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No Small Thing NO SMALL THING NO SMALL THING The 1963 Mississippi Freedom Vote WILLIAM H. LAWSON University Press of Mississippi / Jackson Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2018 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2018 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lawson, William H., author. Title: No small thing : the 1963 Mississippi Freedom Vote / William H. Lawson. Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2018] | Series: Margaret Walker Alexander series in African American studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017046044 (print) | LCCN 2017047615 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496816368 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496816375 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496816382 ( pdf single) | ISBN 9781496816399 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496816351 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781496818195 (paperback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Civil rights—Mississippi—History—20th century. | Civil rights movements—Mississippi—History—20th century. | African Americans—Suffrage—Mississippi—History—20th century. | African Americans—Mississippi—Politics and government—20th century. | Mississippi—Race relations—History—20th century. Classification: LCC E185.93.M6 (ebook) | LCC E185.93.M6 L39 2018 (print) | DDC 323.1196/0730762—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046044 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DEDICATIONS vii Prologue THE HARBINGER 3 Chapter One INVENTIO 13 Chapter Two THE SUMMER BEFORE THE LONG, HOT SUMMER 29 Chapter Three ORGANIZING, RECRUITING, AND CANVASSING 49 Chapter Four THE CAMPAIGN IMAGE IMAGINED 83 Chapter Five FREEDOM IN FULL SWING 97 Chapter Six A RALLY FOR VICTORY, A REVIVAL FOR FREEDOM 129 Chapter Seven FROM FREEDOM DAYS TO FEDERAL LAW 147 Epilogue KEEPING THE FAITH 171 NOTES 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 INDEX 197 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND DEDICATIONS The title of this book is not my own. In the summer of 2006 I was on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, conducting research for this project. After spending a few days at the library roving through its historical archives for primary sources, I managed to make contact with a few of the volunteers who had traveled to Mississippi in the fall of 1963 and lived in the area. I was wrapping up an interview with one of those volunteers, Pete Andrews, when he suggested that I speak with a gentleman across the hall. The next thing I knew, I was having lunch with Hodding Carter III, a Mississippian who not only had been involved in state politics in the 1960s but who had also advised presidents (not to mention his father had won the Pulitzer for his editorial writing during the Emmett Till trial and postverdict). In the middle of our discussion, he stopped midsentence, looked me in the eye as if to make sure I understood with absolute clarity what he was about to say, and said, “You know, Bill, what they did was no small thing.” I nearly fell out of the booth. He didn’t know it then, but he had just given me the title. What you have in your hands is the result of many years of effort. And yet I feel it’s still not complete. Every time protests pop up in the news, I wonder if they have anything in common with the Freedom Vote. They almost undoubt- edly do: local people organizing and speaking out for change. This trend did not start with the Freedom Vote and certainly did not end there, but it was conducted in a uniquely American manner: protest in the form of a mock elec- tion. Real participation in a fake campaign where the legality of the votes was overshadowed by the symbolic act of casting a ballot not only showed tactical innovation in protest but also empowered its participants as it educated them. During our lunch conversation that day, I was profoundly moved by how brave those involved with the Freedom Vote were, regardless of the role they played. The need for social change is not likely to ever leave us, and we would do well to remember examples like the Freedom Vote as we continue to negotiate for a better world. And so I dedicate this book in honor of all those who volunteered and participated in the Freedom Vote. vii viii Acknowledgments and Dedications I couldn’t have done this on my own. I would like to first thank my col- leagues who encouraged me to pursue continuing work on the Freedom Vote. Big “thank-you’s” to Davis Houck, Jennifer Proffitt, Andrew R. Opel, and Raymond Fleming. I am forever in your debt; you taught me how to find answers to questions. I must also say a grateful thanks to the editors and staff at the University Press of Mississippi. Your encouragement meant a lot to me as we worked through this process. Though I don’t have enough room to list them all, I must thank each librarian, collections manager, curator, and archi- vist who spared their time to help me. This wouldn’t have been possible without your assistance and expertise. We owe a lot to the folks who keep our libraries, archives, and collection holdings safe and accessible. Thank you. Lastly, I would like to thank my family for all their support over the years, and for actually believing me when I said I was working on a book. NO SMALL THING Prologue THE HARBINGER Certainly this is one of the most unique voting campaigns in American history. And certainly this is the first time that people went out on the dusty roads all around some state to gather in the vote. And certainly, though we really can’t realize it, history is being made right here in Jackson today, and was made all over this state this week. And certainly the real campaign that was waged in this gubernatorial election was the one that Henry and Ed King were waging and the one that was bringing for the first time to people in this state, for the first time to people all over this country maybe, an awareness of the fact that Mississippi, since Reconstruction time, has never had a free election. —Robert P. Moses1 To say the 1960s was a turbulent time is an understatement. The decade wit- nessed drastic changes to many fundamental aspects of American culture. Initiating some of that change were social movements, each one seemingly feeding off the momentum and strategies employed by those that came before it. The decade began with the civil rights movement already well under way, generating other movements such as Black Power and the feminist movement, and the environmental movement and the antiwar movement. While each movement certainly had many differences in goals, strategies, and constitu- tive members, these distinct and unique movements also had something in common—protestors. The protestor of the 1960s is not the first civil disobedient in American his- tory. The tradition of protest is rich and extends far beyond the founding of our nation. Yet the protestor of the 1960s is markedly different than those who came before, and is still an influential model for how social movements operate today. Contemporary social movements owe much to the protestors and pro- tests from the 1960s, specifically in the model the protestor provided: middle class, liberal, progressive, and in their twenties, with some higher education— these are the characteristics that came to mark the agents of change, not only then but today as well. 3 4 Prologue: The Harbinger The mold for this social actor prototype can be traced back to a summer in Mississippi, simply known as Freedom Summer. Historian Bruce Watson posits that Freedom Summer kicked off and inspired what we have collectively come to think of as the decade of social protest. According to Watson, all we associate with the 1960s—the counterculture lifestyle, the politically charged atmosphere, the progressive and liberal changes to society—didn’t actually begin until the summer of 1964.2 This is when close to 1,000 northern col- lege students volunteered to spend their summer in Mississippi educating local blacks about citizenship and attempting to register voters. Resistance followed, but the summer marked the end of America’s naïveté and laissez-faire attitude toward civil rights. Watson is not the only one who feels this way. Doug McAdam states, “In short, Freedom Summer served both as the organizational basis for much of the activism of the Sixties as well as an important impetus for the development of the broader counterculture that emerged during the era” (5). Tracy Sugarman, a reportorial cartoonist who spent the summer of 1964 in Mississippi, notes, “Nearly one thousand summer volunteers left Mississippi at the end of the ‘long, hot summer’ of 1964, and reentered the frenetic political landscape,” and the lessons they learned were quickly put into practice (167). This impact did not go unnoticed. As Clayborne Carson explains, “the summer volunteers, who returned home greatly influenced by their experiences in Mississippi, would bring a measure of radicalism into the student rights and antiwar movements” (129). The protestors from Freedom Summer changed not only Mississippi, but as the quotes above bare witness, America as well. Freedom Summer’s influence on the trajectory of not only the civil rights movement but also the social movements to follow is unmistakable. The style of direct-action protest, organized and coordinated across organizations, mobi- lizing and unifying resources in a sustained campaign with clearly defined goals, got its start in the muggy, sweltering heat of that Mississippi summer. The “idol of the historian tribe may be called the obsession with origins,” and it would appear that the beginning of what we commonly think of as the decade of protest begins with and owes its creation to Freedom Summer (Bloch 29).
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