• ''••e We Shall Not Be Moved''

Dcmomrra1in1t (o r cii•il right.\. -..:nuthild 1\ 'eg rut'S kneel and ptay he/t>re thf' l iry i-Jai{ in ,1ihunJ,'. Ca. '/ hey 1-rt're w ;estcJ hy police ,i hen they reiuscd to disperse.

Negro Youth's New March on Dixie A new generation of Negro leaders is pressing home the bitter

battle against segregati By BEN "· BAGDI This phetograph was taken hours after the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Sasser, Georgia -- a church on i n the Deep South. • KIAN used for SNCC voter registration meetings -- was burned to the ground. Standing near the smoking ruins, their hands joined in prayer, are voter registration workers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com­ mittee and Negro citizens from Terrell County -- "Terrible Terrell" as it is called. Robert Parris Moses is a twenty-seven-year­ ways looked on the defensive, cringing. This time the 5000 voting-age Negroes, one is registered to old Negro of soft voice and hesitant manner they were taking the initiative. They were kids my vote. Moses and his friends were- and are- -con­ whose life up to February of 1960 was focused on age, and I knew this had something to do w ith ducting semisecret schools to coach local Negroes As you have just read in the SATURDAY EVEN­ Samuel Block and threeotherSNCC field secre­ his native New York City, scholarly work in the my own life. It made me realize that for a long how to pass registration tests. What happened to ING POST, the Student taries had to flee Ivy League and teaching in an expensive private time I had been troubled by the problem of being Moses is not unique; a week later a colleague was Nonviolent Coordinating over the roof of their office in school. He had never been in Committee faces real danger in Greenwood, Mississippi, the South and had a Negro and at the same time being an American. kicked to semiconsciousness, a month later an­ its campaign for to avoid a potential never wanted to go. But he did go, at last. This was the answer." other was shot dead. Much is at stake, for Amite democracy in the South. lynching by a white mob armed with guns and On the morning·of August 29, 1961, Moses was Robert Moses and his project are significant, is one of 137 counties in the South where Negroes Since the POST article was written, a wave of ropes. walking in khaki chinos and a T shirt down the but more significant still is the new generation of are a majority but have few votes. Such counties terror has swept over Georgia and Mississippi: Robert Moses, SNCC field secretary, and dusty main street of Liberty, Mississippi (popu­ American Negro that h e typifies. It is a body of are the backbone of a powerful conservative others lation, 642). There he was s Four churches -- two of which were used as were arrested in Indianola, Mississippi, for "dis­ truck down by a young men and women who will make an impres­ white force in American politics. When Negroes cousin of the local sheriff and beaten on the head sion on the history of their country. ft is the first begin voting in these counties there will be pro­ meeting places for registration rallies -- have tributing handbills without a license." (The hand­ until his face and clothes were covered with blood. generation of American Negroes to grow up with found changes in Southern and national politics. been burned to the ground in Southwest Georgia. bills advertised a meeting on voter registration to Considering where he was and what he was up the assumption, " Segregation i s dead.'' It has Nonviolent themselves, the students appear un­ Prathia Hall, Jack Chatfield, and other SNCC take place that evening.) to, the violence is not surprising. Moses-A.B. transformed integration from a legal contestlo a moved by the violence of others. In 1960 their workers were Hamilton C ollege, M.A. Harvard, Ph.Q. candi­ mass movement, fighting not for future c hange battleground was the lunch counters. In 1961 it shot at in Dawson, Georgia. And yet, despite the terror and the intimidation, date-was trying to upset the social structure of b Two young Negro girls SNCC's ut for results here and now. Sensitive to the was Freedom Rides on buses. From 1962 onward were seriously injured program of voter registration and direct the Deep South and change party politics in the emergence of colored men all over the world, it will be the ballot box, and in this they march in Ruleville, Mississippi, when nightriders shot action WILL continue. United States. His method: helping rural Negroes conscious that there is a time bomb ticking in the wi th a massive army. Wii l\ them are all major into the home of a couple prominent in a SNCC For information on how you can help these stu­ register to vote. crowded Negro slums of t he United States, the· Negro civil-rights groups, strengthened by $325, .. voter registration drive. dents and their efforts, please contact " One day at h ome in New York," Moses told Negro college students of J962 are welded into 000 in cash from the Field Foundation in Chicago me, " I saw a picture in The New York Times of one of the most fi ercely united, d ynamic and and the Taconic Foundation in New York. Back­ Negro college s tudents 'sitting i n' at a lunch optimistic social movements of our time. ing the vast drive to register Southern Negroes to counter in North Carolina. That was in February, Characteristically, they seek out the toughest vote is the United States Department of Justice, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1960. The students in that picture had a certain problems in the toughest places. Liberty, Mis­ which gives the movement moral support and look on their faces- sort of rnllen, angry, deter­ sissippi, is the county seat of Amite C ounty, intervenes with lawsuits and court orders to strike 799 1/2 Hunter Street, N. W. mined. Before, the Negro m the South had al- where 54 percent of the population is Negro. Of down barriers. Atlanta 14, Ga. •

kchnique of nonviolence: "If they are insulted, they do not answer back. If they are attacked physically, they do not hit back." Robert Moses, a teacher, went Charles McDewattendedcol/ege south when the sit-ins began. in the South, stayed to fight.

