The Struggle of Struggles [New ed.] 1496844637, 9781496844637

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THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES

CIVIL RIGHTS IN

MISSISSIPPI TrenT Brown, General ediTor

THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES

Vera Pigee Edited, annotated, and with a new introduction by Françoise N. Hamlin

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi. www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses. Cover design by Frank Marin. Any discriminatory or derogatory language or hate speech regarding race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, class, national origin, age, or disability that has been retained or appears in elided form is in no way an endorsement of the use of such language outside a scholarly context. Copyright © 1975 and 1979 by Vera Pigee All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2023 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2023 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pigee, Vera Mae, 1924–2007, author. | Hamlin, Françoise N., editor, writer of introduction. Title: The struggle of struggles / Vera Pigee ; edited, annotated, and with a new introduction by Françoise N. Hamlin. Other titles: Civil rights in Mississippi. Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2023. | Series: Civil rights in Mississippi series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022045945 (print) | LCCN 2022045946 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496844637 (hardback) | ISBN 9781496844644 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781496844651 (epub) | ISBN 9781496844668 (epub) | ISBN 9781496844675 (pdf) | ISBN 9781496844682 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Pigee, Vera Mae, 1924–2007. | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Coahoma County Branch—History. | African American civil rights workers—Mississippi—Clarksdale—Biography. | Women civil rights workers—Mississippi—Clarksdale—Biography. | African American women—Biography. | African Americans—Civil rights—Mississippi—Clarksdale—History—20th century. | Civil rights movements—Mississippi—Clarksdale—History—20th century. | Clarksdale (Miss.)—Race relations—History—20th century. Classification: LCC E185.97.P5935 A3 2023 (print) | LCC E185.97.P5935 (ebook) | DDC 323.092 [B]—dc23/eng/20221205 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022045945 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022045946 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction: God Has Always Had a Time, a Place, and a People: Vera Mae Pigee (September 2, 1924–August 18, 2007) ix The Struggle of Struggles, Part One 1 The Struggle of Struggles, Part Two 103 Timeline 172 Index 177

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i would like To acknowledGe TrenT Brown for The opporTuniTy to write the introduction to the 2016 republication of William McCord’s memoir (Mississippi: The Long Hot Summer) for the University Press of Mississippi that ultimately led to my pitching this project. Thanks to the press staff for their enthusiasm and assistance moving this along smoothly. I wholeheartedly acknowledge the work of StoryWorks (Jennifer Welsh, Nick Houston, Aallyah Wright, Layla Young, Charles Coleman, and others) in Clarksdale for representing the next generation invested in remembering, archiving, and celebrating those who came before. They give me hope for the future, and I know Mrs. Pigee and Mrs. Davis would have been thrilled with Beautiful Agitators. Thank you for sharing your experiences and lessons with me. In terms of the project itself, I thank Cyprene Caines (a brilliant student in my “Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement” first-year seminar who became my research assistant, and an amazing scholar in her own right) for taking the first pass with the edits, researching biographical dates, and catching things I missed. I am grateful to Katherine Charron, Tammy Ingram, and George Trumbull IV, who read the introduction and shared their editorial wisdom. Thanks also to Frank Rivera-Marin for designing the cover to echo the originals. This is a labor of love, and ultimately any mistakes are my own. Finally, this project genuflects and gives all praise to the Pigee family— particularly Mrs. Vera Pigee, Mr. Paul Pigee, and Mrs. Mary Jane Davis— for the gift of their sacrifices, stories, and lessons. I dedicate this volume to them in memoriam. They have left legacies that I hope generations to come (including my own son, Elijah) can learn from as they forge new paths toward a more just world.

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GOD HAS ALWAYS HAD A TIME, A PLACE, AND A PEOPLE Vera Mae Pigee (September 2, 1924–August 18, 2007) leadership involves more Than Grand scripTed speeches and television airtime.1 Grassroots leaders often go unnoticed beyond their communities, yet without them figurehead leaders would not have a platform. Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee identified herself as a businesswoman, mother, and leader who worked to build local and statewide movements in Mississippi long before college-aged students came to the state to assist and propel activities forward in the 1960s. A beautician by trade, an avid churchgoer, and an activist mother, Mrs. Pigee supported and mentored youth through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and, as secretary of the local branch, she organized behind the scenes to ensure that the movement moved.2 Grassroots leadership like Mrs. Pigee’s hides in plain sight in photographs or in documents, as the media does not necessarily name those beyond the focal figure in their narrow frame. Nor does it perceive ordinary people as newsmakers even though they organize the newsworthy events. This means that finding and researching crucial local activists requires a more involved practice and more care. I had a foot in the door because of my history in Clarksdale (as an exchange student in high school in the early nineties). A former teacher invited me into her classroom, where I learned of students’ grandparents involved in activities in the 1960s. I found Mrs. Pigee after conducting quite a few interviews in Clarksdale as a second-year graduate student. Her name kept coming up in conversations, but I had never read about her in the then-few books that existed about Mississippi’s movements. Once someone finally gave me her phone number in Detroit, Michigan, I called her and received an immediate reprimand that half the people I had talked to had no business claiming a place in the history of the civil rights ix

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movement. She revealed a compellingly complex and rich story. I eventually traveled to Detroit during my spring break in my first dissertating year (2000) to meet her in person, and while I spent the week in her home talking to her extensively, she also watched me closely to determine whether I could be trusted.3 I respect that hesitancy. Why should she (or anyone else) gift her story to a stranger (and one with an accent and enrolled in a fancy East Coast university)? From her I learned about being a historian and a scholar, and the ethics of the work that I wanted to conduct, write about, and teach. This work takes time. It takes an investment in people to learn about them, to learn from them. Time. As scholars we have precious little of it, and it is all too easy to sit with someone for a couple of hours with a tape recorder and leave thinking that you have the full story. I learned that extraction of this kind does harm—to the histories written and to those whose stories scholars collect and often misrepresent. I ultimately wanted to write a history in which the people who had given me their stories could recognize themselves. I had a personal investment in the people with whom I went to high school who had no clue about their local history, and who took for granted that their grandparents had desegregated the very building in which we studied. Our state-supplied history textbooks inadequately addressed slavery, and the coverage of the mass movement for civil rights (which was long and bloody in Mississippi) focused primarily on out-of-state leaders. Once I had met Mrs. Pigee and understood her immense role in the Clarksdale story, and beyond, I found more material to corroborate her story. The traditional archives hold organizational papers, more top-down information—from government sources to national civil rights organizational papers to a few personal collections of those involved in them. Individuals do emerge in the traditional archives, but it becomes more challenging to find the nuances of Black leadership, or those who did not leave papers, or how women led, or how local people used national resources for their own local use. The traditional archives hide such imperative details. Indeed, while researching the NAACP in Mississippi for what became Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II, I spent time at the Library of Congress looking for the Black women, particularly Mrs. Pigee.4 Her name rarely appeared. I had to resign myself to relying on the scant scraps I had collected beyond the interviews and her books. Or so I thought. Mrs. Pigee literally left her mark all over the archives. It seems so obvious now, but as the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, she handled pretty much all the branch business and correspondence, from its newsletter,

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entitled Cryer, which documented the details of the local movement, to the letters between it and the national office. She organized everything. I returned and started comparing the handwriting from samples I had—and there she appeared, hidden in plain sight. Given the many conversations I had with her in person, I could triangulate events, people, places, and campaigns but also focus on how she assessed her own life’s work. In short, finding Mrs. Pigee required multiple methods to produce an in-depth portrait of her centrality to the movement. Sometimes it is less about stubbornness in the archives and more about changing our vision about what an archive is and how we should read differently. She taught me that too. During the intervening years, I wrote to her regularly and thanked her for her time, but it took nearly five years to see her again. By then she had moved out of her historic home on Edison Avenue, after the death of her beloved husband in 2004, and moved into assisted living. She had aged considerably and mourned the loss of the man she had partnered with since she was a teenager. I also met her daughter, Mrs. Mary Jane Davis, and spent long hours talking to her, learning more about her mother and her own activities. At that point I asked Mrs. Davis about the primary sources I knew Mrs. Pigee had accumulated in the sprawling house but had not moved to the small, compact apartment. When I had stayed with Mrs. Pigee in 2000, she had shown me a room filled with files, papers, certificates, and awards. I distinctly remember seeing the original framed Coahoma County Youth Council Charter on her wall. My mistake then was that I did not ask her to let me explore this material, and this was before I owned any portable smart devices that might have enabled me to document some of the primary sources without removing them. I cringed when Mrs. Davis informed me that she had promptly cleaned out the house, and everything had gone to the landfill to prepare it for sale. She had kept some photographs, which she kindly gave permission for me to print in the book, but the rest was gone. Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee died in 2007 and rests next to her husband in Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery. I kept in touch with Mrs. Davis by phone and mail, and I sent her the completed manuscript for Crossroads at Clarksdale before it went to my editor. Her approval and confirmation that I had represented her mother fairly and accurately encompassed my ethics of care. With her blessing the book went to the press, and she received one of the first printed copies. Mrs. Davis died in 2014, which I found out a couple of years later when her widower wrote to tell me to stop sending my annual holiday card. She had no children. The Pigee line of strong, determined women ended with her. I have taken time to narrate this account not only to gratefully acknowledge the time I spent with these amazing women who now walk with the

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ancestors but to show what they taught me, and to again reiterate the time it takes to tell stories with care. My book argues that the civil rights movement was a mass of local, organized movements, not a singular phenomenon, and that a local study approach enables a close analysis of the range and effects of Black leadership. Local examples and situations provide models for larger contexts. I reinstate women’s roles as paramount to local success, recasting our understanding of those roles in their own terms, using the trope of activist mothering to reinterpret leadership in contrast to more formal male models. I show how local people deftly manipulated organizations and campaigns to serve their activism and goals at particular moments, not how organizations set the tone for local movement activity. The book’s chronology also recalibrates the standard accounts of this era. By extending the narrative beyond the mass movement years—in part an outcome of adopting a biographical approach—I demonstrate how the stories are intricate, that the characters are flawed and complicated, and that many campaigns mattered when it comes to acknowledging the extent of change and progress that occurred. In other words, I argue that the story of the Black freedom struggle is not yet finished. Mrs. Pigee’s life gave me the tools to think about women’s leadership on their own terms, and her books illustrated just how messy organizing becomes.

WHY AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

These books, republished here in one volume, reveal the foundations of why this history matters. Mrs. Pigee wrote to set the record straight, to make sure that her work and that of her collaborators did not get erased. When I asked her directly why she felt the need to write, she answered, “Well I saw a lot of stuff from a book that was wrong. I saw something that Aaron Henry told them that the Freedom Riders came through Clarksdale and sat in the bus station, which is the biggest lie that a person could tell, because my daughter and two more kids I sent to the bus station held the first sit-in in Clarksdale.” She continued with a warning: “You read a lot of things that are not true. And I certainly hope and pray that your book [Crossroads at Clarksdale] will be as truthful as humanly possible. Because mine is, it has nothing in it but the truth.”5 All autobiography is self-serving in a myriad of ways, and Mrs. Pigee’s is no different. In order to document her mettle, and the extent of her investment and its cost, she filled pages with local minutiae and politics. Personal details and descriptions of family life take a backseat due to her ultimate goal of telling her truth about the movement and her place in that history.

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Most autobiographies written by African Americans in the Jim Crow generations narrate some kind of racial awakening—usually during childhood or adolescence—some kind of traumatic racist experience that explains or set the course for their life journey. Mrs. Pigee did not follow that convention: rather, she spent time describing her parents and the lessons she learned from them. From her father she learned about self-sufficiency and the will to thrive rather than merely survive. As a sharecropper, barber, and tailor, he hustled to make ends meet. The household, albeit poor, was plentiful, with a garden and livestock. She noted, “I didn’t know we were poor—we always had plenty food.”6 From her mother she witnessed and absorbed religiosity and faith, alongside a knack for organization that amounted to her own hustle. Mrs. Pigee remembered her mother’s blunt honesty and forthrightness, which did not waver when facing bigotry, and resulted in a begrudging respect for her integrity and hard work. So, although Mrs. Pigee chose to stay with family in her early years, rather than take the opportunity to attend high school in Philadelphia, she multiplied the gifts inherited from her parents. She was street-smart long before she got the credentials that attested to her book smarts.7 Mrs. Pigee’s books were (until now) self-published, out of print, and not readily available. She had sold them at NAACP conferences and when she traveled to speak, but they were never uniformly distributed. I inquired about the decision to self-publish. She answered, “I did approach publishers. One of the publishers wanted to publish the book, but he made me feel like they were dictating what they would do, and how long the book would be in print and go out of print and all that stuff. And I put it in the wastebasket. I said, ‘My book doesn’t ever need to go out of print.’”8 She insisted on control and ownership of her voice in every way. Republishing these books creates a more permanent space for her as one of the first in the slew of civil rights autobiographies that have emerged since. She explained the necessity of part two: “I wanted to do a follow-up on the first book. And it’s somewhat different and still it isn’t. Because the people I’d asked I’d wanted to know would they do it again. All of them said yes.” She continued that “the second book reiterated what the first book had said, and then you had the action from the people who had been involved.”9 She created sources where there were none available to her for the historical record and to authenticate herself. Mrs. Pigee does show up in a few published spaces beyond the local paper, the Clarksdale Press Register. Grace Halsell, a white author and journalist, disguised herself as a Black woman and documented her experiences in Harlem and Mississippi as a “soul sister.” Mrs. Pigee mentions her in her autobiography as a friend and one of those who convinced her to write her

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story. In Soul Sister, first published in 1969, Halsell reveals she stayed in the Pigee house in Clarksdale while the family was out of town. She describes Mrs. Pigee’s home, from its cozy size to its home comforts. In contrast, she then mentions the bullet hole delivered by night riders, explaining what she called “a gaping reminder that terror is a companion of every black man and woman in Clarksdale.”10 Mrs. Pigee had trusted this stranger and left the key in the mailbox. Indeed, Mrs. Pigee did this frequently, allowing youth and other activists to access her home for respite as she did her work as an activist mother. She did it for me decades later. She confirmed that her home served as a central meeting place for NAACP workers too and that her daughter got used to sleeping on the couch to accommodate guests, noting, “And they’d say that the NAACP told me when I get here to call you. So that was the way we lived.” She chuckled, “And sometimes I’d go home, and I’d hear the air-conditioning running, and I knew my husband would be at work and I’d be at work, but they’d be up in there having a meeting . . . the lawyers from Jackson, they all came to my house.”11 Sexism and the expectation that men led the movement also motivated Mrs. Pigee’s autobiographical endeavors. Her image appears in photographs illustrating civil rights activities, with her name often misspelled or completely missing. For example, the February 14, 1962, issue of Jet magazine has a photograph of her, Rev. Willie Goodloe, and Aaron Henry alongside aid supplies for distribution by the committee she codirected, captioned with “Vivian Pigees” and crediting Aaron Henry for the campaign. It is not surprising, then, that she might feel the need to correct the record. The audience for her books therefore consists of those interested in the local movement history, those in Clarksdale, and those less familiar with the copious details she includes to document her role at the center of the local movement. The specifics mirror the depth and breadth of her activism and illustrate the messiness of local movements. Yet for readers unfamiliar with Clarksdale’s movement, her narrative does not move chronologically and does not provide a clear view of events and people over time. For this reason, this republication includes a brief timeline organized around and from the text to orient new readers.

CONTEXTUALIZING THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I have used Mrs. Pigee’s autobiography in undergraduate classes several times over the years as a primary source document by a Black woman at the local level. Students are often taken aback by her bluntness and what they

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deem an emasculating view of many of the men she encountered. Context then becomes important. In the world of autobiography and biography, Alex Haley’s groundbreaking book Roots, published in 1976, garnered enough attention for Mrs. Pigee to mention it to authenticate her own work.12 The seventies also ushered in women’s voices more forcefully, beginning with Toni Cade’s publication of The Black Woman, a collection of essays that includes Frances Beal’s essay “Double Jeopardy.” This anthology contextualizes Shirley Chisholm’s run for president in 1973, where she unabashedly refused to ally solely with her race or her gender and demanded that the electorate and her congressional colleagues deal with her as a Black woman in her entirety.13 Mrs. Pigee published part one in 1975, the UN’s International Women’s Year, which followed more than half a decade of a multifaceted women’s movement that saw women at the podiums demanding safety for and control over their bodies while also chipping away at laws and policies discriminating on the basis of gender. Although racism muted Black women’s voices on the national stage, they also organized to address gender inequity and the “double jeopardy” they faced.14 Mrs. Pigee always anchored her identity to her role as a mother, both to Mary Jane and the youth, and similarly began her book with her own mother. She fully embraced her femininity from the beginning of her activist life by claiming and using its strength. In July 1954 the Clarksdale Press Register reported on the fourteenth annual meeting of the Mississippi Independent Beauticians Association (Black beauticians) held in Clarksdale. It indicated that the five hundred participants openly declared their support for the Brown decision handed down two months previously and rejected segregation. It would not be a stretch to assume that Mrs. Pigee attended that meeting and probably had a hand in its organization.15 As such, while she did not embrace the term “feminism,” often viewed as too white and middle-class, she understood gendered dynamics and had exploited them when useful (her activist mothering), but by the point when she wrote the book, she had felt the bite of sexism in the movement’s memorialization. By the mid-seventies the few books that existed on the civil rights movement focused primarily on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy, or men who had later risen up the ranks of government or the private sector once the mass movement began to ebb and the Black freedom struggle moved into a different phase with the next generation. Mrs. Pigee worked in the trenches, person by person for four years in the late fifties, to gather enough members to charter an NAACP youth council in Coahoma County. She worked full-time for the NAACP without compensation but with her family’s blessing and her husband’s unwavering support, and she leaned on

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her thriving business equipped with a manager and staff while she organized the local movement. In contrast, Aaron Henry, the branch president for most of the years and also the state conference president, did the public-facing work and got most of the credit. It is no accident that Dr. Henry makes his first appearance about a third of the way through part one of Mrs. Pigee’s recollections—he operated at a different tier and with a different leadership style. The mass of movements needed both but recognized his. Even so, an internal memorandum between national NAACP officers that Mrs. Pigee would have never seen corroborates her value within the organization. In 1963 Calvin Banks, NAACP program director, wrote to executive secretary Roy Wilkins about Mrs. Pigee’s visit to New York that May to appeal to the Independent Community Improvement Association and the national NAACP office for emergency relief. Banks reassured Wilkins of her loyalty, saying that her “commitment to the Association is total. . . . She requires very little guidance. She is articulate and effective and at all times projects a proper NAACP viewpoint.”16 Mrs. Pigee was no wallflower. In this context her gendered voice, tone, accusations, and berating make more sense: she intended to set the gendered record straight with some home-truths, buoyed by the spirit of the moment in which she wrote. The title of her autobiography, The Struggle of Struggles, embeds the overall lack of recognition. What is the struggle of struggles? Mrs. Pigee identified many other areas, especially while she actively organized, that constituted struggles within the struggle beyond the gendered and historical misremembering. For one, she had a lot to say about the generational conflicts among the movement’s constituents. Readers might find her scolding of the younger generations surprising and heavy-handed, but in the context of her organizing and mentoring youth in Mississippi in the fifties when Black people died for less, she deserves some grace. I had asked her explicitly about her feelings for the youthful Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members who came to Clarksdale in 1963 and 1964, inquiring whether she felt as angry as the tone in the autobiography suggests. She had not exaggerated. “Well, I was, I was angry. At first we tried to work with the SNCC kids. My thing with the SNCC kids, they didn’t have nothing, they didn’t have a house to stay in, they didn’t have any money, they didn’t have a car. And in Clarksdale, we were already organized and had things going. Then they would come and try to get a little group of kids to organize into a SNCC group. And I didn’t like that. They’d take my kids.” The younger activists naturally attracted the attention of the local youth, and it helped that they got a stipend, whereas the youth councils relied on volunteers. Understandably, after years of NAACP work and providing resources, Mrs.

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Pigee resisted the younger organization and its plans. She underscored how the NAACP had to bail folks out of jail for activities it had not organized, and she resented the imposition, firmly stating, “They are going to work under the NAACP. And when you do the activities of the NAACP and you go to jail, you don’t have to worry about it. We call the NAACP mother, and mother will be there. . . . It wasn’t like I didn’t like the kids, I didn’t like some of their activities, and when it got where I didn’t like them, I told them about it and also told them to hit the road.”17 The tensions were territorial but also grounded in Mrs. Pigee’s ideas about fairness and respect. Her finality did not make her popular in some movement circles, and as the younger generation now has outlived hers, they control more of the narrative of the Mississippi movement, pushing her further into the shadows. Conflicts between organizations, even those with the same goals, are normal. Yet Mrs. Pigee remained steadfast in her loyalty to the NAACP even as she wore other organizational hats when necessary. The violence and resistance in Mississippi required organizational collaboration, resulting in the founding of the Council of Federated Organizations in 1961, which encompassed the membership and resources of the major organizations operating in Mississippi and began as a foil for the already well-established state NAACP. Mrs. Pigee viewed it as a means to an end. In 1968 she said, “We open our doors, our homes, we shared our money, our food, and organized COFO and let COFO serve as a guide between the organizations in hopes that we would lose our organizational identity to a certain point because at that time, voter registration was our main project and to really get out there and to work on projects, however, I differ with a lot of techniques, ideologies and philosophies. . . . What I really say about it is, the NAACP is my thing and I have been doing it for 17 years and intend to continue.”18 That NAACP also enabled her to travel across the country and abroad, cementing her loyalty. Even within the NAACP, however, Mrs. Pigee encountered struggles within the struggle. By the mid-sixties she began to feel betrayed by the changing configuration of the local branch. These struggles elicited the rawest writing, which often resulted in trains of thought bordering on rants. Her words hint at hurt feelings and personal wounding, but she is clear about the disrespect she felt from all parties over time. Her oft-used term “do-nothings” referred to those who assumed leadership positions after the hard work had been done. That she had sacrificed so much for so long at much cost to her family and finances, made her resent folks swooping in to claim the spoils of her labor. In 1964 she wrote, “It would be unfair to ask all mothers, all professional women, and all Christians to eat, sleep, work, and talk freedom,

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but more and more the opportunity not to do so is becoming less and less.” Yet ten years later, as she wrote her autobiography, she lamented the tone and motivation behind people’s actions.19 From Mrs. Pigee’s point of view, loyalty was central to any sense of success. That comes through clearly in the section of the autobiography about naming the streets in and around the federally funded Chapel Hill Heights, newly built affordable housing near Chapel Hill Church where Mrs. Pigee attended, in the seventies. Snubbing her became a bone of contention, one that her daughter also carried for years. Indeed, Mrs. Mary Jane Davis told me that when a few members of Chapel Hill wanted to host an appreciation day for Mrs. Pigee, she and her mother were surprised, given the many occasions when they could have named something substantial after her and instead chose men. Mrs. Davis mused, “I didn’t know that that many people really cared. And someone had to talk her [Mrs. Pigee] into it.” Mrs. Davis reinforced how every street in Chapel Hill Heights bore a man’s name and that the entire Fourth Street in Clarksdale was renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard despite his only rare appearances in the town.20 She gave another example, of how Walton Wade, a renowned local barber and a bluesman, got another set of apartments named after him, while Mrs. Pigee got a tiny street within the complex (Pigee Cove) that does not even show up on maps. Mrs. Davis said dryly, “I thought they had it backwards.”21 Perhaps a harmless omission to some, but street naming shapes public memory by prioritizing, and subsequently valuing, certain people over others.22 Of course each circumstance varies by time, place, and person, but the politics of street naming necessitates a swell of local support and that a purposeful framing actually occurs. A commemorative practice that excluded Mrs. Pigee led her and her family to question the success of all the labor they had exerted. Mrs. Davis stated emphatically, “I don’t owe Clarksdale anything—and Clarksdale doesn’t owe me anything. I did my best that I could do when I was there.” Mrs. Pigee shared that mind-set in her later years. When asked how she thought we should remember the movement, she said, “To be honest, I really don’t care! I really don’t. Because people have different thoughts, different ideas. I don’t think anybody who knows anything about it would say that Aaron Henry and I did not lead the movement, did not organize it in Clarksdale and didn’t really work with it.”23 Not everyone overlooked or forgot Mrs. Pigee’s struggle of struggles once the danger had dissipated. Her sacrifice did not go unnoticed by those young people she touched. In January 1970 the National NAACP youth director, James Brown Jr., wrote to Mrs. Pigee to thank her personally for working tirelessly to build the membership of the Youth and College Division, “There

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were many times when I didn’t think we would overcome our deficit,” Brown noted, “but because of the response of our youth councils, especially yours, we did.”24 The local youth council president, Roy Wright, also wrote a letter to Laplois Ashford (national youth secretary) to nominate their advisor, Mrs. Pigee, for an award at the National Convention over someone they claimed had done very little for their respective council. They insisted, “Perhaps she does not turn the world on end by doing magnificent feats, but to us it is the little things that one does every day for the course of Freedom that warrants merit. . . . Sacrifice in every shape, form and fashion mentionable.” Calling her “our beloved advisor,” Wright insisted that Mrs. Pigee did not seek the limelight and accolades for her unpaid work, but “since she is after all human and not a machine, we feel she, as others even you at times, would appreciate a little congratulation, thank you, keep up the good work, etc., from those of you who make up the National Staff once in a while.”25 It is not clear if she ever knew of these letters extolling her dedicated labor and accomplishments. I once asked Mrs. Pigee how folks should organize at the turn of the century. She mused, “I would say join the NAACP, most people are not members of the NAACP. And if you don’t have a youth council, organize one. And I tell them how to organize one.” She considered it a vehicle for learning citizenship and community, adding, “Then you go and do whatever needs to be done in your neighborhood, because there’s always something to be done. And our youth group used to—if there were elderly people in the neighborhood, they would run errands for them, or just clean the yard. The group was involved like that—they did everything.”26 Her advice falls in line with her life’s work. The title of this introductory essay comes from a piece she wrote in 1964 that focused on her role as a mother, praising her daughter, and lifting up youth by declaring, “Youth is our greatest resource.”27 In a 1998 Clarksdale Press Register article, Mrs. Pigee claimed that she was making progress on her third book, which she wanted to focus on contemporary civil rights. “Many kids today don’t know our history. . . . Young people just don’t know what it took to get those jobs for them,” she said, still recognizing the importance of nurturing young people.28 She took great pride in her intensive long-term state and local youth council work and always promoted working with the children as key. Forever an NAACP stalwart despite her internal struggles at the local level, Mrs. Pigee also remained committed to local organizing as a way to stay responsible and mentor young people. She knew it was an investment in the future.

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WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM VERA PIGEE?

Clearly, a lot. Rev. S. Leon Whitney says it best in his interview in part two: “It is necessary to have as many written accounts of what transpired as possible. Any people who do not know their history be it good, bad or indifferent, are not very well informed” (140). Mrs. Pigee was fearless, or at least she never gave in to any anxiety. She declared, “The people, once they gained confidence in me, would tell me whatever was going on. . . . I would keep my word and that I wasn’t afraid of nothing, I would go anywhere. I thank God that He didn’t give me the power of fear.”29 She leaned on her deep religious faith to eradicate any fright and traveled on the speaker circuit for the National Baptist Convention in the last decades of her life, addressing women’s day programs and the like. She did not always speak about her movement experiences but as a child of God buoyed by her formal and informal biblical studies. Yet she felt no compunction to rebuild the waning NAACP branch in Clarksdale at the turn of the twenty-first century, stating, “People say, ‘[Mrs.] Pigee, what are you going to do about it?’ And I say, ‘Not a darn thing! It’s time for you to get off your sit-down stool and do something now.’ You don’t have to be afraid of anything now, no, the things you were afraid of then, you don’t have to be afraid of now.”30 She continued, “I know I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do! And I knew that He had the angels captive around me and my family and my house. And I know that today. And I had no right to be afraid.”31 It takes a woman sure of herself and unafraid to speak up in order to do this work. It takes a special someone to fight others taking advantage of her labors and demand recognition. There is a necessary level of ego for engaged leadership of this kind. So while her books might read as self-aggrandizement at the highest level, she earned it and refused to let anyone take her light. Twenty years is a long time when it comes to leading and organizing in the trenches. Obstacles shift, resources change, challenges evolve. Memory is intimately tied to politics, from electoral politics to on-the-ground tussles for power and influence in communities. Mrs. Pigee might be exceptional in the breadth and reach of her activism over time and across organizations and regions, but her story represents so many women whose contributions and leadership are rendered invisible by social norms and politics. Who are the Vera Pigees in your local histories?

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BEYOND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY: THE SEED BEARS FRUIT

There is more to learn and celebrate. Before I finished Crossroads at Clarksdale, I published an article about Vera Pigee, “Vera Mae Pigee (1925–): Mothering the Movement,” first in the edited volume Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives in 2003, and then in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas in 2005.32 Over the years I also made sure of her inclusion in the Mississippi Encyclopedia and in the state’s archival newsletter.33 In 2010 SNCC photographer Charles Moore’s image of Mrs. Pigee in her beauty salon graced the cover of Tiffany Gill’s Beauty Shop Politics.34 More and more people now know about Mrs. Pigee as scholars dig into the mass movement history and find the jewels in communities. The digitization of many academic archives and organization and government records has made her a little more visible. Going back to my collected archive and then wandering the internet, I found more materials than I had seen a decade or two earlier.35 This is encouraging. In 2017 StoryWorks and Mississippi Today developed Beautiful Agitators, a play centered on Mrs. Pigee, using the autobiography, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files, and my published research.36 The script covers mainly her activist life from 1955, when she became the branch secretary, to 1965 and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, illustrating the strength of local people, named and unnamed, to bring about change and justice.37 Jennifer (Jenna) Welch, StoryWorks’ founder and producing artistic director, was working on a reporting project looking at education and focusing on the Delta. Mississippi had the highest standard for civil and human rights education in the country (due to activism and pressure), but there was no curriculum to support this mandate. Welch wanted to create a play to teach to the requirement. Choosing Mrs. Pigee as the focus happened during a brainstorming meeting at the Crossroads Cultural Art Center in early 2017, where writer Nick Houston raised Vera Pigee as a possibility. He had read about her in Crossroads at Clarksdale while taking a history class at Delta State University. Charles Coleman, a native Mississippian from Cleveland, attended the meeting and asked, “Why haven’t we known about her previously?”38 Houston and Coleman brought in Aallyah Wright (all of them had attended Delta State and worked in student theater), a native Clarksdalian, a recent college graduate, and a new reporter for Mississippi Today. As a result, all three became playwrights, and Mississippi Today collaborated on the project.39 After more research in Clarksdale, including interviews with locals who knew her, the first community performance of Beautiful Agitators debuted before a local audience nine weeks later. Welch noted, “We learned about this legend who published her own autobiography and spoke to us

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that way . . . thank goodness she had the presence of mind and the ambition to write those books. . . . And could see the future . . . and claim her space.”40 The play went through a few evolutions to fit audiences and contexts. Working with the US Capitol Historical Society, StoryWorks created a robust set of lesson plans and curriculum to accompany each scene to teach students across the country about local Black organizing, victories, and challenges through Mrs. Pigee’s illustrious life.41 Working with her stories elicited strong responses from those involved. Tarra Slack, director of personnel for the City of Clarksdale, who also played the role of Mrs. Pigee, grew up in Clarksdale and probably met her in the various spaces they coinhabited. Yet Ms. Slack never knew about her sacrifices. She lamented the reality that she had “encountered someone with that greatness and just not known the caliber of greatness that I was in the room with.”42 Embodying Mrs. Pigee, Ms. Slack noted, “gave me a sense of what it was like for my mother and other women of that day, it gave me a sense of how to stand up in a period of struggle and how to fully be present in a moment without really working hard to do that. Allowing the time itself to pull out of you what is necessary.”43 She tapped into Mrs. Pigee’s fearlessness, ignoring the director’s initial requests to express more worry when interacting with the police chief in a scene: “I don’t know where this came from, but there is no fear in that moment. Because when you find yourself between not being able to live and not being able to live, you’re going to pick the thing that calls you victorious in that situation, which was to be fearless in that moment.”44 Ms. Slack carried remorse that Mrs. Pigee had never received her credit during her lifetime, saying, “She probably left this earth not really knowing the impact she would have on this generation. It’s kind of like a seed, when you put it in the ground you think it’s gone, but all of a sudden this plant pops up . . . it produces fruit. It may create shade . . . it could do so much for so many, and you think it’s forgotten.”45 Seeing another opportunity for a more permanent marker for Mrs. Pigee in Clarksdale, Charles Coleman participated in the 2019 Paint the Town event to create murals downtown that represent local history. With the assistance of Chandra Williams, the executive director at the Crossroads Cultural Art Center, Coleman painted Vera Pigee, using her image from one of her book covers. He worked late at night after work and volunteered his time. He mused, “That’s the least I could do knowing that she probably spent countless of hours staying up at night doing things for her community for the next generation in order to have a better way of life.” He had also noticed the community reaction to the first production of Beautiful Agitators. “As soon as this story was told . . . from the first night . . . when we had our second act conversations with the community about the play,” he testified, “seeing

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Mural of Mrs. Pigee in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Courtesy of Charles Coleman.

some of those people speechless and in tears, the room . . . something was moving.” He noted wryly, “She’s working from beyond the grave.”46 At these events audiences wanted to talk about Mrs. Pigee, and her personality came across when they shared their memories, creating what Welch termed an “intergenerational experience.” For many of the cast members, these afterthoughts and hearing the responses and testaments were transformative. Layla Young (who played Wilma Jones) concluded, “There is deeper work that can be done through art other than shining your own light . . . there’s a greater sense of community through the shared experiences that we all had.”47 I asked the cast members too young to have known Mrs. Pigee how they felt about her omission in their education and local knowledge. Young learned about her after her audition and quickly answered why she had never

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Moving the Movement Forward. Courtesy of Charles Coleman.

heard about her, “She’s Black, a woman, and from Mississippi . . . in the sixties.”48 Coleman recognized her power and said wistfully, “She was firm, brave, and it makes me wish I’d known her personally myself.”49 Wright registered profound disappointment. I then asked them what Mrs. Pigee had taught them. Young has had more acting opportunities and teaches acting classes in Cleveland—growth she attributes to her work on this project. Coleman noted Mrs. Pigee’s organizational skills and integrity: “She was very strong, and I’ve learned to plan things out strategically . . . think first, always put your family, friends, and community first to better the community . . . and to look at things in a positive light.” Aallyah Wright, who moved to Washington, DC, in August 2021 to propel her career as a journalist, credited Mrs. Pigee’s life lessons in her journey. “Learning about her and her story has pushed me to be not only a better reporter but a better person and to be bold, to stand firm in my beliefs and to lead the work with integrity and also be proud of who I am and where I come from and allow that to be at the forefront wherever I am,” she observed.50 Mrs. Pigee would have been proud of these young people continuing her legacy. Jenna Welch most admired Mrs. Pigee’s commitment to education, voting, and school desegregation and saw her story as an opportunity to inspire students across the country. “She leveraged everything that she had, that she had built, in order to do it. She took huge risks and was happy to do it.” Of the autobiography she adamantly stated, “She didn’t exaggerate, she wasn’t loose with the facts . . . it correlates, it all checks out . . . her documentation gives so much more value because it was truthful . . . it was coming from an

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authentic space.”51 Most recently, with the spirit of Mrs. Pigee as inspiration, StoryWorks and others worked with beauty and barber shops to bring out the vote in 2020.52 As of the summer of 2022, Mrs. Pigee’s image (alongside Aaron Henry) adorns the side of another large downtown building in Clarksdale, Higher Purpose Co., a Black-led nonprofit to help Black economic and entrepreneurial efforts in the area. As Aallyah Wright correctly asserts, “You can tell her spirit is still lingering.”53 I am honored to have known Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee, and to have had direct access to her story. I hope that through the republication of her books, she finally gets all the recognition she deserves. She can now claim her time and place. As Charles Coleman concluded, “Now the whole country knows who she is.”54 Now the whole world knows who she is.

