The April Project

Black History Month Part II: Recognizing Black Activists from Mississippi in Protest of Confederate Heritage Month

[notmyheritage]

Mississippi Burning

James Chaney, of Meridian, is most famous as a martyr of Freedom Summer, but his courage and leadership as a young activist should be remembered independently from his murder. 

When Chaney was fifteen and attending an all-black high school, he and some of his friends made badges that said “NAACP” and wore them to school. All of them were suspended for a week for this demonstration. Chaney later participated in Freedom Rides, a huge effort to integrate buses across the South. His non-violent demonstrations continued until he joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963.

Chaney became a committed CORE volunteer, organizing voter registration drives and voter education classes. As a local, Chaney could be a guide to the other workers, many of whom had traveled from outside Mississippi and were unfamiliar with the area. And as a black man, Chaney could be a liaison between the white organizers and the black community, introducing people like Michael Schwerner to black church leaders in order to spread CORE’s message. 

Not long after the first trained volunteers arrived in Mississippi for Freedom Summer, Chaney went with two white workers, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion, a church right outside Philadelphia that was meant to host a Freedom School. In a conspiracy involving more than a dozen white men, including law enforcement officers, the three men were killed. Chaney, who was tortured before being shot three times, was only 21.

[notmyheritage]

“More Sinned against than Sinning”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett* was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. When her parents died, she became a teacher to take care of her many siblings and continued her education at Rust College. She soon moved to Memphis where she taught in segregated schools. 

At the age of 22, ten years before Plessy v. Ferguson was decided, Wells-Barnett sat in the “white” car of a train. When she refused to move at the conductor’s request, he grabbed her by the arm. She bit his hand, and it took two more men to physically remove her from her seat. She successfully sued the train company, but the trial court’s decision was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

This experience attracted the attention of local newspapers, and she became a journalist herself, ultimately becoming the co-owner and editor of a black publication, The Free Speech and Headlight. In her articles, she investigated and criticized racial injustices like school segregation and lynchings and encouraged activism in the black community. She explored the incidence of lynching across the South and the motivations behind those murders. She began to challenge the accepted excuses given by white lynch mobs and charged white women with encouraging relationships with black men. In 1892, her investigations were published in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. After three of her friends were lynched, she encouraged black people in Memphis to boycott white businesses and move out of the city. She herself was forced out when the newspaper’s offices were burned down by white opponents. She moved to New York City then to Chicago, where she continued her career in journalism.

Wells-Barnett was involved in the early suffragist efforts and worked with white women like Frances E. Willard and Susan B. Anthony. Conflict arose, however, when the white suffragettes revealed their racist views and refused to help her in her anti-lynching cause. She founded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and continued to raise awareness about lynching. Though she was a founding member of the NAACP, she eventually left the organization, dissatisfied with their hesitance to take real action on issues. In 1930, the year before she died, she ran for a seat in the Illinois state legislature, becoming one of the first black women to run for office in the United States.

*Wells-Barnett hyphenated her last name when she married, which was a very big deal at the time.

[notmyheritage]

“If we don’t like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it.”

At the end of World War II, black veterans returned from fighting for European freedom only to be denied their own rights here at home; Medgar Evers was among them.

Evers got started in Mound Bayou, where he was involved in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and helped organize a boycott of gas stations that denied black people access to bathrooms. In 1954, eight years before James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi, Evers applied to and was rejected by the law school at Ole Miss. And that year, he became the first field officer in Mississippi for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Evers and his wife Myrlie moved to Jackson to open the field office. During his time in the capital city, Evers engaged in a wide variety of anti-racist actions. He worked to expand the reach of the NAACP, with a particular emphasis on improving youth involvement. He investigated lynchings of black people, including Emmett Till’s, and other abuses. Evers also helped organize the boycotts of segregated businesses in Jackson and supported Meredith’s efforts to integrate Ole Miss.