Who are these young Negro revolutionaries? integration, I could return as a reporter and still hold it in, play it cool. This is the kind of self­ papers than the students, but which permeates How did they get this way? Why are they so dif­ find most working-class whites proclaiming that repression every Negro builds into himself. But the slums in large cities. These are the Black ferent from their parents? How do they work? in the Deep South integration would never come. when you do something personally to fight Muslims. What have they done so far? But today doubt is replacing certainty. I have prejudice there is a feeling of great release." Muslims mean business. They pray to Mecca In two years they have revolutionized the drive just finished talking with Negro leaders in New Something like this was happening to other five times daily, they dress soberly, work hard, for integration. With sit-ins and Freedom Rides York, Washington and Atlanta, and with Negro college Negroes. Charles Frederick McDew had pay their bills, forbid drinking and smoking, they have won equal treatment at lunch counters, students and their leaders through the Deep been a high-school athlete in Massillon, Ohio, so manage their own apartment houses and depart­ buses, terminals, public parks, swimming pools, South. I listened as well to whites. For the first accepted by everyone in his town that he grew ment stores, and teach in their state-accredited theaters,churches, libraries, museums and beaches time, in places like Birmingham and Jackson, one up without race consciousness. His father had schools that the white race is rotten and the in many cities and towns of the Deep South could hear the hard core cracking. There was the gone to a Negro college in South Carnlina, and colored races will inherit the earth, including the which orthodox civil-rights groups had privately Mississippi farmer in town for the day saying, "I to please him McDew went to the Deep South U.S.A. They teach members not to strike first, written off for decades. suppose integration's coming, what with the Fed­ for the first ti me, to go to college. In his first three but if struck to be prepared to die in retaliation. They have done it with the sophisticated tech­ eral Government pushing it"-and then with months he was arrested three times and struck oy For millions of Negroes unable to accept the nique of nonviolent protest, adopted from their bitter puzzlement- "and those damn young a policeman for doing or saying things that had Muslim theology or puritanical life, the Muslim patron saint, the Indian Mahatma Gandhi. They niggers." been normal back in Massillon- trying to enter message still has a powerful, emotional appeal. ask politely for equal service in a public place the main YMCA in town wi th his Ohio member­ The influence is strong in every large Northern and wait until something happens. If they are in­ New Heroes, New Expecl:ltions ship card or sitting in a "white" railroad car. city and seems to be growing in Southern ones. sulted, they do not answer back. lf they are at­ During Religious Emphasis Week several The group had 100,000 practicing members in tacked physically. they do not hit back. If they ·'Those damn young niggers" not only puzzle white Protestant ministers described their de­ 1960; spokesmen said it would have 1,000,000 by are arrested, they stay in jail as long as they can older whites of the Deep South, but they some­ nominations to the Negro college students. When the end of this year, in order to dramatize their point and add the ex­ times astonish their own elders. They behave like McDew asked them if he could attend their Thus the Negro masses are moving, but in pense of imprisonment to the cost of maintaining no other generation of Negroes in American his­ churches, they said he could not. McDew asked what direction no one can guarantee. The move segregation. If they are tried and convicted, they tory, perhaps because no previous generation has a rabbi who was present and was invited to the can be bitter and destructive, like the program proceed to challenge the constitutionality of the seen so many colored men rise in other nations. temple. Ultimately McDew left Christianity and of the Muslims. Or it can be channeled into the whole procedure. Theirs are new heroes, new rules and new ex­ adopted Judaism. Still, he felt no urge to take traditional pattern of protest, reform and ulti­ If some are jailed or hospitalized, others take pectations. Parents measure how far Negroes up the civil-rights fight. Like many Northern mate cooperation, on which the students have their place, for the new Negro generation has re­ have advanced since World War IT ; the children Negroes he tended to look down on the South placed their faith. versed a historic trend. For 300 years the most measure how far they have yet to go. Most older and on the Southern Negro. Even the agitation of the students, however, ambitious and militant Negroes fled the rural Americans look upon the 1954 Supreme Court " l felt," he said, "that it was the Southern causes deep fear and resentment among many South, leavi ng colored communities wi thout ag­ decision as the historic foundation of