Let the People Decide Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County Mississippi The signing

g of Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a result of hardships such as voting suppression, police brutality, intimidation tactics, and murder. In Let the People Decide... civil rights activists struggled for simple rights, now often taken for granted. These simple rights include the ability to attend school and vote in state and local elections. The following paragraphs will explain the economic repression African-Americans underwent as well as introducing the oppressive Mississippi Citizens Council. Also examined, will be the hardships leading up to Freedom Summer and an independent freedom ballot, which led to legislative change. After the civil war and the abolishment of slavery, sharecropping became the primary income for many former slaves in the southern United States. Sharecropping, or halving, allows a farmer to live on a plantation in return for growing crops on the land. In addition, half of the profits from the crop are split with the plantation owner. In many instances families farming the land had to provide fertilizers and seed for their crop, which was predominantly cotton. Sharecropping is inherently oppressive, ensuring that farmers remain impoverished and indebted to their landowner. As technology increased with the introduction of tractors, mechanical cotton picking techniques, and pesticides, the need for cheap labor decreased. Although the need for sharecropping diminished in the south, the oppressive social class structure remained. Many

whites kept their sharecropping etiquette which implied a subservient role of AfricanAmericans. In order to inspire white social and economic supremacy, Citizens Councils were established and founded in Sunflower County in 1954. The Citizens Councils began after the Brown V Board of Education Supreme Court decision, requiring the desegregation of schools. These councils were prevalent throughout the south. The Citizens Councils promoted segregation of African Americans, as well as white supremacy. Members of the Citizens Councils were generally wealthier members of white society including more respectable members of society, which included lawyers, bankers, police officers, legislators etcetera. The Citizens Council did not adhere to violent tactics like the Ku Klux Klan, and did not align with the KKK. Despite their attempts to keep distance the council was often referred to as the uptown Klan. Although their tactics were not violent the council used intimidation tactics which included closing mortgages of African-American homeowners, and pressuring employers to fire African-Americans. In addition, the council also organized school boycotts and smear campaigns against organizations striving for civil rights, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP in Sunflower County was established soon after the initial Brown Supreme Court Decision. NAACP members initially held voting drives to register voters and obtain rights of an American citizen. During their struggles to promote voter registration, organizers were met with further resistance. The Citizens Council threatened those who went to vote as well as had many African-Americans fired from their jobs if they were even under the suspicion of working

with the NAACP. The council also manipulated whites into joining their organization under the guise of protecting their freedom and rights Further voting drives were sponsored by the NAACP in nearby Humphreys County. A striking example of suppression and intimidation is the case of Gus Courts. Courts was a grocer and the president of the Humphreys County NAACP. The Citizens Council forced Courts to relinquish his position. The council also demanded that he provide the names of all members within the local chapter of the NAACP. One member of the council threatened We will tie up your bus and tie up your store. We will run you out of town. Courts never conceded, was shot and forced to flee to Chicago. One of the first African-American voters in Humphreys County was Courts close friend, Reverend George Lee. Members of the council attempted to intimidate Reverend Lee into removing his name from the registration roll. Polls were guarded against African-Americans for alleged security purposes. Unfortunately, Reverend Lee did not acquiesce and was killed by one of the polling guards who followed him home. Despite evidence, media presence and FBI involvement no one was convicted. NAACP involvement in Sunflower County diminished after the murder of 14-year-old Emmitt Till. Till allegedly made a socially unacceptable comment to a young white female, who then told her mother. The young man was then kidnapped by two white men and found three days later floating in the Tallahatchie River. Even though 63 percent of the population was African-American the all-white jury found the two men not-guilty, Roy Wilkins, leader of the NAACP said in a letter to Eisenhowers Justice Department after the acquittal the green light

