Memphis Voices: Oral Histories on Race Relations, Civil Rights, and Politics
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Memphis Voices: Oral Histories on Race Relations, Civil Rights, and Politics By Elizabeth Gritter New Albany, Indiana: Elizabeth Gritter Publishing 2016 Copyright 2016 1 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..3 Chapter 1: The Civil Rights Struggle in Memphis in the 1950s………………………………21 Chapter 2: “The Ballot as the Voice of the People”: The Volunteer Ticket Campaign of 1959……………………………………………………………………………..67 Chapter 3: Direct-Action Efforts from 1960 to 1962………………………………………….105 Chapter 4: Formal Political Efforts from 1960 to 1963………………………………………..151 Chapter 5: Civil Rights Developments from 1962 to 1969……………………………………195 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..245 Appendix: Brief Biographies of Interview Subjects…………………………………………..275 Selected Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….281 2 Introduction In 2015, the nation commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which enabled the majority of eligible African Americans in the South to be able to vote and led to the rise of black elected officials in the region. Recent years also have seen the marking of the 50th anniversary of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment, and Freedom Summer, when black and white college students journeyed to Mississippi to wage voting rights campaigns there. Yet, in Memphis, Tennessee, African Americans historically faced few barriers to voting. While black southerners elsewhere were killed and harassed for trying to exert their right to vote, black Memphians could vote and used that right as a tool to advance civil rights. Throughout the 1900s, they held the balance of power in elections, ran black candidates for political office, and engaged in voter registration campaigns. Black Memphians in 1964 elected the first black state legislator in Tennessee since the late nineteenth century. Even before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the New York Times reported that Memphis had “made more progress toward desegregation with less strife than any other major city in the Deep South.”1 So what accounts for the formal political mobilization of Memphians before the Voting Rights Act of 1965? How did they become a powerful political force? What accounts for the New York Times’ comment that Memphis had made so much progress with so little strife? What did civil rights activists think of this assessment? Although archival documents, newspaper articles, and other secondary and primary sources shed light on these questions, oral history provides crucial and unique information. 1 John Herbers, “Integration Gains in Memphis; Biracial Leadership Takes Hold,” New York Times, 5 April 1964, Schomburg Clipping Files, University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C. 3 Much has been written on the black freedom struggle in Memphis, but aside from Michael Honey’s Black Workers Remember, which examines the intersection of civil rights and the labor movement, no oral history collection exists on the civil rights movement in Memphis.2 This book not only will help remedy this gap but also will focus on formal politics there and the intersection of this prong of the freedom movement with direct action, legal, and economic equity campaigns. The two major civil rights organizations in the 1960s in Memphis were the Memphis NAACP branch, which became the largest branch in the South in 1961, was consistently recognized nationally for its activism, and powered the local civil rights movement that encompassed people of all ages and backgrounds, and the Shelby County Democratic Club, the black Democratic club in Memphis that mobilized black voters to hold the balance of power in elections and vote successfully for black candidates; these organizations worked together with overlapping leadership and membership. Because most of the records are lost for the Democratic club as well as some records of the Memphis NAACP branch, oral history becomes all the more important for telling the story of civil rights in Memphis. These organizations were so strong that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of Racial Equality, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee made few inroads into Memphis. Both organizations also assisted with the struggles for voting rights in the nearby and rural Fayette and Haywood Counties. Black Memphians had a locally driven struggle in which they relied on their own activism and organizations although they paid attention to national civil rights developments. 2 Michael K. Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 4 By incorporating the voices of more than twenty civil rights activists (both leaders and grassroots workers), politicians, and others involved, this book, which focuses on the years from 1954 to 1969, includes not only valuable information on the Memphis NAACP branch and the Shelby County Democratic Club but also on strategies of and resistance faced by civil rights activists. Voices of black and white Memphians paint a picture of the racial climate of the time and the impact of civil rights activists then and later. Memphis Voices not only provides crucial behind-the-scenes information but also includes stories and perceptions of women and grassroots workers, whose work often was neglected in newspaper accounts of the day and often in subsequent historical scholarship.3 Certainly, firsthand accounts of participants discuss the inner workings of the local movement, show how it connects with national and state developments, and highlight largely unsung heroes of the civil rights movement, which was one of the most important and transformative developments in American history. Understanding civil rights movement and political developments in Memphis is crucial to the development of an in-depth, nuanced portrait of the black freedom struggle and, more broadly, southern politics. After all, the overall civil right movement was a movement of thousands of local movements. By discussing the prevalence of the black vote in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s, the book disrupts the conventional narrative of the civil rights movement that focuses on voter discrimination before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To be sure, numerous scholars have looked at voter mobilization, including voter registration campaigns, in the years before 1965, but less noticed among scholars than direct action, labor, and legal prongs of the 3 The work of historians Michael Honey and Laurie B. Green, in particular, provide an invaluable spotlight on the activism of working-class people. Yet while Honey focuses on labor and Green does not focus on formal politics and the Memphis NAACP branch, this book builds on their and other work as well as provides new information on the black freedom struggle in Memphis through highlighting the stories of Memphians that little attention has been paid to by scholars. Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993). 5 movement are the ways in which African Americans in the South who could vote before 1965 used their voting power as a tool to advance civil rights. This book explores how formal politics was part of the civil rights struggle in Memphis and how African Americans there contributed to making the Democratic Party more progressive, a development that occurred across the South. The book also looks at the gains and limits of the black freedom struggle in Memphis by including assessments of the struggle by oral history subjects, all of whom were interviewed in the 2000s. Historical participants provide behind-the-scenes details on strategies and conflicts; valuable perspectives on change over time; and other information that might or would be forgotten or not emphasized enough if their stories were not captured. These goals were all part of the author’s strategy for conducting oral histories. To be sure, memories can be flawed and stories can be jaded, so this oral history collection relies on other primary and secondary sources in order to assess their words and tell the story of Memphis. Yet, this collection contends that it also is invaluable to learn about history from those who lived it. Furthermore, voices of Memphians breathe life and provide enhanced understanding of existing documents and other information in the historical record. Oral histories reveal the feelings and emotions of interview subjects as well as how civil rights developments had a personal impact on people. They get at the motivations of historical actors as well as how previous generations influenced them. They shed light on what can be a confusing newspaper articles from the time as well as spotlight covert resistance that is not so discernable. Oral histories provide us with perspectives of what civil rights activists saw as important and may lead future scholars to pursue angles that they otherwise might not have.4 While this author has 4 For instance, Memphis civil rights activists stressed how the leadership and membership of the black Democratic club and NAACP branch overlapped. After learning this information, this author’s research led her to see that 6 extensively utilized oral histories, employing minor edits for the sake of clarity and flow, readers, however, may want to consult the actual recordings