modern Negro's problem, not mine. Then one night I whites in the Deep South. A white cab driver in gressive leadership. Today the most vigorous desegregation; not one Negro student in over a was reading the Talmud when I came across Birmingham told me, "Everyone knows this young Negroes are pouring back to Dixie, and hundred interviewed had any vivid personal this : 'If Tam not for myself, then who is for me? whole integration business is Communist. The what once was enough to suppress Negro protest recollection of the day of that decision. They all If I am for myself alone, then what am I? If not old niggers in town, they don't want no part of it. only invites more into battle. regard it as a failure. now, when?'" They like it the way it is. See that old nigger at But almost every student could remember pre­ the stand on the corner? I asked him about it After Each Batlle, More Uecruits cisely where he was and what time of day it was Commitment to the Struggle and he said he wanted no part of it. But these when he fi rst heard of the event that galvanized younger ones . . . . " In Orangeburg, South Carolina, for example, them all and launched the new Negro generation McDew read the Talmudic passage just after when a few Negro students were refused service into contemporary history : the sit-in at Greens­ the Greensboro incident. Within a week he had Private Praise From Their Elders at a lunch counter, twenty-five classmates demon­ boro. Students, faculties and college presidents enlisted in the movement at his own college, had strated in protest. When their college threatened testified that after the Greensboro incident a become a leader, had been arrested and jailed. Two hours later I talked to the old man at the to expel the students, 500 others marched down­ strange fever swept the campuses of the coun­ Today he is chairman of the Student Nonviolent corner stand. What did he think of the student town. When the city said it would arrest a ll try's 120 Negro colleges. Within a week of Coordinating Committee, a small band of former · campaign? He gave me a long, hard look and demonstrators, 1400 paraded si lently on City Greensboro there was scarcely another topic of students working as full-time professionals in the said, 'Tm with them. The only way our people Hall. Within twelve months of tl1e first incident conversation on Negro campuses. Students began Deep South. (Like Moses, McDew tried to regis­ can move ahead is to stick together." that called this generation to battle- a sit-in at organizing sit-ins and protests in their own col­ ter Negroes to vote in Liberty, but he fi rst called Thus, if the students seem to be rejected by Greensboro, North Carolina, on February l, lege towns. The subtle alterations of history, the Washington and told the Department of Justice. older Negroes speaking to their white bosses, they 1960- a total of 1600 demonstrated in Missis­ tide of change throughout the world and the When McDew and two local Negroes appeared are privately praised and supported. If the stu­ sippi ; 4000 in South Carolina; 4200 in North painstaking groundwork of older organizations in the town, there were some well-dressed stran­ dents rely on dangerous direct action, it is never­ Caroli na; 5500 in Alabama; 7000 in Georgia; and earlier generations had prepared the new gers, recognizable to all as FBI agents, keeping theless significant that they reject personal vio­ 10,000 in Louisiana; 16,000 in Tennessee. In one Negro for that particular moment. an eye on the courthouse. There was no violence lence and plan for ultimate peace with the white year this silent rebellion of 70,000 Negroes­ After his first demonstration in a picket line, that day; there was no registration either. Every community. with some white sympathizers-challenged public Moses felt the same emotions that many students door on the courthouse was padlocked.) "Tt's a race against time," one man put it. "At authority in the South; 3600 were arrested. describe. Or take the case of a girl l shall call Emma, a one end you've got groups like the Muslims They have shaken the old certainty of white " I had a feeling of release. From the first time bright, lively freshman in a Negro college, whose saying, 'To hell with the white man.' At the segregationists. Twenty years ago I could live in a a Negro gets involved in white society, he goes commitment to the struggle began seven years other end you have the student movement Deep South community and know that my fe llow through the business of repressing, repressing, ago when she was still in junior high school. It saying, 'Stand up for your rights with non­ whites believed implicitly that segregation would repressing. My whole reaction through life to was only this yea:r, however, that she burst to the violence.' I think the students are gaining. If Pushing ahead with the voter-registration drive, Robert Moses and girl field workzrs whom never change. In the turbulent years of school such humiliation was to avoid it, keep it down, surface. In 1955 when she was twelve years old, they aren't, then God help us all." THE END he has trained urge a potential voter in Jackson, Miss., to make an attempt at registering.