EDITORIAL NOTES

Self-published books often do not get the careful eye needed for copyediting, uniform prose, and appearance. I have made some editorial decisions that do not change meaning or tone but correct minor errors. Many of the paragraphs run on for at least a page—I did not edit this. I did use square brackets to add words for clarity or suggest words when the original gives few clues. Part two consists primarily of oral histories conducted and transcribed by Mrs. Pigee. There are some words that are lost in Mrs. Pigee’s transcription and have no clear alternatives. I italicized book titles and deleted accidental repetitions in the original. I did not alter Mrs. Pigee’s grammar but adjusted apostrophes, spaces, dashes, commas, and minor typos (one-letter errors) in the script (for flow) and moved or inserted quotation marks only when the legibility was compromised; otherwise I left the random quotation marks. This volume includes the original copyright pages from both books, as well as a brief timeline to establish chronology, and footnotes to elaborate on people, events, and facts that Mrs. Pigee assumed readers to already know.

Notes 1. The first part of this essay title comes from the title of a possible 1964 presentation script that Mrs. Pigee wrote. See Vera Mae Pigee, “God Has Always Had a Time, a Place, and a People: Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee,” NAACP Papers IIIC73 Coahoma County 1964–65, Library of Congress. 2. I have used the term “activist mothering” in previous publications to describe Mrs. Pigee’s self-identification as a woman and a mother as tools for her activist work.

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3. The process of finding this history through oral history became another occupation in my research. See Françoise N. Hamlin, “The Book Hasn’t Closed, The Story Is Not Finished: Coahoma County, Mississippi, Civil Rights and the Recovery of a History,” in Sound Historian: Journal of the Texas Oral History Association 8 (2002): 37–60. 4. Françoise N. Hamlin, Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 5. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, January 25, 2000, Detroit, Michigan. 6. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 7. Before her activist life, she had attended the Roosevelt School of Cosmetology in Chicago and worked primarily as a beautician for almost two decades. Once she decided to restart her educational pursuits, weary of in-fighting and the johnny-come-latelys that she made sure to expose, she straddled schooling in Detroit and organizing the youth in Clarksdale. In December 1973 she graduated with her first degree (sociology and journalism) from Wayne State. Her daughter had disengaged herself from the Clarksdale movement in part due to the internal struggles in the early 1960s after her desegregating efforts. She studied at the historically Black college Central State, in Wilberforce, Ohio, now called Central State University, and never really returned once she graduated (https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/ Central_State_University accessed October 18, 2021). 8. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 9. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 10. Grace Halsell, Soul Sister (Washington, DC: Crossroads International, 1999), 192. 11. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 12. Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976). 13. See Toni Cade, The Black Woman: An Anthology (New York: Berkley, 1970); https://his tory.house.gov/People/Listing/C/CHISHOLM,-Shirley-Anita-(C000371)/; and https://www .archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/shirley-chisholm accessed November 1, 2021. 14. See Frances M. Beal, “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” first published in 1969 and subsequently anthologized in multiple volumes, including Cade, The Black Woman. 15. “Group Favors Integration,” Clarksdale Press Register, July 17, 1954. 16. Memo from Calvin Banks to Roy Wilkins re: Mrs. Piggee’s [sic] visit, 13 May 1963, NAACP Papers IIIC73 Coahoma County 56–63, Library of Congress. 17. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 18. Vera Pigee interviewed by Robert Wright, July 5, 1968, in Jackson, Mississippi, Masonic Temple, Ralph Bunch Collection, Howard University. 19. Vera Mae Pigee, “God Has Always Had a Time, a Place and a People: Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee,” NAACP Papers IIIC73 Coahoma County 1964–5, Library of Congress. 20. Reverend King would fly into Memphis and drive down into the Delta for mass meeting events to invigorate local movements but rarely stayed overnight (and when he did, it was usually in Mrs. Pigee’s home). 21. Author interview with Mary Jane Davis, July 19, 2005, Detroit, Michigan. Mrs. Pigee agreed to the tribute only if she had control and could choose those she deemed as worthy veterans for the program. The determination to control her image remained (“Sunday Tribute to Honor Early Civil Rights Leader Dr. Vera Pigee,” Clarksdale Press Register June 5, 1998).

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22. For examples, see Derek Alderman, “Street Names and the Scaling of Memory: The Politics of Commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. within the African American Community,” Area 35, no. 2 (June 2003): 163–73; Roger W. Stump, “Toponymic Commemoration of National Figures: The Cases of Kennedy and King,” Names 36, no. 3/4 (1988): 215; Moaz Azaryahu, “The Power of Commemorative Street Names,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14 (1996): 311–30. 23. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 24. Letter, James Brown Jr. to Vera Pigee, January 19, 1970, NAACP Papers IVE14, Library of Congress. 25. Letter, Roy Wright to Laplois Ashford, July 1, 1964, NAACP Papers III E9 Mississippi, Library of Congress. 26. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 27. Vera Mae Pigee, “God Has Always Had a Time, a Place and a People: Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee,” NAACP Papers IIIC73 Coahoma County 1964–5, Library of Congress. 28. “Sunday Tribute to Honor Early Civil Rights Leader Dr. Vera Pigee,” Clarksdale Press Register, June 5, 1998. 29. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, January 25, 2000, Detroit, Michigan. 30. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 31. Author interview with Vera M. Pigee, October 12–13, 2001, Detroit, Michigan. 32. Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives, ed. Martha H. Swain, Elizabeth A. Payne, and Marjorie J. Spruill (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003), pp. 281–98; Proteus: A Journal of Ideas 22, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 19–27. 33. See Françoise Hamlin, “1961 in Mississippi: Beyond the Freedom Riders,” Mississippi History Now, May 2011, https://mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/1961-in-mississippibeyond-the-freedom-riders; “Vera Mae Pigee: 1924–2007” (2017), Mississippi Encyclopedia, https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/vera-mae-pigee/, accessed October 19, 2021. 34. Tiffany M. Gill, Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). 35. I recently found her testimony in the Congressional Record, when I had a precise date of when the hearing transcript was entered on the floor of the House by Rep. William Fitts Ryan (D-NY) on June 16, 1964. Congressional Record 1964, p. 13999, Mississippi Hearings Section 3, June 16, 1964, 88th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 110, Part 10—Bound Edition pdf. In this hearing Mrs. Pigee testified about her arrest on December 7, 1961, regarding the boycott, her beating at the gas station on April 23, 1963, and the drive-by shooting into her home on June 8, 1963. She testified with Lawrence Guyot and Fannie Lou Hamer, among others. 36. https://www.storyworkstheater.org/agitators, accessed November 9, 2021; author interview with Charles Coleman, October 27, 2021, via Zoom; author interview with Jennifer Welch, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. StoryWorks is a documentary theater company based in San Francisco (and now Clarksdale) that transforms investigative reporting into plays and audio dramas. 37. “Who Is Mrs. Vera Mae Pigee?” promotional video https://vimeo.com/262691679 accessed October 26, 2021. 38. Author interview with Charles Coleman, October 27, 2021, via Zoom. Another Delta native, Layla Young, who auditioned for the play and was cast as Wilma Jones, also had no clue about Mrs. Pigee.

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39. Author interview with Aallyah Wright, November 9, 2021, via Zoom. 40. Author interview with Jennifer Welch, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. 41. https://www.storyworkstheater.org/civil-rights-curriculum, accessed October 26, 2021. 42. Author interview with Tarra Slack, November 3, 2021, via Zoom. 43. Author interview with Tarra Slack, November 3, 2021, via Zoom. 44. Author interview with Tarra Slack, November 3, 2021, via Zoom. 45. Author interview with Tarra Slack, November 3, 2021, via Zoom. 46. Author interview with Charles Coleman, October 27, 2021, via Zoom. 47. Author interview with Layla Young, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. 48. Author interview with Layla Young, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. 49. Author interview with Charles Coleman, October 27, 2021, via Zoom. 50. Author interview with Aallyah Wright, November 9, 2021, via Zoom. 51. Author interview with Jennifer Welch, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. 52. Author interview with Jennifer Welch, October 25, 2021, via Zoom. 53. Author interview with Aallyah Wright, November 9, 2021, via Zoom. 54. Author interview with Charles Coleman, October 27, 2021 via Zoom.

THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES

THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES Part One

By Vera Pigee

Copyright © 1975 by Vera Pigee All Rights Reserved Order Copies Directly from VERA PIGEE 14110 Steele Detroit, Michigan 48227 Printed by Harlo Press, 16721 Hamilton Avenue, Detroit, Michigan 48203

LEITMOTIF Why I Wrote This Book I must pause to share with you my reason for writing this book. One autumn morning in 1974, I had a vision. Two hands were passing a book to me. The book has the appearance of the Bible. I woke up actually reaching for the book. A few weeks later at about the same time, I had another vision. I saw that same book lying on my bed, opened. A voice said to me, “Pigee, finish My book, and your title shall be The Struggle of Struggles. “Lord, why that title?” I asked. “This is the answer to your prayer,” the voice answered. “Write the book and tell both sides of this controversial subject.” “Yes, Lord,” I replied—but I kept on running. I had been burdened with an idea for a book for more than ten years. My first idea was that of writing a national NAACP Freedom Songbook.1 I discussed this possibility with Reverend Gloster Current, director of the NAACP branch, at my home while he was a guest of the Coahoma County NAACP.2 He informed me that other local groups had printed freedom songbooks. I replied, “Yes, I know. But I want a national NAACP Freedom Songbook—a book that will captivate the motivating power of the freedom songs, so others could feel what I had experienced as these songs kept renewing spirits in Clarksdale.” I appealed to the local, state, regional and national NAACP for material; made several trips to the national office to meet with the songbook committee appointed by the director and kept pestering the director. After several years my efforts were rewarded. The first National NAACP Freedom Songbook was 1. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909. 2. Gloster Current (1913–97): director of branches in the national NAACP Office (1947–77).

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THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES, PART ONE

published. Lift Every Voice.3 I received an autographed copy from the director, autographed to “The Pesterer, Pigee,” signed by Gloster Current. I had worked a little on this book in 1969 with the help and encouragement of Miss Grace Halsell, the author of Soul Sister.4 At the time I had the Clarksdale Story in mind as a title. For three years I have written an article for America’s Voices (formerly Black Voices). My theme is “Beautifying Blackness.” I have been honored to speak at local, district, state, regional, national, and international affairs, at which time I always spoke about “the struggle.” (I was so involved with my academic activities) I stopped working on my book. Still, I could not get away from the idea while studying at the University of Michigan, Wayne County Community College, and Wayne State University. I continued to give lectures and write many papers on various segments of the civil rights struggle. One day I checked out a book from the Richard Branch of the Detroit Public Library, whose author wrote: “A black man in Clarksdale told me the freedom riders sat in the Illinois Central Railroad Station.” I showed this paragraph to the librarian, explaining that it was Adrian Beard, Wilma Jones, and Mary Jane Pigee (my daughter) who sat in that station, and that the freedom riders did not come through Clarksdale. The librarian stated that other people had told her they had read something about the Civil Rights Struggle in the sixties which, of course, was not true. She also asked me, “Why don’t you write a book?” I took the book home with me and showed it to my daughter. I told her I did not believe the man in Clarksdale had told that lie. She replied, “I believe he did. He is a habitual liar. I hate him. With all of your knowledge and involvements, why don’t you write a book?” I reprimanded her for saying that she hated anyone. I promised her I would write a book when I obtained my degree. My husband, Paul Pigee, said, “You don’t have to hate him! Mary Jane and I hate him enough for you.”5 I kept running. When I received my degree in Sociology and Journalism I started to work toward my Master’s degree and started job hunting. I took and passed a written test, and when I went for an interview the supervisor looked at my application and asked, “Why don’t you write a book?” I did not take this job. Instead, I went to a college and put in an application to teach on 3. The NAACP published Lift Ev’ry Voice: NAACP Songbook in 1972. 4. Grace Halsell (1923–2000): journalist and writer who disguised herself as a Black woman to understand racism in America. She talks about Mrs. Pigee in Soul Sister (New York: World, 1969). 5. Paul Pigee (1921–2004).

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solving social problems. The director of personnel, after carefully examining my resume, asked, “Why don’t you write a book?” In November I went home to Clarksdale. I stopped by to see a member of my membership church (Chapel Hill), Mrs. Hazel Ward. When I walked into the cleaners where she was working, she said to a customer, “I just told a friend of mine Mrs. Pigee should write a book about her participation in the Civil Rights Struggle.” That night I went to Mrs. Minnie Booker’s house, another of my church members, to eat ice milk and ginger ale. She said to me, “Mrs. Pigee, today I was reflecting on your role in the civil rights struggle and how Emmett Burns said I could not vote in the election when a little group was fighting you. I came home and got the letter I received from him and went back to vote, asking him if I was not a paid-up member.6 I wonder where he got my name and address? He didn’t know me. You will always have my prayers and my support. I realize, of course, there is an internal conflict you are fighting now, but you will find yourself and you will write about it.” I told Reverend J. D. Rayford about these experiences. He replied, “Yes, Mrs. Pigee, I know. I had a similar experience when I first organized the Rayford Chapel Church.7 Write your book!” I kept on running. I realized by this time that God had given me visions and confirmations. I began to epitomize the civil rights struggle and its goals and achievements, step by step. Yet there was an immoral frenziness [frenziedness]. In my scrutiny I saw that we had been biased, in declaring all southern white men guilty and all other, white and black, men innocent. I saw black and white, men and women, who had contributed absolutely nothing to the struggle, yet they are treating the NAACP as if its program slid along on their blood alone; trying to take power, gain honor and respect and have all the best jobs, running the poverty programs like the Nixon administration ran Watergate. Some of the names in this book may become repetitious but, from the middle 50s until civil rights and poverty bills were passed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, only a few people really participated. That’s the way it was!

6. She is referring to the Coahoma County NAACP branch elections. 7. J. D. Rayford (1895–1984); Rayford Chapel Baptist Church, Clarksdale.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A special thanks to all those previously mentioned and to all who helped me spiritually, physically, financially, and morally; to the NAACP for providing the legal expertise, bail bond money and lobbyist Clarence Mitchell who worked on legislation as only he could have done which provided the vehicle on which we began to ride over segregation and discrimination. To the clientele of Pigee’s Beauty Salon whose acceptance of my participation in the Civil Rights Struggle enabled me to pursue a most lucrative career. Congressman Allard Lowenstein, Dr. C. S. Stamps and Mrs. Thelma Ferguson Harrison of New York City; Mrs. Eva Morgan, Mrs. Alice Elizabeth Thompson, Phillip Gordan, Billie Guynes and Roosevelt Monk of Detroit; Mrs. Clara Luper and her children; Calvin Luper and Mrs. Marilyn Luper Wesley of Oklahoma City; Reverend James Rayford of Columbus; Mrs. Lorraine Fuller of Chicago; Mrs. M. Echenbacher of Washington; members of the Coahoma County NAACP Branch and Youth Council who worked with me on numerous dangerous projects. Mrs. Elizabeth Stringer; Mrs. Theodosia Thomas; Mrs. Henrietta Archie; Mrs. Saddie Cash; Mrs. Beatrice Wright; Roy Wright of Gary, Indiana; Larry Graham; Howard Wright; Miss Shirley Graham; Mrs. Annie Sanders; Miss Hattie Mae Gilmore; Reverend B. T. Cooper; Reverend Willie Goodloe. Reverend S. A. Allen and Reverend Willie Malone of Marks; Reverend J. D. Rayford; Reverend E. T. Smith; Henry Espy; Mrs. Annie Mae Goon. To my family, Paul Pigee, my husband, of Clarksdale and Detroit; my daughter, Mrs. Mary Jane Pigee Williams, and her husband, Frank Williams, of Boston; W. C. Berry, my brother, and his children Ken and Agnes; Mrs. Janie Smith, my aunt; Mrs. M. A. Shankling of Chicago; Mrs. Sarah Kerkendall, my cousin, of Detroit; my mother-in-law, Mrs. Martha Pigee, of Glendora; my aunt, Mrs. Della Duman of Clarksdale; the Pigee Youth Council of the NAACP; and to all of my relatives in Mississippi, Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, and Detroit. 9

CONTENTS Leitmotif—Why I Wrote This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 A Personal Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . NAACP Youth and Branches Activities . . . . C.O.F.O. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Federal Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Depositions of Blacks in Tallahatchie County Positive Action Finally. . . . . . . . . . . . . . F.B.I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Various Pressures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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. 13 . 22 . 56 . 65 . 66 . 72 . 73 . 81

Nominating Committees 1968–70 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 1970–72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 1972–74 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Sources of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

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A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION I, Vera Mae Berry Pigee, was born to Mr. Wilder Berry and Mrs. Lucy Wright Berry, in Leflore County, just south of Glendora, Mississippi, because my mother had gone to the home of her maternal grandmother, who was a midwife, prior to my birth. My father and mother lived at Tutwiler, Mississippi, Tallahatchie County.1 They were sharecroppers on a plantation. I have a brother, W. C. Berry, who resides in Chicago, Illinois. My father was a 10th or 12th grade student. He was a barber and a tailor and enjoyed traveling. I do not know if he did any foreign traveling other than Canada, but he traveled the length and width of the United States. When my brother and I were preschool age, we knew no poverty as one may associate poverty with sharecroppers. Our father ran a barber shop and cleaners from our house. He and mother raised plenty of vegetables, hogs, cows, ducks, turkeys and chickens. Some of the older members of the family said mother’s house was pretty and modern for its rural setting and era. My father enjoyed drinking and traveling and one day Mother said he just walked away. They tried to make their marriage work by reuniting on several occasions, but my father’s taste for whiskey had grown as had his love for traveling. Before he died, he said he had lived to regret his mistake of deserting his family. Mother, unlike my father in various ways, was an 8th grade student, a non-drinker, and in 53 years of life only traveled in four states, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi. She was a neat housekeeper, a good cook and deeply religious. My mother had a melodious voice. She sang in the Silent Grove Missionary Baptist Church choir in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for many years. When my brother and I were small, Mother taught us to say grace before meals and the Lord’s Prayer before we retired. My father’s sister came to visit 1. Glendora is approximately thirty-two miles southeast from Clarksdale; Tutwiler is approximately sixteen miles southeast from Clarksdale.

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us, and brought two of her children who were older than my brother and I. When her son kneeled and began to say his prayers, I ran to my mother and said, “Mama, he is saying our prayers.” To me, the Lord’s Prayer was so sacred I thought each mother had her individual prayers which she taught to her family. My mother used to sing, pray and even shout when I could not understand or see why. She taught a Sunday School class for many years and her students really loved her. If it rained on Sunday morning, the children she taught, who lived nearby, would get their books and come to our house and Mrs. Berry would teach her class. She was a strong woman physically, spiritually and mentally. She was alert to the conditions of local, state and national affairs, and very considerate of her neighbor friends’ thoughts and beliefs. Physically, she picked and chopped cotton, carried the cotton to the gin, cut and hauled wood and protected my brother and I completely. A man once hit my mother with a belt. My brother, who was ill, was lying on a pallet under a shade tree. He grabbed a switch and hit the man, so the man hit him with the belt. My mother picked up a nearby piece of iron and almost beat that man to death—not for hitting her, but for hitting her sick son. Mother was blunt with people, white and black. This was not the acceptable thing for blacks in the South in that period of our history. She worked for a white family in Clarksdale in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Sunday was her day off. After deductions her take home pay was $14. Mother made breakfast, dinner, cleaned the house, washed, ironed and baby sat. The woman Mother worked for would finish making supper for her family in the late afternoon. Mother got off about 2 p.m. She usually started the meal if the family wanted fried chicken and biscuits. She made biscuits and prepared the chicken and put them in the refrigerator. The lady Mother worked for would always make a mess, particularly on the kitchen floor. Mother told her, “I am going to mop and wax this kitchen floor every Monday and put clean newspaper on it. When I finish my work each day I will take the paper up, sweep the floor and put more paper on it. Because you make such a mess on the floor every evening, I am not going to mop this floor every day. When I finish my work on Saturdays, I will take the paper off the floor and sweep it. This way, when your guests come, the floor will be clean.” Mother’s employer agreed with the plan. A few weeks later, Mother was getting off a little early one Saturday. “Lucy, mop the kitchen floor before you leave,” said the employer. “No. I will not,” Mother said. “The cook I had used to mop my kitchen every day.” “Where is she?”

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“Dead.” “That’s what I thought. That’s why I’m not going to mop it every day. I’m not going to let you work me to death, like you did her. Mop it yourself! It’s your floor. I’m doing more work now than I’m getting paid for. Pay me so I can go home, and you can get someone else to do all of this work. I won’t be back!” “Don’t you dare to sass me.” “Both of us are grown women with grown children and grandchildren, and no way can one of us sass the other. You are older than I am, but we are equally grown.” The employer’s husband came into the kitchen and asked what the problem was. Mother told him. He said, “Lucy, here is your pay. This floor is clean. Go home and cool off. We will see you Monday.” “If I do come back, I’m going to care for the kitchen the way we agreed on.” “Go on home! I’ll talk with her after she cools off.” Prior to this job, my mother worked for a plantation owner and his family. She lived in the little servant shack. There were three other servants, a cook, a butler, and a chauffeur. Mother was the maid. The first day mother worked for this family, she went into the kitchen for her breakfast. The cook had prepared corn cakes, syrup and coffee, but there was no sugar and cream for the coffee. Mother asked the cook for sugar and cream. The cook said, “She does not give us sugar and cream, but none of the servants like it in our coffee anyway.” “I am going to ask her for sugar and cream for my coffee,” Mother said. “No. Don’t go in there this early in the morning asking for anything.” “Why not? She is up.” When mother turned to walk away, the cook, butler and chauffeur jumped up from the table. Mother knocked on the bedroom door. The employer answered in a hostile voice, “Who is it? What do you want?” “This is the maid,” Mother said, “and I want some sugar and cream for my coffee, please.” The employer opened the door and gave Mother a small can of PET milk and a dish of sugar.2 When she left the kitchen, one of the servants said, “I am surprised she didn’t start screaming.” “That ain’t all she will do,” the cook said. “What else will she do?” Mother asked. No one answered. The servants just looked at each other and hunched up their shoulders.

2. PET milk: A brand of evaporated milk.

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The sugar and cream were used up in a day or two and Mother went for more. She was asked if she had used it all. Mother answered that all the help used it in their coffee. “What?” asked the employer as she rushed to the kitchen to ask the help why they had lied, saying, “I hate niggers who lie.” The cook became ill and the plantation owner’s wife asked Mother to cook during her illness. Mother agreed. When the cook returned to work, the lady for whom she worked asked Mother to keep the job as cook. “No,” said Mother. “Why?” Mother told her she was tired of cooking, and she “would not cook for her at all if she wasn’t tired, because you measure the food for your cook.” Mother became ill shortly after the cook’s illness and her employer ran to the telephone and called her own personal physician. She asked him to come at once because the best servant she ever had was sick. When the doctor arrived, she told him, “Cure Lucy, and when she quits working for me I want you to kill her!” The day Mother finally left, this lady ran to the telephone and called the same doctor and told him, “Lucy is leaving me.” Mother asked her, “Why are you calling him? I would never take any of his medicine anymore.” Lucy Berry was the best economic [home economist] I have ever known. When my brother and I were growing up she worked spring, summer, and fall, raising chickens, hogs, gardening, and canning fruit and vegetables. When she was not working in the cotton and corn fields, in the winter, she would get up early in the morning and make a fire in the open fireplace, to warm the bedroom in which we slept in order that my brother and I could dress in comfort as much as humanly possible. Then, she would make a fire in the stove in the kitchen, bake biscuits, fry ham, make ham gravy and coffee, serve our breakfast, pack our lunch and send us off to school. Mother would put on a big black pot of peas or greens, potatoes, cornbread, a peach or blackberry pie and season the entire meal with tender love and care. Once we were off to school and dinner was cooking, she would take our old dresses and old pants and shirts which belonged to my brother, and begin quilting quilts. These quilts were not fancy, but they were clean, comfortable and warm. Every morning when Mother would go to milk the cow, she took the cow a little handout [handful] of shells from the peas or husks from the corn meal, sprinkled with a little salt. She fed the cat and dog from the table. She

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taught us to be kind to animals. She was so organized in disbursing her time, meager funds, material possessions, love and affection. My mother wanted me to get an education. At 14, I was in the 9th grade. There were no tuition-free high schools for blacks in my area in the Mississippi Delta. A great-aunt of mine, whom I had never seen, came to visit us. She wanted to take me to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to complete my education. I wanted to finish school but my mother’s health was poor. I was afraid of leaving her because of her health and also the intimacy between us. She was my father, mother and sister. To receive a letter stating that she was ill, knowing that I could not come home to take care of her for the lack of funds, would have been more than I possibly would have been able to comprehend. Paul Pigee came to our house to meet my aunt. She told him of her plans to take me home with her. He grinned, made no comments, and left immediately. He went home and told his mother he wanted to marry me and my aunt was taking me away. Early the next morning his mother, Mrs. Martha Pigee, came and told my mother that Paul did not want her daughter to go away, he wanted to marry her. Paul worked in a grocery store in Glendora, Mississippi. He was 18 years old. His salary consisted of old clothing, stale food and a little money, which he carried home to his mother and seven brothers and sisters, of which he was the second oldest. In two months, we were married. Some members of my family protested my getting married because of our ages. After we were married Paul continued to work at the store. The owner would give him cold cuts, fruit, candy and a soft drink for his lunch. Paul always chose a large bottle of pop and he would bring the fruit, candy and drink home to share with me. The first Saturday prior to meeting my aunt, Paul did not go to work. He sat on his parents’ porch waiting for my mother and I to pass on our way to town. He joined us. Paul and I sat on a bench in a store all that afternoon. We ate ice cream and drank pop. It was at this time he asked me to marry him.

• • • Sociologically we planned out our lives and, through the years, we fulfilled the plans we had made. We planned to have two daughters. Mary Jane Pigee was born on September 1st. I was sixteen years old on September 2nd. Our second daughter, Vera Pigee, was born sixteen months later and expired in seventeen days. Our second goal was a career for me in either cosmetology or music. I studied both but chose cosmetology.

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Our third goal was to purchase our own home while our daughter was at a pre-school age. We acquired our first house when Mary Jane was four. Our fourth goal was to send Mary Jane to the school of her choice. She chose Central State College, at Wilberforce, Ohio; the University of Michigan, Roosevelt University, and the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Our next goal was to buy a new car and complete my education. Paul kept his promise to educate his daughter and his wife, and my graduation gift was an all-expenses paid trip on an NAACP tour of six countries: Canada, Europe, Switzerland, Uganda, Kenya and Germany. Sid Finley, who was in charge of the tour group, was asked to appear on the only TV station in Nairobi, Kenya, with two other members of the group.3 I was honored to be one of the participants. Finley discussed NAACP policy. I discussed branch and youth activities. The disc jockey who interviewed us asked me to speak to the put down of the NAACP. He had heard from blacks, when he was a student in America, that the NAACP is antiquated. I asked him, “If the NAACP was obsolete, could it get 44 business and professional men and women, and students 10,000 miles from home in April?” He said, “No.” “There is your answer,” I said. “The people who indoctrinated you knew about as much about the organization as you did.” Gloster Current came to my graduation at Cobo Hall in Detroit and brought me a Panasonic clock radio, a congratulatory card autographed by many people at the national office, and some money.4 He said he did not know what made me tick, and he encouraged me to go after my Master’s degree. He also said that the nation knew about the years of sacrificial service I had given the NAACP.

• • • Mrs. M. A. Shankling, a cousin who had helped Mother rear W. C. and myself, respected my right to marry with no school or job; I had no choice. When the wedding procession was in progress a lady said, “What a shame to let that baby marry.” Mother was a practitioner trained by experience. She was a newlywed when the influenza of 1918 reached the epidemic level. My parental grandparents moved my father and mother to their home, after both of them became flu victims. Mother said daddy’s illness was brief. She was losing her physical and mental strength. Her spiritual strength diagnosed her illness and 3. Sydney Finley Jr (1931–2002) served as the Midwest regional director of the NAACP in the 1960s and was a high-ranking officer in the Chicago (Southside) NAACP branch. 4. Cobo Hall was the Detroit Convention Center, now the TCF Center.

