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MOVEMENT National Boycott • P , 1Ott DEC. 1965 Delano Workers Ask VOL 1 NO. 12 MOVEMENT National Boycott • P. 3 Published by The Student Nonviolent Coord inating .Committee of Ca lifornia NATCHEZ BOYCOTT SUCC SS BUSINESS CUT 25-50% NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI -- the boycott be ended and "business return One of the most successful commercial. to normal." boycotts ever conducted by the civil rights movement (according to the Wall Street Negro Demands Journal) has just ended. A series of demands The demands of local Negro leaders were were won, but the long - range effects of presented to the city in late August, the day the boycott, both good and bad, are still after the car of the NAACP President to be seen. was- bombed, and the president seriously '-- etaliation injured. Included in the demands were the '- The business leaders and the Chamber enactment of an adequate housing code, de­ of Commerce of Natchez met early last segregation of the hospital, publicfacilities, month to plan a counter-offensive against schools, and more hiring of Negro police­ the tightly organized boycott that Natchez men and clerks. Other demands were police Negroes were waging against them. The escorts for Negro funerals, and the use of boycott at that time had cut business from courtesy titles, Mrs., Miss, Mr., by public 25% to 50% in a three week period. officials when addressing Negro employees. The owner of a .women's clothing store The demands were refused and the com­ heavily patronized by Negroes, was quoted munity began picketing and boycotting the in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "Most downtown merchants. Over 7 0 0 citizens of us can hold out for a few months because were arrested and imprisoned in Parchman Christmas is coming up. But after that, Penitentiary. a lot of stores here are going to go out Mr. Bill Ware, ~CC worker in Natchez, of business." The owner had cut advertis­ reported by telephone at press time that ing by 40% and laid off a third of his SNCC was encouraging people to continue MEXIC.AN AND FILIPINO farm workers on Delano picket line. The historic grape strike employees. the boycott until demands were met on more is beginning its 4th month. George Ballis photo than a token basis. Lay-Off Threat The meeting of business leaders was at­ Agreement tended by Balmer Hill, Jr. (Armstrong After several weeks of picketing and the Tire: a Sears - Roebuck affiliate), B.F. boycott, city officials agreed to hire four Volunteers Needed By SNCC In Alabama Ritchie (International Paper Company and negro policemen, six auxiliary policemen, Mississippi Economic Council), GradySar- appoint a Negro to the school board, Set SNCC is planning a year-long program Uanuary-December 1966) of political organi­ . gent C:;outhern Bell Tel & Tel), R.B. For­ up a biracial housing commission, desegre­ zation in the Black Belt counties of Central Alabama. man (Director of the City Bank & Trust and gate the hospital and instruct city em­ Concentrating in 16 to 22 counties, SNCC workers will org,mize people on ? county President of the Natchez School Board), ployees to use the terms Mr. Miss and to county basis into an independent political movement. Freedom schools and adult and other business leaders. Mrs. classes Will be conducted in political -education for Negroes newly registered under the Their decision was to threaten the mass The boycott, has now stopped. On De­ Voting Rights Act of 1965. sign~d firings of Negroes working for Chamber cember 1st, NAACP officials an SNCC is asking for volunteers who: 1) have had some experience or training in prac­ of Commerce members and to encourage agreement with the Chamber of Commerce. tical politics or who are willing to learn, 2) have practical training in running voter white residents ro dismiss Negro help. At that time, 23 downtown stores agreed registration programs and establishing community support for such programs, 3) Since International Paper and Armstrong to hire Negroes, public facilities and the can provide for themselves financially at least four months of the year's program. Tire employ 2500 of the 2800 manufacturing hospital were desegregated. Although the It is essential that volunteers commit themselves for the entire year's program. employees in Natchez and AdamS Counties, boycott is officially off, Natchez sources There will be a training session in late January or early February in Atlanta, Georgia. this kind of retaliation would leave a large say that some business may stillhave slack For applications, contact Shirley Wright, SNCC, 360 Nelson Street, Atlanta. Georgia percentage of Negro workers jobless unless sales. The desegregation of public schools 30313. they submit to the Chamber's