[ivJ Emma was a member of the secret Student Inte­ gration Club in her school-in a Deep South town which still has no integration-preparing to demonstrate for integration sometime in the future. This year, her first in college, she led a campus group that asked for service in a "white" lunch counter in the college town. She spent a week in jail awaiting trial for trespassing, and she watched from her cell window as hundreds of her fellow students paraded in protest before a stunned white community. "Don't use my real name," she cautioned me. "If you do, my mother will lose her job back home."

The New Status Symbol: Prison Last year Brenda Travis, a sixteen-year-old high-school student in McComb, Mississippi, asked for service at a "white" lunch counter in a bus station. Later, when she was expelled from school for the sit-in, she joined a student protest march. She was sentenced to a year's detention. Recently, after serving six months, she was re­ leased on condition that she leave her home county-preferably the entire state nf Missis­ sippi. When I asked if she would ever protest again, she said, "Of course." These are members of a generation that talks constantly of " the movement" and " the strug­ gle" and asks newcomers seriously, "Have you been to jail?" On office walls of Negroes in cities all over the country are hanging self-made "diplomas" proclaiming that the holder has served time in a Southern prison. It is a generation that is willing to follow these grim rules:

You may choose to face physical assault without protecting yourself, hands at the sides, unclenched; or you may choose to protect yourself, making plain you do not intend to hit back. If you choose to pro­ tect yourself, you practice positions such as these: To protect the skull, fold the hands over the head. To prevent disfigurement of the face, bring the el­ bows together in front of the eyes. For girls, to prevent internal injury from kicks, lie on the side and bring the knees upward to the chin; for boys, kneel down and arch over; with skull and face protected.

In the last two years more than 5000 Negro college-age men and women have learned such techniques in special "workshops" held at almost every college campus and in churches, Masonic lodges and private homes. It is a generation that takes for granted that telephones are tapped, that the local police are their enemy, that the local courts are against them. The atmosphere of an underground is en­ Using the new generation's technique of nonviolent protest, a kneeling Negro demonstrator hanced by the conviction that they are spied in Albany forces a police captain to hoist him onto a stretcher in order to take him to prison. ''~lhese young Negroes take for granted that in the end Negroes and whites will get along better in the South than they will up North:' Albany youths sing "We Shall Overcome" at a mass meeting the day after Dr. Martin Luther King was jailed in July. upon, that special state commissions hire Negroes leaders-some descended from the same tribes when integration comes in the South it will be to infiltrate civil-rights groups. "Did you see that as American Negroes-were addressing the with eyes open on both sides, and life down here guy trying to volunteer back at the restaurant?" United Nations in clipped British accents ac­ will be healthier than in the North." one leader asked me. " He informed on us two quired at the London School of Economics, or As might be expected, there is a poignant rela­ months ago and thinks we don't know. Now no­ in the mellifluous French of the Sobonne. "I be­ tionship between Negro students and their body will talk to him." gan to realize," said one student in Mississippi, parents. Students are defensive for their parents Typically, these young revolutionaries are the "what a disadvantage it was to be an American with outsiders, but they disapprove of their children of veterans who came back from World Negro. We are almost the last colored people in parents' failure to rebel in their time. Most War II determined to change things but did not the world to get equal rights with white men.'' parents seem to approve the actions of their chil­ succeed. These young people grew up in the era of tele­ dren. Dr. Arthur D. Gray, president of Talladega "You have no idea how bitter my father is," a vision, in which they were deeply impressed by College in Alabama, said, "The calls I get from student said. "He came home after 'fighting for the sight and sound of Negroes in world news. parents are almost all concerned with the effect democracy,' and when he tried to vote they beat The students in turn produced action recorded by on grades. The mothers and fathers don't mind him up. He kept his bitterness bottled up inside television cameras which, for the first time, sent that their children are arrested. They worry if they him, but I never learned to keep it inside me and direct reproduction of racial incidents from the stay in jail and get behind in their studies.'' I never will." deepest South into homes of both Negroes and There is some tension between religious lead­ The leaders are Negroes who grew up in the whites all over the country. ers and students, since the campus seems to have North and went South, like Moses and