Monday would have been Emmett Till's 70th birthday

Monday, July 25, would have been Emmett Till's 70th birthday. Till, of course, was only 14 when he was murdered in 1955 in Money, Mississippi.

Freedom Riders honored in return to Mississippi

Freedom Riders were honored this week in their return to Mississippi, a half-century after their initial arrival in Jackson:

By 1961, Mary Jean Smith had been a part of sit-ins and received training for nonviolent protest, but she wasn't ready to challenge segregated travel in the Deep South until she sat behind two white passengers on a city bus in Tennessee.

"They had a transistor radio and were listening to reports about the Freedom Riders. One of them said, 'I hope all those niggers die.' It did something to me. I went into another world," she said Tuesday.

Smith, a Tennessee State University student, volunteered to be part of the next group of riders who would head south through civil rights battlegrounds in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. Along the route, they were beaten and their buses were burned. Eventually, they were arrested and thrown into the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

On Tuesday — 50 years to the day after the first wave of riders arrived at the Jackson terminal — a celebration was held for them in Mississippi's capital. They were welcomed by Gov. Haley Barbour, Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. and hundreds of high school and college students, who called them heroes.

John Lewis offers thoughts on 49th anniversary of March on Washington

Students trace civil rights trail

Freedom Riders defied injustice

Freedom Riders defied injustice, changed history: MyFoxTAMPABAY.com

Ruby Bridges views her portrait at the White House

Waring dissent paved way for Brown v. Board of Education

An article in the latest issue of the National Law Journal explains how a dissent from Judge J. Waites Waring in the Briggs v. Elliott case paved the way for the U. S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education:

On the morning of the federal court trial, a large group of the plaintiffs and their supporters traveled by caravan from Summerton to Charleston to witness what would be one of the most important legal proceedings in American history. Hundreds lined up in the courthouse, on the stairs leading to the courtroom and onto the street for a chance to see and hear the legal attack on their second-class status. They were not disappointed. They observed the testimony of witnesses describing the profound disparities in the educational facilities and resources provided the black and white children of their community. They heard what would become the historic expert testimony of psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark as he described his "doll studies" and opined that segregation stigmatized and injured their children. But what thrilled the plaintiffs the most was the searing cross-examination by their lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, as he questioned the defendants' star witness, ultimately forcing him to admit that, at least in part, his testimony was based on a lifelong belief in racial segregation.

But this was South Carolina, the year was 1951 and the doctrine of Plessy was deeply ingrained in the region's culture. Several weeks after the completion of the Briggs trial, in June 1951, the three-judge panel issued a predictable decision, holding that racial segregation of the schools was a matter of state legislative policy in which the federal courts were "powerless to interfere." What was not predictable was the stirring 20-page dissent by Waring, who concluded that "segregation in education can never produce equality.…Segregation is per se inequality." Waring described segregation as an "evil" that "must go and go now."

Waring's improbable journey on race began after his appointment to the federal bench in 1942. Civil rights cases on his docket slowly opened him to a view of his native city and state that he had never considered as a prosperous attorney and member of elite social societies in Charleston. He started modestly, ending segregation in his courtroom. Beginning in the mid-1940s, Waring issued a series of opinions equalizing the pay of black teachers and requiring the state to admit black students to the University of South Carolina School of Law or to open an equal law school for African-Americans. Waring crossed the racial Rubicon in 1948, when he ordered the state Demo­cratic Party to end its "white primary" and to allow black South Carolinians to vote in the only election that then mattered in the state. Waring soon found himself a social pariah in his native state. Politicians called for his impeachment, death threats were constant and crosses were burned in his yard.

Shortly after issuing his historic dissent in Briggs, Waring turned 70 and became eligible for judicial retirement. He quietly submitted his notice of retirement to the president, and he and his wife moved to New York City. There, he watched as Briggs and other school-segregation cases wound their way onto the Supreme Court's docket. In all of these cases, from Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and South Carolina, only Waring concluded that segregation in public education, even if equalized, was incompatible with the 14th Amendment. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court, echoing the words and reasoning of Waring's dissent, concluded in Brown that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." On the night of the Brown decision, Walter White, the president of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders journeyed to Waring's small Upper East Side apartment to thank him personally for the courage and vision of his dissent.