demands that will probably start by the Fall of 1966. THEATRE FOR THOSE lNHO HAVE NO THEATER munities where SNCC and CORE are active. "Instead, it spoke directly to the people. strongly to GODOT. She got up in the The plays they toured were IN WHITE We discovered meanings that commercial intermission and gave a little speech on AMERICA, Brecht's THE RIFLES OF SEN­ productions in New York and the North how important the play was and how the ORA CARRAR, WAITING FOR GODOT by obscured. GODOT shows how simple prob­ audience should listen seriously to what Samuel Beckett, Sean O'Casey's SHADOW lems can become immensely complex ­ it W:lS about." OF A GUNMAN, and PURLIE VICTORIOUS just the act of staying alive, staying to­ "In fact she just about ruined the play," by Ossie Davis. WAITING FOR GODOT gether. What most people picked up on was interrupted Murray••'Everyone was laugh­ was the most unusual and controversial. the relation of slave to master. People ing and enjoying the play; after she spoke "Movement people objected at first," saw GOOOT as the state they were in be­ they stopped and were very seriously lis­ says GiL "I don't mean to criticize them fore the Movement came to their town. tening," but they thought it would 'be irrelevant, a They would say, "We're not waiting; we're "I don't think she ruined it," said Gil, GIL MOSES risk. They thought people wouldn't be in­ in motion: "but she did show that we're giving life terested. We were afraid of it too. and death meanings to the play that were Gilbert Moses and John O'Neal met in "Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer reacted very impossible in a removed, isolated, com­ Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. Gil was mercial theater. By the end of the tour an editor of the Mississippi Free Press it wasn't the same play. It meant something and John was working for SNCC on a to the audience, so we were forced to play literacy project. Gil was also directing for clarity. Actors in the commercial the­ a drama project at Tougaloo College. To­ ater can obscure and slur the meaning in gether they founded the Free Southern order to get an 'interesting' production. We Theater. couldn't:' "Our ideas at that time were basically bourgeois," says Gil.·..We thought in terms What is the difference between the FST· of 'making it,' of success, not in terms of and the commercial theater? they were asked. profit, but in terms oftheater-for-theater's -sake. We've grown a lot since then." "Our ideology," said Gil, "is that theater Gil Moses and Murray Levy, who joined is important. There are few theaters doing plays of importance .. We want to develop the company in the summer of 1964, after an art that will grow with the audience, We the first FST tour, are travelling the began by rebelling against the level of country now. The FST is temporarily at education in the South. We wanted to open a standstill; th~y have no money. Until they raise $45,000 they may not be able up the possibilities of critical thought, to prOVide alternatives to the cliches that to continue. people, black and white, are fed daily in The FST's home is New Orleans, There they rehearse. there the actors live and the South. We want a theater that works by sometimes work part-time when there is comparison, rather than propaganda, that no money. Most of the performances are stretches people's ideas by indirection and given on the road in one-night and two­ reflection. We felt that plays like GOOOT night stands around the south in com- FST PRODUCTION of "Waiting for Godot" continued on last page . EAST COAST MIGRANT WORKERS times. It has a large shed with a stage is still higher than the majority of poor shantytowns and labor camps. Union~ c~e where there may have been revivals. people in this country. many reasons for their reluctance, but I With two crews and at least 150 people, My •'subsistance" income allows me think unions, for the most part, are like there are only two water taps -- for wash­ to buy the food I need for myself and my the rest of America. They just don't care. ing, cooking, and drin"ing. wife. It allows me to live in a decent But a strike· by agricultural workers McWilliams catches us in there one place with heat and hot water and a gas in Kern County, Calif., is giving hope day and kicks us out. Periodically after stove and an icebox, with regular garbage to those who are more than just "con­ that, state and county police cruise through. collection. My child will be born in a hos­ cerned" with poverty stricken farm la­ Steve and I are each talking with a group pital and delivered by a doctor. Ifhe/she (?) borers, those who are willing to wor~') of people when he drives in with two needs medicine, he/she will get medicine.
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