McDew, They have an earnest faith in the power of replaced the Negro church as the center for social or Negroes who grew up in the South and went education to guarantee success in life and to bring action. Students tend to strike the first blow, North, like Frank Dukes. salvation to the Negro. Dave Jones, twenty­ while ministers join later. Yet religion continues three, is a s tudent at Tougaloo College, near to be a strong thread in the student movement. Jackson, Mississippi, son of a sharecropper, who "Low Man on the Totem Pole" says he was changed during his first college vaca­ Activists Still a Minority Dukes is thirty-one, a senior at Miles College, tion when a white boy he knew laughingly asked Alabama, a serious, cool and aggressive man him why a Negro would go to college. "I realized There is even some tension with the N.A.A.C.P., leading a city-wide boycott against Birmingham that he thought it was impossible for a Negro to the basic organization for Negro civil rights. stores. He was born and bred in Alabama, and better himself. His laugh made me aggressive. I Many students expressed sentiments like one in after high school he left the state determined want to be a biochemist or a doctor, but in Mis­ Georgia: "When you ask the N-double-A, 'What never to return. He knocked around Northern sissippi a Negro has trouble rising. So I'm aggres­ can I do personally, right now?' they have no cities doing odd jobs, spent five years in the sive. I hate do-gooders, the kind of person who answer." Many students regard the N.A.A.C.P. Army, including eighteen months in Korea, and says, 'Oh, I am sorry for you. I will help you.' as stodgy and slow, an ironic opinion considering then decided that as a Negro he ought to go to I hate that. I'm aware of what's expected of me the accusations of radicalism the N.A.A.C.P. is .college-in Alabama. as a man, and I do it. I work late in lab. I'm accustomed to hearing from the white community. "Wherever I went in the United States, the learning how to speak properly, how to write On the other hand, the N.A.A.C.P. continues to Negro was low man on the totem pole. But in no well. I'm getting rid of the undesirable traits of have the loyalty of most students, who admit that state in these United States did I find things as ghetto living, remaining clean, being concerned after they dash ahead they often have to ask the bad as they are here in Alabama. I'm president with the fine arts, learning to appreciate beauty N.A.A.C.P. for legal help. of the student body and I figured, 'This is the in life. Moreover, as a Southerner and a college Putting all the Negro civil-rights fighters to­ place for a man to start. Right here. Right now.'" student, I have an obligation to act, to protest, gether-maybe 400,000 in the N.A.A.C.P., an­ The new generation of Negroes is profoundly to demand equal rights.'' other 40,000 in C.0.R.E., 250,000 college stu­ moved by the emergence of colored men in Asia dents-they are still only a small minority of the country's 19,000,000 Negroes. To be sure, they and' Afriqi. Their heroes tend to be Africans. l n Integration on a 'Yes, But' Basis Jackson the field secretary for the National As­ are the leaders, the activists with hope and a be­ sociation for the Advancement of Colored People These young Negroes take for granted that lief that they can improve thei~ lot. But they are named his son "Kenyatta,'' after the leader of the old pattern of race relations in the South will still a minority. Mau Mau rebels in K.nya. Students listed as be gone in their lifetime and that in the end Sixty percent of Negro youth are "the children inspirations such men as Kwame Nkrumah, Tom Negroes and whites will get along better in the of the ghetto,'' cramped into city slums, largely Mboya, Julius Nyerere, and Patrice Lumumba. South than in the North. undereducated, untrained, unemployed. Like the James Forman, executive secretary of the Stu­ "In the North,'' said one student leader from college students, they are rebelling against things dent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee did the North, "they're all in favor of integration on as they are, but the slum kids have no construc­ postgraduate work in African studies and says he a 'yes, but' basis. 'Yes, but not now. Yes, but ti ve means of expressing their frustrations. They plans some of his strategy in the South on the pat­ not here. Yes, but not next door.' I'm not saying are without hope for their own careers. Whitney tern of African independence movements. there's no difference between the North and Young Jr., executive director of the Urban When students began describing "how I got South, because there's a world of difference. League, national social-work agency says: "Either into the movement" it became apparent that the "But in a way the South is healthier and less this year or next there is great danger of massive explosive effect of the Greensboro sit-in in early frustrating. Both sides know where they stand. teen-age violence by the children of the Negro 1960 was closely related to the news in late 1959 The white South says 'No!' We say 'Yes!' It's slums against the outside world.'' that fourteen West African states would declare right out there between us where we can all see For s1,1ch despairing Negroes there is another their independence from white rule. African it and kick at it in public. I get the feeling that group that makes fewer headlines in "white" 34 N~W YOK. POST, TUESDAY, . MARCH 19, 1963 he. ha.s been serving as a ·field- secretary for the Student. Non­ \ Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was forced out o! his car one night and "three white fellows jumped me and beat me' up pretty good." When he complained to the -police, they said tt was "sawethin~ I plotted up." Less tha.p -a fortni~ht ago, he t;;,ent a dalt_,,sortmg food a!