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predicted the cure. The deteriorating condition of her body was not caused by the flu, per se, but by the hot liquid diet prescribed by her physician. My father and mother in-law, my husband and all members of the family had gone to work in the fields, except my sister-in-law, Gollie. Gollie was left at the house to do the chores and care for me. She cooked some greens, salt pork, cornbread, potatoes, blackberry pie and made some fresh buttermilk. I begged her to give me some solid food. When she refused I cried. I told her the Lord had shown me my flu was gone and if I did not get some food I was going to die, as did some of the people we knew. Gollie asked me if some of them had died from hunger. I said, “Yes.” She began to cry and went to the kitchen and brought me a little of all the food she had prepared. Upon returning, she asked me not to tell anyone she had given me the food—even if it made me worse. I promised I would not tell under any circumstances. When I began to eat the food, one could hear it going down in my empty stomach. I slept like a newborn baby that night. Gollie did not sleep. She prayed all night that the food would not kill me. The next day I could hardly wait until the family went to work so Gollie could feed me. A few days after she started feeding me I was strong enough to dress myself, walk to the table and eat with the family. My mother-in-law asked, “What did Gollie do for you? You are recuperating unbelievably fast!” I asked her if she really wanted to know and she said, “Yes.” I told her Gollie had given me some food, some of everything she cooked. When my daughter Mary Jane was born, I would not go to the hospital. Instead, I went home to Mother. She gave me some of everything she cooked because, she said, she almost starved when her children were born due to the inexperience of the doctors and midwives. My mother was spiritually strong enough to tell the doctors, nurses, family and friends she would not get well and that she was not afraid to die. She asked me to bury her in her choir robe, slip, panties, hose, gloves, and her yellow gold ring. She wanted me to style her hair, but my friends objected and, in my grief, I agreed with them. I hate myself for not completely keeping my promise to my mother. She tried so hard to prepare me mentally and spiritually for her departure. When she became desperately ill, I was in Beauty College in Chicago. I had been proprietor of Pigee’s Beauty Salon in Clarksdale for four years. I was interested in theory and the latest in hair fashion and I graduated from an integrated beauty college. Mrs. Annie Mae Goon sent me a telegram about my mother’s illness. I received the telegram on a Monday morning. Tuesday morning, I arrived in Clarksdale on the 11 o’clock train. When I walked into Mother’s house,

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my stepfather said, “When Lucy heard the train whistle blow, she said you were on that train.” Lucy was asleep. She opened her eyes and looked up into my face and frowned like a little child. She began to cry. I said, “If you are crying because I came to see about you, I will go back to Chicago, where Paul and Mary Jane are. They won’t cry.” She smiled and said she wouldn’t cry any more. I sat down on the side of her bed for a few minutes. She did not speak. I said, “Now you are not going to talk to me.” She began to talk. “I have been very ill the six weeks you have been away. Of course, I knew something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what. One day I went to your beauty shop and talked with your operator and customers. It seemed so lonesome to me because you were not there. I cried. That was my last trip to your shop. I know what I felt now. My mother came to see me and gave me a piece of cake, the best I ever tasted. I could not walk when she came to visit me. I have only seen my mother twice to know who she was. Her name was Hattie Matthews. She died when I was a baby. She was 19 years old, beautiful, and sang like an angel. “The first time she visited me was before you were born. Your brother was a baby. Your daddy and I were living on Dr. Birtfield’s plantation between Drew and Ruleville, Mississippi.5 Your daddy carried a bale of cotton to the gin and before he returned, I got sick and hot and no one was there to do anything for me. I took some medicine but I was getting worse. I went to the window and looked out to see if I could see anyone passing. Everything was quiet and still. I got into bed and looked at my baby. He was asleep. I began to pray. I remembered just as well as if it were yesterday. I thought I was dying. I asked the Lord to take care of my baby. “At that very moment my mother came in, dressed in white and smiling. She sat on the side of the bed just as you are doing now. She opened a big beautiful fan and fanned me a few strokes. The air was the coolest I ever felt. Then, she reached a long-handled spoon toward my mouth without saying a word. I opened my mouth and took the medicine. The pain left and I fell asleep. I am not afraid to die. I was converted when I was seven years old. I have made mistakes. I have been right and wrong sometimes, but God knows I wanted and tried to do what pleased Him all my life. Look in the chifforobe drawer. You will see both of my policies.” She jumped up and said, “Let me show you I can walk now. I told Reverend Jones you were on that train. I did not want you to know I was sick. When I first became ill, my husband, my neighbors and Dr. O. G. Smith took good 5. Sunflower County.

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care of me. After my mother visited me, I got up and was able to do my housework. I went to church and sang in the choir. My last time. I went to a friend of mine’s funeral and while we were viewing the body, the funeral director played the record “Tis The Old Ship of Zion” very softly. That is what I want. I want the funeral director to play that record. I want him to push my casket to the seat where you, my son-in-law, my little granddaughter, my husband and other relatives will be sitting so you can all view my body.” At this point, I had become so emotional my struggle to contain myself had failed. She said, “Oh! Don’t cry. I will make a beautiful corpse. Let me show you.” She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes and smiled. Then she said, “I would have died two years ago if it had not been for the many acts of kindness you have shown me. When I would go to the doctor you went with me. You paid for our fare, the doctor, and for my medicine. You paid the premiums on my insurance each week, and when the insurance company paid me, you would not accept a penny. You opened a grocery account for me, made big Sunday and holiday dinners and I was always at the head of your guest list. My son—because I do not feel like Paul is my son-in-law—has been so good to me. When he was working here, even though he was not making a big salary, every time he had a payday you all shared with me. He used to wash and iron my clothes, clean my house, cook and bring me food when he was off his job and you was working in your beauty shop. I wished at one time that I could get well just to work and repay you. Now that I know that I am not, God is going to bless you.” I said, “You are going to get well. I am going to take you to John Gaston Hospital in Memphis.”6 She said, “I can’t walk well enough to get on a bus, train or even in a car.” I said, “Oh! I am going to get a good friend of mine to take you. He is an expert in taking those who are ill to the hospital.” “Who?” Mother asked. “Mr. Willie Whitehead.” I said. “He drives an ambulance for Delta Burial.”7 She asked, “When?” I told her I would have to make the arrangements with the hospital first. She stayed one week in the hospital. A doctor wanted to perform surgery on my mother and I told him she was too weak. She would die on the operation table. He said, “This is needle and knife day. If you do not want her operated on, why did you bring her here? She is going to die.” I told him I brought her there because “I thought, with advanced medical usage, she could get a little relief. All of us are going to die. Including you.” 6. Opened in 1936 with Public Works Administration funds and demolished in 1990. 7. Delta Burial Funeral Home.

NAACP YOUTH AND BRANCHES ACTIVITIES

The positions of Coahoma County and Mississippi State Youth NAACP Advisor were forced on me. I attended my first Mississippi State Conference Board meeting the summer of 1955 in Jackson, Mississippi. Few NAACP members, adults and youth were present. Coahoma County had but one youth present, my daughter, Mary Jane Pigee. John Frazer, a youth from Greenville, Amos Brown and Dr. B. E. Murph had a Youth Freedom Choir with him from Laurel. The State Conference of Adults and Youth Conference Advisors voted for Dr. Murph and I to be the State NAACP Youth Conference Advisors.1 I objected because Coahoma County had no NAACP Youth Council and I could not see myself going to the State Youth Conference advising organized youth, with us not having a local unit. Medgar Evers, field secretary for the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP branches, said, I was tuned in on the right wave length.2 He was in the process of organizing youth councils and branches and it was not easy, because of the apathy on the part of the NAACP members to become involved. He knew I was willing to become active, having just been elected secretary to the Coahoma County Branch! He asked if I would be willing to organize a Youth Council in Coahoma County. I told him I knew nothing about the formation of a Youth Council. Medgar Evers, C. R. Darden, president, and all said, “You can learn.”3 My reply was, “I’m not looking for an excuse! I am only dealing with facts.” “I told the Coahoma County branch when we were in the process of getting started, and again when I was elected secretary, that the only thing I 1. B. E. Murph (1908–72): a dentist and president of the Laurel branch in Mississippi. 2. Medgar Wiley Evers (1925–63). In 1955 he was also a member of the Coahoma County NAACP branch. 3. Charles R. Darden (1911–89): 1955–60 he served as state president of the NAACP.

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knew about the NAACP was that it is something that is supposed to make these Mississippi white folks act like human beings and I want to be a part of that monster. I am going to learn all about it.” I went to the state office after the meeting and gathered all the reading material I could about the organization. I immediately began to try to get 25 paid youth members to meet the membership requirement to secure a Youth Council Charter. We worked from 1955 to 1959 and finally, after five years of hard unpopular membership campaigning (door to door, beauty shops, barber shops, civil and social groups, individuals and churches when possible), we had 34 youth NAACP memberships. Some of the parents who let their children join requested that the name of their young remain anonymous and not appear on the charter. Steve Abraham was president of the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP and Mary Jane Pigee was vice president. This is the only Youth Council in the state which has continued to function ever since its inception. This was my first effort at organizing a group. I knew the more involved I became, the higher the risk that my family and I would suffer harassment, reprisals, physical abuse and maybe death. My husband, Paul, my daughter, Mary Jane, and I had a conference. We discussed the possibilities of all of the abovementioned things happening and particularly Paul’s chances of losing his job. Paul said, “Someone needed to speak out against all forms of segregation. If this is what you want to do, I am willing to make whatever sacrifice we must make. On my job they give white folks who work there two weeks paid vacation. Blacks who work the same job get no vacation. I hope we are doing the right thing. I am not as optimistic as you are about how fair blacks will be with each other if and when we come into power by the suffering of a few. I have one question. If I lose my job, what then?” “If you lose your job,” I told Paul, “we will open a café in the rear of my beauty shop.” He said, “OK.” Mary Jane did not understand the seriousness of a black person in Mississippi in the 50’s challenging the white power structure, with its composition of the White Citizens’ Council and Ku-Klux-Klan.4 It was also comical to her to hear us debate as to what could happen because of our activities. She said, “Mother, you do not live in any of these white people’s house, nor do you work for them. Therefore, I do not see how they can hurt you financially.” 4. White Citizens’ Councils: network of segregationist organizations created in Indianola, Mississippi, in July 1954 as a direct response to thwart the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Ku Klux Klan: extremist, white supremacist, violent hate group that operates as a secret society created after the Civil War by former Confederates.

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I said to her, “Your father works for a gang of them. The worst kind. Those who own the plantations, cotton, compress and the shacks in which many blacks live and many of those people are my customers.” I went to work full speed for the NAACP for gratis, with the blessing of my family. The few youth council members and myself became involved in a series of NAACP activities, membership and voter registration campaigns, passing out newsletters, stuffing and sealing envelopes, serving as hostess for the Coahoma County branch Freedom Dinner. All of this work was done gratis, mainly using my beauty shop and home for the office. The price of tickets ranged from $1.00 to $3.50 from 1956 to 1972. Mrs. Ruby Hurley, the 5th Southeast Region NAACP secretary who had worked with the Coahoma County NAACP branch and Youth Council from their inception, shared the organization’s birth and growth pains.5 She nourished the officers with her knowledge of the organization, reprimanded us when we needed reprimanding, and when we didn’t. She also guided us from the local branch to the Mississippi State Conference, the 5th South East Regional and the National NAACP Conventions. Mrs. Hurley was speaking in Clarksdale, in the early 60’s for the Coahoma County branch of NAACP’s Annual Freedom Dinner. She observed the cooperation of the Active Youth Council members. She also noticed my refusing admittance to a few youths and, when the dinner was over, she asked the Youth Council president, Roy Wright, and I, what our formula was for such youth cooperation. I told her the Executive Board and branch gave me permission to let only the active Youth Council members in, admission free, to serve the dinner. Afterward, if food was left over, the youths were permitted to eat it. These youths whom I turned away were members, but not active members. We had never seen some of them at a meeting, and my life philosophy is “If one cannot sweep the floor, one can’t sit on the stage.” I said to Mrs. Hurley, “Our organization is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If I let those youths in to get a free meal and they show off on our big night, there may not be another big night. I know one cannot please everyone, but I want the local, state and national youths and adults to remember me not only as one of the pioneers for freedom in Clarksdale, Coahoma County, and the state of Mississippi, or as the “Civil Rights Queen,” or the “lady of hats” and many other more sophisticated terms. I just want the world to know that “She was fair.” 5. Ruby Hurley (1909–80) opened the first permanent NAACP office in the South (Birmingham, Alabama, then Atlanta, Georgia) and worked to grow local branches and support individuals across the region in their campaigns and cases until her retirement in 1978.

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The youths worked with all of the branch’s projects. The branch provided transportation for youths to the state conference board, the annual state, regional conference and a few national conventions. Coahoma County Youth Council delegates attended their first state conference in Jackson in 1955. The conference opened the first week in November. Our delegates were Sarah Gaston and Mary Jane Pigee. Because the youth council had no money, the branch arranged a ride for the youth delegates, and Mary Cox, Sarah Gaston’s aunt, gave the girls food and lodging. One branch member attended the conference. Three of us drove back to Clarksdale after the banquet. I worked in my beauty shop Friday and Saturday. I returned to Jackson, Sunday, for the state conference board meeting and public freedom rally. I also gave Mary Cox’s landlord some of the money I had earned, for giving the two youth delegates lodging. Miss Cox refused to accept any compensation for the food the girls consumed. Instead, she added me to her Sunday dinner list. By rejecting an invitation the Chamber of Commerce had previously extended to two local black schools, inviting their band to participate in the annual Christmas parade, the white power structure gave the Civil Rights Movement the momentum it needed.6 Prior to the parade, the Chamber of Commerce notified the schools that the invitation had been withdrawn. The band could not participate in the parade. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as far as community involvement. Before this action by the Chamber of Commerce, only a small percentage of the colored community, as it was called at that time, was actually participating. This was a blessing in disguise. All the youths in the community grieved because, members of the band or not, they looked forward to seeing the parade. When non-NAACP youths went home telling their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, relatives and friends that the Higgins High School and Coahoma Junior College bands could not perform in the Christmas parade merely because the white folks said so, everyone wanted to know what they could do. The Coahoma County Youth Council had a meeting in my beauty shop the same day the school received the letter of withdrawal. The youths wanted to know what they could do. I told them that the branch was having a meeting the next night and they should pass out this information. “Encourage your families, friends, classmates and instructors to be present, and use the phrase ‘No Parade, No Trade’ for a boycott theme.”

6. This occurred in 1961.

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Some of the youth council members went to the area of the city which was being boycotted, where some of the salespeople came out onto the street and invited them in. The youths refused, saying “No Parade, No Trade.” That night the youths opened the meeting as usual, singing freedom songs. One received a message from those songs unlike ever before. “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” The other day as I was walking, I read a sign No colored allowed. I read that sign, dear. I read it over, and then I hung my head and cried. I realized that no meeting could have been complete without singing the National Anthem of the Civil Rights Struggle, “We Shall Overcome.” We sang these songs with vehemence, until everyone present could see and feel the dawning of freedom for black folks in Clarksdale, Mississippi. We re-emphasized the reason and the need for the boycott! The Coahoma County branch of NAACP’s negotiating committee met with the managers of all the business establishments in Clarksdale (hotels, motels, department stores, banks, theaters, Greyhound Bus Company, Illinois Central Railroad, service stations, five and ten cents stores) who were supplying two to four facilities and creating additional expense for themselves. The county court house had two water fountains, one for White, the other for Colored; four rest rooms, one for White Ladies, White Men, Colored Women, and Colored Men. They gave us every excuse imaginable. Each group or person we met with told us they were powerless to do anything about the Illinois Central Railroad and Greyhound Bus Company.7 We informed them that we had registered our complaint with the proper authorities, still we were trying to give them the entire basis of our grievances. We asked them what they would do about the injustices they could do something about. We were not even promised summer jobs for the youth. Therefore, we had no choice but to call a boycott. We issued instructions to one or two thousand who came to the next meeting. This time we were asking them not to do anything. Just stay home until our sons and daughters could get jobs that were not obsequious, get a drink of water where they pleased, use all facilities and march in the Christmas parade. Many black people who had called the mass meeting and the movement a mess, said, “These white folks ain’t done nothing to me.” Yet they came to the meeting. Many of them stood up and said, “All of us can stay at home.” They kept their promise for two years. Many blacks lost their jobs, but many white businesses folded. These are our children. “No Parade, No Trade.”

7. This is in the context of the Freedom Rides of 1961.

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At this crucial time in our plight, the Coahoma County Branch’s activities were intertwined and almost inseparable. The Youth Council sponsored only one demonstration. This was the sit-in at the Illinois Central Train station.8 The Council sponsored many voter registration and NAACP membership campaigns without any financial aid. Yet they were not independent. When they successfully solicited adult membership, the branch got the members and the money. The people who registered were adults. The Council worked in voter registration, voter education and voter participation every year from 1955 to 1972. For five years the Youth Council received a grant and registered over a thousand persons each summer. Their activities included raffles, dances, street rallies, workshops and public programs. The most unique activity of the youth council was that they sponsored the first public integrated concert in the state of Mississippi, at Haven Methodist Church, Clarksdale, Mississippi.9 The participating artists were the national folk singer and recording artist, Guy Carawan, and my daughter, Mary Jane Pigee. This was in the early 60’s, prior to the influx of white civil rights workers. The first concert was in 1961. Guy drove to Clarksdale with his wife, Candy. Candy was pregnant. They arrived in Clarksdale on Saturday night. The concert was set for Sunday afternoon. Before concert time, Guy and Candy walked up the streets. The police followed them and, on their way back to my house, stopped them and asked if they knew they were in a hostile area of the city. Guy told them, “No. The people had not been hostile toward them.” The police asked what his name was. He replied, “Guy Carawan.” They asked why was he in that part of the city. He told them they were visiting friends. The police asked him who his friends were. He told them, “the Pigees.” The police asked, “Old Vera Pigee?” Guy didn’t answer. When asked, “Are you selling that white gal to the niggers,” Guy angrily replied, “This is my wife!” He was told that “white folk in Mississippi did not allow folks to visit niggers,” Guy said, “My wife and I visit whomever we choose.” When asked where he lived, Guy replied “California.” There were two cars of policemen and they put on quite a show. They told Guy he was poor white trash stirring up trouble. Many police cars were positioned around the church when the concert was over. We all went back to my house for dinner. The Youth Council, branch officers and the police had cars on each end of our street. Baird Street is just one block long. We knew they were going to arrest Guy when he left my home. Therefore, Reverend J. D. Rayford and Reverend R. L. Drew got into 8. August 23, 1961. 9. January 7, 1961.

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their cars to lead and trail Guy’s car to the highway, but the police stopped Guy before they reached the highway.10 They gave him a ticket for running a traffic light even though he had not passed any traffic lights. Reverend Rayford and Reverend Drew went to the City Hall with Guy and posted his $26.00 fine. Guy returned to my house telling me he would stay for trial if I insisted, even though he had other engagements he needed to keep. I told him he had given us enough of his time. We only paid his traveling expenses and the Youth Council would pay his fine. He thanked me and promised to come back the next year and do another concert with my daughter—and he did. The second time he came, he was well accepted by concert audience response. He knew they were up tight the previous year. We informed him that his previous appearance constituted the first integrated concert in the state. The third year Guy called a few days before the scheduled concert and expressed regrets for himself, his wife and the baby. My daughter did the concert alone. At the close of the concert, I asked if anyone wanted their $1.00 returned because Guy had not come. No one accepted my offer. They all agreed they had gotten more than they paid for. The purpose of the concert was to raise money to pay the expenses for the Coahoma County Youth Council to attend the various NAACP conventions. My daughter said she will always cherish the numerous experiences she had been privileged to enjoy. She had led her first picket line at the National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, picketing the F. W. Woolworth Company, because of their segregation policy in the South!11 The Mississippi delegates were told to lead the line, with the youths in front. It was also at the Philadelphia Convention when we boarded the NAACP Freedom Train to Washington. Delegates from each state visited their Senator and Congressman to urge them to vote for the passing of the Civil Rights and Poverty bills! Although we did not get to speak with Senators James Oliver Eastland and John Cornelius Stennis, their well-trained assistants told us they would not vote for the bills.12 We returned to the Senate, delegates from all 49 states were waiting to hear the report from Mississippi. Mary Jane Pigee reported for the delegation. She made a prediction that youths of all races would join the black youths in Mississippi and they would knock on every black person’s door in 10. Robert L. Drew (c. 1897–?): Royal Funeral Home owner, farmer, pastor, and chairman of the local NAACP executive board. 11. July 1961. 12. Eastland (1904–86): staunch segregationist and served in the US Senate for over thirty years. Stennis (1901–95): staunch segregationist and served in the US Senate for over forty-one years.

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Mississippi who were of voting age. Even though the youths were too young to register themselves, they could help the adults register and our representatives in Washington would move out or move with the changing times. She also contemplated on the National NAACP Convention in Chicago, 1963. We picketed the board of education. The sun was hot. The radius of the building was about 4 blocks, and the youths from Laurel had their banner! All of the Mississippi youth delegates were picketing together. A reporter ran up to one of them and asked, “Why would anyone come from Mississippi to Chicago to picket?” The youth answered that he “knew Chicago was as segregated as the state of Mississippi and I am having so much fun picketing I do not have time for an interview. Our advisor, Mrs. Vera Pigee, is back there somewhere, ask her.” The reporter was pushing through the crowd calling, “Mrs. Vera Pigee!” “I am Mrs. Pigee,” I said. He said, “A group of youths from Mississippi would not give me an interview. They told me to interview you. I want to know why you all came from Mississippi to picket in Chicago.” I told him, “When I was in beauty college here in Chicago, my husband went to a shoe factory on Canal Street job hunting. A man told all the black men they were not hiring and asked the white men to wait. And I, like the youth, am really having too much fun picketing to engage in your stupid interview.” Mary Jane Pigee soon became inactive because, after we began to scratch the surface in the freedom struggle, there were too many local internal struggles. She kept her membership with the association. I have continued to organize other Youth Councils. After Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963, I organized a Medgar Evers Tunica County Youth Council, a Bolivar County NAACP Medgar Evers Youth Council, a junior youth council in Clarksdale (and it was active until I went to school. I recommended Mrs. Idessa Johnson as advisor.13 In less than six months the council had become inactive), a Young Adult Council in Coahoma County and a Youth Council in southern Mississippi. In 1973 one of my husband’s nephews asked me to organize the many Berry youths, who are in my family, and the hundreds of Pigee youths, who were my husband’s family. He said, “We want to belong to the organization and we want to name it for you.” So in 1974, I organized the Pigee Youth Council, and they elected me advisor. 13. Idessa Johnson (1912–85?)

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I still serve as advisor to the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP. A retired woman, whom I recruited, Mrs. Idessa Johnson says the branch elected her to the position of Advisor. The nation knew I organized the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP and the youth re-elect me every year, with full knowledge they do not have to. The folk in the community who are non-producers are trying to destroy the one Council which withstood the youth growing up and moving on—withstanding the SNCC kid-catch.14 The SNCC kid-catch destroyed almost every Youth Council in the state of Mississippi except for the one they termed as mine, the Coahoma County Youth Council. Black and white people in Clarksdale said they could not understand the national letting the same little “ego trippers” who scattered the branch trying to tear up the historical Coahoma County Youth Council. I said, do not totally blame the national, blame yourselves for not becoming involved, because I personally know many lies have been written to the national office. One example that is a matter of record: Leroy Jones wrote the national and said I did not have a membership roster. I still have the roster I had when he was afraid that if he came to the meeting, he would lose his job. Larry Graham came to the 1975 Washington Convention disenchanted because a black man, Henry Espy, being defeated in a mayoral election because blacks allegedly fought him and sold the vote to a white candidate and threatened people who lived in the federal government housing project if they voted for Espy.15 He said he had worked so hard to get blacks registered through the youth council activities, and now they are treating each other worse than the white man did. I told Larry that if the charges were true, the election could be challenged and the federal government would investigate the alleged threat to individuals who live on its property. Before he could wind down, he came to me uptight again because someone told him a girl from Clarksdale, went to the National Youth Director’s office at the convention and told his secretary she did not know how Larry Graham won “Mr. NAACP” for the state of Mississippi. She was secretary of the Coahoma County Youth Council and told the secretary to send all membership cards to her. Larry said he was going to the office and I said, do nothing, Larry. That girl is not a member of the chartered Youth Council and has never attended a meeting. The branch sent 19 youth memberships to the National. .

14. She is referring to the active organizing work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 15. Henry Espy (1943–): president of Century Funeral Home, the family business. The family is well established in Mississippi and national politics. He became the first African American on the Clarksdale School Board (1971) and served as the mayor of Clarksdale for four terms (1989–2013).

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She belongs to the branch, therefore, she cannot understand the youth activities. You won because you raised the most money in the “Mr.” contest. Enjoy yourself. Do not play in filth, or you will become filth. There is a basic law that says “Whatever one sends out into the universe, returns to them.” James Brown’s secretary is going to send the membership cards to the person who gets out there and gets them and sends them in. Dr. B. E. Murph came to the State Youth Conference and said that after we introduced COFO to our communities they destroyed his council. One or two of them wanted him to take them to the National Convention but they had not been doing anything for the NAACP. He was going to fly to the convention and reorganize the Laurel Youth Council upon his return. I became so distraught with the idea that people whom we had invited into the struggle were becoming a problem! I went into the NAACP office and asked the secretary how many active youth units we had. She had one official roster on the state record—Coahoma County. The Laurel Youth Council and the Coahoma County Council were the largest and strongest councils in the state. I thought maybe my theory, practice, ideology, belief and continued active productive service was what the local, state, regional and national NAACP wanted and needed to continue to be the number one civil rights organization! I was willing to keep struggling as long as outsiders were the major creators of internal conflict. But insiders had become the non-productive publicity-seekers, seemingly with the blessing of some big shots at every level of the NAACP. I decided to share Reverend J. D. Rayford’s theory, “that if any staff can operate a Youth Council, branch, state conference, regional or national convention without members, delegates and dedicated workers and replace them with friendship, negative attitudes and spotlight seekers, they have my blessing.” Here is another example. I wired two roundtrip, chartered bus fares to the regional convention for Coahoma County Youths to Lillian Louie, NAACP secretary in Jackson in 1973.16 I was supposed to fly, but instead I had to drive to Jackson to take the two youths. I called Miss Louie and asked if there was one available seat on the bus. She said that half the bus was available. I asked if I could pay half fare and ride one way. She said she would ask Emmett Burns.17 When the youths, Miss Shirley Graham, Miss Griffin, and I arrived in Jackson, Miss Louie said she had given Reverend Emmett Burns my message and he told her to collect full fare from everyone who boarded the bus. I 16. Lillian Louie was Medgar Evers’s secretary and continued in that role after his murder. 17. Emmett C. Burns, Jr. (1940–2022): elected NAACP field secretary for Mississippi around 1970 and went on to serve in the Maryland House of Delegates (1995–2015).

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gave her the money and told her I felt sure there would be no problem when I arrived at the convention. However, Reverend Burns told me he could not give my money back because many branches and Youth Councils did not cooperate in the bus project, and the state conference of NAACP branches was going to have to underwrite the expense. I told him I had done more than my share on the bus project and I thought two and one-half fares would help but it would not be fair to me to take a fare for a seat I was not going to use, just because someone else did not cooperate. I could not ride back on the bus because I had to rush back to Clarksdale and on to Detroit for school. I had helped raise the state conference money for 18 years, and I had raised more money for the state conference in the “Mother of the Year” contest consecutively, than any woman in the state. He still refused me my money. At the next state conference board meeting in Jackson, Aaron Henry, state president, read the agenda and asked if anyone wanted to add an item to the agenda.18 I said, “Yes! I have a grievance!” When I was asked to state my grievance, I told the conference of beautiful, dedicated people from all across the state that I held no grudge but I was not and had never been on the NAACP payroll. I only wanted the return of that portion of money for the return trip of which I did not partake. Henry asked Burns if he wanted to comment because the money had been given to the bus company and he did not think they would refund it. I told the president the only thing Reverend Burns could say was what I had already said, and that I had tried to get an understanding before I rode the bus. I did not give my funds to the bus company, I gave it to the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP. And I had witnesses and proof to the authenticity of my story! Reverend Burns said, “No, he did not wish to make any statement. He had no disagreement with my statement.” The conference did not cooperate with the bus project. The state conference board members voted unanimously to refund me. They passed the hat and raised more money than the state conference owed me. They gave the excess to the state conference. They said they were not ministers, but they knew morally it was wrong to take my money for a state conference debt. The 20 years I served as state Youth Advisor is a position I shall always cherish. It has been a way of taking that extra step going beyond telling young men and women what not to do and a very specific way of helping them become involved in various activities in a positive way. Many young people 18. Aaron E. Henry (1922–97): World War II veteran, pharmacist, president of the Coahoma County NAACP branch and president of the Mississippi State NAACP during the mass movement, later elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives (1982–96).

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who grew up in the Mississippi State Youth NAACP Conference have gone all over this country in the furthering of their careers in business, education, religion and management. Their success is worth all of the effort, sacrifices and twenty years of struggling. No amount of insensitivity can change this. If I had the chance to relive my life, I would make no changes. There were many traumatic experiences; I received numerous phone calls, telling me that my name and the names of nine black men were on the official state death list. When Ms. Bessie Turner and I went to Washington, D.C., to testify before the Commission on Civil Rights, she testified about how two Clarksdale policemen, Paul Bratt and Ben Barrier, had arrested her and made her lay down on the concrete floor at the City Hall and pull down her pants and whipped her between the legs with a leather strap.19 On another occasion, Mrs. Lucy Boyd and I were trying to organize the Tallahatchie County NAACP Branch in Charleston, Mississippi.20 She would drive to Clarksdale at night, alone, to our mass meeting and bring one or two NAACP memberships. When she became frustrated, I went to Charleston and spoke to the few people who were present about the necessity of an NAACP branch. Mrs. Boyd said I was the first person to ever make a public freedom speech in Charleston. Reverend S. A. Allen had previously invited me to speak at a church he pastored and, after I had spoken, told his congregation that they were the first to have such a meeting in Tallahatchie County. Reverend Allen thanked me for having the guts to pioneer. Mrs. Boyd and I checked the Coahoma County Membership roll about a year later and 64 members were Tallahatchie Countians. I sent the list to Mrs. Lucille Black, who was the National Membership secretary, and asked her to verify the list because I was going to send it to the executive board for a charter. Mrs. Black called me and said, “Vera Pigee, you are crazy. This has never been done before. I know I have worked here longer than anybody, and the list you sent is accurate and the branch can be legitimately chartered. I called to congratulate you. All I know about Tallahatchie County is the role Ruby Hurley played in investigating the Emmett Till murder.”21 19. The attack occurred on January 19 or 21, 1962, and another source cites February. 20. Lucy Boyd (1930–2018): organized and became the first president of the Tallahatchie County NAACP branch. 21. Lucille Black (1908–75): joined the NAACP in 1927 and became the national membership secretary in 1945, retiring in 1971. Emmett Till (1941–55): Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam abducted, tortured, and murdered Till, a fourteen-year-old from Chicago visiting his family in the Delta that summer.

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The night Reverend J. D. Rayford and I went to Charleston to organize the branch, not a man would agree to serve as president. Mrs. Lucy Boyd, who weighed but a mere 90 pounds, walked up to the table where I was standing and said, “Mrs. Pigee, I will be the president.” There have been, and still are, enjoyable events. At my first National Convention Mrs. Lucille Black added the Freedom Dinner Committee to convention activities.22 She came to Region Five and asked for a chairperson to read the report. Kelly Alexander, of Charlotte, North Carolina, looked at me and said, “Mississippi will read it.” I was seated on the dais and Mr. Roy Wilkins asked me to stand up because I was the first woman he had ever seen at the Freedom Dinner with a big, colorful hat. He told the Mississippi delegation not to come back to the convention without me because I was the “Lady of Hats.” He asked me to come to the dais at every Freedom Dinner and show him my hat.23 Now, my friends from all over America say, “I came to the convention just to see your colorful hats and colorful wigs.” I do not regret giving up the plane trips, and driving to the convention to bring Coahoma County Youth Council members with me, nor borrowing money from the credit union against my share for the Coahoma County Branch to bring delegates. I read a story in the Clarksdale Press Register about a black boy who lived with his mother in a servant shack in the white section of the city of Clarksdale. He wanted to go to school in the black section because the white school district in which he lived did not teach carpentry. I called Reverend J. D. Rayford and told him if the courts allow a black student to go to school outside of the white school district for a subject which was not taught there, this was our cue to ask the courts to send a black student to the white school which taught many subjects that were not taught in the black schools. “Mrs. Pigee,” he said, “some of the members of our church who are members of the Coahoma County Youth Council of the NAACP will make the necessary applications. I am going to talk with them and their parents now.” Two black girls made applications to enroll in Clarksdale High School for the first time in the history of the school and the district judge issued a Court Order.24 After the Court Order was issued there was an internal struggle with a black educator who pulled someone else’s school record and tried to sell me 22. The 1960 NAACP National Annual Convention was in St. Paul, Minnesota, June 1960. 23. Roy Wilkins (1901–81): executive secretary of the National NAACP (1955–63) and executive director of the National NAACP (1964–77). 24. Elnora Fondren (1949–2019) desegregated Clarksdale High School on September 14, 1965, and Bettie J. Yarbrough joined her soon thereafter.