Several years after the Brown decision, Waring and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who authored the Supreme Court's unanimous order, had a chance encounter. Waring told the chief justice, "I was greatly relieved when you decided that Clarendon school case. I'd been very lonely up to that time." Warren responded to the retired Southern jurist, essentially living in exile, "Well, you had to do it the hard way."

60 Minutes examines unsolved 1964 civil rights murder of Louis Allen

Mitchell blog: Records show Klan leader, 77, involved in abduction of murdered civil rights workers

Jackson Clarion-Ledget reporter Jerry Mitchell. in his latest blog entry, writes about a former KKK leader, still alive, who was involved in plotting the kidnapping of murdered civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, in 1964:

My story in today’s Clarion-Ledger details the case against reputed Klan leader Pete Harris, now 77. Let’s look at them in order:


1) In spring 1964, he and Klansman James Jordan visited Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, who was quoted by Jordan as remarking that civil rights worker Mickey Schwerner was “a thorn in the side of everyone living, especially the white people, and that he should be taken care of.”

2) In spring 1964, Harris attended key Klan meetings where Klansmen discussed “eliminating” civil rights worker Mickey Schwerner.

3) On June 16, 1964, Harris was present at a Neshoba County meeting, where Klansmen left and beat members of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church and then burned their church.

4) On the evening of the killings, June 21, 1964, Killen gathered Klansmen, including Harris, at Akin mobile homes sales lot in Meridian, according to testimony. Earlier that day, Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price had arrested three civil rights workers, including Schwerner, James Chaney and Andy Goodman. Killen told Klansmen that the civil rights workers were being held in jail and “needed their rear ends torn up,” according to testimony.

Jordan testified Harris made telephone calls, gathering more Klansmen for the job. When the Klansmen gathered to leave, Jordan said Harris told them he had to stay behind because he was a leader in the Klan.

That night, Klansmen intercepted the trio, killing them and burying their bodies 15 feet down in an earthen dam. But all the world knew on June 22, 1964, was that they were missing.

5) Jordan testified that a month after the killings he and Harris met with Bowers, who praised their work in eliminating the three civil rights workers.

Jordan testified Bowers urged them to get rid of their weapons and to stay quiet.

Don Cochran, a former prosecutor, said he believes there is almost enough evidence in the transcript alone to bring a case against Harris.

Identity of informant in murder of three civil rights workers still in question

In an article published today in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Jerry Mitchell explores the continuing mystery of the identity of the informant who told police how to find three civil rights workers in 1964, leading to their murders:

FBI records obtained by The Clarion-Ledger show three separate Klansmen-turned-informants for the FBI told agents that Price or the Neshoba County Sheriff's Department were tipped off by someone here in Longdale, an African-American community off Mississippi 19 nine miles east of Philadelphia.


Around lunchtime June 21, 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner arrived at the ashes of what once had been the Mount Zion Methodist Church, investigating what had happened. They spoke with church members, including Ernest Kirkland and Cornelius Steele, and interviewed Bud Cole, who had been severely beaten by Klansmen.

Minutes after they turned onto Mississippi 19, Deputy Cecil Price arrested them. That night, he released them into the hands of waiting Klansmen, who killed and buried the trio.

"You can conclude without a doubt there was an informant in the Longdale community," Ratliff said.

Back in 1964, the FBI investigated the informant question. One Longdale resident told the FBI that Clarence Hill was an informant for Sheriff Lawrence Rainey.

Hill, now 86, told The Clarion-Ledger that accusation is a lie.

Original Freedom Rider Ben Cox laid to rest

Funeral services for Rev. Ben Cox, one of the original Freedom Riders, were held Saturday:

The Rev. Dennis Blalock called Cox a "good soldier" in his eulogy, saying Cox had suffered and endured.
"True bravery is a spirit," Blalock said.
Cox rode buses in 1961 into segregated Southern states to protest transportation systems that, according to a PBS website about the civil rights movement, kept white and black patrons from sitting together on buses, trains and trolley cars.

Ben Cox, one of 13 original Freedom Riders, dies

Former Freedom Rider remembers Medgar Evers

How Hattiesburg, Mississippi, kept from having trouble with Freedom Riders

Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, who continues to offer one remarkable story after another about the American civil rights movement, has another one in today's edition.