}d clothes that had been $hipped to GreeI1w?od / rt'om Chicago t(? help the impoverished Negroes there. (fh~ local Board of Supervisors has cut .off 22,000 Negroes In the region from federal commodity aid in c1n obvious counter­ thrust against the voting dflve.) Afterward, as he and three associates drove off, their car was fired at. Only minor inj1.1ries :resulted; when they protested to police, they were accused o! having staged the shooting. ¥. ¥ ,1,1: This is Greenwood, Miss., U, S, A. Block, One in New York now midnight last summer Sam Block and a few o! his on a brief visit to promote tfi'e- collection of funds, food and m.ssociates in the campaign to register Mississippi's Negro ~ voters clothes for the embattled Negroes' of the area, describes harro,w­ (I) were still in their office in Greenwo.od when they heard lng days and nights without raising his voice or betraying any V) noises outside. Peering through the window, they saw a group anguish. "By the help of God, I survived," he says...... o! white .:: men emerge from oars. The visitors were carrying Almost as an afterthought he recalls he was chains, ropes and shotguns. arrested last ~ month for "public utterance calculated to provoke breach ~ Block, .an of the ...... undemonstrative, slender 23-year-old Negro (he is peace." He was given a six-month sentence and $500 fine; he 5-foot-11 and weighs 127) needed no briefing. As the armed bands declined to .ar:cept a suspended sentence in return for a pledge °' llssembled in a style reminiscent of all the old Southern lynch !:>::J ~ -to leave town. He is · out o» bail, a very temporary ·:r.eprieve. :i:. ~ scenes, Block and his cohorts hastily put through phone calls ~ <::'! for help to the Justice Dept. ' ~ ¥ ' ~ ;j and the loca\ FBI. But in a few Born in Cleveland, Miss., Block. completed high school there ;:: C 0-. moments they decided· it would be u_nwise to w;ait. then ~ [ ~ enrolJed in Harri,s Teachers College in St. Louis, where som: ~ Block led his companions up to a bathroom window .from irelatives lived. His .~hie! interest was mu.sic: ._ · ,...,...... which they leaped ,>l:. ~ to the roof of a next-

Known as the infamous "Land of Emmett Till" in the Mississippi Delta t h is terror-marked community of Green­ wood burst into 'new racial v iolence following a series'•of house burnings, jailings of a Negro student lea~er Samuel Block and the midnight shooting of voter education worker Jimmy Travis on the outskirts of the city n ear Mississippi Vocational College at Itta Bena. The latest outbreak came less than 12 hours after Presi­ dent Kennedy delivered his 6,000 word civil rights message to Congress calling for increased protection of Negro rights and less than two weeks after Block appealed to the Justice Department to send Federal marshals into the area to pro­ -,; tect citizens trying to vote. , ~r.;, Block and Travis were among Student Non-Violent Co­ members who h ave been distribut­ Vi..... ordinating Committee r: ing food sent by various ci~ies to !a;111ilies d~nied welfa~e t::.. m 11) aid because of increased votm g activity. Travis was shot ::s the neck and shoulder by what appeared to be ::t~t~m~ti~ ...... of the Mississippi Block interviews prospective voter in Greenwood rifles as he drove Bob Moses, director 2 and Atty. R. T. Blackwell, area shook his head no and de­ () Voter Education Project nodded "yes." Block calmly ;;,,:,°' of Voter Education, to their quarters. "Judge, I ain't going to do none of that." The >.... C ::s director clared -'< C Moses said the shots came from a 1962 white Buick which judge snapped "well, you'll do six months and pay a $500 g 3 o· from their Greenwood office of appeal immediately and was .... 0 trailed them seven. miles fine." Block filed notice C ~ which was recently threatened by fire which destroyed released on a $500 fine. He was convicted in the same a..= ::s..... was arrested was fined $100 four other adjacent Negro businesses. Block court where JET associate editor Larry Still ~ V, h public utterances calculated to cause a after he was arrested while surveying ' .... () and charged wit on traffic charges (,) ;;; () was caused by per­ area. Located near 0 breach of peace after he said the fire conditions of destitute families in the II>0 _II>.... office in retaliation for SNCC body of 13-year-old Till was sons trying to burn the SNCC the area where the mutilated ' ... a distributing food sent from Chicago. found in 1956, Greenwood. is also 35 miles from Ruleville I IQ z s· and offered hoodlums firing , c· t:) Block was convicted in the City Police Court where two college coeds were wounded by ~ ..... a suspended sentence if he promised to be a "good boy." into