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the idea that the student’s average was too low to transfer. One of the parents had said that the student could go to Clarksdale High only if I transferred them. The first day I was to take one of the black students to the white school, Reverend J. D. Rayford said I could use his car, and another NAACP member said he would accompany me, but when the time came to go I could not find that member. When we arrived at the Clarksdale High School we went into the principal’s office. I was told that I could not come into the office. The student’s parent said, “I requested Mrs. Pigee’s presence.” She was given a silly grin and assured that there was no need for me to be there. All the seats in the reception room were taken by students or their books. When I left the building and returned to the car to wait for the student and her mother, it seemed as though the whole football team was blocking the passage under the arcade. I walked up to them and said, “Excuse me.” They made a small opening. I pushed through and sat on the front seat of the car I was driving. I opened the car door, turning the sideview mirror to a position where I could watch the football team. I prayed and began to read the little New Testament which I had in my purse. Groups about class size began to pass by the car. One boy in the first group said, just loud enough for me to hear, “That’s that Mrs. Pigee. I wonder if she brought that damn NAACP and the T.V. camera with her!” In the second group a boy said, “If it wasn’t for her,” nodding his head toward me, “we wouldn’t have that over here,” nodding toward the student. These groups appeared to be classes organized to harass me. They knew the day I was bringing the black student to the white school. Prior to, and the day of, registration I received threatening telephone calls, saying they would kill me if I brought that “damn nigger’’ over to their school. I told them they were Christians and Christians did not go around killing people. Furthermore, I was a taxpayer in the city, county and state and I had as much right to come over there as anyone else. The next day Reverend Rayford went with me to take the student. A white woman driving the car in the front of me stopped in the middle of the street and let some students out of her car. A policeman spoke to her and then she drove off. I pulled to the curb. When the student opened the car door, the policeman, who had spoken to the white woman while she let the students out in the center of the street, told me I could not let that girl out there. I asked him, “Why?” He said, “You heard what I said.” I told him, “The woman you just greeted let three or four students out at this same spot.” Before he could comment, a white man came out of the

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school and backed his car down a one-way street. I said to the policeman, “Look at him! That white man backed his car the wrong way on a one-way street and that woman let students out of the car in the center of the street.” He said nothing. I took down the license numbers of both cars and, the badge number of the policeman who permitted these acts and I reported them to the police, sheriff, F.B.I. and NAACP. The next morning when I stopped to let the student out, a little white girl walked up to the car and threw in a piece of paper. That afternoon, while working in my beauty salon, two policemen walked in with a search warrant that stated whiskey was being sold on the premises. The next day while Reverend Rayford and I were waiting for the student to come out of school, two boys walked up to the car and one of them asked me if I “wanted my freedom.” I said, “Yes, I do.” After a month of transferring the students I tried to get a taxi to transport them. The local NAACP appointed Reverend E. T. Smith, Reverend J. D. Rayford and myself to a special finance committee to raise funds to pay the cab driver. The churches where Reverend Smith ministered were Friendship of Friars Point and New Hope of Clarksdale. The churches where Reverend Rayford is minister were Rayford Chapel, Clarksdale, and Unity of Marks, and the church of which I am a member, Chapel Hill. They were the greatest contributors to the paying of the cab fare. When the necessary funds were not given to us, the three of us paid the fare. This was a traumatic experience. I was instrumental in enrolling these students and the only obligation the NAACP had to the students was transportation. One of the parents made more demands. Every week one of the students needed some skirts and sweaters and could wear any size from 12 to 18. They would also need lunch money and club dues. The Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council has been a blessing to me. Out of the various activities, I used the negative and the positive aspects as a learning process. First, I prayed about my accepting that which appeared to be a punishment for trying to organize a Youth Council. I loved it, nursed it, watched it grow, rejoiced at its success, was saddened by its failures and struggled with the task of making the council activities become a part of reality. All over this country I have true friends I met through some phase of my NAACP activities. They are too numerous to name, but there is one I must name. Mrs. Clara Luper of Oklahoma City, whose Youth Council activities inspired me to the point where I was speechless.25 I had been a Youth Council Advisor longer than she. I met Mrs. Luper at my first National NAACP 25. Clara Luper (1923–2011): Youth Council advisor for Oklahoma City NAACP branch.

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Convention in 1960, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had two youth delegates with me. Mrs. Luper was attending for her third time. She had a chartered Greyhound Bus loaded with Oklahoma City crying, praying and singing NAACP Youth Council members. The convention officially opened then on Monday and closed Sunday afternoon, with a public mass meeting. We worshiped that Sunday morning with the oldest black church in St. Paul. Mrs. Luper arrived late with her group. She apologized and the ushers placed chairs in the aisles for them. The minister dedicated the service to the delegates and said God was going to bless the freedom movement of the NAACP because it was led by Christ-like people. Mrs. Luper invited me to speak for the Oklahoma Youth Council in the early 60’s. They serenaded me at the Oklahoma Airport. I invited her to speak for the Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council in 1968 and the Youth Council members and I became the serenaders at the Memphis Airport. Again, Mrs. Clara Luper gave me the encouragement I unknowingly needed! I was driving south on Highway 61, leaving Memphis. When we entered Coahoma County, she began to clap her hands and said, “I have wanted to come to Coahoma County ever since I met Vera Pigee, standing up on National convention floors all over this nation talking about Coahoma County, Clarksdale, Mississippi.” Mrs. Luper is the only advisor in the United States of America who has chartered one or two buses and brought youth delegates to the Annual Convention yearly. I have had from one to four youth delegates each year. Mrs. Luper and I are the only advisors to share this effort consecutively for almost 20 years, bringing youth delegates consecutively. In 1963 I was presented the first prize Advisor’s Award in Chicago at the Annual Convention, by Laplois Ashford, who was the National Youth Director. Mark Roseman, the third National Youth Director, under whom I served, presented me the second prize Advisor’s Award. James Brown, who is the present director, presented me three third prize awards. It was because of my work with the local and state youth. I was elected and re-elected many times Regional Advisor, chaired workshops, gave pep talks, and led pep rallies. The Fifth Southeast Regional elected me to the National Youth Work Committee. I served one two-year term on the committee. The committee’s function was to get the National Youth program in varied phases in order that the local, regional, and national youth could focus on at least one program simultaneously. Each committee member was to submit an idea to the committee. Mrs. Clara Luper’s contribution was the Mr. and Mrs. Contest. Each local youth unit was to compete in their own units. The females raising membership and the males raising money. The contestant who raised the greatest number of

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memberships in the local contest would receive the memberships raised by their local contestants and be crowned as the local Miss NAACP. The same procedure held true for the male contestants, with only one exception—they would raise funds. Larry Graham, president of the Coahoma County Youth Council, won first place in the State “Mr.” contest in June 1975, and will represent the Mississippi NAACP State Youth Conference in Washington and Miss Mammie Poe won first runner-up to Miss Mississippi. The first semi-public demonstration in Clarksdale was in the spring of 1960. It was a project of the Coahoma County Youth Council. The council had about fifty members, with about one fourth being active. We had no prior experience, no bail bond money and no legal advisor. Demonstrations were growing and this little group was five years old. They wanted to sit-in. I called the national office and spoke with Laplois Ashford, the National Youth secretary, and discussed the youth position that the NAACP was moving too slow. He agreed with the decision Medgar Wiley Evers had made about more planning and community involvement. I suggested, as an alternative, a shopping trip to purchase a Bible and a frame for the NAACP Charter of the Coahoma County Youth Council. This plan was accepted with a promise to the local branch executive board, the state, and national office, that there would be no sit-ins, but for the lack of property bonds, cash bonds, and the availability of an attorney and moral support for the safety of the youths. I called the parents of the youth members whom we believed would let their children go. The president’s parents agreed he could go with the group. They waited for him. He did not show and when they returned, he was one of the first to show up at my beauty salon. The youth members who had gone on the shopping tour impeached him and made my daughter, Mary Jane Pigee, who was then vice-president, president, and who led the group on the shopping tour. Sarah Gaston, Viola Yarbrough, Steve Abraham, John Hatchett, Wilma Jones and Mary Jane Pigee were all very candid in expressing their objections to a male president who was afraid to lead his members. On Monday afternoon Wilma Jones, Mary Pigee, and Mitchell Lee walked to Walgreens and F. W. Woolworth stores for timing purposes. Tuesday morning, Walgreens was their first stop. They did not have a frame large enough for the NAACP Charter. They then went on to Woolworth’s. Both of these stores had eating facilities. The youths said that, upon arrival at Woolworth’s, a group of white youths were eating hamburgers and hot dogs and they moved closer to each other as if to make room for them to sit down. Reverend J. D. Rayford is co-advisor to the council. His duty was to wait outside of the stores and if he saw anything that he

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thought might be harmful to the youths, he was to pick them up and bring them back to my beauty salon. Elder Walter Jones, Wilma Jones’ grandfather, had been assured that the trip was perfectly safe and that Reverend Rayford would be there to secure their safety as much as humanly possible. But, at 10:30, Elder Jones said he could no longer stay on the tractor on his turkey farm, about five miles south of Clarksdale. He jumped in his truck and drove to F. W. Woolworth’s. While he was parking his truck, he saw Reverend Rayford standing on the sidewalk in front of the store. He assumed the youths were inside. He casually greeted Reverend Rayford and almost ran inside. When he stepped inside the store, he saw seven of the youths standing in a single line, with the exception of Miss Pigee, who was talking on the telephone. A saleslady was trying to fit the NAACP Charter into a frame. Elder Jones and the young people said the woman’s hands were shaking as though she had been a long-time palsy victim. Elder Jones acted as though he did not recognize the youths, and their response to his presence was the same. Elder Jones said, “As I browsed around the store, I noticed the actions of the employees and the customers. Some had frozen in their tracks, others had a look of surprise, and still others had hate-stares on their faces.” An old white Coahoma County physician said to some women in the store, “Someone ought to take an ax handle and beat the hell out of those nigger chillen.” When he walked away one of the women said, “I do not see anything wrong with the children and what they are doing. They are well dressed, clean, well behaved, and if he feels they should be beaten he should do it himself. Furthermore, I have never seen those kids before. I’m sure they live in Greenville.”26 After they had purchased the frame for the charter, they slowly walked back to Pigee’s Beauty Salon, all of a sudden remembering they had forgotten the Bible. Only one trip had been planned, but Elder Jones, Reverend Rayford and I agreed they could make the second trip. They were advised again not to sit-in. The police and many other white citizens had heard about the activities and were congregating in the street and peeping out of opened windows of business places. The police followed them back to the beauty salon after they had secured the Bible. Early that Tuesday morning, Mr. Gloster Current called to Vera Pigee, as he always called me, that if anything went wrong we could depend on the resources of the NAACP. After being informed about the white people opening the windows and peeping out, and the visibility of police cars, I wondered 26. Greenville is approximately seventy-two miles south of Clarksdale, in Washington County.

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where the black people were, particularly the men! Now as the Civil Rights Struggle or movement, as it was called at that time, progressed, I learned where they were. They were hiding. Afraid of losing their jobs and afraid of the white people. So, we termed this experience a semi-protest, or trial run, and we also watched the action and reaction of the parents and the public. The first demonstration was on August 7, 1961.27 Adrian Beard, Wilma Jones, and Mary Pigee sat in the Illinois Central Railroad Station in Clarksdale. When Miss Pigee and Miss Jones decided they were going to sit-in some place, Adrian Beard was out of town at the time. The branch officers met with those two girls for a strategy meeting. Mr. John C. Melchor, who was branch president, wanted a boy to go along with the girls.28 Adrian’s mother, Mrs. Catherine Beard, was working in Chicago. His father was in the United States Army. He was living with his grandmother, his sisters, and a childhood friend of his mother, Miss Hattie Mae Gilmore.29 Miss Gilmore called Adrian’s mother and she said he could go. She and I asked his grandmother, Mama Vi, we called her. She said, “Well, my daughter said he could, and he said before he went away he wanted to go. God knows it’s all right with me. But where are they going?” I told her I did not know but I would let her know before they go. The branch officers thought they should choose the place with the least traffic as a matter of personal safety to the two or three youths. The youths asked me to select a place. I chose the Illinois Central Station, but I did not tell anyone until the day they were scheduled to go. I did not want a mob waiting for them. I had checked the time it would take them to walk from my house to the station, the traffic, and the accuracy of the train schedule. The national office sent a Mrs. Julia Wright to help work out the plan and counsel the youths.30 She arrived about two days before the sit-in. She was very petite. The national NAACP sent Attorney R. Jess Brown, from Vicksburg, Mississippi. We reviewed our plan with Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Wright said of all the demonstrations she had guided, this was the only one where all of the details had been planned to the second, and there wasn’t anything for her to do but give the youths moral support. I said that the one thing she could do was call the police station, because the 27. Sources date this sit-in on August 23. 28. John C. Melchor (c.1913–78?): Delta Burial Corporation cofounder in addition to local NAACP officer. 29. Hattie Mae Gilmore (1922–2006). 30. Julie Ann Varner Wright Hunter (1937–2022): NAACP youth secretary for the region (1961–63). Afterward she became a librarian and in 2002 served as the first executive director of the Broward County African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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youths were going in the waiting room that said “White” and I would be in the one that said “Colored” when they get there. Reverend Rayford said he would give me a ride to the station and he would wait outside to observe the activities of the local people and police. When the sit-inners arrived I was standing in line at the “Colored” window, behind a few black passengers. The ticket agent was waiting on them. There was one white male passenger on the side of the station designated for whites. After the agent finished serving the black passengers, he turned to the white window and saw the one white youth and three black youths in line. The white youth purchased a ticket and checked his luggage. Miss Pigee asked for a ticket to Memphis. The ticket agent told her they would have to go to the other side and get their ticket. She asked him why they had to go to the other side and pointed out that the boy in front of them had not had to go to the other side. He did not answer this. He opened a door and told them to come through a little room. They all said, no, they would not go through to the room. They would sit and wait until he was ready to sell them tickets. He called the police. Shortly after he made the phone call three police cars arrived. The Chief of Police, Ben C. Collins, jumped out of the car and ran into the station and walked up close to the window, saying something to the agent.31 Then, he turned around and told the youths to leave the station. He told them three times to “get up and get out!” They did not say anything, neither did they move. He then told them they were under arrest. They asked him, “What for?” “For Breach of the Peace,” the Chief said. They got into the cars and Ben Collins drove them to the police station. The officers began processing their arrest sheets. Adrian would not answer any questions except his name, age, and address. When he was searched he held up his arms so they could get his wallet. He had ten dollars and some identification cards. Miss Jones did not give her correct last name. She had no identification and five dollars. Miss Pigee answered all the questions and signed the arrest sheet. Chief Collins kept tearing up Miss Pigee sheets because she used the title, Miss. After they were arrested I went to my home, where a lawyer was waiting. I signed a retainer, requesting his services to represent my daughter. Elder Jones signed a retainer, employing Attorney R. Jess Brown to represent Miss Jones. Attorney Brown and I went to Mama Vi’s home. I told her the youths had been arrested, and asked her if she wanted to secure the service of Mr. Brown, who is a lawyer from the NAACP. She said, “Yes.” Attorney Brown said, “Miss Gilmore can sign the retainer.” Mama Vi said, “Lawyer R. Jess 31. Benford C. Collins (1930–2000): served as chief of police 1961–69.

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Brown, I am blind, old, sick and my hearing is impaired. But Adrian Beard is the oldest of my grandchildren. He has made his conviction and I am going to stick by him. If you just show me where you want me to sign, I will write my own name and anyone who reads this retainer will understand it. Just give me a little time.” She signed the document and we left. As we slowly made our exit, Mama Vi began to sing, “Must I be carried to the sky on a flowery bed of ease, while others fight to win the prize and sail through bloody seas.”32 The youths went from court to court. The three black NAACP lawyers, Attorney R. Jess Brown of Vicksburg and Jackson, [and] Jack Young and Carsie Hall of Jackson, argued, summarized and appealed as only they could have done until the courts acquitted them.33 I asked them why they had sat in the station knowing that their lives were in the hands of Mississippi white men. That station is a hundred years old and the only thing Negroes have ever done on that side is swept, mopped, cleaned and peeped in. Adrian said, “I have lived on an army base most of my life, and I feel that I have as much right to the best as anyone else. Not only what Mississippi has to offer, but all of America.” Wilma Jones said, “When I was a little girl I was dissatisfied with mannequins in all of the display cases in the department stores. I asked my daddy why were they all white. Little colored girls wear pretty dresses, when they can get them.” Miss Pigee said, “If I had been killed while sitting on that old bench, my only regret would have been that I could not come back and sit on that bench again.” The list of demonstrations was variable [varied] which actually took place in Clarksdale after the three youths sat in the Illinois Central Railroad station. The second demonstration was in the Greyhound Bus terminal. We had a Coahoma County NAACP executive board meeting. I was the only woman on the board. I asked those black proud brothers about sitting in at the Greyhound Bus Station. I explained why it was so urgent to me. My daughter had sat in the train station. She was attending Central State College at Wilberforce, Ohio. She would be coming home for Christmas, and I knew she would not use the colored side of the bus station. These men agreed that it needed to be done, but no one agreed to go. I told the board I was going if I had to go alone. I did not want my daughter’s holiday vacation prolonged because no one in Clarksdale was willing to do what they should have done long before she was born. Mr. John C. Melchor and Reverend R. L. Drew said if I sat-in and was arrested, they would post a property bond. Reverend J. D. Rayford said he would be the lookout person. I went home after the meeting and discussed my plans with my husband. I did not eat my dinner that night, 32. From the hymn “Am I a Soldier of the Cross?” 33. R. Jess Brown (1912–89); Carsie Hall (1908–89); Jack Young (1908–75).

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nor breakfast the next morning. I prayed all night. The next morning I called Mrs. Idessa Johnson and asked her if she would go out with me.34 She said, “Yes.” I said, “You don’t even know where I am going.” She said, “Mrs. Pigee, I will go with you wherever you go.” I told her what time I would come for her, but I did not tell her where we were going. We walked to the Greyhound station. Reverend Rayford was standing on the platform between the white and colored entrances. The colored side of the station was full of people. The spacious air-conditioned white side had three customers; a teenage boy, who was seated; a man, who had the middle-class appearance, was at the ticket counter; and a woman was standing behind the man. Her physical appearance was white, small, old, poor, illiterate and scared. When she saw Mrs. Johnson and I standing behind her she forgot her destination. I asked the ticket agent for a round trip ticket from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and for a schedule of the express buses. When we turned to leave the ticket counter James Brooks (“Clean James”), who was the porter at the bus station, had come in the white side with a broom and dust pan, as if he was cleaning. Mrs. Johnson and I drank from the fountain, went to the ladies’ room and then left. The day my daughter came home, I went to the bus station to meet her. When I opened the door on the white side she was standing at the ticket counter talking to the agent about the unprofessional manner in which he wrote her ticket and how much trouble she had trying to get home. She also let him know he had managed to get one thing right—the fare. The agent rewrote the ticket and we started to the bus to claim her luggage. I left the station first and noticed a retired policeman standing at the door. When my daughter pushed the door, opening it to come out, the retired policeman would push it closed. When I looked around, they were swinging the door back and forth. I ran up to the man and asked him what his problem was. He said he was merely opening the door for her. I told him that she was perfectly capable of opening the door for herself. He went back inside the station and took my daughter’s books out of the seat and placed them on the floor. I told him to put them back. One of my daughter’s luggage could not be located. She asked the agent to put a tracer on it. The agent remarked that he had not had any trouble until she came home. I informed him that he had gone too far! I paid for the ticket and he screws it up. Then the company misplaced her luggage! I asked him if he was holding her responsible for their insensitivities. He began to tremble, and said, “No.” 34. The date of this protest is lost to history, but as Mrs. Pigee went to purchase a ticket for her daughter’s return for the holidays, we can assume it is late fall (November/December).

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The day she was returning to school, Reverend J. D. Rayford drove Miss Hattie Mae Gilmore and myself to the bus station with her. Three of us sat down in the waiting room [for] white passengers. Within minutes four policemen entered the waiting room. One began to interrogate me, another Miss Gilmore, and another my daughter. They asked the old familiar questions: name, where we worked and what all we thought we were doing. They told us we could not wait on this side. We asked, “Why?” Mary Jane said, “I am an interstate passenger. I’ll wait where I please, and I please to wait here.”35 The officer she was talking to said, “If you all do not move on I am going to arrest you all.” I told Mary Jane to get their names and badge numbers. It was about time for her bus to depart. I gave her a notebook and pencil and told her to record the license numbers of all the police cars that had emerged on the bus station premises. The colored side of the station was full. But, when these people looked out and saw all of the policemen, and police cars and white people across the street at the cafe and drug store standing outside, the colored men began to leave. Reverend Rayford followed one old man, asking him not to leave. “See those two women and that girl over there? We don’t know what they are going to do to them.” The old man told Reverend Rayford he didn’t care what they did to us, because we had no business being over there. At that moment J. C. Pettis and his wife drove up and parked, and got out of their car. Mrs. Pettis came over to where we were standing while J. C. went over to Reverend Rayford. “What’s happening?” he asked. Reverend Rayford said, “I am trying to get some of these men to stay here.” Pettis said, “I’ll stay.” Sylvester Davis (Metcalf) walked up to Reverend Rayford and asked him what the problem was. Reverend Rayford told him, “Mrs. Pigee, Miss Pigee, and Miss Gilmore had been in the white side of the station and all the colored men left.” Sylvester Davis said, “I am here with you, Reverend. I thought those damn niggers were running from the white folks. And they call themselves men.” An older colored man, who worked at the bus station, ran into a little room and said, “As old as I am I have never seen niggers who wanted to be white as bad as Mrs. Pigee and her daughter.” Mary Jane finally boarded the bus. We left and filed our complaints with the NAACP, the Justice Department, the local F.B.I., police and Interstate Commerce Commission. We kept repeating the cycle until we won. The Clarksdale Press Register, Wednesday, December 27, 1961—SIGNS GONE FROM SIDEWALK (white and colored signs). Who removed the segregation signs from the sidewalk in front of the Greyhound Bus Terminal 35. This is in the context of the extensive Freedom Rides in 1961 testing the implementation of Morgan v. Virginia (1946).

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here? Police Chief Ben C. Collins and bus station manager Val Redding both said they didn’t know. Collins said he noticed Sunday, that the signs had been removed and advised a United Press International reporter to consult Mayor W. S. Kincade on the question as to the removal of the signs.36 The Mayor could not be reached for comments. The signs designating white and Negro waiting rooms were erected by police. When the November Interstate Commerce Commission order to integrate waiting rooms went into effect, the bus company was forced to remove its signs. The first time I was arrested was on December 7, 1961. Miss Gilmore and I were in my kitchen drinking coffee when someone knocked on my door. It was Chief of Police Ben C. Collins and another officer. When I opened the door the chief said, “Hello, Vera.” I asked, “What is it, Ben?” He said, “Don’t call me Ben. I am the Chief of Police, city of Clarksdale.” I said, “I am Mrs. Vera Pigee and you are on my property.” He said, “You are under arrest.” I asked, “What for?” “Conspiring to withhold trade from the downtown area.” I asked, “Who signed the authorization?” “The county prosecuting attorney, Babe Pearson.”37 “May I see it?” He gave me the warrant. “Let me get dressed.” “No. You can’t go back into the house. You are under arrest.” “I am a political prisoner, and I am going back into my house to turn off all the utilities and dress up pretty.” I went into the kitchen and told Miss Gilmore what had happened. I asked her to remain in the kitchen until I was dressed, and to call Reverend Drew after we had gone. We walked out to the police car and, when I reached out to open the door, the policeman who had accompanied the chief put a handcuff on my right arm. He looked in my face and said, “Give me the other one.” We drove to Reverend Theodore Trammell’s house.38 The police handcuffed him and drove us both to the County Jail, where a policeman was waiting outside the jail with the key to unlock our handcuffs. Shortly after Reverend Trammell and I were inside the jailhouse, two officers brought in Reverend R. L. Drew and Mr. John Melchor, also handcuffed. 36. W. S. Kincade (1905–84): served as Clarksdale’s mayor from 1961 to 1969. 37. Thomas H. “Babe” Pearson (1929–2007). 38. Theodore Trammell (1926–62): World War II veteran, schoolteacher, pastor, and the chaplain of the Coahoma County NAACP branch.

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When they arrived, a man was trying to fill out an arrest sheet on me. He asked me, “What is your name?” I said, “Mrs. Vera Pigee.” He jumped up about three feet off the floor and said, “You mean Vera Pigee, don’t you?” I said, “No. I mean Mrs. Vera Pigee. I am married. Do you exercise this way every time you fill out one of these forms?” He said, “I ain’t never had no nigger prisoner here calling herself Mrs.” I told him, “I am Mrs. Vera Pigee, a wife, mother, political prisoner, business and professional woman. Wherever I go, even if I am brought in handcuffs, my name is still Mrs. Vera Pigee.” He said, “All right!” Then he asked, “How do you spell that Pigee?” I said, “Suppose we start with Mrs., and I spell it P-i-g-e-e.” When he asked what my occupation was, I replied, “beautician.” He had to pause for me to spell it. But I did not volunteer the information. He used all twenty-six letters of the alphabet trying to spell my occupation, and the Clarksdale Press Register printed the word exactly as he had spelled it. The four of us were left in the corridor. I looked at Reverend Trammell. His eyes were closed and his head bowed. Reverend Drew’s arms were folded, head bowed, and eyes closed. Mr. Melchor’s head was resting against the wall. He seemed to have been looking through the jailhouse roof. I thought to myself, “Oh, they are praying.” I tried to pray, but I could not find the words. Instead, I began to recite the 121st Psalm and a feeling of serenity such as I had never experienced before came over that corridor. Reverend Trammell began to frown. I asked him what was wrong. He said he was not feeling well. I hurried to a room where Aaron Henry and Babe Pearson were. I told Babe that Reverend Trammell was ill and had suffered a heart attack earlier. They told him they would send him to the doctor in a police car. He said he would walk. Immediately after Reverend Trammell became ill, Babe Pearson called us into a small courtroom. A woman with a note pad, Ben Collins and Fitch Farris were already in the room.39 Babe Pearson lectured us. “I had you all brought in because you have engaged in an act of conspiracy against the downtown merchants. These merchants have spent their money in supplies to serve this community, just as some of them have been doing for 40 and 50 years. You all are destroying the goodwill between the white and colored. I do not have time for a trial today. I am going out of town. I am already dressed, you can see I have my coat on my arm. I am asking only one thing of each of you. Stop this foolishness. Call off this boycott! Conspiracy carries a severe punishment. Does anyone have any questions?” 39. Fitch Farris was the deputy sheriff in Coahoma County.

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We all answered, “No!” “You deny the boycott?” Aaron said, “No, we deny the conspiracy.” “Well, all of you conspired.” John asked, “When did we conspire? I have been out of town for a week. And why did you handcuff us as though we were common criminals? The four of us are business and professional men and women, property owners, tax payers and registered voters.” Drew said, “Did you know that Reverend Trammell was hospitalized not long ago following a heart attack? Yet, you handcuffed him?” Babe said, “I did not handcuff him.” Fitch Farris said, “You had it done. I did not know anything about it until I received a call that you were having these people brought in.” I said, “We did not conspire, but the merchants and Chamber of Commerce did, when they got together and refused to let the Higgins High and Coahoma Jr. College bands participate in the Christmas parade.” Babe said, “Will each of you use your influence to call off the boycott if I let you go on your own recognizance?” We all answered, “No!” Babe said, “Go on your recognizance anyhow.” About a week later, he called us back to post bond. H. Y. Hackett said, “I will make bond for all of them.”40 When we went to trial, Babe Pearson subpoenaed my daughter and asked her if I had conspired with a group against the merchants. She told him that she had not seen me conspiring. In other words, she was so busy with her academic work she did not have time to watch her mother. She thought the shortcut to the answer would be to “ask her, Mr. Pearson. There she is, seated at the table with those men.” Reverend J. D. Rayford drove Mary Jane to the Memphis, Tennessee, airport to catch a flight for Washington, D.C., to attend the NAACP National Convention. While waiting for her flight departure, they went into the cafeteria. Mary Jane had a cup of coffee and Reverend Rayford had a cup of hot tea. He left, driving alone, and returned to Clarksdale! Upon his arrival the police arrested him, put him in jail, towed away his new car, took his license tag, revoked his driver’s license and charged him with drunk driving. That following December, Mary Jane was coming home from school for the holiday vacation. While walking from the Greyhound bus terminal two white policemen in a squad car spotted her. She heard one of them say, “There’s that Pigee girl.” She began to run. They pursued and caught her. Fulton Ford ran out of his cleaner’s and got into the police car with her.41 He told someone to bring his car over to the jail and to tell me what had 40. H. Y. Hackett (1892–1983): farmer, landowner, local NAACP branch treasurer. 41. Fulton Ford (1903c.–85): a black business and property owner.

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happened. He posted her bond and brought her home. The charges were a white man said he thought he heard her curse in the courtroom about six months ago. On one other occasion when Mary Jane was home for a school holiday, upon her arrival she was greeted by a vast snow. All attempts to secure transportation had failed. Even Reverend Rayford could not come to her assistance because his car was blocked in his driveway by the snow. A police car in the area approached and Mary Jane asked for a lift. The two white policemen agreed to drive her home. When asked where she was heading she answered, “Baird Street.” As the car reached the intersection of 6th and Baird, one of the officers asked who she was visiting on Baird Street. She replied, “I’m not visiting anyone. I live there with my parents.” “Who are your parents?” she was asked. “Mr. and Mrs. Paul Pigee,” she answered. At these words the driver stopped the car and asked, “Do you mean Vera Pigee?” Mary replied, “I told you, Mr. and Mrs. Pigee!” The other officer opened the door and told my daughter, “Get out! You can make it from here on your own.” The list of demonstrations and arrests grew. On Father’s Day, June 16, 1963, we picketed the white churches. Our signs read: 1. Our Father; 2. Our Heavenly Father; and 3. Grant unto us our freedom. There were four picket lines, four people per line. I led the first line that left the NAACP office. One of the male drivers was really afraid. He ran into the NAACP office, saying, “Mrs. Pigee. The fireman got my people!” The police had arrested his four picketers. On June 17th we picketed the local newspaper, the Press Register. Reverend James Rayford, formerly of Clarksdale, who now resides in Columbus, Ohio, led the picket line. The paper refused to give a black woman a title, but the name of a white citizen who was hospitalized was reported in a separate column. And I think their janitor was black. Our signs read: 1. The aid of the press will help freedom; 2. May we have the press on the side of freedom; 3. Freedom of the press can aid in freeing the oppressed; 4. Favorable public sentiments can be moved by the press; and 5. Freedom of the press—Freedom to petition to be free. On June 18th Reverend Willie Goodloe led the picket line. The sign read: Our City government must improve. On June 19th, 96-year-old John Wright led the line. The sign read: 1. Let My People Vote; 2. Out of every 100 who try less than 5 get registered; 3. To deny me the right to vote denies me my freedom; and 4. If you keep us from voting, we will keep you from being President. Roy Wright led us on June 20, as we picketed the library. The signs read: 1. I want only to get a book to read; 2. You say I am ignorant. How can I help it? and 3. When you will not let me get a book to read.

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On June 21, Miss Martha J. Mullin was the leader. The signs read: 1. How about a lift from the southern bell? You are great enough to do it; 2. Southern Bell has the capacity to be fair. Let’s display it; and 3. Southern Bell and its local personnel should include us. On June 21, 1963, Reverend J. D. Rayford led the picket line at the United States Post Office. Our signs read: 1. My postman has walked for years. How about a job inside for him; 2. All white inside, getting whiter outside; and 3. This is discrimination by the United States Government. Larry Graham, who has been president of the Coahoma Youth Council for five years, led many picket lines at Sears and Roebuck, Fred’s Dollar Store, and various doctors’ offices. Mary Pigee and Wilma Jones stood in the ticket line at the Tyson and Paramount Theater. The ticket seller told them they would have to see the manager. They told her they did not want to see the manager. They wanted tickets to see the movie and that the white kids in front of them were not required to see the manager. Youth Council members planned to go for a swim in the white swimming pool. When they arrived, all of the water had been let out of the pool. A few years prior to the demonstrations, my cousin, Levon Hoskins, and I were walking on the sidewalk, passing the white swimming pool. A policeman told him to walk on the other side of the street because some young ladies were swimming. The Youth Council picketed all of the business places in downtown Clarksdale, and on Highway 61. Every day, I would get Fulton’s Ford station wagon and go to the Holiday Inn. The youths would jump out of the station wagon before it stopped rolling, and run to the door. The white people who worked there would lock the doors and tell us the cafeteria was closed while customers were seated at the tables eating with their hats on. One of the waitresses peeped out and told me to go to the back door if I wanted to be served! I told her the “back door crowd” had not come. They were scared they would lose their jobs, but they would be there after we broke the barriers. Many white people were also arrested in Clarksdale. Congressman Al Lowenstein and a friend left my house one night, driving to the Alcazar Hotel.42 The police arrested them for walking from their parking place to the hotel and charged them with violating the curfew ordinance. This did not discourage the congressman. He came back in a few weeks and brought 42. Allard K. Lowenstein (1929–80): a political scientist and lawyer who worked in Mississippi in 1963 and 1964, recruiting students with the National Student Association. He later represented New York’s Fifth district in Congress 1969–71. This event occurred October 23, 1963, during the Freedom Vote campaign. The Alcazar Hotel is the white premier hotel located in downtown Clarksdale.

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me some clothing to be distributed at the Freedom House to the needy. He also brought President Roosevelt’s grandson with him.43 Mississippi Free Press, Saturday, May 4, 1963 CLARKSDALE LADY BEATEN—THEN CONVICTED OF DISTURBING THE PEACE Mrs. Vera Pigee, of Clarksdale, was convicted and fined for “disturbing the peace,” Monday, after she was beaten by a local gas station attendant. She said that she would appeal the decision of the City Court. Mrs. Pigee told the Free Press that she and her husband drove up to the Lion station at 617 State Street, Tuesday, April 23, and told the attendant to put gas and oil in the car. She said she then walked into the station office and asked another attendant for the key to the rest room. He told her to go around to the back. She said that she didn’t want to go around in the dark and asked for the key to the ladies’ room that was lighted. The young man said that in the few times he had worked there, he had only seen white women use that room. Then he said, “Take the key. You’re decent. Go use the rest room.” As Mrs. Pigee was unlocking the door, the other attendant, Percy Green, approached her and told her she couldn’t use that room. He said the one for colored was in the back. Green ordered her to give him the key and she complied. Then Mrs. Pigee asked him to take the gas and oil out of the car. Green told her not to come back and she answered that she wouldn’t—and she would tell other Negroes not to use the Lion station either. He said, “Good, be sure to tell all of them we do not cater to nigger business anyway.” Then Mrs. Pigee asked for the change from the $10 bill she had given the other attendant. When Green didn’t give her the money, she insisted. “Man, give me my change.” Mrs. Pigee said that Green ran from behind the counter and hit her with his fist in the temple, mouth and jaw. Her husband ran inside the station and asked Green if he had hit his wife. Green did not answer. He put his hand under the counter and told the man who had given her the rest room key to call the police. Paul said, “Come out of the station.” Mrs. Pigee said, “Not until he gives me my change, honey.” Paul said, “Man, give my wife her change.” Green said, “Here is your change. Your bill was $3.70.” He gave her $5.30 in small change. The Pigees were riding in Reverend J. D. Rayford’s car and went directly from the 43. Franklin D. Roosevelt III.