In it, Mitchell reveals the previously untold story of how Hattiesburg,Mississippi kept from having trouble with the Freedom Riders, with an interview of longtime Hattiesburg civil leader Bobby Chain:

Chain said the idea was simple: Let the Freedom Riders hold protests and provocations in peace. There would be no angry mob scenes, no retaliation.

"We met every morning at 7 o'clock to plan for the day's events," Chain said. "The places where we knew these people would go, we visited privately with (the owners/managers/proprietors), whichever one of us could best talk with them. We said, 'Now look, if (Freedom Riders) come talk to you, you be nice to them and no problems.'
"We got the bus stations to take down the 'white only' signs. We got the right people to see to that, too. This group we had, these were powerful men."

A search of issues of the Hattiesburg American from May though August 1961 had front-page news of the Riders - "mixers" as they also were referred to in the headlines - and their arrests in Jackson and other Southern cities.

But there were no stories of arrests or incidents involving the Riders during that summer in Hattiesburg.

Chain said the group stayed mostly behind the scenes. Had word gotten out, "(t)his probably wouldn't have been popular with some segment of our population, had they known what we were doing, but it never got out, and we kept this group together for two or three years because we didn't know how long (the Riders) would keep coming, and we had a few stragglers in the years after that."

Ex-FBI agent recalls Mississippi murders

Former FBI Special Agent Floyd Thomas told a group of Massachusetts High School students this week about the investigation into the disappearance of three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner,James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in 1964, and the subsequent discovery of their bodies and investigation into the murders:

The students sat quietly, listening to Thomas as he recounted the facts, the investigation and the outcome of one of the South's most publicized murder cases.

"I was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations 1951 to 1973," he said, beginning his tale.

The Freedom Summer Murders were attributed to Ku Klux Klan members in Philadelphia, Miss. Thomas spent three months away from his family in Arkansas investigating the case.

"I received a phone call from headquarters advising me to leave immediately and go to Meridian, Miss.," he said.

He continued, "Down in the area of Philadelphia, there had been three people reported missing down there, plus a rented station wagon."

A bystander's tip led Thomas and his partner to look through the woods nearby, where they located a station wagon matching the description of the missing vehicle.

"You could just barely see it in the weeds out there — the top of a vehicle. The doors were partially open...and everything that was flammable was burned."

"The outside of the car wasn't burned or anything, and the weeds weren't burned, so they had it towed in," he continued, "So now we had found our vehicle, but still had three missing persons."

Thomas let the group in on the methods he used when working a case, saying, "Working a crime investigation is just like putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

"You've got all these pieces and you've got to get the pieces all together to get the picture," he said.

Thomas and his partner then learned that the three missing individuals had been arrested some time previously and detained at the Philadelphia jail after a traffic stop.

It's believed that during their detainment, the sheriff conspired with local KKK members to release the three men in time for them to be intercepted on the highway by men with bad intentions.

Thomas and his partner worked with a local naval base to use ultraviolet photos viewing recently disturbed plots of land.

"So we dug all that. We had 30 sailors from over at the base there helping us drag ponds," he said, adding a brief anecdote about other pastimes the sailors found to entertain themselves.

"I don't know how much money the government spent on chickens," he said with a chuckle.

He explained, "Those sailors figured out they could throw a fire cracker into the chicken houses and when it went off all the chickens around would suffocate. They had dead chickens scattered around all over there."

Thomas spent his time checking for decomposition in the soil and looking for new construction sites.

It was in one such location, a dam still under construction, where Thomas and the other investigators found the bodies of the missing men 44 days after they vanished.

Thomas continued, "I heard on the radio just before I got there — 'I think we found them. We found a shoe heel.'"

"The shoe heel turned out to be the shoe heel of one of the boys that was buried in the dam."

He described how the men were laying, the intricate procedure of trying to excavate the bodies without destroying the evidence and a joke Thomas attempted that "went over like a lead balloon" with the man he told it to.

"We got to this one kid, and he had a little place under his arm here," Thomas said as he pointed to his left side.

"You've got to have a little humor to go along, or else you'll go nuts," he said.

"I said to the kid in the hole with me, 'This guy's been hurt! Go get us a doctor!'"

The man climbed out of the hole, now at 25 feet deep, and reported to those around, "This guy's crazy. Obviously (the victim)'s dead, he's been down there for three months."