The more vocal Evers became, the more threats he and his family received from white supremacists. His home was bombed, and he was nearly run over by a car. The terrorism culminated in his assassination: he was shot in his driveway in the early hours of June 12, 1963. The man who murdered him, Byron De La Beckwith, was a member of the White Citizens’ Council, an organization of white supremacists who terrorized civil rights activists and other “agitators” in order to maintain segregation. It took three trials and thirty years before he was convicted for the crime.

Though his career as an activist was tragically cut short, Evers’ legacy in Jackson and in Mississippi is powerful, and he is remembered and honored as one of the State’s greatest sons.

[notmyheritage]

“Our Infinite Table”

My name is Natt Offiah. I am the child of Nigerian immigrants. I attend Jackson State University, getting my masters in biology, and was born and raised in Jackson. I love my city and my people and will fight fiercely to protect both. I work with an organization called the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (MSSC). We work with young queer people to help them make their schools and communities a safer place. We are currently working on several projects including our teen community GSA and our stories project as well as participating in the survey project What's Your Issue.

I am also involved with another collective of young people to build collective movement power in Jackson and Mississippi as a whole. We want to address all of the issues that we face as Jacksonians while centering young folks, trans people, queer people, black people, brown people, poor people, working class folks, undocumented folks, immigrant folks, indigenous folks, differently-abled folks and as many marginalized folks as can fit at our infinite table.

I love my state and I really really love my city. There is just something about Jackson and the beauty of the people that live here and the potential for greatness that fills every part of this city. Being surrounded everyday by people that look like you and share much of your culture is incredible. I believe in the people that call Jackson and Mississippi home. I see what we can become. I see our collective potential. We are so much greater than 50th at everything. It's just gonna take some time and work to get everyone else to see what I see. I wanted to and I still want to help people. I remember when I was younger and there wasn't an MSSC or as far as I knew a collective of folks that were fighting for the people. I didn't know that I was oppressed. I didn't have that type of vocabulary as a young queer black person. I just knew sometimes things didn't feel right. I remember feeling helpless and like there was nothing I could do to change that. I never want another young person to feel that way. A big part of what we do is about building people power and getting our message out. It's so much harder than you would think to do that. Building bases and spreading a message takes a very long time and sometimes I'm not always patient.

But I'm always really excited when I meet a young person who is excited about changing the culture of their school or community. Or when actions and rallies go as planned [like the rally to protest a series of discriminatory bills that have been collectively referred to as the Confederate Spring]. I want to tell young people to not give up. I understand what it feels like especially now. We all need to work together to move our city and our state forward. We can do this. If you want to really get involved in some real work that can actually change things here where we call home, then shoot me an email [email protected].

I'm rooting for y'all!

For more information about the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition: www.mssafeschools.org

[notmyheritage]

“The Movement Is in Me”

A teacher from Hattiesburg, Victoria Gray Adams got her start in the civil rights movement when she began teaching voter registration classes in her community. When organizers from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee arrived in Hattiesburg in 1962, Adams welcomed them with open arms. At first, she helped them make connections in the community, creating a phone tree to make sure they never went hungry, but later she became a full-time field secretary and helped organize boycotts and Freedom Summer.

Adams was particularly interested in increasing political access for black people in Mississippi. Because of Jim Crow voting restrictions and a segregated Democratic Party, black people were almost entirely shut out of the political process. In addition to her voter registration efforts, Adams helped organize the Freedom Registration and the Freedom Vote, an unofficial political exercise to demonstrate that black people were in fact interested in participating in politics and the election process: 80,000 black Mississippians registered and voted. She was also a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She and her co-founders, Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devine, were the first black women to be seated as guests on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. They were joined by busloads of black Mississippians who traveled all the way to D.C. to support the women from the gallery. Adams was also the first woman to run for U.S. Senate from Mississippi when she challenged incumbent John Stennis for his seat.

Adams later moved to Thailand with her husband where she advocated for black men in the U.S. military. She died in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2006.

“You can do anything you need to do if you know why you need to do it and you know how to do it. You have the strength to do it.”