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station to his house and called the police. Reverend Rayford, Paul and Mrs. Pigee counted the change—it was $1.00 short. Mrs. Pigee was told that Chief Ben Collins would be informed about her call when he came in. She called the Coahoma County Sheriff and was told that he couldn’t act unless she swore out an affidavit. The FBI in Memphis was also informed of the incident. One hour later, Chief Collins came to Mrs. Pigee’s home and arrested her for disturbing the peace. Mrs. Pigee called A. C. Mooneyham, the manager of the State Street Lion oil station (Highway 61) and the D & X Station on 803 Desota (Highway 49). She asked for her $1.00 back, but he refused. Green had said they didn’t “cater” to nigger business. Mrs. Pigee said that Negroes were going to boycott both service stations. He only owned the one Lion Oil Station and his station closed because of the effectiveness of the boycott. She wrote to the home office of the Lion Oil Company—they did not answer. AFFIDAVIT “I, Mrs. Vera Pigee, entered the ladies rest room in the County Courthouse that has a sign on the door saying ‘White Ladies.’ I entered the room along with Miss Wilma Jean Jones at about 11:30 a.m. The Chief of Police, Ben C. Collins, entered the rest room within a minute or two. As he entered he said, ‘You all come out of here.’ I had entered one of the individual booths and proceeded to use same. Miss Jones was standing in the rest room. Collins then called to her very loudly, ‘Wilma! Come out of here.’ About the second or third time he called she slowly made her exit and stood just outside the door, which the chief had left open. He came back in to call me. He said, very roughly, ‘Vera! Come out of here.’ In a few minutes I walked out. Just outside the rest room door stood L. A. Ross, the Sheriff of Coahoma County, Chief Collins, and Thomas Babe Pearson, the County Prosecuting Attorney. L. A. Ross said, ‘Don’t you all go in there anymore.’ After this we went back into the courtroom. I called Mr. Ross later the same day, November 12, 1963, to complain to him about the action of the Chief of Police in a County Building in the presence of the Sheriff. L. A. Ross said, ‘When you pull these stunts, you put me on the spot.’ He also said, ‘You know you didn’t have any business going in there and I don’t want to hurt anybody. I am busy and have some men in the office. I will call you.’ As of this writing, November 13, 1963, 10:30 a.m., he has not called.”

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The Coahoma County Branch of the NAACP meeting was held in one of the local black churches. There are some black churches in Clarksdale now in which a freedom meeting has never been held. In some churches that we used at the outset we were later denied the facilities, after a live hand grenade was thrown into Centennial M. B. C. Charlie Newsome ran outside and got the bomb. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested. Dick Gregory was our guest that night.44 Some members in all of the churches affected the church, accepting its responsibility to the whole person. My membership church, Chapel Hill, was no exception before the Civil Rights and Poverty Bills were passed and churches began to get Head Start programs, jobs, food, training and medical care for parents and children. A one-hundred-unit housing project was requested for Chapel Hill, to prove to the government that Chapel Hill was interested in, and serving, the whole community. I was told its extra activities were listed as having had citizenship classes. Of course, these classes had been held in Chapel Hill for a number of years, but the church did not sponsor them. Esau Jenkins of Charleston, South Carolina, Johns Island, asked Dr. Martin Luther King to add citizenship classes to SCLC programs, which Esau had already begun on Johns Island in his bus.45 Three members of Dr. King’s staff, Reverend Andrew Young, who is now a United States Congressman in the House of Representatives, Mrs. Septima Clark and Mrs. Dorothy Cotton, came to my home at 611 Baird, in Clarksdale, in a little red car and invited me to the first citizenship training session in Dorchester, Georgia.46 I told them I was already overloaded as I was a wife, mother and businesswoman, and my many church, NAACP and COFO activities were more than I could handle. I recommended, and called, some retired teachers, but none of them would accept. Reverend Young said they were going to stay at my house until I promised to come to the one-week-long intensive workshop and come back to Clarksdale and supervise the classes.

44. The bombing occurred April 3, 1963. Dick Gregory (1932–2017): African American comedian, author, and civil rights activist. 45. Esau Jenkins (1910–72): businessman, preacher, and civil rights activist. 46. SCLC came to Clarksdale to recruit Mrs. Pigee in 1961. Andrew Young (1932–): pastor, key officer in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Georgia congressman (1972–77), US ambassador to the UN (1977–79), mayor of Atlanta (1982–90); Septima Clark (1898–1987): educator, civil rights activist, developed literacy and citizenship classes; Dorothy Cotton (1930–2018): civil rights activist, key leader in SCLC.

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After a few days, I finally agreed. Miss Hattie Gilmore and I later visited Esau Jenkins. After returning home, recruiting students, making the textbooks and organizing the school, I had a class in Chapel Hill. The Coahoma County Voters League, of which Reverend R. L. Drew was president, sponsored the school and gave compensation to all of the churches in which we had classes; Chapel Hill, Silent Grove, and Rayford Chapel. After the first cycle SCLC gave the churches a donation. As long as we used them, and we used them until Basic Adult Education, a governmental program began in 1966. The citizenship program under SCLC was in its infant stage and really struggling. We had to furnish our own meeting places, make our own books, and provide our own blackboard. The instructors and supervisor volunteered their time and service. They were Mrs. Vernon Armstrong, Reverend J. D. Rayford, Mrs. R. L. Drew, Mrs. Idessa Johnson and Miss Hattie Mae Gilmore. The purpose of the citizenship schools was to help adults help themselves. Our goal was to help adults become registered voters. My work in the citizenship program was self-fulfilling in just one night. I walked into a class in the basement of Chapel Hill and read one of the students’ names. She had written that her first name was Mattie. She said, “Mrs. Pigee. You can’t read my writing.” I said, “Oh! yes I can!” She looked up at me with a look of humility and said, “My mother died when I was a little girl, and I had brothers and sisters who were younger than I. I had to mother them while my father worked. I never had a chance to learn to read and write. Now, I can write my name. I won’t have to make that ‘X’ on my check anymore.” One of our students, Mrs. Mamie Louis, who was a customer at Pigee’s beauty salon, was my first recruit. She was a domestic worker for a rural white family. She commuted to class four nights a week for four or five years. She had always wanted to go to school. She and her husband moved to Chicago. One Saturday morning my telephone rang. A voice said, “Mrs. Pigee. This is Mrs. Louis. The pin I received last night really belongs to you.” “What pin?” I asked. She said, “I am now a registered nurse. And all because of your effort to organize those citizenship classes. I am coming home soon, and do myself the honor of letting you see me in my uniform and pin my pin on you.” Another project, said to have been church related, was the turkey drive Dick Gregory launched in Chicago.47 He sent a van load to COFO in Clarksdale. I set up distribution centers at Chapel Hill, Silent Grove, Centennial and Rayford Chapel. I also gave turkeys away on nationwide TV. 47. Gregory announced the drive November 27, 1964 (“Aid for Mississippi Negroes,” New York Times, November 28, 1964, 16).

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The food and clothing alleged to have been given away by Chapel Hill was really clothing and food given away by the Mississippi Emergency Welfare Relief Committee.48 I am a member of Chapel Hill and, with the cooperation of most of the membership, I have been able to make many contributions to the community. But when the streets, coves, as they are called, and center were named not a one was named for me. I was in school in Detroit at the time, but I was told that a little black group with a male chauvinistic attitude had named the streets in Chapel Hill Heights before the church knew what was happening.49 I told the people who informed me of this action that I did not know black men in Clarksdale had a chauvinistic attitude. Where was all this aggressiveness when white folks were kicking them in the attitude, and sending the educated and uneducated into the alleys to step in waste to get to the back doors. This was an act of empty honor seeking, petty jealousy, brainwashing type thing that had been done to and still lives in most black men—waiting until after black women and children did something, then step out and take over. I also told the many people who brought the subject to me that if the 500 members of Chapel Hill, and all of the people in Clarksdale and Coahoma County, let two or three men take a government project and treat it as if it were their own, it was all right with me. If anything I had endured could be used to give poor people, black or white, a more comfortable place to live, than they had ever had before, it was worth the suffering. I knew people were living in Chapel Hill Heights who had never lived in a house with a bath tub with running hot and cold water. Women from another church in Clarksdale came to my beauty salon and asked me why could not at least one of the street names be changed and named for me. They felt that my church had mistreated me. I told them that whole countries had had their names changed, but don’t blame the whole church because a few men thought it was “right” to use my activities to help get the project, but “wrong” and too much of an honor to name a street for me. There are many Christian people in Chapel Hill Church whose lives have toughened my life in a positive way. When I received an invitation to President Lyndon Johnson‘s Inauguration, Mrs. Viola Debro Johnson, who was 48. Mrs. Pigee and David Dennis (CORE) cochaired the Emergency Welfare Relief Committee under the auspices of COFO. 49. Chapel Hill Heights is a community of low-income affordable apartments built with federal funds.

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superintendent of Chapel Hill Church School, asked me if I was going. I said, “I do not know. It is such an expensive affair.” She said, “This community will send you. I have sat here in my office, year after year, watching you feed and clothe people by the thousands. If you had been working as hard for yourself as you have for others, you could afford to go anywhere in the world, and most of the people in this community will never forget Vera Pigee’s work. Chapel Hill will take the lead in helping you go.” That Sunday morning during the service, Bennie Gooden, a deacon of Chapel Hill, asked me if I had the invitation with me. I gave it to him. After reading it he told the congregation, “Mrs. Pigee did not know I was going to do this. To show our appreciation for what she has meant to this church suppose we help her go.” I was really shocked! It suddenly seemed as though the entire congregation was trying to get to the table at the same time. I leaned on the shoulder of Mrs. Idella Topps, a member of our church. She embraced me and said, “Pigee. I know you are surprised at our response. Don’t pay any attention to our fights. We are together, and all families fight. If you don’t compose yourself, I’ll take that invitation and go to the Inauguration myself.” Mrs. Adeline Yarbrough, the mother of one of the first two black girls to attend the white school in Clarksdale, and grandmother of the other one, brought me a donation from Rayford Chapel Church; Mrs. Irene Davis brought a donation from Centennial Church and Mrs. Viola Debro Johnson brought a donation from the Delta Burial Corporation, of which I am an agent. They sent me by American Airlines—first class. A fireman from Los Angeles said that I was the only person he had met at the festivities whose community had sent them. I phoned Mrs. Minnie Booker’s house, who is a member of Chapel Hill Church and the pioneer for Accredited Kindergarten for Children of Color in Clarksdale. I told her that I was sending a truckload of toys to her kindergarten and I wanted her to give them to people in need and that we would be sending some applicants. She asked, “Is the truck in Clarksdale now?” I answered, “Yes.” She took a deep breath and said, “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Pigee.” Many people in Clarksdale made contributions to the civil rights struggle. I know. Because I certainly did not go to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and spend a month just to write a book about “what someone had told me.” I was born in a county adjacent to Coahoma, thirty miles from Clarksdale, and I wish I could name all of the people in Clarksdale who made meaningful contributions to the struggle—which we are now abusing the fruits of. Yes, even in Clarksdale.

C.O.F.O. After NAACP branches in the state of Mississippi began to demonstrate by picketing, sit-ins, and petitioning the local, state and national government, civil rights activities began to escalate primarily through public mass meetings, membership campaigns, boycotts and voter registration activities. Other civil right groups [entered] the state of Mississippi, saying to the officers of NAACP branches and state officers, “I want to work with you.” They had learned in the various communities that without the support of the local NAACP united the citizenry would not accept them. Behind their fear there was respect for the organization and its local leadership. Those who came forward in the 50’s and early 60’s were dedicated. We knew our lives were on the sacrificial altar every moment. Medgar Evers was far-sighted enough to see that we had begun to move forward slowly, and we did not have the time nor the resources to fight with these younger, weaker organizations. He invited them to come to the NAACP state conference and asked the board to form an umbrella under which all groups could lose their identity and function as a united meeting board. We were glad to accept anyone who wanted to identify with us. We were real and thought they were. These Civil Rights groups came to Mississippi and congregated in the villages, towns, cities and counties where NAACP united was organized and working. Included were the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). We accepted suggestions openly and, soon, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was born during the early stages of this operation.1 The concept was a blessing, because the NAACP branches had no paid staff. The only paid personnel were Medgar Evers and his secretary, Miss Lillian Louie, and they were not connected directly to any one branch. SNCC 1. Created in 1961.

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paid students $10.00 a week. CORE and SCLC had a paid staff. The many NAACP branches had offices which were called Freedom Houses. We turned our Freedom House over to the group assigned to work with our branches. That was our first mistake—particularly with the SNCC kids. In Clarksdale we introduced the newcomers to our community, shared our homes, strategy sessions, and churches with them. Our branch and Youth Council met every Tuesday at various churches in the city. I usually secured black churches in which to hold the meeting. The Youth Council held its meeting from 7:00 to 8:00, then stayed through the branch meeting and participated in the activities. They would sing freedom songs and help plan membership drives, demonstrations, voter registration drives, voter education workshops and voter participation. Some of the students started gossiping about who could afford to give them free lodging and board. When our first group arrived, most of the branches’ officers were attending the National NAACP Convention in Chicago, the year Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy were assassinated. The convention lasted one week. Upon returning, we learned that the students had had a telephone installed in our Freedom House without even asking our permission, even though we had a business phone in our office. They ran up a stupendous telephone bill and then they left. The manager of the Bell Telephone Company in Clarksdale called me, to solicit my support in collecting this large past due bill. I told him I did not feel I could be of any help, that the students had no means of support other than the $10.00 a week SNCC paid them. I told him that the students were transients, they came and went. Besides, the phone company knew that the office was a NAACP office and required only the type of phone the board deemed necessary. However, I promised to take his grievances and the bill showing where the calls were made, to the board. The board members called a meeting with the group and explained to them that we upheld the principle of the NAACP and paid our debts, and did not make bills we could not pay. Many of the students stated they had been in Clarksdale working for the NAACP, gratis, and that the national office should and would pay the bill if the board asked. The board voted unanimously against the idea. They tried to use the NAACP through the board. Individuals and organizations have tried to use the NAACP through me. I attended a workshop with another civil rights organization. I was arrested for availing myself of public facilities at a service station about 10 miles out of the city. Upon leaving the service station, we were stopped by a highway patrolman who arrested the driver, Reverend Rayford, for allegedly speeding at 60 miles per hour through the town. Upon contacting this other civil rights organization, I was asked if they provided expenses for

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us to come back to trial, would I ask the NAACP for an attorney. I agreed. The NAACP assigned me an attorney from that immediate area. Expenses provided were a meager $50, which I promptly returned after which I was advised that the NAACP would give me additional money if I asked. I was also informed that if I had worked as hard for this organization, as I had for the NAACP, I would be a part of this organization’s national board. I had all of the youths who came to Clarksdale singing in the NAACP Youth Council choir and collected their membership dues. As soon as they thought the community had accepted them, they began to tell the NAACP Youths to get out of the Freedom House. When confronted with this dirty trick by the members of the NAACP executive board, they said they were just playing with the NAACP kids. A few more of their so-called tricks were to tell some of the Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council members that if they belonged to SNCC they would not have an advisor and would get $10.00 a week, and they could do whatever needed to be done. They said, “Mrs. Pigee has too much power. She runs the branch Youth Council and Freedom House. You all are poor kids, but Mrs. Pigee’s house and beauty salon is air-conditioned.” Most of the youths told me what some of the COFO kids said. They poisoned the minds of a few youths and adults. When I made up the agenda for the weekly freedom meeting, I designated a period for discussion. Our theme was “Where we are now—Where we came from.” I gave a brief history of how I had become the secretary, not attending the meeting the night I was elected. It was really no contest. No one else would accept. I was surprised but I was not afraid of white folks. I had organized the Youth Council after a previous attempt failed and the state conference of branches asked me to organize the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP. I organized the Freedom House after COFO elected Dave Dennis and myself state chairpersons of the Emergency Relief Committee.2 At first I tried to operate out of a small room in a local church but the response to the appeals we made were so great we had to get a bigger place. I will discuss this committee’s function later. Our first Freedom House was an old shamble of a store. I asked its owner to let us use it, promising that the youths and I would clean and paint it and I personally would be responsible for the rent. So, if anyone termed my action or activities as “power,” it was well-earned power. And, now that the Youth Council and branch were no longer dreams or merely on paper, they could elect any member they chose to any of the positions. 2. David Dennis (1940–): Freedom Rider; organizer and activist in Louisiana and Mississippi; field secretary of CORE.

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Inquiries came from the audience as to why I engaged in this type of discussion. I told them straight out that lies and gossip about my activities were being spread by some of those whom we had welcomed into our community. Some of the NAACP members present expressed dissatisfaction with the behavior of the little group in the community. One of the SNCC’s strong points was to go into a community and create unrest toward the people in the community who had emerged as leaders of the civil rights movement, who made it possible for SNCC to move into the communities. I went to New York to speak for a series of programs for the Mississippi Emergency Relief Committee, sponsored by a group of ministers in the city of New York. Dr. C. S. Stamps, pastor of the Metropolitan M.B. Church in Harlem was the treasurer and his generous congregation was one of our major contributors. They presented me with a check for the committee in the amount of $500.00 and sent 30,000 pounds of clothing to Clarksdale while I was still in New York. When I returned, a real ragged white SNCC kid had come to Clarksdale to help us. Immediately after I came home, Dr. Stamp’s group sent us an additional 25,000 pounds of clothing. I was working like a slave, helping to unload the truck when this new ragged white boy asked, “Where is that high and mighty Mrs. Pigee?” I said, “You would probably be surprised. Why do you think she is so high and mighty?” “Because,” he replied, “the COFO kids over at Marks said she is sitting on tons of food, clothing, and money over here.” When I said, “I am Mrs. Pigee,” he jumped up into the van that had brought the clothing and hid. Shortly after we finished unloading the clothing, I received a telephone call informing me of my new boy’s need of a place to stay. Mrs. Clara Grey said she would give him sleeping facilities. The next morning Mrs. Grey woke me up and said he could not stay at her house another night. I asked, “Why?” She said, “He is lying on the bed naked with the door open. When I saw him I closed the door, but he re-opened it. My family and I are shocked.” On Sunday afternoon, a white woman called me. She said she lived on Madison Street in Clarksdale and her husband only worked three days a week. “We have no lights, no gas, no food. The children all need shoes and clothing. My son is sick and taking treatments at the Children’s Hospital in Memphis. We only have an old truck. The welfare gives us money for gas and oil to take our son for his treatments. I stay in the hospital with him. The welfare gives me a little money to pay for the food I eat, but it is not enough. When my money is gone I eat what little food my son leaves on his plate. Sometimes I do little chores for the patients and visitors and they’ll give me a little money and I buy food. I am pouring out my troubles to you, because I have heard you talk on the radio. I have seen your picture in the

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paper and read about all the people you are helping. I was afraid to call you, because I am white! “My husband and I have been to the welfare and the other white charity organizations, but they will not give us anything! If my husband could only get two more days [of] work, we could pay our bills. The compensation he receives for the three days he does work pays for a little food, pays our rent and telephone bill. We must keep the telephone because of our sick child. Mrs. Pigee, if you can help me, I will clean your house, cook, wash and iron for you. If you will just give us some food and pay our gas bill. If you think I am not desperately in need, please come over here. We are so hungry.” I asked her what kind of trick was she trying to pull. Or if the Coahoma Citizens’ Council was paying her to get me to come over there so she could kill me. She began to scream and cry and gave me her telephone number and her address. She also gave me the name and number of a black woman and asked me to call her. She said, “Better still, I will have her call you. She told me you would help me. She said she has known you since you were a girl, that your mother was a friend of hers.” A short time later, the black woman called me. She said, “Pigee. Do whatever you can for those people. They don’t have anything, and you have just got to go to her house.” I told her to have the white woman meet me at the Freedom House at 409 Yazoo. I called Reverend J. D. Rayford and Miss Hattie Mae Gilmore and asked them to meet Paul Pigee and myself at the Freedom House. It was a cold Sunday afternoon! Minutes after we arrived this family drove up. One look was all we needed. We gave them food, clothing and bed clothing. The little boy who was ill had shoes that were much too big for his feet, and he wore no socks. I fitted shoes and socks on his feet and, when I finished, he kicked me. I turned him around, picked him up, put him across my lap and spanked his behind, until my husband said, “That’s enough.” I went to their house the next morning, which I will not even try to describe other than to say it was clean, and that the little boy did not kick me anymore. I took their light and gas bill to the local Emergency Relief Committee and we made out the checks payable to the individual companies. About a week later, the woman whose bills we had paid called me about 6:00 p.m., and said, “I am scared to death.” Some whites had kidnapped her little boy as he was coming home from school. They told her they had him and if she told anyone or called the police, they would kill him. They cursed her out and told her she and her husband were a disgrace to the white race, taking hand-outs from the damn NAACP and niggers.

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She told them that no one would help them and that their gas and light bill was two months in arrears and the companies were about to discontinue their services. She added that the checks they had given her husband to pay the bills were not from the NAACP but from the Emergency Relief Committee. She said they told her, “That fool, Pigee, would name the NAACP anything.” I asked her if she had called the police and she said, “No,” and asked me what she should do. I told her it was her son’s life at stake and if she hadn’t called the police, I could understand why. It may well have been the police who had the boy. The checks we gave for the light and water bills were paid at the City Hall and the gas company and someone in one of those departments or both of those had to tell. And, from my past experience with the local F.B.I., they were no different than the police. About 8:00 p.m., she called me again to tell me her little son had come home. He told her, “I was walking home from school with some other children when two white men in a car called me. They told the other children to go on home and that they were going to give me a ride home. They said they were going to stop and get me some food. They bought me a hamburger, a drink, some candy and apple and oranges. See, Mama! More than I could eat. I brought some home. They said you wouldn’t mind, because they had called you so you wouldn’t worry about me.” This family came back to Freedom House a few more times for food. The mother told me if I didn’t want the neighbors to see a white woman cleaning my house or cooking for me to bring my clothes to her house. She would gladly iron them for me, because her family would have starved or frozen to death if we had not helped her. She realized that some of the black people didn’t want me to help her. When she came to Freedom House she heard someone say, “This stuff is for us. It ain’t for no white folks.” I told her the only thing she owed me was the same thing that we requested of all the black folks. We had given and re-given and all we asked was that she and her husband register to vote. Reverend J. D. Rayford drove them to City Hall, and they registered. The Coahoma County Youth Council Branch and COFO intensified the voters registration campaign after the Freedom Vote.3 We moved into the local political structure by attending our first precinct meeting in the city auditorium. The police bussed whites from outside our precinct into our meeting. Several members of our group overheard one woman telling a friend over the telephone, “You’ve got to come down here. The niggers are here! I’ve sent a police car to bring you.” One of those who were chauffeured to our 3. The statewide Freedom Vote occurred November 2–4, 1963.

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meeting was an elderly woman who, upon her arrival, asked, “What are we voting for? I didn’t know we were supposed to vote for anything today.” She was warned, “Be quiet. This is a precinct meeting.” And, even though voting outside of their own precinct, these voters were permitted to voice their oral votes and affected the outcome of the meeting. Shortly thereafter we ran our first black political candidate. We were told by the Chairman of the Coahoma Democratic Election Committee that funds were no longer available for paying poll watchers. Reverend J. D. Rayford, H. Y. Hackett, Reverend Willie Goodloe and myself volunteered to do it. On several occasions food and drink were brought in to the white workers. However, when we attempted to eat food that had been brought to us, we were informed that we couldn’t eat it there and there was a designated area for us to eat. When we asked just where that spot was, no one seemed to know. One elderly couple, who had been given their official ballots, entered the voting booth together. I immediately went to the booth and informed them that one of them would have to come out. The lady informed me that she had been doing this all the time. I said, “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m here. To stop you from doing it wrong.” The director came over to the booth and also informed them that one of them would have to leave the booth. The lady replied, “Oh, come on! You know we’ve been doing this for years.” The director made no comment to her statement. After the polls were closed we were not permitted to sit at the table while the votes were tabulated. We had to sit in the balcony and watched the proceedings from there. A black woman from Roundaway, Mississippi, came into our disbursement center the first day we opened, in the basement of Haven Methodist Church.4 It was cold and raining. She asked for clothing for her children. She wore a print dress, a thin sweater, a three-quarter length coat, stockings, socks, and a pair of old shoes. I asked her if she wanted clothing for herself. She said, “I sure need some. But, I will be most appreciative if I can get clothing for my children so I can keep them in school.” I asked her what size she wore. She told me. The group of workers gave her a complete change of clothing. When she took off her shoes one of them fell apart. Those of us who saw this could not restrain ourselves. One of the COFO workers, who was a SNCC worker, created a legal problem for the NAACP. A member of the National staff came to the NAACP executive board meeting in Jackson and informed us that we had merged with other groups without the consent of the National Office and had created 4. Roundaway is an unincorporated community located fourteen miles south of Clarksdale.

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a catastrophe for the NAACP and that it must be resolved. A few board members agreed with the staff member, but said they had no knowledge of how the organization was formed. One day they had received a letter from Medgar Evers, telling them all about COFO. I stood up and told the staff member, “We organized COFO, and I was surprised to hear men say that Medgar, alone, gave birth to COFO.” Miss Mary Cox, who was secretary of the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP branches jumped up and said, “Amen, Pigee.” The staff member said we had organized a monster. I agreed, and said I was willing to accept my punishment and I was working harder to kill the monster than I did to give it birth. COFO sponsored two candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor on the Freedom ballot.5 The elected officials of the state of Mississippi were in Washington, on radio and television, telling the newspapers that Negroes in Mississippi would not vote even if they were registered, because they were too apathetic. Each COFO unit was given Freedom ballots and boxes were carried wherever black people were. This was a statewide project. The votes the Freedom candidates received tripled the votes for those who ran on the official state ballot. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was born out of that successful endeavor. The COFO group in Clarksdale had a meeting and assigned a church to each worker, to work on Sunday. I chose my membership church, Chapel Hill M.B.C. I had my ballots and box in my beauty shop, and that Sunday I carried my box to church. After Sunday school, I had a brief conference with my pastor and deacons. I was given permission to appeal to the congregation at the close of the service. About 12:10, Tom Gaither, who was the coordinator of our local COFO, came to Chapel Hill and told me one of the major T.V. news media was in town and the COFO workers could not get the churches to cooperate in the filming of the congregation signing the Freedom ballot.6 One church told him to bring the cameramen at 12:00, and when they arrived everyone, including the black minister who had invited them, was gone! I told Tom that our service was almost over, but I would speak to my pastor, Reverend L. R. Skipper again. He said it was all right with him. I told Tom to get the cameramen and set up at the entrance on Carolina and Lynn. All of the SNCC kids who were supposed to be working churches throughout Coahoma County came to Chapel following the camera. One 5. The Freedom Vote ballot ran pharmacist and NAACP leader Aaron Henry for governor and Tougaloo College chaplain Edwin King for lieutenant governor. 6. Thomas W. Gaither (1938–): activist and organizer in SC and MS; field secretary of CORE; retired biology professor from Slippery Rock University.

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came into the church and asked me where the ballot box was. I asked him, “Why?” And, why was he not working the church he was assigned to? He told me they wanted to help me! I told him I had help. The members of the Coahoma County Youth Council were helping me, and I was working the church with or without T.V. He said, “If you are going to pass out ballots and pencils and let people mark the ballots inside, you can set the box outside where the camera is unattended and they can film the people as they deposit their ballots!” I told him I wasn’t seeking publicity—but I wasn’t dodging it either—and I did not know if the congregation was going to let the men film them or not, but I was going to stand beside my ballot box if it was a high peak or a fizzle. I also said that if the newsmen were interested in photographing an empty Freedom ballot box sitting on the steps of a church, they would have photographed his box. This was just another example of the struggle within the struggle. Reverend Skipper and I emphasized the necessity of each person marking their own ballot and depositing it in the box on their way out. The Youth Council members and ushers of our church, directed by Mrs. Sylvia Flowers, gave everyone a ballot! Miss Cedonia Davis and I manned the box. Many people deposited their ballot expressing little or no concern for the camera, until one member of our church said, “Oh! What’s the T.V. cameras doing here?” The struggle within the struggle was at the most repugnant part of the struggle. With all of COFO’s weaknesses its strengths were obvious! Factories in Vance and Summer, Mississippi, had no black employees and their excuse was that no blacks had applied. The Coahoma County Unit of COFO sent a bus loaded with people to those factories and they made applications! J. D. Rayford, Jr., a law student, was the director of that project. Upon following up he was told that the factories were closed for a brief period but finally re-opened on an integrated basis.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT After years of voter registration activities, telling and re-telling the federal government in the form of affidavits, depositions and testimonies about the injustices that were perpetrated against the black citizenry, the government finally began to have hearings on the Circuit Clerks. The hearing of the Quitman County Circuit Clerk was held at the federal building in Clarksdale. Aaron Henry and I arrived late and the courtroom was full. In the hall were two doors with glass in them. At the first door a group of white people were peeping in. We went to the second door which was near the presiding judge. An officer of the court peeped out and told us to get away from the door. Aaron said, “OK.” I did not say anything. The officer came back two or three times and every time he would say the same thing. Aaron said, “OK.” Finally, he opened the door and said, “You all keep saying OK, but you are not moving.” I said, “I have not said anything. But I am not going to leave this door until you get those white folks away from the other door. You are not asking them to leave. They were there when we came.” He went back into the courtroom. He did not even approach the judge but a few minutes later he came back and told us the judge had said to get away from that door. I told him to go back and tell the judge that as long as those white people peep, I was going to peep. He stepped outside and said, “This is the federal building.” I said, “That’s why I am not leaving.” He did not come back anymore. That night someone called me and said, “Mrs. Pigee. You didn’t know it but that was one of those bad white men from Quitman County you were arguing with today.” I said, “You got it wrong. He didn’t know he had jumped on the NAACP. If he had known, he would be running now.” The federal government finally sent federal registrars to Coahoma and a few other Mississippi counties to register all of its citizens, but in spite of the federal government actions Coahoma County was subjected to the first recall in its history, thereby removing all registered voters from its rosters.1 1. After the 1970 census, twenty counties, including Coahoma, purged their voting registers. The passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act enabled the arrival of the federal registrars.

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DEPOSITIONS OF BLACKS IN TALLAHATCHIE COUNTY

These depositions were being taken at the New Federal Building in Clarksdale. When I arrived, the blacks and whites from Tallahatchie County were so conditioned to obeying the pattern of segregation rules that all of the whites were seated on the left side of the courtroom and the blacks on the right. I sat on a bench on the left side. There were four white women already seated. One by one they left. I was the only person in the crowded courtroom with a seat to myself. A black student who was working in voter registration in Tallahatchie County came in and sat beside me. One white man and four white women were seated behind us. The first three black people to testify stated, when asked what their occupations were, that they farmed and owned 150 to 500 acres of land. The lawyer asked Mrs. Berdie C. Keglar to tell the experiences she had had at the circuit clerk office in the courthouse at Charleston, Mississippi, while trying to register. She said, “He told me to read an ar-ti-cle of the state constitution.” The white man who was seated behind us said, “ar-ti-cle,” and the white women grinned. A black man said in his testimony he went to the Chancery Clerk’s office to register! The white man behind us said, “Chancery Clerk’s office,” and the women grinned. The third person who testified was a black man who said he went to the Circuit Clerk’s office to radish. The white man said “radish.” At this point of the testimony, the grammatical errors the blacks had made and the emphasis placed on them by the white man had become so comical to these white women they were about to fall off the bench with laughter. I said to the black student sitting beside me, “The black people from Tallahatchie County who testified may not be educated, but they are a lot more intelligent than some people in this courtroom.” The white folks in Tallahatchie County had taken everything and the first thing they took were the schools. I know. I was born there. While I was growing up there, the white kids’ school opened in September. The black 66

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school did not open until November. Now, the same people who kept black people from getting an education are sitting up in a federal building making fun of them because they are not educated. When these people who are testifying were young, it was even worse. When the whites used to pass the cotton field where we were picking cotton, they would stick their heads out of the school bus window and yell, “Pick that cotton, nigger!” Now there were cries of bussing little children so far from their home. They were bussing them—bussing little white children past those schools in churches, the Rosenwald schools and past black children, and those sympathetic whites and blacks did not object.1 I said to my mother, “What more do they want? They already have the schools and buses and they are going to get the money for the cotton we are picking, and they still ain’t satisfied. When I grow up I am not going to pick any cotton. If there was anything honorable about picking cotton, they would pick it.” It was strange to me that the white man and white woman did not think it was so comical when defendants said they owned land in Tallahatchie County—land which had been enriched by the blood of Emmett Till, Clinton Melton whom I grew up with, and other black people I know who were killed by whites in Tallahatchie County.2 All of a sudden their testimonies became quite intellectual. The laughter and repeating of verbal misusage ceased. After I stopped talking, someone on the side of the courtroom where the white people were seated said, “That is that Mrs. Pigee.” The judge told the policeman, “If you hear them so much as wink an eye, bring them to me!” We were in the same building on February 3, 1965. I was giving testimony for the federal government. Attorney John Duffy was the lawyer for the contestants. Depositions were taken all over the state of Mississippi, contesting the election of Thomas Gerstle Abernathy, 1st Congressional District; Jamie L. Whitten, 2nd Congressional District; John Bell Williams, 3rd Congressional District; Prentiss Walker, 4th Congressional District and Williams Nyers Colmer, 5th Congressional District. Attorneys for the contestees were Jamie L. Whitten, Charles L. Sullivan and Leon L. Porter, Jr., of Clarksdale.3 1. The Rosenwald School project assisted in the creation of nearly five thousand schools across the South for African American children in the early twentieth century. 2. Elmer Kimball shot and killed Clinton Melton at a Glendora service station where he worked on December 3, 1955. An all-white jury acquitted Kimball in the same courthouse that held the earlier Emmett Till trial. 3. Jamie L. Whitten (1910–95): he also served as a US congressional representative (D-MS) from 1941 to 1995. Charles L. Sullivan (1924–79): later served as lieutenant governor of Mississippi, 1968–72. Leon L. Porter Jr. (1925–97): also served as city judge and officer of Coahoma County Citizens’ Council and member of the school board of trustees.