Freedom Riders reunite after 50 years

The BBC has an article on the reuniting of the original Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi, last week:

Back in 1961, Jim Crow customs ruled the Deep South. Despite a Supreme Court ruling making segregation on interstate buses illegal, black passengers were still expected to sit at the back.

The Freedom Riders refused to abide by convention, infuriating the white supremacists of the Ku Klux Klan.

On 14 May, a white mob attacked a Greyhound bus carrying Hank Thomas and six other activists as well as regular passengers, near Anniston, Alabama.

Hezekiah Watkins was one of the Freedom Riders Its tyres were slashed, and the bus hissed to a halt. A firebomb was lobbed through the back window, filling the air with poisonous smoke.

"I knew I was going to die," recalls Thomas, aged 19 at the time. "It was a question of the best way to do it: leave the bus and be beaten to death, or stay and burn?"

An exploding fuel tank saved his life. The crowd retreated, allowing the suffocating passengers to clamber free.

Jerry Mitchell speaks on the murder of Medgar Evers

John Lewis asks graduates to build a better society

During a graduation speech at University of Mary Washington Saturday, Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga. one of the original Freedom Riders and a civil rights pioneer, urged the graduates to "build a better society."

The school issued the following news release:

Civil rights icon John Lewis called on the University of Mary Washington class of 2011 to build a better society, urging the graduates to challenge injustices as he delivered the undergraduate commencement address on Saturday, May 7.

“You must stand up. You must speak up. You must speak out,” said Lewis, a Democratic congressman from Georgia. “You must create a world community at peace with itself.”

Lewis, a 1961 Freedom Rider, praised the university for its three-month tribute to the Freedom Rides and to their architect, the late civil rights leader James Farmer who taught at Mary Washington. The Freedom Rides successfully defied segregated interstate bus travel and facilities in the South.

“No other college in America is pausing like you have to celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides,” he said. “I come here to say thank you, thank you.”

“The University of Mary Washington is a bright light in the education of all of our citizens about the issues of civil rights, human rights and social justice,” he said. “You have discovered that the cause of civil rights is not just the legacy of…one people, but all Americans. We all must play a role in helping to build a just and open society.”

Lewis spoke to about 5.000 people, including graduates, family members, friends and faculty, gathered in Ball Circle for the 100th annual commencement. The university awarded a total of 1,295 degrees in the May 7 undergraduate ceremony and the May 6 graduate ceremony, including 450 bachelor of arts degrees, 42 bachelor of liberal studies degrees, 92 bachelor of professional studies degrees and 459 bachelor of science degrees, as well as 252 master’s degrees.

In his remarks, Lewis recalled his upbringing in Alabama. Born to sharecroppers in 1940, he attended segregated public schools. “Whites only” signs were commonplace. “As a young child, I tasted the bitter fruits of segregation and racial discrimination,” Lewis said. When he questioned his parents about segregation, they said “that’s the way it is. Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble.”

But as a teenager, Lewis was inspired by the activism surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. aired on radio broadcasts “as if he were speaking to me…to get involved.” In those pivotal moments, Lewis made a decision to become a part of the Civil Rights movement.

“I got in trouble,” he said. “It was good trouble. Necessary trouble. James (Farmer) and the Freedom Riders 50 years ago got in trouble. Necessary trouble. Good trouble to bring down those signs that said ‘white men, colored men, white women, colored women.’ Those signs are gone and they will not return.”

“Your children, the only place they’ll see those signs is in a book, in a museum, on a video. We live in a better country. We’re on our way to the creation of a beloved community where we can lay down the burden of race and create a society where we can forget about race.”

Lewis was a student at Fisk University when he organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn. At 21, he “had all my hair and was a few pounds lighter” when he joined the Freedom Rides, he recalled. Lewis endured vicious beatings at the hands of angry mobs and, in all, more than 40 arrests for challenging segregation. Yet he remained a devoted advocate of nonviolence.

“You must never ever give up. You must never ever give in,” he said. “Get out there and push and pull, and do your part to create a loving community in redeeming the soul of America. You can do it. You must do it.”

During the height of the Civil Rights movement, Lewis helped organize and chair the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that was responsible for coordinating student activism. He was a young man when he was deemed one of the “Big Six” leaders of the movement along with King and Farmer.

Farmer, who taught history at Mary Washington for about a dozen years, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton in 1998. This year, Lewis himself received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, who as Lewis noted was born the year of the 1961 Rides.