has been given to hoodlums to demean, persecute, and kill Negroes, with or without provocation. Another key group which aided in the struggle for civil rights in Sunflower County was the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). Following a 1960 Supreme Court ruling, all bus terminals were to be de-segregated. Although separation of the races was illegal, there was little enforcement of the law. After the court ruling, members of CORE sent off on a bus ride from Washington DC to New Orleans. On May 4, 1961, thirteen volunteers vowed non-violence and set off toward the south. The Freedom Rides were executed in order to test the newly imposed regulations and make it impossible for officials not to uphold the law. On the way to New Orleans the freedom riders encountered racist dissent in Alabama. In Anniston the bus was firebombed while another bus of Freedom Riders was attacked at a station in Birmingham. A few activists flew to New Orleans; however, 10 participants were determined to complete the journey through Mississippi, the most openly racist state. Through their bravery the riders forced the Kennedy administration to take action. Attorney General Robert Kennedy made an arrangement with Senator James Eastland to provide the activists safe passage. The National Guard accompanied them all the way to Jackson where the group was accused of violating segregation laws and subsequently imprisoned for 60 days. Pressure from the Citizens Council was still strong and by the arrival of the Freedom Riders virtually no political or civil rights activism was taking place. Council influence ensured only 3.4 percent of African-Americans voted. Although the presence of the Freedom Riders did not inspire mass action, it left an opening for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to fill a void in voter registration and civil rights advocacy.

In 1964, soon after the initial freedom ballot, SNCC Mississippi field secretary Bob Moses organized Freedom Summer, a large scale voting registration campaign. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was formed which included the SNCC, NAACP, and CORE. These organizations recruited students from all over the country to participate in undoing the racism within Mississippi. In addition to voting rights campaigns, the COFO established Freedom Schools and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee started in 1960 at Carolina A&T University by college students staging sit-ins to combat segregation. After the release of the Freedom Riders SNCC volunteers, Amzie Moore of the NAACP set out to construct a Freedom Ballot. The ballot encouraged local people to develop their own political institutions designed to address problems they identified. Volunteers focused on voter suppression of African Americans in the entire state of Mississippi and were accompanied by students from Yale and Stanford. Many white volunteers were harmed by southern whites who called them outside agitators, among other things. The MFDP Freedom Ballots produced 83,000 AfricanAmericans who registered to vote, their slogan: let the people decide Through the struggle, and on the heels of the successful Freedom Ballot MFDP was created and co-founded by Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP created town hall meetings, and a Mississippi Democratic Convention. At the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City 68 delegates (including 4 whites) attempted to participate. The case was made against the segregationist regulars of the Mississippi Democratic Party. Emotional testimony was given by Hamer about her abuses incurred on a sharecropping plantation after she attempted to register to vote. Hamer also shared information about her time in a Ruleville jail cell where she was beaten and she overheard police conspire to kill her and throw her in the river.

Her testimony was played on prime-time television after Johnson attempted to halt her testimony. Johnson feared the electoral loss and walkout of 15 southern states if he allowed the acceptance of the Freedom Democrats. Johnson offered a compromise suggesting two seats in the National Democratic Party. They did not accept, fearing the end of the struggle for further civil rights campaigns. In addition to Freedom Ballots and the MFDP elections, thirty Freedom Schools were established in Mississippi, proving a viable alternative to the underfunded education system. Three thousand students with dilapidated and outdated texts were now being instructed by college graduates. Instructors lectured on topics such as leadership development, civil rights history, and remedial courses. Freedom Summer was not without its share of blood and tears. There were 1000 arrests, harassment issues with racist whites, police brutality, and numerous unprovoked instances of violence. The most horrific example of senseless violence was the murder of three CORE members by police. An African-American civil rights activist, James Cheney, and two white civil rights activists, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were arrested while investigating a church bombing in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Jail was the last place the trio was seen alive, their bodies surfacing near a dam six weeks later. After Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, heightened national awareness of the murders of Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner as well as Fannie Lou Hamers testimony pre-empted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act banned discriminatory voting practices, literacy tests, or any prerequisite to voting. In addition any area thought to implement discriminatory voting practices would have the election process monitored by federal observers.

Every Freedom Campaign, candid testimony, race-based acquittal, and every footstep marched led to the creation of the MFDP and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each police beating and lynching, every murder inspired and propelled the civil rights activists to fight for the rights enjoyed by their white fellow citizens. Their perceived resistance to the southern way of life allowed for unadulterated violence and senseless brutalities. These injustices strengthened the resolve of those who felt their laws were higher than the laws of man.