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On cross-examination, Attorney Charles L. Sullivan said he believed the registration book reflected a date later than the year in which I said I had registered. I told him I was not sure of the year, and that is why I gave two possible years in my testimony (page 203, line 10, Volume No. II of the court record). When we recessed for lunch, I told John J. Duffy, the lawyer who was the agent for the contestant, “That book and application those local lawyers had was the registration book and application from the registrar’s office!” Duffy asked, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes, I am sure. I would know that book anywhere.” He said, “Why didn’t you tell me!” I told him, “I thought you knew what kind of book and applications they were looking at.” Duffy asked me if I thought they had subpoenaed the records. I said, “No. They didn’t know they were supposed to subpoena them. They are so used to treating local, state and federal records as if they were their own personal property.” That afternoon, Wednesday, February 3, 1965, Duffy asked Attorney Vincent J. Brocato if the registration books from the registrar’s office in Coahoma County had been subpoenaed.4 Brocato said, “No” (page 325, line 5, Vol. II of the federal record), and added, “I am chairman of the Coahoma County Election Commission and, as such, have supervision and jurisdiction of the registration records of Coahoma County.” Duffy asked, “Does your position include the authority to remove them, under the law of Mississippi, from the registrar’s office?” Brocato replied, “I think so.” Duffy said, “I am very interested in the fact that the originals of these applications are here in the court, and that for the past two days the original books of entry have been here in court—having been removed from the Circuit Clerk’s office without a subpoena, as you have stated for the record.” After court adjourned, Duffy said it was quite frustrating to see men who were supposed to uphold the law committing elementary violations in a federal hearing of record.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

Reverend R. L. Drew, Reverend J. D. Rayford and Mrs. Vera Pigee were subpoenaed to testify by the Northern District of Mississippi Civil Action File No. 3791 (J), United States Courthouse, Oxford, Mississippi, December 21, 1965, 9:00 a.m. We testified about our experiences with the paying of 4. Vincent J. Brocato (1905–68): served as Clarksdale city attorney.

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poll taxes and the Literacy test, which included the sheriff destroying a list of names of black people of which I brought to his office to pay their poll taxes. I re-wrote the list—got back in line and paid their tax. The poll tax was outlawed March 25, 1966. It complemented the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. After we had finished our testimonies, one of the federal agents said he wanted to talk with us. He asked us to wait. When everyone had left the courtroom, he peeped out and closed the venetian blinds. He said he had seen our names on so many documents that it was an honor to meet us. Yet that man was afraid to let the white Mississippians see him engage in a friendly conversation with us.

FEDERAL COURT—JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI

The Federal District Court and NAACP sponsored lawsuits to remove racial segregation barriers. The trial was held at the Federal Court building in Jackson. The defendants were the Mississippi Public Transportation facilities, the City of Jackson, the Illinois Central Railroad, the Greyhound and Trailways Bus Companies and the Jackson Airport. Witnesses from Clarksdale who were to testify, Tuesday, September 26, 1961, were Helen O’Neal, Wilma Jones and myself. My testimony was concerning a Greyhound employee. During the 50’s I went to the colored side of the Greyhound Bus Station and purchased a round trip ticket to Memphis, Tennessee. It was near departure time. I walked out to the platform and stopped near the door of a bus destined for Memphis. Bill Oliver, a black man I knew, and a black woman came out and stood behind me. The Greyhound bus driver, a white man, came out of the white side of the station. He walked to the door of the bus and told me to “get out of the way.” I said, “I am not in the way, I am going to Memphis!” He said, “Oh! Yes you are in the way.” I asked, “Why am [I] in the way? I have a paid round trip ticket.” He didn’t answer, but looked past me at the white women and said, “Come on, ladies.” I said, “That’s why I’m in the way!” He did not answer and took their tickets. I still did not move. They squeezed by me. He then took the tickets from the black man and woman. They squeezed by me. He closed the bus door and went back into the office. When he returned, before opening the door, he got real close to me and said, “You didn’t buy this damn bus, you just bought a ticket to ride it.” I told him, “We have no disagreement there and that is why I was waiting at the door. If I had been across the street, you would not have known I had bought a ticket to ride. Now, suppose we agree that you haven’t bought the

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damn bus either. You just drive it.” He snatched my ticket and opened the bus door—about six inches—for me to get on. Before we reached our destination, the restroom door came open. The driver looked in the mirror and said, “Shut that door!” Blacks were still riding the backs of the buses then. I said to the few blacks who were on the bus, “Since he is too stupid to ask someone to close the door, let him close it himself.” He pulled off the highway, came back there and slammed the door. When we arrived in Memphis I went to the colored waiting room and asked for the superintendent. He came to the ticket window and asked if he could help me. I told him what had happened. A black woman standing in line at the window said, very loud, “Lord, I thank you. Somebody finally knows what to do. I live in the country and have no transportation to Memphis, other than the Greyhound. They have passed me, standing in that hot sun, with plenty of vacant seats on the bus!” At this point, I could not contain myself. The superintendent said, “Mrs. Pigee. Did he make you nervous?” I said, “No, he made me mad.” He said, “I see you have a round trip ticket. When are you going back?” I said, “4:30 p.m.” He said, “Do you know that that same driver will be driving the 4:30 bus?” I said, “Yes. I ride that bus often.” He opened the door to a little office and invited me in and sent for the driver. The driver tried to deny what he had done. I saw the black man and woman I knew, who had boarded the bus in Clarksdale, in the waiting room. I told the superintendent I would go get them. The driver said, “It was just a little misunderstanding.” The superintendent told the driver he would not stand for the drivers mistreating passengers. Without passengers the company would have no need for drivers. He also informed the driver that I would be riding back to Clarksdale with him. The superintendent told me if I had any trouble on my return trip to Clarksdale to get off the bus and call him. I told him I would do whatever was necessary, because I would not have access to a telephone while on the bus. The man who had been the driver of that bus also testified. He pretended it had been so long he had forgotten the details. The first morning we arrived at the courtroom, white spectators had all the seats. During a break, Helen O’Neal, Wilma Jones, John Frazier, Reverend J. D. Rayford and I asked the black spectators to hurry back to the courtroom before the white spectators occupy the seats. There were not enough blacks to fill all of the seats, but there were enough to get one black person on each bench. Upon returning, a white man told a black man, “Get off my seat! I sat here all the morning.” The black man stood up saying, “I have been sitting on this

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seat all of my life, and you have got your seat behind you. You just don’t have anything to put your seat on.” Most of the blacks and a few of the whites in the courtroom stood up. A Federal Marshall went over to the white man and told him, “No one owns a seat in this courtroom. It’s first come, first served, and we are not going to tolerate this.” The NAACP lawyers were Mrs. Constance Baker Motley and Derrick Bell.5 Mrs. Motley sent a Federal Agent to ask me to come to the room where she and Attorney Bell were. They questioned me about the commotion in the courtroom. The three-judge panel presiding over the court were Judge Richard T. Rives, of Montgomery, Alabama, Judge Sidney Mize, of Biloxi, Mississippi, and Judge Claude Clayton, of Tupelo, Mississippi. When they returned to the courtroom, one of the judges lectured the crowd. He said, “Anyone causing any form of disruption in a federal building, whether court is or is not in session, will be dealt with to the letter of the law.” The Jackson Daily News, September 26, 1961, stated that “three local Negroes; Samuel Bailey, Joseph Broadwater and Burnett L. Jacob, and the NAACP were the plaintiff witnesses, appearing from Winona, Clarksdale and Memphis.” It was gratifying to be part of the lawsuit which took blacks from the front of the trains! If a train was wrecked, the front cars were the first to derail. Passengers in the back of a bus (blacks), in the event of a crash, had a 100% less chance to survive than those in the front. One thing about that trial I can still visualize is one of the lawyers for the defendants presenting his case, supposedly impressing the court. Mrs. Motley read a newspaper. When her turn came she asked, “Your Honor. May I ask the defense attorney one question?” The Judge said, “You may.” “Sir,” she asked, “which state bar examination did you pass?” The defense attorney answered, “Mississippi.” “I thought so,” said Mrs. Motley. “Because a one-year law student would have known better than to use some of the terminology you used in presenting your case.”

5. Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005): attorney for NAACP Legal Defense Fund until 1965. She then became the first African American woman elected to the New York state senate before President Johnson appointed her to the Southern District Court of New York in 1966. Derrick Bell (1930–2011): attorney in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, worked for the NAACP LDF from 1960 to 1966, before going into academia.

POSITIVE ACTION FINALLY The positive Supreme Court decisions are too numerous to itemize. The Congressional Act, as outlined in the August–September 1964 issue of the NAACP Crisis is a summary of the main provisions of the Civil Rights Bill. Attorney Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP lobbyist in Washington, who has gained the title of the 101st senator, used in his presentation to the senators and congressmen the inhuman treatment I, Vera Pigee, suffered at a Lion Oil gasoline station in Clarksdale, to add service stations to Title II, Public Accommodations.6 As our man in Washington traveled and spoke, he told the story of how the white service station attendant attacked me. He also said one day he would request that Title II be changed to the Pigee Title. Some self-fulfillment experiences must, of necessity, involve various segments of the federal government. The National NAACP annual convention was convening in Washington at the same time the three civil rights workers were killed in Mississippi.7 We adjourned the convention and went to the Justice Department and picketed until the attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, came out and promised the NAACP there would be a complete investigation into the death of those three men. To my knowledge, I was the first black woman in Mississippi to receive an invitation to a President’s Inauguration, White House conference “To Fulfill These Rights” and a copy of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s book To Heal and to Build.

6. Clarence Mitchell Jr. (1911–84). 7. White supremacists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, abducted and murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who worked for CORE and COFO and were investigating a Black church burning.

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F.B.I. My first experience with the F.B.I. was in the late 50’s or early 60’s. A man from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came into my beauty shop. It was a Tuesday morning. My daughter and I were cleaning the shop, when a small, rough looking man dressed in work clothes walked in with his ID in his hand. He had a look of fear, or hate, on his face. The manner in which he greeted us was apropos [appropriate] to his appearance. I told this agent that he looked and acted like a cotton patch Mississippi, illiterate white man, who had found or was given counterfeit credentials by the KKK. He was shocked by my bluntness. He became very candid. He said that he had never been to Mississippi. He apologized for his appearance and behavior and said he wanted no part of the KKK. He convinced me that his ID was authentic and that he had deviated from his usual pattern of dress and behavior to deter attention. He began his interrogation by asking if I was Mrs. Vera Pigee, and who was the girl? I told him that I was Mrs. Vera Pigee and the girl was my daughter, Mary Jane. He asked what my position was with the NAACP. I asked him, “Why?” He said he had a list of names of people who lived in Clarksdale and who were suspected of being engaged in Un-American activities and I was the only female. He had just been given the sixth name, Reverend J. D. Rayford. He asked if I knew Reverend Rayford? I told him I had known Reverend Rayford since I was a little girl in the country and that he was one of my recruits in the Civil Rights Struggle. I asked him where he got the list of names, and to explain to me just what Un-American activities were? He said the list was given to him in Washington. He wanted to know if I had any connection with the Communist Party through the NAACP? I told him I was secretary of the Coahoma County Branch of the NAACP, Executive Board member, membership chairperson,

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Youth Advisor for the Coahoma County Youth Council, State Conference Board member, State Youth Advisor and Regional Youth Advisor. He asked what kind of meetings did we have? I told him most of the meetings were open to the public and that I was inviting him to the next meeting. He said he didn’t come down here to attend meetings and answer questions, that he was asking the questions. He asked if I knew where he could find the other five persons? Sarcastically, I looked down into my uniform pocket and looked back up at him. He thanked me and left. In April 1963 my house was fired upon. I called the local FBI agent and asked him to come out and investigate the shooting.8 He asked me how did I know my Civil Rights had been violated? He came to my house—two hours later. A black man was killed near my beauty salon by some white policeman in Clarksdale. Charles Evers and I went to the funeral home on Sunday, at the request of the young man’s father. We checked the body and found bullet holes in his back.9 The next day Reverend J. D. Rayford and I kept an appointment with a federal agent in the old federal building in Clarksdale. Before going, I read in the Clarksdale Press Register where the policeman who had killed the black man had been exonerated. While one agent was taking our report of another incident, another agent was reading the paper. The agent who was reading the paper seemed very proud of the judge’s decision in the Kangaroo Court which exonerated the police officer. When he finished reading the story he tried to get the attention of the agent who was talking to Reverend Rayford and I. He looked over at him and cleared his throat, winking his eye and stamping his foot. I said, “A story about white criminals being acquitted for shooting a black man in the back will make anyone clear their throat, wink their eye and stomp their feet.” He said, “What story?” I said, “The one you just read.” At this point, the other agent and Reverend Rayford had stopped talking. He said, “Oh! I didn’t read that story yet.” I said, “It is a national catastrophe that you are on the federal payroll and don’t even know how to tell the truth.” “Mrs. Pigee!” Reverend Rayford called. “I don’t need reprimanding,” I told him. “That white man knows he read the story and was trying to tell the other agent he approved of the action of the judge, and I am insulted.” The very idea, that blacks helped to pay this 8. Affidavits date a shooting into the Pigees’ house on June 8, 1963. 9. Ernest Jells died in a hail of bullets on September 20, 1963.

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prejudiced man’s salary. He is so hung-up on the myth that black people are too stupid to read a Mississippi white man’s unspoken language. If they could read his body language, they were afraid. I wanted to put that lie to rest, forever, and let him know that at least one Mississippi-born woman can read his body language and are not afraid to tell him. I told the agent that I was going to report him to the Washington D.C. office. This injustice was another moving experience for me. It seemed as though the Lord had preserved the pool of blood where this man was killed and I had gone to the funeral home and put my finger in the bullet holes in his back. I was trying to keep from hating anything white. After I left the funeral home that day, I took the white sheets off my bed. Reverend Rayford said, “I will write a letter and sign an affidavit against you, because I know how involved Mrs. Pigee has been in this case. The young man’s father called me and requested the involvement of the NAACP.” At this point the agent admitted that he had read the article but that he was really disappointed with the decision of the judge. I told him that he was still not telling the truth. They had discussed the case and its outcome before we came to the federal building. We reported the agent to his superior. Another FBI agent phoned our house to talk with my daughter about her Civil Rights activities. Her father answered the phone and told the agent that she was asleep. He called my beauty shop. I told him to leave his number and I would have her call him when she awakened. She went to his office. He told her he was surprised that she was loafing and not working. She told me what he had said. I called him and asked him if he accused her of loafing. He said, Yes, because he knew most students worked during the summer. I told him that my daughter was thin and had not been in the best of health. She made good grades, mostly “A’s,” and had worked hard each summer in Voter Registration; she had no job because, in Mississippi, the white students were given all of the jobs—except chopping cotton. I told him that the house and bed Miss Pigee was loafing in was the same house and bed she had loafed in all of her life. Both are owned by her father and myself. We did not mind her sleeping and resting in our house and bed, and now that you know she loafs, if you want to talk with her, again, you can call for an appointment. “Oh Mrs. Pigee,” he said, “I didn’t mean it that way. You misinterpreted what I said, because my youngest brother sleeps all summer.” I told him, “When your brother does the same thing my daughter is doing, he is sleeping, she is loafing. I didn’t misinterpret what you said. I only commented on what you said.”

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I worked in Basic Adult Education, a government farm program, from May 1966 to March 1969.10 The program was in its infant stage, but the work we were doing was similar to the citizenship program I had been involved with, directed by Dr. Martin Luther King’s organization and NAACP training sessions and workshops. This program was one in a series of government programs which brought black and white people together, on the supposed sameness theory in Mississippi. In this program job titles were one of the difficulties. Even though the work was basically the same, the salaries varied on the premise of degrees. One’s degree determined the title and salary scale. In our program there were some retirees, a music teacher, a business man, a carpenter, an unemployed elementary school teacher, a real estate salesperson, some students and some teachers who had left the classroom, and a business person. Our assignment at this point was primarily recruitment. I went to a house in Riverton, a section of Clarksdale, and knocked on the door. A child about two years of age opened the door but did not come out. She was trying to talk to me! I stepped inside the door. An even younger child was sitting on the floor, eating rice out of a pot. A pot of water was also on the floor. The babies and the house were clean. On the porch of the house next door sat two little old ladies. When I came out of the house one of them asked me, “What do you want with the babies’ mother?” I told them I was recruiting students to go to school. They asked if I meant the school that paid people to go. I said, “Yes, but I don’t consider $30.00 a week pay.” “She ain’t goin’ to do anything with that,” one of them said. “I’ve tried to tell her not to go to the field, but stay home with her children.” I asked if the mother of the children had a husband, or was she on welfare. They said, “No. She ain’t got no husband, and these white folk ain’t going to let her get on the welfare.” “So, then,” I said, “if she did not go to the field and chop cotton for $3.00 a day, she couldn’t pay her rent and buy the rice her babies were eating. I know that both of you ladies are playing Christians, but you should really be helping that woman with those children.” I returned to the office and told the program administrator, Joseph Wheatley, about the situation.11 He told me to spend as much time as I needed on the case. He laughed and said, “I know you would do that, anyway.” The next morning, the lady came into the office. Her marital status and age qualified her for our program. I called Mrs. Fox, supervisor of the Coahoma Department of Welfare, and the lady qualified for welfare. 10. Under the auspices of the antipoverty agency Coahoma Opportunities, Inc. 11. Joseph H. Wheatley (1931–2005).

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I went home at 12:00 to eat dinner, as it is called in the South, with my husband. We had rib steak, gravy, cream potatoes, tossed salad, bread and ice tea, but I couldn’t eat. I went to bed. I cried, and prayed and slept all afternoon. The next day I recruited a lady out in the country. She had two kids, and one of them was very ill. She had no income, no food, and had been trying to get on welfare for 4 years. I made several trips to her house but she was not at home. One night, I asked Reverend J. D. Rayford to go to her house with me. This time she was home. The sick baby, hot with fever, and the other child were in the same bed. Their only light was a little reflection from the open door of a wood heater. I turned my car lights on to provide enough light so I could fill out her application. I told her I had made several trips to her house. She said that every day she and the children would go to a store in the community. The customers who came in gave her children nickels and dimes and some of them would buy milk and medicine for her sick baby. She had gotten the notes I had left, but she did not have the transportation necessary to come the fifteen or twenty miles. These are not isolated cases. In June 1966, the administrator of the Basic Adult Program was trying to compile the vacation schedule, so he called each employee into his office. One of my co-workers, who was a white man, asked me if I had secured the dates I wanted for my vacation and, if so, what dates. I told him, “Yes. The first week in July.” I couldn’t afford to miss seeing all of my friends at the National NAACP Convention. He said everyone could get the dates they wanted except him, and we were discriminating against him. I asked him what his problem was. “You’re in it too,” he said. “I have been seeing you, listening to you on the radio and reading about you in the paper for years. I didn’t know these others. I put in my application four years ago.” I told him that he couldn’t have made application for this program four years ago because the program had just been funded, and that I was not hiring or scheduling vacations for anyone. I had a job there just as he did. I was going to ask the boss what he was talking about. I went into the office and asked the program administrator what this worker’s gripe with me was and how was I involved. He informed me that this man wanted his week vacation over a three-week span—one day the first week, two days the second and third weeks, and he had told him it would take a little time to arrange. I asked him where did “I get in it,” to use the man’s exact words. Wheatley said, “Nothing was said about you in our conversation.” I went back and told this man that I had not discriminated against anyone and that my activities, about which he spoke, helped get the Poverty and Civil Rights Bills passed, to free and get jobs for all the people.

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He jumped up, shouting a lot of lies, and finally he said that we had “made an ass out of him.” I told him that finally blacks in Mississippi were making jet-age progress, because, heretofore, everything bringing up the ass in Mississippi had been black, and l was proud to have lived to see the day when a Mississippi white man would admit he was a white ass. My title changed several times during the four years I worked in the program. I was a teacher’s aide at Hull Elementary School in Coahoma and we were studying Black History. One of those white Washington so-called experts on black folks walked into the classroom. I stopped talking long enough to recognize Dr. whoever he was. He said, “Go on with your classwork.” When we finished, he commented on the subject matter and asked the enrollees some questions. Then, he asked me if I taught the students anything about the proteins a steak provided. I remarked, “No. But I have taught them about the proteins their bodies could get from dried peas,” and I asked him how many steaks he thought a person could buy on $30.00 a week. I also informed him that most of our students had large families, and I couldn’t help but wonder why the government was not giving them more than $30.00 a week. In the early 60’s many people wanted to share in the various protests, but their fear was insurmountable. In Clarksdale the white police, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and employers were making examples out of those who were actively involved. Their dirty tricks equaled and surpassed Watergate.12 A few examples follow: (1) Reverend R. L. Drew was a successful businessman. He was president of the Coahoma County Voters League before the local branch of the NAACP was organized. As his activities in civil rights increased, his wife, who has a master’s degree, was denied employment by the school board. The local bank refused him credit on an old established account. (2) The day my daughter sat in the Illinois Central Railroad Station, the Chief of Police of Clarksdale went to North Delta Compress, where my husband was employed, and asked his boss to have Paul Pigee come to the office. There, the chief interrogated him. “Why did your daughter go in the white side of the train station?” “What are you talking about?” “Stop pretending you don’t know what I am talking about. Did you tell Mary Jane to go in the white side of the train station?” “No.” “Where was Mary Jane born?” “At Glendora, in Tallahatchie County.” 12. Watergate: the major national political scandal in 1972 that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

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“Then she knows niggers are not supposed to get out of their place with white folks. Where does Mary Jane go to school?” “Central State College, Wilberforce, Ohio.” “Since she started to school up there she wants to be white, and you tell her she is still a nigger. Where were you and Vera born?” “Tallahatchie County.” “Why did she go in the white side of the station if you did not tell her to? Would you have gone in the white or colored side?” “Since I wasn’t over there and do not know the circumstances that surrounded the act, I cannot say what I would have done.” “Did you know those chaps could have incited a riot?” “What chaps?” “Did you know that Mary Jane could have gotten hurt?” “For what?” “Where was your daughter going?” “I do not know.” “That nigger gal is in jail charged with breach of the peace. You didn’t know that, I suppose?” “No I didn’t. How could I know where my daughter is when I am on my job working.” “Do you want this job?” “Yes. I want my job!” “I don’t think you do.” “What makes you think I don’t want my job? I work every day and I have worked here since Mary Jane was a baby. I can do any work to be done in this Compress.” “Who owns that house at 611 Baird where you, Vera and Mary Jane live?” “You are the Chief of Police for the city of Clarksdale. You have the records at your disposal at City Hall. You know my wife and I purchased that house long before you became chief, and we don’t owe anyone.” “Does your wife and daughter go away without your permission?” “Yes.” “What kind of a man are you? I don’t let my wife go anywhere unless I agree.” “I am working. I don’t have the time to listen to what you and your wife do, nor do I care what the two of you do. When I get off work my wife is usually working in her beauty shop. When she gets home I am asleep and she does not awaken me. When I get up in the morning she and my daughter are asleep and I do not awaken them. We didn’t plan it this way. It just happened. I go home every day for lunch and read the notes they leave, telling me where they are. If they forget to leave a note, they usually call me long distance.”

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The chief asked Paul’s foreman, “Does he go home for lunch?” The foreman replied, “Yes. The company’s truck transfers all workers and sometimes Paul drives the truck.” “Am I on trial or something?” asked Paul. After hearing Paul say he approved of Mary Jane’s behavior, the chief said to Paul’s foreman, “I know you are going to fire him.” As Paul slowly walked away he heard the chief tell the foreman to fire him. The manager replied, “I have no cause to fire Paul.” “Cause? Don’t you know that his wife is the most aggressive leader of the NAACP in Clarksdale?” “We are discussing Paul. He does his job well here at the Compress. He never misses a day, and he is never late. He is one of the best workers here. The company needs him. His wife and daughter do not work here, and I do not know them.” The chief came to my beauty salon early the next morning and brought with him a lady who worked at the City Hall. As he proceeded to interrogate me she took down notes. Chief: “Who owns this beauty salon, Vera Pigee?” “Be more specific. Are you talking about the building or the appliances?” “Both.” “Mr. Fulton Ford owns the building. I own the appliances.” “Fulton Ford owns the house?” “Yes. I told you Mr. Fulton Ford owned the house.” “How many customers do you have?” “Why, chief? Who are your customers? I am not going to tell you who my customers are. You already know. You keep one of your policemen watching my house and beauty salon almost around the clock, except the night my house was fired on. The policeman who investigated the incident said he did not know who did it; therefore, I am assuming they were not present.” “You are talking to the Chief of Police, Vera, and you must answer my questions.” “You are talking to a married woman. My name is Mrs. Pigee. I pay city, county, and state taxes to operate a legitimate business. You have moved in with your secretary and made your office in my beauty shop. Now I am asking both of you to leave. If I ever need your service, I will call you.” “On second thought, yesterday, you went to my husband’s job to get him fired because our daughter sat in the Illinois Central Railroad Station. Today you want to know who my customers are so you can harass them.” The woman who had accompanied the chief had stopped writing at this point of the dialogue between the chief and I. The chief jumped up and called her by her first name and they left.

VARIOUS PRESSURES Blacks were constantly under pressures of all descriptions. Some of them learned to harness that pressure and use it to help keep those of us who were active afloat! One man, a cook, stood in an alley waiting for a black person he could trust to tell me he heard his boss talking about running me out of town. Professor B. F. McLaurin came to the Coahoma County NAACP Branch meeting at Haven Methodist Church and made a public speech.1 He stated that his school was a good school and he and his staff were satisfied with the operation as buses picked up poor black kids every day from elementary school to junior college age, who could not otherwise get this training. “Mrs. Pigee is talking about integration of the schools and that would mean the closing of my school. However, if my school does close, I have a farm on which I can earn a livelihood for me and my family. Mrs. Pigee does not have a job to give to anyone. When these white folks fire the cooks and maids who are now her customers, she will not have any employment.” The Coahoma County Youth Council stood up as a unit and began singing “We Shall Overcome” and Professor McLaurin’s expressions could no longer be heard. I was surprised to hear that the president of the highest institution of learning of our community and his staff were satisfied with stepping in waste to get to back doors. However, I knew he was not speaking for the entire staff at Coahoma Junior College. I have friends and customers who work and live on the campus and support our movement as best they can without the school knowing it. It is the school’s privilege to be satisfied, which I support. But it was appalling that they did not defend my rights and the rights of all the people who were there that night. Some of them were parents of the students who attend that school, and they were not satisfied. We had rights, too, but did they not know that? We were doing what they should have done before some 1. Benjamin F. McLaurin (1910–88) served as the president of Coahoma Junior College from 1945 to 1966.

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of us were born. We weren’t trying to get anyone fired. We were writing letters to our supposed representatives in Washington asking them to vote for the Poverty and Civil Rights Bills to get more and better jobs for all of us. I told the Professor, “We hope you and your staff have no objection to this. All black teachers in the state of Mississippi are in debt to the NAACP for filing a law suit for equal pay. When your school does close, and my customers get fired, I will pick cotton on your farm with you. I learned to pick cotton long before I became a cosmetologist. I am not afraid of integration. The beauty college from which I graduated was integrated. You can tell whoever sent you to this meeting that when I believe in a cause I defend it from the depth of hell to the heights of high heaven.” Reverend J. D. Rayford said, “Professor, if I had a child in your school, I would get in my car tonight and go get him.” Another type of pressure can be seen from the following incident. Early one Saturday morning, my husband had left the house to clean up my beauty shop, which was three blocks away. While I was preparing my breakfast one of the eyes on my gas stove malfunctioned and the flames leapt toward the ceiling. I rushed to the phone and called the fire department, also three blocks from my home, then I called my husband. In a matter of minutes Paul had ran his three blocks and extinguished the fire before the arrival of the fire department vehicles. Pressures were so tense that even close friends and neighbors were afraid to come out of their homes to see what had happened. Only two blacks showed up. They were Hank Willis, my husband’s uncle, and my neighbor, the late Mrs. Carrie Holmes. Paul and I had gone through all of the phases which we had planned as our goals, by careful planning, prayer and years of hard work. The time for me to go to school had arrived. The hardest decision for me to make was where to go. I considered Coahoma Junior College and spoke with Mrs. Zee Anderson Barron, a friend of mine, who worked out there. I had a conference with my doctor about my plans, because of a serious health problem. He attributed my problem to the years of stress, strain, and pressure to which my family and I had been subjected, my involvement in Civil Rights activities, and to the long hours I had had to work in my beauty salon. He advised me to go to school away from home. He knew I was too involved with my business, church, NAACP and civic affairs to give priority to my academic work. This decision brought about a face-to-face confrontation with other problems which appeared to be new, but were already there. Mrs. Thelma Ferguson, whom I met through my civil rights activities, invited me to share her New York apartment. W. C. Berry, my brother, offered me food and lodging in his Chicago home. Mrs. Estella Smith, who began to mother me when I

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was trying to get it together after the death of my mother, upon hearing of my plans to return to school said, “I wish to God you would come to Detroit.” So, Detroit it was. Before I left Clarksdale, I called an executive board breakfast of the Coahoma County Branch of the NAACP at my house at my expense at which time I shared my decision to go away to school and my other plans. I planned to commute from Detroit to Clarksdale, by Delta Airlines, once a month and I would also spend my summers at home. I told the board I was willing to resign my position with the local branch of the NAACP, a non-paying position which I had held for thirteen years. I had accepted it at a time when no one else would. Whether or not the board and branch wanted to accept my resignation, I was willing to share my expertise I had acquired with my replacement, or with the newly elected assistant secretary, Mr. E. L. Martin. The executive board members unanimously said, “No. We will not even think about your resigning, that is why we have an assistant secretary.” The board members pledged their full support and cooperation. The branch gave me a standing ovation, audibly expressing its desires that I should not entertain the idea of resigning, pledging its support and cooperation. They kept their promises, at least until a few branch officers and executive board members became the entire branch. I attended the Detroit Center of the University of Michigan the first semester of 1968. I commuted home once each month as I had promised. Each month when I returned, I called the assistant secretary, branch officers and members of the membership committee to get the memberships and send them to the National NAACP office. The assistant secretary said that, after a few months of really trying, he found he could not work with most of the officers of the Coahoma County branch of NAACP, so he was resigning. I asked him to come to the board meeting and discuss the problem and try to reach a solution. If he was not satisfied with the decision of the executive board, bring the issue to the branch, because he was elected by the same branch that elected other officers. But he said, “No,” and asked me to inform the board. I agreed to tell the board if he would tell at least one other board member. He said he would tell Reverend R. L. Drew, Reverend J. D. Rayford or Roy Wright. I called Reverend Rayford. Martin told him that he came to my beauty salon, before I went away to school, and I gave him my material. He tried to serve in the position to which he was elected, but some of the officers would not respect his right to function. They would not give him the names of members who had paid their dues, so he could make the report and

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give it to the treasurer to send on to the National office, or give it to me. He named the person involved and said he had already told his sister-in-law, Mrs. Florida Watson. I relayed E. L. Martin’s message to the board. A member of the board called him and he verified the accuracy of the message, and added that it was his final decision. Reverend Drew, who served as chairman of the board of our branch, asked who had been sending the money to the National office in my absence. One member of the board said, “I have.” Reverend Drew then asked, “Where is the portion of the money that belongs to the branch?” The board member answered, “I kept it, because the branch owes me some money.” Reverend Drew said, “We have paid you some money on that debt, but you did not tell us that you had paid yourself. Now, are you prepared to give us a detailed report of all monies you have collected on the branch’s debt, and the balance owed to you?” “No,” said the board member, “but I will at the next meeting.” He never did bring any written record to the board, I was told. I suggested that, if duplicate copies of the membership records were turned over to the secretary of the board, we could determine if the branch owed the individual or if the individual owed the branch. The member involved chewed at me for making the suggestion and, it goes without saying, I returned the same treatment to this self-privileged character. Because like E. L. Martin, I was still trying to do the job I had been elected to do and had been doing for fourteen years. I had tried to resign from the position but kept it with the board and branch’s approval. Ironically, the person who was creating all of the problems was the first to object at the idea of my resigning. I asked the chairman of the board, Reverend R. L. Drew, if the branch had combined all positions into one and, if so, which of the board’s members were all of the branch officers. “No, Mrs. Pigee,” said Reverend Drew. “You know each officer was elected to do a specific service to the branch, and none of us in here knows that better than you.” I asked if I could recommend a replacement for Martin and I suggested a name. The same person who had objected to all other ideas said, “No. Let Martin keep the position and use the person Mrs. Pigee suggested as an assistant secretary to the assistant because Martin would do a little something.” There were seven members present, plus the presiding officer. Three of us protested trying to keep a person in office who found it impossible to work with some of the officers. Reverend Drew said we would take the matter up with the branch. The next month, when I returned home, I asked what had been done. I was told that the branch had accepted the latter suggestion.

