all heavily dependent on black trade, giving the boycott both immediate and lasting effects," Klopfer said.

Medgar Evers, head of the state NAACP, and Henry had met that summer with with President John F. Kennedy during the NAACP convention in Philadelphia, talking with Kennedy and others over the severity of their problems.

Then two months later, shortly after their meeting, Clarksdale's mayor decided there would be “no Negro participation” in the annual Christmas parade, and his decision would result in the first major confrontation in Clarksdale since 1955, according to Klopfer.

“Henry and others were stunned and affronted by the mayor's edict. It was tradition for the black band to play at the end of the parade, followed by floats from their community. There seemed to be no reason for this decision, except that the mayor apparently resented the progress African Americans were making all over the state.”

Henry and Evers called for a boycott of downtown stores with a slogan stating if they couldn't parade downtown, they wouldn't trade downtown.

Handbills were printed and a newsletter sent out asking for blacks to join in the boycott; merchants felt pressure from the start.

"The white community leaders would not come to terms with the black community and the boycott dragged on,” Klopfer said.

Aaron Henry "voiced the black community's view" when he said it could go on forever unless there were real changes in hiring practices.

When the county's attorney Thomas H. (Babe) Pearson threatened to jail Henry if he didn’t use his influence to call off the boycott, Henry would not budge, so Pearson called out for Clarksdale Police Chief Ben Collins to come out from the side room of his office, and told him to “take this nigger to jail.”

The arrest was illegal, Klopfer states, since no warrant was issued, "but Henry knew better not to argue with an armed policeman. He could have been killed for such dissent.”

Years later, "Henry admitted he didn't mind going to jail at the time, since he knew it would result in an intensification of the boycott--and it did.”

Seven more Clarksdale civil rights leaders were brought in and all were locked up, later charged with restraint of trade and released. The boycott reached its peak about three years later, following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and merchants felt the economic pinch throughout the event as they missed one-half of their customers, Klopfer said.

Yet even while Henry and others were being arrested, another group -- all white -- tried launching a boycott of their own when the Mississippi State Legislature passed a resolution that no loyal Mississippian should shop in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the state line, and quite close to Clarksdale, Klopfer said.

“Tougaloo College professor John Salter, a dedicated civil rights activist, wrote about the Clarksdale boycott, noting that while public accommodations and other facilities in Memphis were quietly desegregating, the Mississippi legislature further distinguished itself, ‘...by publicly investigating conditions at the University Hospital in Jackson, where white and black children were leaving their segregated wards and playing together in the corridors’.”

Few people today have read about the Clarkdale boycott, Klopfer admits.

But others have learned in their history books -- or were alive at the time -- when six years earlier, African-Americans in Alabama launched a boycott of the bus system in Montgomery after local civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white rider.

“Parks 1955 decision came soon after the trial freeing the murderers of Emmett Till, an African American 14-year-old Illinois school boy who was killed in the Mississippi Delta for allegedly whistling at white women,” Klopfer said.

Given that African-Americans constituted a large part of the bus ridership, history books show the boycott hurt Montgomery’s revenue base.

“People found alternative ways to get to work and school, and the boycott drew national attention. Even some northerners supported the boycott and gave donations."

Both Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, who would remain at the forefront of the struggle through the 1960s, "emerged at this time.”

The Montgomery boycott ended in 1956 when the Supreme Court declared that the segregated transit system was unconstitutional.

“From this history and their own, Hispanics know that boycotts have proven effective in their quest for labor justice and union rights.” Klopfer said.

In 1965, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, led by Cesar Chavez, launched a national boycott against grapes.

“The five-year boycott, or la huelga, placed enormous pressure on California grape growers to recognize the union and it drew national attention to the plight of unorganized immigrant workers in low-paying and dangerous jobs,” Klopfer said.

Meanwhile, boycotts still carry a threat in the Delta, according to the civil rights author.

“Citizens in the small town of Cleveland, near the site where Emmett Till was killed in 1955, threatened an Easter boycott just last month over an issue involving school segregation. One thousand school children marched from their building to administrative offices."

Klopfer says the school board listened -- "at least for this particular demand" -- and gave in, after board members were told of an impending boycott.

“Boycotts carry weight and politicians should be taking seriously the response to Arizona’s new law, if they value lessons learned from history.”

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Susan Klopfer is the author of three civil rights books, including "Who Killed Emmett Till?" "The Emmett Till Book" and "Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited." She is an award-winning journalist and has been an acquisitions and development editor for Prentice Hall. She is the author of a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection and is a public speaker, freelance writer and active blogger.

Author revisits Mississippi delta civil rights cases

Former area author revisits civil rights cases
BY TERRY HOUSHOLDER
fwdailynews.com

Sunday, 11 October 2009 00:00

Susan Klopfer believes the long, sad chapter of American history surrounding the civil rights struggles of African Americans should never be forgotten. Using her journalistic talents, she’s authored two books focused on unsolved atrocities in the Mississippi Delta region that have brought new light to several cases.

Klopfer, whose husband, Fred, is a psychologist, has authored several non-fiction books in the past, including a computer book for Prentice-Hall, “Abort! Retry! Fail!” that was an alternate selection for the Book-of-the-Month Club. She’s now marketing two books she wrote while living in the Mississippi Delta: “Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited,” and “The Emmett Till Book.”

Klopfer lived two years in Mississippi and was fascinated when meeting interesting people who were part of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They inspired her to collect their stories and to do extensive research and writing over a 23-month period.

“Every time I turned around, I was running into people who wanted to talk about what they knew, about what happened during the civil rights years,” Klopfer said. “Many had relatives who were killed or disappeared. I started working like crazy because I was excited about what I was discovering and learning.”

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