In concluding his remarks, Lewis urged the graduates to make a commitment to justice, no matter how difficult the path.

“My friends, the storms may come. The winds may blow. The thunder may roll. The lightning may flash. And the rain may be beat down on our old house. Call it the house of UMW,” Lewis said. “Call it the house of Virginia. Call it the house of Georgia or California or New York. Call it the house of Alabama. Call it the American house. We all live in the same house.”

“I say to you as you leave this university, as you leave this little piece of real estate, you still have the power to change the social, economic and political structures around you. You still have the power to lead a nonviolent revolution of values and ideas in your community and around the world. If you use that power, if you use your education, use your talent, use your skills, use that power, then a new and better world is yours to build.”

“So I say to you today, walk with the wind. Let the spirit of history, the spirit of UMW, and the spirit of the Freedom Rides be your guide.”

Following the address, Daniel K. Steen, rector of the university’s Board of Visitors, conferred an honorary doctor of humane letters degree on Lewis.

He has been awarded over 50 honorary degrees from universities throughout the United State. He also holds a B.A. in religion and philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary, both in Nashville, Tennessee.

Lewis was elected to Congress in 1986 and has served as U.S. representative of Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District since then. He is Senior Chief Deputy Whip for the Democratic Party in leadership in the House and is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of its Subcommittee on Oversight.

Two years ago, Lewis was visited in his office by a man who had encountered Lewis on May 9, 1961 in Rock Hill, S.C. The man, who was a Klansman in 1961, had beaten Lewis that day in South Carolina. Nearly 48 years later, the man came to apologize to Lewis and to ask for forgiveness.

“He started crying. He gave me a hug. I started crying and I hugged him back,” Lewis said. “That is what the movement was all about – to build a sense of community. We all live in the same house because we are one people.”

Freedom Riders say today's youth disconnected from battle against racism

In an article in today's Washington Post, the legacy of the Freedom Rides, which took place 50 years ago, is combined with a look at today's young people:

One of the youngest of the riders, Hezekiah Watkins, is now 63 years old and lives across town from Lovelady in Jackson. He has found himself thinking the same thing when he looks at his 21-year-old daughter, Kristie. In recent weeks, as he has given interviews and speeches about his experience during the rides, he has juxtaposed his teenage years with hers.

“A lot of times, she feels as though somebody owes her. I’m always asking, ‘What are you owed and by whom?’ ” Watkins said. “I talked to all of my kids about the ’60s and what we went through. They’ll just look at me like, ‘It’s not relevant.’ My thing has always been this: You’re standing on a banana peel, and any given day you could slip.”

For Hank Thomas, who was 19 when he joined the Freedom Riders, the contrast between his experiences and those of young people today could not be more stark.

Fifty years ago, the sacrifice was unambiguous. Forcing integration on the South meant putting your body on the line. It meant buying a bus ticket down to Jackson after hearing about the bus firebombed in Anniston and the men and women beaten in Birmingham and Montgomery.

“You never knew what was going to happen,” Thomas said, remembering the anxiety of the times.

Thomas, a black businessman, lives outside Atlanta. He owns three McDonald’s franchises and three Marriott hotels. When he was in the first group of 13 riders, launched with little fanfare by the Congress of Racial Equity, they called themselves the “young eagles.” Thomas jokes now that they are the “bald eagles.”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. considered that first ride a fool’s errand, and at one point he declined an invitation to board the bus with the students. The young felt haughty about going where the leader of the civil rights movement would not dare. Their protest, in retrospect, is credited with giving the nonviolent movement a template for future campaigns.

John Lewis to be honored at NAACP dinner

Congressman John Lewis a civil rights pioneer, will be honored at a NAACP dinner today in Detroit:

Civil Rights pioneer and U.S. Rep. John Lewis and musician Kid Rock will share the spotlight today at the Detroit NAACP branch’s annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner at Cobo Center.

Lewis, who grew up in racially segregated Pike County, Ala., just miles from where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a movement to end segregation on Montgomery’s buses, is the keynote speaker.

Inspired by King, Lewis organized marches, led lunch-counter sit-ins, helped integrate interstate bus systems and organized voter education and registration drives.

Lewis became a symbol of the movement when he and other protesters were attacked by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they tried to march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. So horrifying was the attack that it became known as Bloody Sunday.