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Board and branch members called me and asked me when the branch would have another meeting. I called the person whom I had recommended and told this person that I had been informed that the Coahoma County Branch of the NAACP had made the choice of using their service as an assistant secretary to the assistant secretary. The member readily accepted the position. I told this person that, if they came by my beauty salon, I would gladly supply the materials they needed and answer any questions they might have. The member thanked me and said, “I’ll be by there today.” This person never came. A few weeks later the newly elected officer was seeking information at the executive board meeting as to how to make a membership report. Reverend Drew asked me why I had not given assistance to the new officer. I told him I tried, that when I called the person to inform them of the position, I offered membership envelopes and report blanks, and to answer any question the person might have. I was told, “I will come by your beauty salon today,” but the officer never came. The board member who manipulated the idea of what appeared to be indifference on my part said, “I told the officer it wasn’t necessary to go to Mrs. Pigee. I would help prepare the membership report.” Reverend Drew said, “You are not the secretary.”

NOMINATING COMMITTEES I was elected secretary of the branch in my absence in 1955, and at every election I had tried to inform members of their constitutional right to seek office, if they so desired. The report of the nominating committee was given in November 1968 at the Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church. Dr. Althea Simmons was the speaker. I picked her up at the airport in Memphis.1 After the meeting I drove her to my house for dinner and then drove her back to the airport. I presided over the meeting because the presidents were out of town. When the nominating committee made its report, I was unopposed as branch secretary. I asked the committee members if they had done all they could to get someone other than myself to become a candidate for the uncompensated office. I explained to the members that any member who wished to become an officer, or knew some member desirous of becoming an officer, and was absent, someone could call such a person and get their statement in writing. This would be their last chance to submit names. In December, the branch would only vote on names that had been submitted to the members of the nominating committee, or to the branch no later than today. I would move the report of the committee to the last item on the agenda to allow ample time for other names to be submitted for all officers. Charlie Newsome, chairman of the nominating committee, said that he and other members of the committee had made personal contacts trying to get other members to become candidates but no one was interested. Newsome and Mrs. Zee Anderson Barron opposed my actions in delaying the report of the committee. I was matriculating at Wayne State University and much progress had been made in the civil rights struggle. The Civil Rights and Poverty bills had been passed, and blacks were being hired in positions never before held by blacks. 1. Althea T. L. Simmons (1924–90): national NAACP officer and became chief of the Washington Bureau from 1979 until her death.

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The chances to survive for blacks who participated had increased one hundred percent in Mississippi, and the jealousies of some of the active NAACPers of other active members had begun to surface on all levels. A whispering campaign was in process, saying the branch needed a new secretary who lived in Clarksdale. I agreed. Maybe, now that the beatings, shootings, killings, threats, bombings and other forms of harassment on a mass scale were over, we did need some new officers, but why only one new officer—a secretary. I did not see any new people. Those I saw were the same folks who had been there all the time. I had offered to resign and the same people who opposed my resigning were spearheading the whispering campaign.

NOMINATING COMMITTEE 1970–72

The little clique had finally succeeded in securing two nominees in opposition to me, a man and a woman. I polled more votes than the other two candidates combined. Still, I was very pleased with the fact that we had made enough progress that members were at least willing to let their names be placed in nomination, regardless of their motives, and let the membership vote for their choice. One of the candidates was a public school teacher. The Coahoma County branch had more than 1,000 members but less than 100 voted. A news release was given to the Clarksdale Press Register that 1,000 members voted. I questioned this news release and was told it was done to make the branch look good to the press. My comment was that “if the news of the election had not been kept on a low profile, the members would have voted.” These are examples of members using the Branch.

NOMINATING COMMITTEE 1972–74

The branch elects officers every two years. A friend of mine was asked to place her name in nomination for assistant secretary, but she refused. Another was asked to permit his name to be submitted for branch president. He declined, saying, “Since Mrs. Pigee was treated so dirty by that little clique, there is no branch.” I, Vera Pigee, was asked to run for president. I refused. Because, after the dirty tricks of the 1970–1972 election, there were only a few members, but no branch. I told Mrs. Florida Watson, Roy Wright, Mrs. Laura Carter and Reverend J. D. Rayford I would not become a candidate for secretary, in the 1970–72 election. I was tired of dragging the branch along. They said the people in

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this community were depending on me. I was told about some of the males who elected me in my absence, and one or two more who didn’t even know the name of the branch that campaigned to get someone to oppose me. Most of them were part of the same clique which would not consider my resigning when I discussed the idea with the branch and board. A lady came into my beauty shop and told us she would not mind serving as assistant secretary, but she would not oppose me. I told her I welcomed competition, so long as it was not a bunch of lies as part of a slanderous, low-down political type campaign! All hell broke loose. The number one lie was that I did not live here. I really do live here. I have a beauty shop and living quarters at 407 Ashton Avenue, and I have had since 1950! This permanent address meets the residency requirements. The number two lie was that I did not have a current membership record. I had the membership record of the entire membership that Reverend Rayford and I had written. I tried to get the report of memberships and money that others had written. I also had membership cards and records I had kept for 17 years, when the very persons who were now making these changes were scared to join the NAACP. This election was the only time in my seventeen active years that I had not been chairperson or even a member of the membership committee. But I still wrote more members than any of the other members. I was determined not to let the branch my family and I had given the prime years of our lives to die in my hands. Dirty trick number one. I was told that the little clique discussed me and had said that no one could beat me getting votes. One man said, “We will win any way we can.” Reverend Rayford asked, “What is there to win? Why are you black men fighting that woman?” This is the same man that told Mrs. Florida Watson, an employee at Pigee’s Beauty Salon, “We need another secretary. One person shouldn’t be permitted to stay in one position too long.” Mrs. Watson said, “That’s not what the people say whom I come into contact with.” He asked, “What do they say, Mrs. Watson?” “They say that you have been an officer longer than Mrs. Pigee, but she is the best all-around volunteer worker in the state.” Election day was in December 1972, at the Neighborhood Center in Clarksdale, at 7:30 p.m. Reverend J. D. Rayford drove Mrs. Florida Watson, Mrs. Lillie Washington, Mrs. Gracie Williams, a relative of my husband and myself to the polls. Someone in the car remarked, “Mrs. Pigee, your spirit sure is high for being right in the midst of a little clique dirty trick.” “My spirit is high,” I said.

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I thanked the Lord every morning for waking up as the Civil Rights Queen of the state of Mississippi. I knew it was going to happen. The Lord always gives me a warning. Reverend Rayford and Mrs. Watson knew I had told them I was tired of dragging this branch along, and that I did not want to be involved this time, but they insisted. Through all the years of suffering a few of us had gone through; now, one person wanted to be the whole branch. If the members who knew the facts were willing to sit back and let a few people, who were just now coming out of hiding, kill the branch, it is all right by me. The little men who are fighting me are the same men who were afraid to fight the white folk. Apparently they were saying to themselves, “Now, that she has helped to integrate everything in Clarksdale, helped to get the people registered and helped get the Poverty and Civil Rights Bill passed, we will take over. We’ll show everybody that, even though we were afraid of those white men, we ain’t afraid of a black woman. She fought them. We will fight her.” For the first time in my life I became aware that black men in Clarksdale, Mississippi, had chauvinistic attitudes. I guess that must have been what the white men were kicking them in for all these years. I am so thankful that I could be of some help in stopping the white men in Clarksdale from kicking the black men in their chauvinistic attitude, before they kicked it completely off. I was not going to say one word that night. I didn’t care what they did. Reverend Rayford said, “Mrs. Pigee, many of these people don’t realize just what that little group is doing! For example, I wasn’t going to show this to you until after the election. Here is an official ballot a man was passing out today, up and down the streets. He gave this one to Elder Walter Jones, who brought it to my house and checked the “X” beside your name, and said, he regretted the day he had allowed his daughter to sit-in at the Illinois Central Railroad station with your daughter. The man who gave him this ballot was saying, ‘Yesa, boss.’ It was all right at that time, but he would never support the Coahoma County branch again. They had also mistreated him.” I informed Reverend Rayford that he could not deposit that ballot in the ballot box. He said, “I do not want to deposit it. I just wanted you to know that decent people in this community, both black and white, care.” The election committee members were all seated in a little room. The man who had walked the streets in Clarksdale, passing out the official ballots, had the ballot box on a table near the door. I was sitting at a table studying for an exam. Reverend W. J. Colbert sent for me and said that the man at the ballot box would not let him vote. I told the Reverend that I had the membership record which would prove that he was eligible to vote. I showed it to the man

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who was manning the ballot box. He and a woman gave pencils to several other people with which to mark their ballots. I asked where the other committee members were. He pointed to another room. When I went into the room, the presiding officer said, “Madam Secretary, would you please tell the election committee to close the polls?” I stepped outside the door to inform the committee to close the poll. A woman standing at a distance, talking to the “one man committee” said to me, “Mrs. Pigee. I didn’t come to vote. I only came to get my husband.” I didn’t say a word. I opened the door and called to the presiding officer who had sent me out there with the message and asked him to come out and tell this lady that I was merely doing what he had asked me to do, and that I was not trying to keep anyone from voting. When the ballots were counted, I had lost by one vote. A committee member, Earl Gooden, asked for a recount. After the recount Reverend Willie Goodloe said to the presiding officer, “I see we have a real mess here, but we can quickly resolve it. There are only a few members here, and most of us do not know anyone who is running for the position except Mrs. Pigee. Suppose all of us who voted for her, stand.” The chair objected to this, but Walter Griffins, Anderson Grey, Howard Wright, Charlie Newsome, and Reverend J. D. Rayford approved of the standing vote. Six brazen new members of the Branch objected, and each of them addressed insulting remarks to me. The last one to speak said he realized that Mrs. Pigee had done a good job as branch secretary but, now, someone else needed a chance to prove they could do a good job, and if Mrs. Pigee took that type of an attitude, she didn’t need the position in the first place. Mrs. Annie Jackson, who was assistant secretary, said, “You men are being most unfair to Mrs. Pigee. She hasn’t said a word. Why don’t you all address your remarks to the men who are doing all the talking.” Mrs. Nancy Wright stood up and said, “That’s right! These people have been hiding all through our struggle and, now that they think all the danger that Mrs. Pigee and a few others have gone through is over, they want to take over, but the people in Clarksdale are not going to follow them.” Reverend Rayford said, “We are going to challenge this election.” He asked the presiding officer if it was legal to pass out ballots before an election. The presiding officer replied, “Brother Rayford, there were no official ballots passed out—only samples.” Reverend Rayford said, “Ask that man, there, if he gave away any official ballots today.” The presiding officer asked the man Reverend Rayford had indicated. The man said, “But . . . ”

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Reverend Rayford said, “But nothing. Did you or did you not give out ballots today?” The man said, “A few.” The presiding officer said, “Those were sample ballots.” Reverend Rayford pulled the official ballot out of his pocket that Elder Walter Jones had given him. The man just grinned and reiterated, “I gave away a few.” My telephone rang all night long. NAACP members were calling to say they didn’t know about the election. The next morning about forty members came and signed the petition challenging the election. Mrs. Flossie Mae Fields came to the beauty shop and said, “Mrs. Pigee, I cried last night after I went home, and I am still mad. My deacon and I saw a woman giving pencils to people to mark their ballots and when that person walked away the woman would erase the ballot and re-mark it. One woman told her she was doing wrong and she said, “What’s it to you? We’ve got to show that Mrs. Pigee something.” “My deacon is just a new member. I influenced him to join about six months ago and when he witnessed these proceedings he asked me, ‘Is this what you asked me to join?’ I told him that the man and woman who had the ballot box and one other person was running for office. I had never seen either of them at a meeting. We want to challenge the election and sign a petition and do whatever is necessary to protest the action of the woman who erased that ballot. She works at a credit union.” When Mrs. Fields left, I went straight to the union, which I helped to build, and withdrew my funds.2 The secretary asked me if I wanted to borrow the money. I said no. Another officer of the credit union invited me to come into his office. He said, “Mrs. Pigee, your record shows that you have been a member of this credit union for a long time. Why not borrow the money you need?” I said, “Do not ask me why!” He insisted that I tell him what I wanted the money for, and why not borrow it. I told him, “I am sorry you insist on knowing why. I am not going to keep on helping to make jobs for blacks who become a part of a little group and fight me about my non-paid position as secretary of the Coahoma NAACP branch—a position I took when black men and women here were just plain scared.” He asked, “Who works here that’s frightening you?” 2. Friendship Federal Credit Union.

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I told him. I also said, “I am tired of feeding the mouths that bite my hand. I am going to deposit my check with another credit union and so, I am sure, will my many friends who I encouraged to join this credit union—Reverend J. D. Rayford and Mrs. Annie Mae Goon, to mention a few. And God knows, I wish they would use that energy to fight their enemies.” I used to ask the people at the NAACP meeting, what would the black folks who were not involved say when we made a few freedom gains. I knew they would lie to their children and grandchildren about their contributions, but I did not know they would try to make themselves socially acceptable as leaders in their community by lying on, and doing dirty things, to me. History has already vindicated me. If I don’t do anything else, to use Reverend Adam Clayton Powell’s words, “I’ve paid my dues!” A lawyer for the NAACP told me at the National office in New York that he was glad to see me, because my name was on everything in that office, and this wasn’t something one could pass from person to person. Respect as a leader must be earned. The credit union officer said, “Well, now that you have gotten it off your chest, let us loan you the money, the sizeable sum you are withdrawing.” “No,” I said. “In a community this size everyone knows everyone, and when a little group tries to seek empty honors everyone suffers. I am going to let that lady who is on the credit union payroll and her friends show me how they can put their money in the credit union—since “showing me” is their main objectivity [objective]. I opened this account with $5.00, back in the 50’s when some blacks in this county were saying, “I ain’t going to trust them Niggers with my money!” So, today, it’s not a matter of getting something off my chest. I did not come here to discuss anything with you. You almost demanded that I tell you why. Now, you know. I have not fought back to this point but if I did not have to get back to school, I would let the people in this community know what that credit union employee said and did.” The next few weeks much communication between the State and National NAACP and myself transpired. Telephone calls and letters, of which I still have, about the election. The petition challenged the entire election, but only one officer came out challenging the secretary with a telephone call, substantiated by a letter, from the Director of NAACP branches. Gloster Current informed me that Emmett Burns, the newly elected NAACP field secretary for the state of Mississippi, would hold the election, and he was asking me to give him any assistance I could to make sure the election was fair to all.3 He said, “You know Emmett. He is a Mississippi boy.” 3. This is the same Emmett Burns who later refused to refund Mrs. Pigee’s bus fare (as she narrated earlier).

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“I told Mr. Current I hope Emmett can hold a non-biased election.” The first time I ever saw Emmett Burns, Mrs. Ruby Hurley introduced him to the Fifth Southeast Region, as having grown up in the Mississippi State Youth NAACP Conference. I was very impressed with him. I had him as my guest in Detroit; as speaker for the State Youth Conference in Greenwood, Mississippi; as speaker for the 2nd Annual Freedom Dinner of the Coahoma County Youth Council of Clarksdale, Mississippi. For dinner I served him “Freedom” fried chicken, “jail going” potato salad, “bond bailing” string beans, “door knocking” rolls, “mass meeting” cake and “non-violent cokes.” I also taped an interview with him and published a story in the February issue of Black Voices Magazine. Reverend Burns told me of his closeness with Medgar Evers. “Any friend of Medgar is a friend of mine.” “I told Mr. Current, I trust your judgment completely. If you think he can do the job, I’m sure he can. When the election is over I will let you know just what Emmett Burns’ activities were.” Election day came again, and it was almost time for the polls to open. Reverend Rayford came to my beauty shop and asked if I had seen the Mississippi Field Secretary. I told him, “No. I had not seen him, but I knew he was in Clarksdale, and I also knew where he was.” Reverend Rayford said, “I am going to see if he is there.” He was. He and one other person were looking at the NAACP membership roster the national office had sent. I went to the polling place, the neighborhood center, about thirty minutes after the poll was to have opened. Only the workers were present—the same committee, with one or two additions, who had served in the November election which had been challenged. I voted and paused a few minutes to exchange greetings with one of the new committee members whom I had not seen over a period of years. The field secretary called out to me and said, “Mrs. Pigee. You are one of the candidates seeking election, so you will have to get off the stage.” I thanked the field secretary and went back to my seat and continued to study for a test. Mrs. Florida Watson, Mrs. Elizabeth Griffin, Reverend J. D. Rayford and I sat in the same place most of the afternoon and watched people we knew, paid-up members, being denied the right to vote. We also saw a young boy vote. I called him over and said, “I know you. What are your parents’ names? How old are you?” He told me their names and added, “I am 18 years old.” “I saw you up there voting.” He said, “Yes, I just voted.”

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We saw Mrs. Eula Bell Crisler snatch her ballot from a man and she called out to me. Mrs. Watson went to see what the problem was. Mrs. Crisler was telling some man, “Keep your hands off my ballot. The name you are pointing to is not the name I want to vote for.” Mrs. Watson said, “It is OK now, Mrs. Crisler. Take your time and vote for your choice!” Two men said, “We have had all of this that we can take.” Reverend Rayford said, “No, men. Where is that man the National sent here to hold this election. I am going to find him.” He went outside just as the man was getting out of one of our friends’ car. Reverend Rayford, Mrs. Crisler and Mrs. Watson told him what had happened. He called the man whom Mrs. Crisler had argued with and told him he had no right doing what he had done. The man denied his actions, but we had been looking right at him. The field secretary told me he had to leave to take care of his biological needs and he asked me to select a teller for the vote tallies. I told him that I had not said anything to him or anyone else, and that I did not have a teller all day. I also told him that the neighborhood center had facilities enough to meet any needs he may have, and that I did not want any more lies told on me. I said I would write to Mr. Current about any grievances I may have! That night he declared me the loser and said, “We have the biggest branch in the state. Does anyone have any questions?” Mrs. Eula Bell Crisler asked him, “Who did you say was the secretary?” He told her. I went to the table, shook his hand and thanked him for coming. I told him I was leaving the next morning, going back to Detroit to school. A few months later, Mrs. Clara Luper and I were in Jackson, Mississippi, working the Teachers Annual Convention for Black Voices Magazine Company. Our display was in the same building as the NAACP state office. Mrs. Luper and I went into the NAACP office and we were talking to the secretary, Miss Lillian Louie, when the field secretary came in and invited us into his office. I introduced him to Mrs. Luper. She told him she had been in the office the day of Medgar Evers’ funeral. He brought up the subject of the Clarksdale election. I told him I did not want to discuss it. I was in Jackson on other business and turned to walk away. He caught me by the hand and said, “You did wrong when you made that radio tape.” Still holding my hand, he closed the door between Miss Louie’s office and his. I proceeded to tell him about all of the improper voting procedures which transpired the day he held the second election in Clarksdale. He released

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my hand and asked Mrs. Luper to leave the office. Mrs. Luper advised him that was the first time in her life she had ever been asked out of an NAACP office after volunteering her service to the NAACP for almost twenty years. It was also the first time she had ever seen a person hold another person’s hand to make them discuss a situation. “One thing I observed very carefully is that you did not deny any of the irregularities Mrs. Pigee said transpired in Clarksdale.” He said, “I only did what was demanded of me.” Mrs. Luper said, “Who could demand that a man of God do wrong? I am going to help Mrs. Pigee tell all about the Clarksdale disaster. I’ll also tell how you asked me out of the NAACP office and held her hand to make her engage in conversation with you.” He said, “The reason I want you to leave is so I can call Mr. Current.’’ Mrs. Luper left and we talked with Mr. Current. Afterwards, I did not receive any more board meeting notices, even though I was State Youth Advisor and had been for 18 years. I managed to get the information about the meetings and go anyway. Prior to the Mississippi State Conference of 1973, I drove five youths to Columbus but there was no place to meet. Finally, a meeting room was secured at the Ramada Inn. The Mississippi State Conference convened its annual session in November. I received a phone call from Miss Janice Carr, president of the Mississippi State Youth conference and a student at Jackson State College, in October 1973. She asked me if I had recommended anyone to speak for the State Youth Conference and if I had, the youths would be glad to accept my recommendation if I had acted in the absence of the Youth conference board. I told her no one had contacted me about a speaker. She said no one had been secured but the youths were not going to the convention and that if they had chosen the speaker, they probably would have selected the same one. They didn’t like the idea of the speaker being invited by someone who did not work directly with the youths. I told Miss Carr that the youths must go. They didn’t. Only eight youths attended the session. I didn’t even go. I wanted the youths of the state to get another advisor. I called Mrs. Myrlie Evers and told her I would not be there to hear her address. This was the first Mississippi State NAACP Conference I had missed in 18 years. She was shocked and wanted to know why. I told her I was tired of fighting those Johnnie-come-latelys whose only purpose was to appear on TV, get their pictures in the paper and get themselves on the federal government and NAACP payroll.

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I told her that Reverend Emmett Burns, a longtime friend of her husband, the late Medgar Wiley Evers, would be there. She said, she did not know Reverend Burns until the NAACP hired him. In January 1974, I received a telephone call and several letters addressing me as the Advisor of the Mississippi State Youth Conference. I said, “No, I am no longer the advisor.” The conference elected officers at its November meeting and I hadn’t gone. I was told that only eight youths from the entire state showed up. They did not hold any election, so I was still the advisor. I was really shocked. This was the first State Youth Conference Dr. B. E. Murph (deceased) and I had missed. It grieved me. I felt as though we had thrown away twenty years of our lives, and that some person, or persons, was fighting our influence and our years of hard work and killing the NAACP program. I could almost hear some of the “Just arrived” advisors getting up in the meeting, making their progress reports, talking about their expertise in working with youth, and how they love people, and all the while their resentment toward those of us who had carried on in the face of the dogs and guns was so obvious, one could see and feel it. Yet they could not get enough youths to hold one conference. I knew the time had come for the regional and national offices to intercede. I went to the board meeting in January 1974, at Jackson, Mississippi. I was re-elected State Youth Advisor. I called Reverend J. D. Rayford, co-advisor to the Coahoma County Youth Council, and sent funds for him to drive the youths to Greenville to attend a board meeting. No place for the youths to meet had been secured and our Youth Council had the greatest number of youths present, more than any other council in the state. One advisor and Reverend Rayford held their meeting outside. Reverend Rayford called me that night and said that the treatment of the youths of the state of Mississippi was too heavy. It seemed that someone thought they could run the NAACP of the state without using people, and he was willing to let them. I drove to New Orleans to the National NAACP Convention in July of 1974 with Jessie Carson, a member of the County Youth Council. The Mississippi delegates called a meeting. I was across the room talking. Dr. Douglas Connor, of Starkville, called me and asked me to explain how Miss NAACP is chosen to represent the state at the national convention. The group’s rules stated that the local Youth Council sponsor a Miss NAACP on the local level, and the contestant who writes the greatest number of memberships be given the memberships that other local contestants have written and come to the state youth coronation and compete with contestants from all other local Youth Councils of the state. The contestant

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with the highest amount of membership would be crowned “Miss Mississippi,” with all of her expenses being paid by the State Youth Conference. She would represent her state at the National competition as “Miss Mississippi.” Aaron Henry, H. Y. Hackett and Cleo Jackson said I wasn’t in Jackson. Dr. Connor said that he knew I had worked for years with the youth program and he had not asked if I had been in Jackson on coronation day but, now that the rules had been clarified, the young lady from Hattiesburg, who was crowned in Jackson, would represent Mississippi. This is just an example of the Coahoma County spillover into the Youth Council, state, regional and national. I was a member of the National Youth Work Committee when the Miss NAACP idea was born and I helped formulate the rules! The NAACP grew on me in varied ways—as a social blessing, or a stigma. Little children playing in the street in Clarksdale would ask my customers, as they would enter and leave my beauty shop, “Do you belong to the NAACP?” My husband, daughter and I were in a department store in Boston. John Skipper, Jr., laid his hand on my shoulder and said, “Mrs. Pigee. The last time I saw you I was attending an integrated musical your daughter was doing in Clarksdale for the NAACP.” A man once touched me on my back on a subway train in Chicago and said, “Mrs. Pigee. I was one of your NAACP Youth Council members in Clarksdale.” When I boarded a plane in New York, on my way to Africa, Sid Finley from Wheaton, Illinois, who was supervising our tour said, “Come aboard, Miss NAACP of the State of Mississippi.” He also assigned the NAACP girls on the tour to be my roommates in London and Africa. Attorney Clarence Mitchell told the Detroit Branch, when he was speaking for their annual $100 Freedom Dinner, that he was honored to introduce a Mississippi “real, honest-to-goodness, long time Freedom fighter,” and as they traveled through the South using all of the facilities in the service stations, to give thanks to Mrs. Vera Pigee. Now, to the stigma attachment. A student at Wayne County Community College asked me if it were true that the NAACP was sending me to school. I told him, “No.” He said, “After all I have heard you have done for the NAACP?” That was the reason he was a black militant. He hated anyone over thirty—including his father—because the welfare had to make his father support him. I told him I had not done anything for the NAACP! The NAACP was the vehicle through which I had worked to get the freedom all of us are now enjoying. I did not know what he had heard about my thing with the

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NAACP, but the NAACP had done a lot of personal things for me, and I had the reassurance of the NAACP that they would not let me suffer while I was in school after having been a volunteer worker for 20 years. I told this young man he should love his father, because neither the NAACP nor the welfare had made his father engage in the activities which brought him here. And if he was going to hate his father for helping make him, he should hate his mother too, and furthermore, I agreed with him he should hate everyone who contributed in any way to produce him. One of my professors in an English class gave our class an assignment. Each student was to write a scholarly paper on a subject of their own choosing, after having it cleared with him. I chose Voter Registration as conducted by the NAACP in Coahoma County. Our instructor was a black man. He said, “All the student’s subjects were accepted except mine [yours], because the NAACP did not conduct voter registration drives.” The NAACP was a legal organization. I told him I would not change my subject because of his limited understanding of the organization. He said he knew I was going to do it my way. I said, “No sir. I am doing it your way.” Some of the other students told him that they knew the NAACP conducted voter projects. We had a heated argument. I did not change my subject. I wrote my paper just as I had planned. My paper was an “A plus.” He gave me a “B” in the class. I gladly sacrificed my “A” to a black male for my moral principles. I want to be the first to admit I made more than my share of mistakes in the 20 years I have worked in the Civil Rights Struggle: but they were earnest mistakes not premeditated, because I believe whatever we do, right or wrong, comes up again and each of us should grow from these individual experiences. I hope and pray we have learned from past experiences in all situations and that is why I shared numerous experiences which grew out of our civil rights struggle. All phases of our society have failed. There are few exceptions. We failed as individuals, as many times we looked the other way when social problems arose. Husbands and wives failed each other. We askewed [eschewed] when problems arose, or over-reacted. We abused the children or deserted them. Our children failed also—they are on drugs, sex maniacs, breaking and entering, looting, killing to the extent that we are afraid of the by-products of our own bodies. The automobile empire has failed and turned millions of bread winners to the street with no pay check.4 Much of this can be attributed to double standards. Industry and large plantation owners in Mississippi receive federal aid and it is hidden under the label of “subsidy,” whereas, when a poor individual receives the same aid, it is called “welfare.” 4. In the context of her residency in Detroit, Michigan.

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The military failed. It was successful in defeating the Indians and blacks, but when we lost Viet Nam, the white man got a dose of his own medicine. President Richard Nixon’s entire administration and the Watergate crises failed the world as Chief Commander of the greatest country in the cosmos. They lied, stole, broke in, etc. Many of the federal programs including housing failed. The real poor cannot afford the housing because the money is absorbed in administration and does not reach the people it was intended for. The educational system with the approval of the Supreme Court stopped the students from praying and learning and now they are whipping the instructors, burning the schools and murdering each other. The number of PhD’s, Masters, etc., is at an all-time high; but warped minds and social problems are also at their highest peak. Science has landed men on the moon and [we] understand how to survive in space yet cannot live together on the planet earth. IRS investigates common laborers, while big industry and the highest paid president in the history of America pay little or no taxes. Civil Rights organizations have made some progress and now groups are using the political dirty tricks towards each other. The conventional church has failed and in the worst way. The NAACP and other groups had to give food, clothing, council [counsel], money, medicine and administer to the entire needs of humans, while the church was fighting over dogma and denominations. All of the catastrophes we are now facing proves our complete society has failed. We have become too permissive and every endeavor has added a new dimension to the struggle. I believe all who reads this book will reassess their priorities and get off on a foot that is in order. There are many individuals, groups and institutions which are in order. I am sure—but the ministry of the order of fishermen organized by Martha Jean (the Queen) Steinberg, is getting it together in Detroit, Michigan, working with all forms of social problems and admitting we have failed and are powerless—recognizing there is strength and power if we become open minded and receptive.5 This is not a new doctrine, it’s the same old story but this ministry practices what it preaches—the Queen calls it “shooting from the hip.”

5. Martha Jean Steinberg (1930–2000): influential black radio broadcaster, and later a pastor in Detroit, Michigan. She was inducted into the Black Radio Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION America’s Voices Black Voices Magazine #10, 1971 p. 11, 24; #3, 1972 p. 26–27 Crisis, NAACP Magazine, September 1964 Bill of Injunction, City of Clarksdale, 1963 Congressional Record, May 4, 1963, Volume # [sic], p. 202–87 Free Press, Jackson, Mississippi, May 4, 1963 Jackson Daily News, September 26, 1961 Letters: E. L. Homes, Illinois Central Railroad, August 20, 27, 1954 Mississippi Black Paper, Random House, 1965 p. 14 NAACP Newsletter, December, 1967 New York Times, June 30, 1963 Press Register, Clarksdale, Mississippi Soul Sister, by Grace Hasell, p. 191–209 State Times, Jackson, Mississippi, September 26, 1961 The Clarksdale Press Register, December 11, 1961, September 1, 1961, January 8, 1962, September 20, 21,1961, June 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 1963. Minutes of the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP, 1955 to 1972.

THE STRUGGLE OF STRUGGLES Part Two

By Vera Pigee

The Struggle of Struggles Part Two Copyright 1979 by Vera Pigee All Rights Reserved Order Copies Directly from Vera Pigee 2234 Edison Detroit, Michigan 48206 or 407 Ashton Avenue Clarksdale, Mississippi 38614 Produced by Art-Type Company, 16776 Murray Hill, Detroit, Michigan 48225

CONTENTS Gratitude . . . . . . . . . . . . A Personal Introduction. . . . My Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . Individual Institutions . . . . . Movement Participants Speak Politicians—Then and Now . . Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black Organizations . . . . . . Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . Informational Sources . . . . .

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MY GRATITUDE TO: Dr. Maurice & Mrs. Jewell Rabb, Louisville, Ky; Mrs. Mildred Shaw, Mrs. Clester Graves, Chicago, Ill; Rev. & Mrs. J. W. Parker, Glen Ellyn, Ill; Mr. Sid & Mary Lou Finlay, Wheaton, Ill; Rev Daisy Huff, Dr. Dan Newson, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Lee & Sons, Toledo, Ohio; Rev. James Rayford, Columbus, Ohio; Mr. Glen Brackens, Cleveland, Ohio; Dr. Wyatt Walker, Mr. Roy & Minnie Wilking, Rev. Gloster Current, New York, N.Y.; Mr. Walter & Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, Mr. Clarence Reed, Los Angeles, Cal; Dr. Herbert Brewster, Dr. Henry Green, Mrs. Georgia Walker, Rev. A. E. Campbell, Rev. D. E. Wayne Hill, Rev. L. M. McNeal, Rev. L. M. Morganfield, Rev. J. B. Betts, Mrs. AIzonia Maxwell, my cousin and her daughter Mrs. Rosie Lee Patterson, Rev. A. McEwen Williams, Memphis, Tn; Mrs. Mary Coleman, Mrs. Ineva May Pittman, Mrs. Dortha Styles Jackson, Ms; Sir Kemper Smith, Dr. Zee Anderson Barron, Mound Bayou, Ms; Rev. J. B. Wood, Rev. Willie Morganfield, Rev. F. W. Williams, Rev. E. L. Johnson, Rev. Jack Johnson, Rev. Sam Davis, Rev. Clarence Grainger, Rev. Edward Thomas, Mr. Charlie B. Newsome, Mrs. Ida Mae Turner, Rev. E. T. Smith, Rev. John Thomas Baker, Rev. J. L. Lewis, Rev. J. C. Curley, Professor James E. Miller, Clarksdale, Ms; Rev. Dr. Leon Whitney, Mrs. Geraldine Stokes, Mrs. Queen Martin West, Dr. J. J. McClinton, Rev. R. Ramsey, Rev. Alton Atkinson, Pastor Floyd Mitchell, Dr. Hazel Kennedy, Sam Hardy, Mother Charleszetta Waddles, Attorney Ronald Johnson and Mrs. Deborah Hooper Johnson, Detroit, Mi; Mr. Cloves Campbell, Phoenix, Az; Mrs. Willie B. Cevales, Gulfport, Ms; Rev. C. H. Cherry, Benoit, Ms; Rev. John Mathews, Indianola, Ms; Rev. Sarnie Rash, Cleveland, Ms.