the' homes of voters. s· As more than 100 citizens lined the court, Block then ask~d Following the sentencing of Block and the shooting of tJ::) the judge "do you mean I have to give up my voter regis­ Travis, the NAACP, CORE, SNCC, the Southern Christian tration activity?" The judge replied "yes." Block then Leadership Conference and tlie Southern Regional Council ~ asked "Judge, do you mean I have to give up helping the appealed to the justice department for immediate protec­ 3 Then Block asked , said the shoot­ 3 people" and the judge nodded yes. tion. Aaron Henry, state NAACP president ;:;: must give up m~, work wit~ the answer to President Kennedy's Civil "Judge, do you mean I ing was an apparent 11)..... student Non-Violent Freedom Movement, and the Judge Rights message, but would only serve to spur voting. 11) \;. SUNDAY, MARCH 3, 1963 'Cbc Xltlanta ]ournal and CONSTITUTION Negro's Shooting Spurs Voter Drive

BY FRED POWLEDGE paign. Wiley A. Branton, director The announcement of the cam­ The shooting last week of a of' the Voter Education Project, paign was interpreted by some young Negro civil rights worker announced in Atlanta: observers as meaning that civil "These are intolerable condi­ rights organizations f e e I Presi­ has set off a widespread call for tions . . . and they cannot be al­ dent Kennedy "a concerted campaign should be placed in to get lowed to continue. Accordingly, the position of every qualified taking a definite Negro" registered there is a need to establish once stand on the to vote in LeFlore County, degree of federal Miss. and for all that in this land people protection he should allow f o r The results, observers said, do not have to be afraid to be voter registration workers. could be a significant three-way free. The President last week out­ confrontation on the voting issue "The State of Mississippi has lined his civil rights legislation among Negroes, the white power repeatedly thrown down a gaunt­ for Congress, and voting headed structure in Mississippi, and the let at the feet of would-be Negro his list. The President asked for federal l{.overnment. voters, not only by the discrim­ federal voting referees to r~gis­ inatory practices of the registrars, ter Negroes when voting suits IT COULD BE, they say, as im­ but also by economic pressures, are filed in counties where less portant a step in voter registra­ threats, . coercion, physical vio­ than Jli,;,Jter cent of the Negroes tion as the Freedom Rides were lence and death to Negroes seek­ are re~stered. [ in interstate transportation. Or it ing the right to vote. In -LeF*re County, according could be another showdown be­ "The time has come for us to tween Mississippians and the to statistics compiled by the U.S. p i c k up the gauntlet. LeFlore Civil Rights Commission from federal government, like the riot County, Miss., has elected itself last September which accom­ 1960 cen~us figures, .9 per cent as the testing ground for democ­ of the voting-age Negroes are panied James Meredith's entrance racy and we a r e accordingly at the University of Mississippi. registered. The nonwhite popu­ meeting the challenge there." lation of the county makes up · What brought the new campaign Mr. Branton said "the full re­ 64.6 per cent of the total popu­ about was the wounding Thursday sources" of the Student Nonvio­ lation. night of 20-year-old James Travis, lent Coordinating · Committee, the No Negroes are registered in a Mississippian and field secre­ National Association for the Ad­ 13 Mississippi counties, · and 42 tary for tl!e Student Nonviolent vancement of Colored People, the other counties count less than 10 Congress of Racial Equality, and per cent of their voting-age Ne­ Coordinating Committee. Mr. the Southern Christian Leadership Travis and two other young men groes as registered. In 1954, in Conference are going into the the state as a whole, there were who are working on a voter regis­ campaign. tration campaign in LeFlore about 500,000 voting-age Negroes, but only 4.4 per cent of the total County were shot at by an un­ HE EXPLAINED that each of identified group of whites about was registered. these organization's-predominant­ · James Travis, . the victim of seven miles from Greenwood, ly the Student Nonviolent Coor­ Miss.,· the county seat. the Greenwood shooting, was born dinating Committee-would send in Jackson, Miss. He joined the Mr. Travis' two companions, voter registration workers from SNCC field secretary Bob Moses Freedom Rides in the summer of. other areas into LeFlore "im­ 1961, and was sent to Parchman and Randolph Blackwell, were not mediately." The total work force hit by the bullets. Mr. Moses Penitentiary for 14 days. could amount to 35 or 40 persons, He has worked in voter regis­ said the bullets came from a car, where two or three have been containing three white men, which tration campaigns in Vicksburg, working in the past. · Miss., and Orangeburg, S.C. bore no license plates. Mr. Branton said he was asking Mr. Blackwell is a field director Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi of · the Voter Education Project, to furnish· protection for the work­ an Atlanta-based agency which co­ ers, but he also wired U.S. Atty. ordinates a Southwide