Learn more about Victoria Gray Adams:

New York Times obituary: http://tinyurl.com/zf9lb2h

The History Makers: http://tinyurl.com/hr7m9kn

One Person One Vote: http://tinyurl.com/hhbdzxh

Democracy Now!: http://tinyurl.com/z7qvkl2

Eyes on the Prize: http://tinyurl.com/hnnrvco

[notmyheritage]

Life Lessons from a Traveler on the Road to Freedom

From Coahoma County, Unita Blackwell began her activism in 1964 through the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) working as a field worker encouraging neighbors to register and vote. That same year Blackwell became an active participant in Freedom Summer.

She served as a delegate for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. With the MFDP, she traveled with other delegates to the Democratic National Convention to plead the case for the organization’s seat at the convention to represent Mississippi.

In 1967, she served as a Community Development Specialist in MS for the National Council of Negro Women.

Blackwell continued her leadership in politics by running for and securing the position of mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi in 1976. In doing this, Blackwell also secured her position as the first black woman to serve as mayor in the state of Mississippi. Using her new platform, Blackwell became a profound voice for conversations and reform on rural housing and development, a subject in which she received a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. As mayor, Blackwell led efforts to improve the living conditions for her black constituents, which included paving streets and installing street lights and sewers in the black section of Mayersville. Blackwell held the office for 25 years until 1993.

Blackwell received multiple awards for her work including the Southern Christian Leadership Award in 1990 and the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 1992.

Blackwell lives in a nursing home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Find out more about Unita Blackwell below:

“A Conversation with Unita Blackwell”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdaneZWWkT8

“Unita Blackwell: Facts & History”: http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Unita_Blackwell.aspx

“Civil Rights Leader Looks Back: NPR Interview”: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90248557

“Barefootin’: Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom”: Autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Barefootin-Life-Lessons-Road-Freedom/dp/0609610600

[notmyheritage]

“Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired”

For many activists in Mississippi, Fannie Lou Hamer has been an icon and role model since she joined the movement in 1962. She promoted a movement led by young people, organized in communities, empowering average Mississippians.

A sharecropper raised by sharecroppers in the Delta, Hamer was all too familiar with racial and economic injustice. In 1962, at the age of 44, she attended her first civil rights organizing meeting. It was held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to promote voting rights for black people in Mississippi. Hamer joined SNCC as a fieldworker to help with voter registration efforts and the Mississippi Freedom Summer project.

Hamer was a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP was organized as part of Freedom Summer to push back against the all-white Democratic delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Hamer, with the rest of the integrated MFDP delegation, attended the 1964 convention to attempt to be seated as delegates. Though they were unsuccessful, Hamer did not relent in her activism and was seated as a Democratic delegate from Mississippi in 1968 – the first African American delegate at a national-party convention since Reconstruction and the first woman ever from Mississippi.

Her activism continued even after the civil rights movement had passed out of its prime. She created the Pig Bank, where she loaned pigs out to families who could keep the piglets then return the mother pigs, and the Freedom Farm to provide food and economic autonomy to Delta families. In 1970, she fought for desegregation in Sunflower County schools, and the next year, she ran for Mississippi Senate on the platform that the state should hire and appoint more minorities. She was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus to unite women of all races, and she served again as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in 1972. Hamer died in 1977, but her contributions to the State of Mississippi and to black people everywhere have not – and should not be – forgotten.

Sources: http://tinyurl.com/j5mowmy; http://tinyurl.com/a5pcr39; http://tinyurl.com/3v7qbm

[notmyheritage]

#notmyheritage

Our governor has called us to celebrate, for the entire month of April, the legacy of the Confederacy in the state of Mississippi. He expects us to take pride in the symbols of racism that litter our state, from building names to statues to the state flag itself. He expects us to take pride in and honor the men who “served” in the “struggle” that was the Civil War. And he expects us “to understand and appreciate our heritage” by recognizing April as Confederate Heritage Month.

Instead, we will shout the names and stories of the black Mississippians who have dedicated their lives to fighting that Confederate legacy.

These are the people who make us proud to call ourselves Mississippians.

Read the Governor’s Proclamation: http://www.governorbryant.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Confederate-Heritage-Month.pdf

(Photo: “A Rally for Voting Rights in Mississippi”. https://contributionsofsncc.wordpress.com/)