Left, Aaron Henry, popular civil rights leader
from the Mississippi Delta
AS 1961 CAME to a close, some white folks in the Mississippi Delta were dreaming of a "white" Christmas when they decided to keep their black customers away from the city of Clarksdale’s annual parade.
Their tune changed when Coahoma County’s NAACP chapter led by popular civil rights activist Aaron Henry sponsored a major boycott over the Christmas shopping season of 1961. Downtown stores were all heavily dependent on black trade giving the boycott both immediate and lasting effects.
Medgar Evers, head of the state's NAACP, and Henry had met with President Kennedy over the summer during the NAACP convention in Philadelphia. National board members traveled from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C. on a "freedom train" where they talked with the president and others over the severity of their problems.
"President Kennedy listened to us intently, was very cordial, and gave us a tour of the White House," Henry later wrote in his autobiography, "The Fire Ever Burning."
Several months later, Clarksdale’s mayor decided there would be no Negro participation in the local Christmas parade: his decision would result in the first major confrontation in Clarksdale since 1955.
Aaron Henry and others were stunned and affronted by the mayor’s edict. It was tradition for the black band to play at the end of the parade, followed by floats from their community. There seemed to be no reason for this decision, except that the mayor "apparently resented the progress we were making all over the state," Henry said.
The announcement came in November and was supported by the Chamber of Commerce. Henry and Evers called for a boycott of downtown stores with the slogan: "If we can’t parade downtown, we won’t trade downtown." Handbills were printed and a newsletter sent out asking for blacks to join in the boycott; merchants felt pressure from the start.
The white community leaders would not come to terms with the black community and the boycott dragged on. Aaron Henry voiced the black community’s view, when he said it could go on forever unless there were real changes in hiring practices. When the county’s attorney Thomas H. (Babe) Pearson asked Henry to come to his office and talk over the boycott,
"We met at his office at seven-thirty the next morning. He told me he knew I was leading the effort, and he wanted to advise me that it was illegal. He read something from a law book but did not explain how it was related to the boycott, and I told him our lawyers had advised us that we were not violating the law, unless we used threats, force, or intimidation to try and make people participate. He finally told me he would put me in jail if I didn’t use my influence to call off the boycott. He gave no explanation of the legal process involved in such an arrest and was clearly relying on his ability to put a Negro in jail anytime he wished. I told him he would have to do just that because I had no intention of calling it off."
Aaron Henry would not budge, so Pearson called out for Clarksdale Police Chief Ben Collins to come out from the side room, instructing him to "Take this nigger to jail."
The arrest was illegal, since no warrant was issued, "and I was not committing a crime in their presence, but I knew even better not to argue with an armed policeman. And I didn’t mind going to jail, since I believed it would result in an intensification of the boycott," Henry wrote.
When they got to the jail, Henry was left standing in the lobby because no one was certain whether or not to book him and if so, what charge to press. Then seven more Clarksdale civil rights leaders were brought in and all were locked up, despite the lack of charges.
When Coahoma County Sheriff L.A. Ross arrived at the jail, he was angered over the forced detention and "genuinely outraged at the entire situation." Ross demanded an explanation from Pearson who told him that the boycott was illegal.
Two hours later, Henry and others were finally charged with restraint of trade and released. After this, the boycott reached its peak. Merchants felt the economic pinch as they missed one-half of their customers. But Pearson had other ideas, and several days later insisted Henry and others be put "under tangible bond" of $2,000 each awaiting their appearance in court.
Originally, the Clarksdale black leaders were brought to trial in a justice of the peace court and found guilty of restraint of trade. When the county court upheld the conviction, it was appealed to the circuit court, which ruled the petition should be amended or Henry and others would be freed. But there was no amendment, and Henry and the others were neither acquitted nor found guilty, while the bond money was held. "We were out of jail but unsure of our legal status," Henry wrote.
While Henry and others were being arrested, another group – all white –launched a boycott of their own. The Mississippi State Legislature passed a resolution "with scarcely no dissent" that no loyal Mississippian should shop in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the state line, and quite close to Clarksdale.
Angry because public accommodations and other facilities in Memphis were quietly desegregating, the Mississippi legislature had already "distinguished itself," wrote Tougaloo professor John Salter, "by publicly investigating conditions at the University Hospital in Jackson, where white and black children were leaving their segregated wards and playing together in the corridors."
The Clarksdale boycott continued for three years, eventually slowing. Passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was found to be "a dramatic way of ending it." Along the way, farm labor mechanization was heading to the Delta and as the need for black laborers lessened, the meanness of whites increased.
On June 12, 1963, as he was returning home, Medgar Evers was killed by an assassin’s bullet.
(Excerpt from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited," Susan Klopfer)
Susan Orr-Klopfer, journalist and author, writes on civil rights in Mississippi. Her newest books, "Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited" and "The Emmett Till Book" are now in print and are carried in most online bookstores including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. "Where Rebels Roost" focuses on the Delta, Emmett Till, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Amzie Moore and many other civil rights foot soldiers. Both books emphasize unsolved murders of Delta blacks from mid 1950s on. Orr-Klopfer is an award-winning journalist and former acquisitions and development editor for Prentice-Hall. Her computer book, "Abort, Retry, Fail!" was an alternate selection by the Book of-the-Month Club.
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