registration Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, saying: campaign. "You must anticipate that this The three young men had just campaign will be met by violence The Student Nonviolent finished what, for them, was a and other harassment. We a re satisfying week's work. An es­ notifying you in advance that you Coordinating Committee timated 135 Negroes had started can provide at once the necessary the registration process in Le­ federal protection to prevent vio­ Flore, a county where less than lence and other forms of intimi­ 1 per cent of the voting-age non­ dation against registration work­ 6 Raymond Street, N. W. whites are registered. Mr. Moses ers and applicants." called the action "the first real A tlanta 14, Georgia breakthrough in Mississippi." IN WASHINGTON, a spokesman for the Justice Department said WHEN NEWS of the shooting the FBI had already started an in­ reached the headquarters of civil vestigation of the shooting. He rights organizations, their di­ said no specific action had been rectors drafted the plan to start taken on the subject of Mr. Bran­ a concentrated registration cam- ton's announcement. Two Shots Hit The Student Nollviolent Coordinating Committee 6 Raymond Street, N. W. Voter Worker A tlanta 14, Georgia JACKSON - A 20-year-old Negro voter registration represe.ntative arrived at University Hospital here this afternoon for emergency treatment of gunshot wounds received in Greenwood last night. . The condition of Jimmy Travis ------was reported as serious but not Sam Block, another field rep, critical. He was treated first at resentative working out of Green­ Mississippi Vocational College and wood, s11id a white hardtop Buick then at Leflore County Hospital without license plates had been The Mississippi president of the before he was rushed to Univer­ noticed earlier in the. evening iri NAACP, Aaron Henry of Clarks­ sity Hospital for removal of a front of his McLaurin Street of­ dale, issued a statement saYint bullet. fice; "those responsible for this act must be hunted down like the "The Buick circled the block Robert Moses, in the car with criminals they are and punished Travis at the time of the shooting several times," he said. "At one to the extent of the law." and a fellow member of the pro­ time there was a city police car , The statement said the act WU integration Student Non-Violent directly behind· it, but . i~; was not Coordinating Committee,. said stopped, even though the Buick ~- u~ess act . of ~y- thai "defeats and dilutes the argu­ three white men wearing sun­ had no license p1ates." ments of the segregatioois~." It glasses trailed them as they left * * * added that the act should .not be Greenwood and opened fire as MOSES said he was questioned approved by responsible citiz~ they were driving toward Green­ by sheriff's deputies shortly af. of Greenwood "not even .•..the ville on Highway 82. ter the shooting. Block said short­ White Citizens Councils." ly before ,noon today . that no one "Jimmy shouted he had · been had asked him for information Moses said the shooting occur­ hit and the car went out of con­ which might lead to the arrest of red shortly after they had stopp­ trol," he said. the white men. He said he planned" ed for gasoline at a truck stop • • on getting in touch with the between Greenwood and Moor• * sheriff and. giving him a descrip, head. MOSES said he, Travis and tion of the car. Rand<>lph Blackwell of the Atlanta There were no witnesses to the office of the Southern Regional shooting except the three voter Council, were .in the car. He said The shooting prompted other in­ registration representatives and the shots were fired at · about tegrationist groups to issue angry the white men who · allegedly did 10: 30 p.m. and that there were statements and a call for federal the shooting. at least seven bullet holes in the protection for civil rights workers. front door on the driver's side * * * said two. windows were David· Dennis, a field worker MOSES after the barrage. He identified shot out. the white men's car as a 1962 for the Congress of Racial Equali­ white Buick hardtop, with no ty, said the group \''ired Atty. Neither Moses nor Blackwell license plates. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy asking were injured. for " ir.1mediate action by the Moses said Travis was wounded federal government to ·provide Travis was in Greenville yes­ in the left · shoulder. He said an­ protection for Mississippi · Negri:> terday, where he conferred with other slug hit Travis in the back citizens who attempt to register Moses and Blackwell. They then part of his neck and lodged near to vote and for civil rights work­ drove to Greenwood. his spine. ers who attempt to teach and in­ Travis joined the organization The Leflore County sheriff's of­ sure democratio freedom to these after participating in .·a Freedom fice confirmed there were holes people." ·Ride, it was reported. He is a in the car. Sheriff John Cothron native of ·Jackson. Block said a­ said the incident was being inves­ A similar telegram was sent to bout 125 Negroes have applied for tigated, but declined further com­ Gov. Ross Barnett a$king for im­ voter registration in Greenwood nient. mediate state action. in recent days.

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