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A PERSONAL INTRODUCTION I, Vera Mae Berry Pigee, am the wife of Paul Pigee, the mother of Mary Jane Pigee. I am a member of Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church, Clarksdale, Mississippi, Reverend John Matthews, pastor. A member of New Prospect Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan, Reverend S. Leon Whitney, pastor. I reside in both cities, therefore I belong to a church in both. I am an at-large chartered member of the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP and a life member of the Detroit Branch of NAACP. I have an associate degree in the Arts, Wayne County Community College; a B. A. in Journalism and Sociology, Wayne State University; currently working toward my Master’s Degree in Guidance Counseling and Theology; studied at the University of Michigan and Oklahoma Missionary Baptist College and am the author of Part One of The Struggle of Struggles. In Part Two of The Struggle of Struggles, we are discussing where we were before the civil rights struggle of the fifties and sixties, the struggling years, and where we are now..

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MY ROOTS Individuals have asked me, how do I compare my book with Alex Haley’s book Roots?1 There are similarities, but no comparisons. My book is an extension of Roots. It spans a different time period in our history. My Civil Rights activities, which I discuss in The Struggle of Struggles parts one and two, began in 1952 with the organization of the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP until 1972. Except for the brief description of my genealogy I was fascinated with the research Alex Haley was doing on his genealogy. I read every little article I saw about his research. In the early seventies when I was doing undergraduate work at Wayne State University, I had a course in the Economics of Sociology. Dr. Linda Ewen, the instructor, asked the class to write a working autobiography tracing our family tree as far back as possible. When she read mine, she asked me to share it with the class. She also told the class my writing reminded her of the research Alex Haley was doing on his Roots. Here are excerpts from that paper: “My great-grandmother Alice Matthews was born Monday, April 10, 1865. She could not read or write and did not remember all of the details about Lee surrendering Sunday, April 9, 1865; but she knew her mother told her she was born the first day after surrender.2 She said, “I am white because my father was a white southern cotton plantation owner of black slaves and my mother was a pretty black girl who was his property and he felt he wanted to sexually abuse his “Nigger.” I am the by-product of a white man’s wishes. He owned me as his child but he did not send me to school. Alice married twice; her first husband’s name was John Allen; they were share croppers in the Mississippi Delta. To this union was born one son, John Allen Jr. John Allen Senior died and Alice married 1. Alex Haley (1921–92): World War II veteran, journalist, and writer. He published The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965 and Roots in 1976. 2. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War with a ceasefire agreement at the Appomattox Court House.

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John Matthews, who was also a sharecropper. To her second marriage, three sons were born: Charles, Henry and George, and three girls, Janie, Elizabeth and Hattie. Hattie was my grandmother. All of them are dead now. I taped an interview with Janie in 1976 at her daughter’s (Mrs. Mary Alice Smith Hawkins Shanlin) home in Chicago. Janie embraced me doing the interview and said, “All of my brothers and sisters are dead. I am the only one left.” She read part one of my book, The Struggles of Struggles, and asked me to tell her mother’s story as an introduction to part two. She said, “Nothing but a fool would deny their past and be ashamed to tell what someone had done to them.” Janie died in July 1978. When my brother, W. C. Berry, and I were small children, our greatgrandmother would share her past experiences with us. We did not listen and remember as well as we should have. She said, “Good Lord, these educated folks are changing everything. They don’t even count money like they used to; they call two bits a quarter, four bits a half dollar and six bits seventy-five cents. They are changing all the words. They don’t say fetch and chillen, it is bring and children. Berry would take my hand and say let’s go, we don’t want to hear that old slavery time stuff grandma’s talking about. The both of us regret our actions today. She knew when we no longer wanted to listen; she would say, “Go on setting up here grinning looking like 30 with the three spoiled out. You better learn everything you kin.” We had nicknames, Berry’s was “Dub” and mine was “Nunie.” That nickname led to my first strong protest; I stopped even my parents from calling me Nunie. One day Alice Matthews told us that her mother said some of the slaves said they came from a beautiful place in Africa called Timbuktu. The book Africa in Perspective by F. Seth Singleton and John Shingler, pages 34 and 35, describes Timbuktu in 1468 as a university town and cultural center of West Africa; one of the world’s great centers of learning with numerous judges, doctors and clerics.3 A liberal arts center with visiting lecturers from the universities of Cairo (Egypt) and Fez (Morocco). Courses at the university were theology, Islamic Law, Rhetoric, Grammar and Literature. There were other stories Alice Matthews told us the slaves shared with her mother about Timbuktu which I cannot recall. Now, I share her thinking about looking like 30 with the three erased. Alice took pride in telling us her husband and all of her children could read but her son Charles. She said, “He just could not learn.” His father tried to teach him and it grieved the both of them when John told her Charles would never be a scholar. “I grieved more than John because I knew the 3. F. Seth Singleton and John Shingler, Africa in Perspective (New York: Hayden Book, 1967).

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problem I encountered by being unlettered,” Alice said, “You chillen’s mother Lucy is my child in many ways. I nursed Lucy from my breast. I had a baby boy who was born about the same time as Lucy; Lucy’s mother, my daughter Hattie, and my baby died about the same time; so, instead of having a son, I had a daughter who was my granddaughter. My brother and I called Alice Matthews, who was our great-grandmother, “Grand-Ma.” She was a very devout Christian; a member and mother of St. Clair Missionary Baptist Church on old U. S. Highway 49 about 5 miles south of Glendora, Mississippi. She prayed over the breakfast every morning until the biscuits got cold. She said, “Good Lord, what are they going to do next Sunday?” When we went to dress the candidates for baptism the pastor, Rev. Jackson, came stepping out with a black gown on. His gown is supposed to be white. During the revival he told those kids if they wanted to be baptized, just step out on his word and give him their hand. He did not say anything about being born again. In the Book of John, Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.”4 “My husband used to read that scripture to me before he died.” She drilled the term “Born Again” in the memory of all she came in contact with. She talked about being born again longer than Charles Colson or any of the Watergate converts.5 My brother and I wanted to have a party and we told Grandma that our parents did not have any money. She said we did not need any money to have a party because our mother had plenty milk, butter, sugar and eggs. If mother would bake us a cake and make some ice cream, we would have a party, invite our friends and have plenty fun. We told her that was a good idea but it would not work for two reasons, one—we did not have an ice cream freezer and besides you did more at a party than eat ice cream and cake. She said, “Remember I am the child of a slave. The owners, who were white, took everything and the slaves learned how to take nothing and make something out of it. I am the only person in this community old enough to know about this kind of party.” She told us to pump a tub of water and leave it at the pump; it would freeze and we would have plenty ice. The day before the party she would show us how to make the freezer. Then she said, “You can have this party only if you live in the country because it will be a fire ball party.” We said, “Fire ball? Mama won’t let us play with fire.” She said, “Yes she will because we will be watching. Get some clean rags and we will 4. John 3:3–8. 5. Charles Colson (1931–2012): an attorney and political advisor who served as Special Counsel to President Nixon (1969–70) and the Director of the Office of Public Liaison (1970–73) before pleading guilty to obstructing justice after the Watergate scandal. He converted to evangelical Christianity in 1973.

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make about six balls out of the rags about the size of a baseball and soak them in (Coal Oil) kerosene. That is why you have to live in the country to have this party. You can play in the wide-open field and not set anything on fire. If any of you catch on fire, do not run. The boys and girls who will be playing fire ball with you will put the fire out.” To make the ice cream freezer, we were told to get a one-gallon molasses bucket with the handle on it, put the ice cream custard in it and a bigger bucket to put the custard bucket in. “Get the ice out of the tub, break it in small pieces and pack it in between the two buckets just as you do in a freezer. Put some salt on the ice and use the bucket handle (bail) to turn it. Boys and girls who were invited and those who were not came. We put on our boots, coats and gloves and played fire ball [for] two or three hours. Alice Matthews told us to keep all of the balls in the air at the same time and the display would be beautiful but we added our touch, we played baseball also. We later ate the cake and ice cream. Thanks to the daughter of a slave for showing us how to use and enjoy what we had. Until this day, I have not enjoyed a party as well as I did that one. There was no foul mouth syndrome, alcoholic beverages or cigarette pollution at the party; just clean fun. Alice Matthews was a very effective counselor of women who smoked cigarettes. She volunteered her services to two of her granddaughters every time they lit a cigarette. If she saw them, she said, “Good Lord, who ever heard of a woman smoking? Nothing good happens to a smoking woman and a crowing hen. I don’t know what is going to become of these young women with their cigarettes. Lighted fire on one end and a fool on the other end.” Her counseling did not help them but it was 100% effective on me. Because of her, I never had any desire to smoke. “Aint Alice,” as she was called by the white community in the Leflore, Tallahatchie County, Glendora, Mississippi area, would continue her counseling when she saw a white woman smoking. She would tell them what she told her granddaughters and they would laugh. She would say, “They think they got so much sense, I was telling them the same thing; every time they light a cigarette, there is fire on one end and a fool on the other.” The last years of her life she lived in Memphis, Tennessee, with her daughter Janie at 241 Ashland Street. She fell and broke her hip [and] Janie carried her to John Gaston Hospital. The white nurses told Janie, “She looks more like our mother than yours. Why is she white?” Janie said, “She is old enough to be all our mother. Ask her! She is old and sick but she can talk.” And talk she did. When I went to the hospital to visit her, one of the nurses asked if I was her granddaughter. She said, “Good Lord, no. That is my great-granddaughter and she has a baby, Mary Jane Pigee, who is my great-great-grand daughter.”

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Her health continued to deteriorate but as long as she could talk, she asked the doctors, nurses, patients and visitors if they knew the Lord in a personal way. Had they been born again? A few weeks after the accident, while still in the hospital, she went to be with the Lord.

INDIVIDUAL INSTITUTIONS There are numerous people who act as though nothing happened until they arrived and most of them with this kind of attitude are young and black. However, there are exceptions. Since the civil rights struggle of the fifties and sixties, it appears that some young and not so young are ashamed, angry or just indifferent because they did not participate or make any meaningful contributions to the struggle. They come to the NAACP, the church and other organizations asking to be officers and trying to force their own opinionated ideas on an entire body of people. I have seen some come to the church, after they reach middle age with no training in Christian education, acting as though everything that had transpired was wrong until they made their debut. No person in their right mind can deny we need changes in every aspect of our social order; the schools, churches, homes and other organizations. There are various kinds of negative and positive changes. Before we jump on the change everything band-wagon, look at the changes in our schools, communities and homes. I hear so many young people say anyone over thirty has not done anything. There are blacks who have become institutions in their own right in spite of slavery, discrimination, segregation and pettiness. There are those who were trailblazers before the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Many of those pioneers have touched my life in a most meaningful manner. This chapter on individual institutions, I hope and pray, will jog our memory of people we know over thirty, dead and alive, who have become institutions in the fields of Christianity, politics, education, business, law, finance, medicine and other social and civic endeavors. The three people whose lives we will briefly summarize are black, not black institutions, but institutions by Webster’s definition.

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INSTITUTION T. J. HUDDLESTON

Born in the nineteenth century, T. J. Huddleston was the son of a slave, studied one semester at Rust College and dropped out to return home to support his family.1 He taught school and rented some farm land. Later he purchased eleven thousand acres of rich Mississippi Delta land. He organized the first black hospital in the state of Mississippi—The Afro-American Sons and Daughters in Yazoo City, Mississippi.2 He organized thirteen Century Funeral Homes across the Magnolia State. He was the father, grandfather and great-grandfather of the Huddleston and Espy families of Yazoo City, Greenville, Clarksdale and other parts of the state of Mississippi and across this nation He lived eighty-three years. He was a financier.

INSTITUTION MRS. MINNIE BOOKER HOUSE

Mrs. Minnie Beatrice Booker House worked in the Coahoma County School system in Clarksdale, Mississippi, many years.3 In 1948, her assignment was near the county boundary. To compensate the person with whom she would be commuting would exhaust her meager salary. She resigned her position and opened House’s Kindergarten. The first accredited day care and kindergarten in the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, which black boys and girls could attend. Thirty years later, from her private school many great leaders emerged: ministers, doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers, public school teachers and other outstanding citizens who went into other business and professions. Mrs. House is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. For a number of years she served as Director of Christian Education at Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksdale, Mississippi. She is Dean of Coahoma County Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress and Dean of the Christian Education Department of the Young People’s Department of the Mississippi General Baptist State Convention. She is an institution in her lifetime.

1. Thomas J. Huddleston Sr. (1876–1959). 2. The Afro-American Sons and Daughters was a fraternal organization organized in 1924. They built the hospital in 1928, and it ceased operations in 1966. 3. Minnie Beatrice Booker House (1901–2001?)

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INSTITUTION DR. ZEE ANDERSON BARRON

“I, Zee Anderson Barron attended elementary and junior high school at Bowman High School in Vicksburg, Mississippi.4 I came to Mound Bayou and attended the Baptist College.5 My brother-in-law, Mr. P. M. Smith, was president. From tenth grade through college I studied at Jackson College in Jackson, Mississippi. I was the recipient of a scholarship. I majored in Education and English. I was a dramatic reader and soloist for the Jackson College Choral group and we traveled all over the United States under Freddric Hull [Frederick Hall]. That gave me quite a deal of experiences which served me in good stead in later years. Jackson College was founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Board (a white organization out of New York City) as an all-black school in 1877 and relocated in Jackson in 1882. The organization withdrew its support from the school.6 Mr. B. Balwyn [Baldwin] Dansby was trying to get the state of Mississippi to sponsor the school. He was also instrumental in recruiting Jacksonians to work there because he had very little money for operating. I left my first job as teacher at Meridian High School, Meridian, Mississippi, and returned to Jackson College as a professor. One of my classmates, who was a resident of Jackson, Mary Whiteside, left her job also and returned to Jackson College. Teachers’ salaries were very little at that time. College professors’ pay at Jackson College was sixty-five to one hundred dollars per month. After the first year, Mr. Dansby did not have even that little money. He was college president. My salary was supposed to be sixty-five dollars a month and when I walked up to the window to get my check, he began to rattle some papers and said, “Miss Anderson, this hurts me as bad as it does you but this is all I have.” He gave me $6.37 for the month’s work. My sister and her husband, Mr. & Mrs. P. M. Smith, continued to support me just as they did when I was a student. Mary Whiteside helped by bringing us food from her home. There were two hundred or more students but they could not pay their tuition. Mr. Dansby would say to his staff, “Hold on. If you all do not hold on to your alma mater, no one else will.” He did not want it to die. He solicited funds for the school. We had plenty activities, a good ball team, choir and dramatics club but no money. Mary Whiteside and I could 4. Zee Anderson Barron (1903–94). 5. Freed slaves founded Mound Bayou, Bolivar County, in 1887. Mrs. A. A. Harris and the Baptist State Convention established Baptist College (Mound Bayou Industrial College) in 1904. 6. Founded in 1877 as Natchez Seminary; the institution moved to Jackson in 1882, and the name changed to Jackson College in March 1899 as the curriculum expanded.

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have gone on to other schools who could have paid the meager salaries. I was offered a job in the state of Georgia and also in the public school system of the state of Mississippi. There are some experiences I had at Jackson College I shall always cherish. I met and married Dr. Barron at Jackson College in 1940. He was a science teacher and later became a medical doctor. I worked at Natchez College with no pay and an interesting thing happened. One Sunday afternoon, the school bus was going to take a student to the railroad station and my roommate said, “Zee, let’s ride to the station.” I had on a silk dress which had been my sister’s and it was too large for me. I had a new spring coat which I put on over the dress. When we returned, the dormitory had burned and the clothing I was wearing were all I had. I had spent every penny I made buying clothes because when I was a student at Jackson College the students wore uniforms. I promised myself when I graduated and started to work, I would buy me some fine clothes. My sister and her husband had to buy me some more clothing. We stayed on at Natchez College that summer, those of us who could sing organized a choir and gave concerts for the school anywhere we could but mostly at Baptist Churches. Our financial manager gave us an allowance of one dollar a day if the people we sang for did not feed us. That fall when we returned to Natchez College, we still did not get any pay. I went on to help other struggling black colleges, of course they paid me. I worked at Mississippi Valley State University and at Alcorn College. I also taught at a high school in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. In 1949, the same year my husband died, I was asked to come to the Agricultural High School at Clarksdale, Mississippi, to work with Professor B. F. McLaurin in organizing Coahoma Junior College.7 There were fourteen white junior colleges in the state of Mississippi at that time supported by tax payers’ money but a black person could not attend any of them. We started Coahoma Junior College from scratch. There was not even a piece of paper with Coahoma Junior College written on it. I was the entire college personnel for three years with little help from the high school staff. The state requirement was to organize we must [have] twenty students. We opened with twenty-two. In 1978, there were thirteen hundred students. It is quite gratifying to see how the college has grown in twenty-nine years. It is also integrated.8 If I had to make the sacrifices all over, I would do it gladly. I do not regret even the days I worked hungry. God has been good to me. I have made five trips abroad and besides I could live anywhere in the world I want to. I chose Mound Bayou because 7. The Coahoma County Agricultural High School was founded in 1924 as the first of its kind for black students in Mississippi, adding the junior college curriculum in 1949. In 1950 Coahoma Junior College was the first of its kind for African Americans in Mississippi. 8. It integrated in 1965.

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of my roots here. As a child, I heard Isaiah T. Montgomery say many times, “The reason I organized Mound Bayou, Mississippi, is: when I came up here this spot was a wasted, howling wilderness and I wanted the world to know Negroes were capable of self-government.”9 My retirement came in good time for me. Since the civil rights struggle and integration, I believe we have lost ground. Our morals are so low I know I would not fit into that frame of thinking. I am director of the Young People’s Department of the National Baptist Convention. Mrs. Pigee, you are one of my girls. I always admired your work in the Civil Rights Movement, paid my NAACP dues and attended the freedom meetings because I believed if I had lost my job I could have gotten another one in Mound Bayou.”

THE CHRISTMAS PARADE—AN INSTITUTION

The Christmas Parade had become the institution in Clarksdale, Mississippi, because unlike large cities, Clarksdale did not have the variety of mass activities which involved black and white participants; therefore, the Christmas Parade was the grand finale event of the year in a special kind of way. The merchants and chamber of commerce used the parade to strike at the black community because a few of us were audacious enough to challenge the existence of the long overdue system of racial unbalance which existed all over this nation in a more subtle way in the North, East and West but raised its head high and proud in the South.10 After that act of retaliation and a prophet [protest] (no parade no trade), we took a good look at the parade and it too had served its purpose under its present formation. I am grateful to Miss Margaret Pharr for her effort in the reorganization of the parade on an equal treatment of black and white participants if my comprehension of this interview is accurate.11 Whatever her reason, if it is for the enjoyment of the children, all people, her love for the community or this act of parade restoration has a political overtone. She is a relative of Mayor Richard Webster. This is evident that one cannot relive, undo or sweep under the rug the contributions good, bad or indifferent of the Civil Rights Movement nor its individual participants. 9. Isaiah T. Montgomery (1847–1924): founder of Mound Bayou. 10. The mayor, endorsed by the Coahoma County Chamber of Commerce, refused to allow bands from the two black schools to participate in the annual Christmas parade in 1961, resulting in a boycott. 11. Margaret R. Pharr (1926–2016): homemaker and member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

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But the cast is set for other individuals and groups to make their contributions on the groundworks which were laid in the fifties and sixties. Solid buildings must have solid footing of varied levels and the Civil Rights Movement, the black church, the NAACP, A. Phillip Randolph and the Sleeping Car Porters Union, Walter Reuther’s Organization of Labor in the automobile industry, and in later years other Civil Rights organizations (S.C.L.C.) Southern Christian Leadership Conference, (C.O.R.E.) Congress of Racial Equality, (S.N.C.C.) Student Non-violent Coordination [sic] Committee, came. All of which made meaningful contributions.

MISS MARGARET PHARR INTERVIEW

Miss Margaret Pharr, born and reared in Clarksdale, Mississippi, was instrumental in restoring the Christmas Parade mainly because of the interest the children would have in it. She said she did not know why it had been discontinued. I told her why. “Now that you know why the Christmas Parade was discontinued, what value do you think its restoring has on the community?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Everyone I spoke with wanted it continued because of the enjoyment it brought.” [Mrs Pigee:] “Does Higgins High School and Coahoma Junior College bands participate?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Yes, they do. They were a part of it in the past and I am sure they were invited and did participate last year.” [Mrs Pigee:] “Before the parade was discontinued, refreshments were served in the auditorium of which the white children could partake but the black children, who had marched all over town and who could least afford to purchase refreshments, had to go home. Do you know if refreshments are still served?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “I really don’t know. I think we got McDonald’s to take care of the refreshments. I think someone takes care of a group as our home bands serve as host and someone would make sure our out-of-town bands, such as Jackson, would be taken care of with food and water.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Do you think the restoration of the Christmas Parade with its black and white participants serves a good public relations effort for the community?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “I think so. I always saw black and white participants in the parade and I have enjoyed working with both.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Everyone needs everyone and I am interested in interviewing you because of your interest in restoring the parade. As I travel around the country and out of country, the State of Mississippi has such a bad image. I am sure you know that. I would like to know what we, black and white, can do to help improve our state?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “I don’t know. I do not think that the state is as bad as some people think it is; perhaps in the past it was. I do

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agree that we have to live down a reputation we so long let exist and earned. I am interested in living it down in our lifetime and I want to know what we can do? I work with black and white elderly at various nutrition sites and they do not seem to mind getting together playing games, exercising and eating lunch; therefore, I do think times have really changed.” [Mrs. Pigee:] Do you find that the blacks are as receptive to you as the whites?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “The majority of the time.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “You would then agree that some of the fears and frustrations still exist?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Yes.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Have you started plans for the parade this year?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Yes, we have. After I put on the parade the first year, we formed a community development council, a branch of the Chamber of Commerce, that works with the Christmas Parade. We have already taken care of [the] schedule and invitations of bands who need early notification from us for travel expense purposes.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “When you were in Clarksdale High School, it was all white?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Yes, until my senior year at which time we were integrated at mid-semester.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “There were two black girls, Bettie J. Yarbrough and her niece. I brought them over there and the resentment, harassment and frustrations, I could feel with my hand. Do you visit the school anymore?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “No, I have not except for a basketball or football game.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Do you feel our higher institutions of learning are operating now as they should have all the time?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “Probably so; I really do not know. I have not been into the schools. I do not even know who teaches. I am aware that the staff is integrated. I just hope the people continue to support the parade as it has benefited all of us, not only the children but the adults as well.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “How many bands participated?” [Mrs. Pharr:] “I cannot remember. Twelve would be a guess. We did have floats and again I cannot remember the number. We tried to set up a standard route but, as the parade grows and the floats increase in height, it is hard to set a regular parade route.”

MOVEMENT PARTICIPANTS SPEAK My major purpose for the interviews with the twenty or more people is to really take a look at where we were before the Civil Rights Movement, during the Movement and where we are now and to go a step further back, particularly in the black social, economical and educational struggle. Having observed many black people, middle-aged and retirees who are benefactors of the Civil Rights Movement, contributors and non-contributors and inbetweeners of the Movement, these interviews are a break from the traditional interviews because the apparatus was turned on and these interviews [interviewees] were mostly asked their names, addresses, occupations, and what was on their hearts, conscious [conscience] and minds. [For example:] Now that you have had a chance to reflect on the Civil Rights Struggle, Movement or Black Up Rising of the fifties and sixties, are you satisfied with what you see, hear and feel? If you had to make the same kind of sacrifices all over again, would you do it? If yes, why? If no, why not? With the moral breakdown in our entire social structure and with the Christian church acceptance of the permissiveness, where did we go wrong and how did we create this social monster?

ROSA PARKS

“December 1, 1955, I, Rosa Parks, a seamstress at the Fair Department Store in Montgomery, Alabama, boarded a Cleveland Avenue city bus.1 The Negro section, which was the back of the bus, was filled. There was a vacant seat in the middle section (that portion of the bus Blacks could use if no white person was using it). The law was if the front seats filled and one white person came to sit in the middle section of the bus, all of the Blacks seated 1. Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was a longtime activist before 1955. Fired from her job, she eventually moved to Detroit, Michigan.

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in that section had to get up and stand in the rear of the bus. A Black man was sitting next to the window, I sat beside him. Two Black women were sitting across the aisle from us. Another of the laws or Ordinance Rules of Segregation was the Blacks had to pay their money and board at the front of the bus and if the bus was congested with Whites. The Blacks who boarded the bus at the front door deposited their fares in the meter, exited at the front door and reboarded the bus. Many times the driver refused to open the side door and just drove off and left them standing there. When I boarded the bus I remembered the driver as the one who put me off the bus in 1943 because I would not pay, disembark and reboard. I was not going to take that chance and let him drive off with my fare without me. At the third bus stop from where I embarked, a few White passengers boarded the bus and they occupied all of the seats that were reserved for Whites and left one White man standing. The bus driver turned around and said he needed those front seats in the middle section. That was the section where I was seated. The four Blacks who were seated would have to vacate our seats for that one man. The first time he asked for the seat, no one moved. Then he threatened us. ‘You all better make it easy on yourselves and let me have those seats.’ The Black man sitting beside me jumped up; I just moved my feet and legs and let him out. Then the two women stood up and walked into the aisle. The driver looked at me and asked if I was going to stand up. I said, ‘No!’ He said, ‘If you don’t stand up, I’m going to have you arrested.’ I told him to go on and have me arrested. He got off the bus and upon returning stood in the front door looking toward the back of the bus. The people began to get off the bus. When the police arrived the driver pointed at me and said he needed that seat. The other three of them got up, she would not. The policeman asked me if the driver had asked me to stand. I said, ‘Yes.’ One of them asked me why didn’t you stand up? I said, ‘I do not think I should. I paid my fare to ride.’ I also asked him, ‘Why do you push us around?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.’ When he said I was under arrest, I stood up. One policeman picked up my purse and the other my shopping bag. We left the bus and they escorted me to the police car. The bus driver told them he would sign a warrant. They took me to the City Hall; there I was booked, carried to jail and put in a cell. I was far from being happy but I was not afraid. I was disgusted with one Black man who was on the bus because he knew my family and he did not call to tell them I had been arrested. I felt at least he could have called. He would not have to reveal his identity. It seemed to me that so many black people at that time were too afraid to do anything to change the system. Many programs, committees and projects had not gone the way I considered to be the right way even though blacks

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were heading them, however, I would do the same thing again if I had to. Some writers, television, radio and newspaper commentators said my feet were hurting. That is not so. There was a hurt inside of me I cannot explain. My soul and every fiber of my being was tired. Yes, I would sit there again as displeased as I am with the social ills in the Black race, for which all of us Black and White must work to change. My only regret is that I did not sit there sooner. I was Secretary of the Local Branch of NAACP and advisor to the NAACP Local Youth Council at the time of the sit-ins. The NAACP was outlawed in the state of Alabama for seven years.”

ROY BELL WRIGHT

“I, Roy Bell Wright, was born on the Adams Plantation at Hopson, Mississippi, about six miles south of Clarksdale on US Highway 49.2 The best thing that ever happened to me was the night my parents brought me to Clarksdale to the NAACP Mass Meeting. I was 12 years old, innocent, uninformed and unaware as to what was happening in the community. My uncle and I used to walk from Hopson to Clarksdale in the daytime to participate in the NAACP activities. We had a car but my parents had to use it for transportation to their jobs. The Coahoma County Youth Council was holding its meetings in Mrs. Pigee’s beauty shop or house. After we planned our meetings, we would invite her. I went to her house numerous days not for meetings but for food because after we walked six miles, we had no money for food. She would give us the key to her house and tell us to go and eat as much of whatever we found in the refrigerator as we wanted; this we did. She was more than an NAACP Youth Advisor, she was a mother to hundreds of us over a twentyyear period. I cannot tell my story without telling how she encouraged me. Shortly after I joined the NAACP, my grandmother, Mrs. Nancy Wright, whom I call mother because my grandparents reared me, brought my uncle and me to Pigee’s Beauty Salon and told Mrs. Pigee she was going to Los Angeles, California, to work a while and she wanted her to take us as her own sons. Anywhere she went, she was to carry us. She promised my grandmother she would but at that time we knew only one place we were going and that was to jail. Mother said, ‘Oh, they can go to jail with you.’ Mrs. Pigee went beyond the requirements of NAACP Youth Advisor. She lectured us about our duties, obligations and responsibilities to our parents, NAACP, education and jobs, to do an honest day’s work, to be honest, live clean lives, have clean 2. Roy Bell Wright (1945–83).

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bodies and homes, our Christian duties and our future roles as husbands, fathers, wives and mothers. She told us when we wanted to hear what she had to say and when we did not. She told us to plan projects and if they were not part of the NAACP program, she would let us know. I participated in everything the Youth Council and Branch did after I joined. At that time our Youth Council and Branch enjoyed a kind of coherence I did not see in any other branch and youth council in the nation. This rapport began to dissipate immediately after the Civil Rights, Poverty Bills and Voting Acts were passed and Civil Rights workers from North, South, East, West and mostly white students began to come into the state through [the] COFO effort. I was the first black man to ring the cash register in White’s Department Store in Clarksdale. I was a part-time employee needing full-time work, as I had married and started a family. Whites said they did not need additional help but they were still hiring white people. I was the black people-pleaser, the one black integrator. Various government programs were opening in Clarksdale and I made applications for employment with all of the poverty programs. I was hired as [a] teacher’s aide in the Head Start program. I had completed two years of college training at Coahoma Junior College. The owner of the plantation where my grandparents, Howard and Nancy Wright, my parents and myself grew up, told my grandfather to move because he needed that house but he had an old house back in the woods we could live in. We refused. Another plantation owner, both being caucasian, told my grandfather we could move on his farm and that it was our Civil Rights activities, especially mine, being the reason why we were told to move. Shortly after we moved on his place, he died and we relocated again. At this time I was desperately in need of a better job. My wife and I had two babies. I made [an] application to and met with the Coahoma Opportunities Incorporated C.O. I. I asked for a better-paying forty-hour job; I was told a job was available, but that I was too young. I also wanted to go to Los Angeles, California, to the National NAACP Convention. I explained my situation to Mrs. Pigee. She told me everything would be alright because we would engage in activities to raise money for me to go to the convention on the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP chartered bus. She said upon return my job status would have changed. This was the last conversation I had with Mrs. Pigee; she waved to me as I boarded a Greyhound Bus in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for Jackson to join the delegates from across the state. She was the first person I saw in Los Angeles. She said, ‘Roy, enjoy yourself because you will have the job you wanted when you return.’ I asked, ‘what did you do?’ ‘I asked the member of the COI Board and Mrs. Personnel Director if you had done a good job on your part-time job. They said that to their knowledge you had

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done an outstanding job. I told them if anyone had gotten a job that grew out of our civil rights activities, it should be you because you had worked so long and hard to help make these jobs possible and now the persons black and white who make the decisions had contributed absolutely nothing to the struggle. I also told them if they discriminated against you because you are young, then the white people were right to discriminate against us because we are black.’ ‘I also related to the fact that Roy was on his way to Los Angeles and I would be flying out of Memphis, Tennessee, Sunday morning and I wanted a commitment before I left!’ Then she said, ‘Roy, I know you will not believe this but a few people from this region, Region I, want the 1969 National NAACP Convention to be held in Jackson, Miss. They will expect full cooperation from us if the State of Mississippi and Region Five accept their proposal; we will have to roll up our sleeves and go at it just like we do in Mississippi.’ We got the convention. My job at Neighborhood Center was waiting when I returned. I worked there seven years in different positions and only received one small pay raise. Afterwards I worked for three months as Director for Neighborhood Center; they did not give me the job. They said I was too young. I got no raise nor bonus. The last time I made an application for a job it was the position of Community Organizer and this started a big fight. It was 1972. I left Clarksdale then. I did not want to leave Clarksdale for several reasons. My church members depended upon me, particularly the older ones; my grandparents were still there but I was tired of fighting with those non-contributors to the Civil Rights Movement who came stepping out of hiding after we had gotten those three main pieces of Legislation—the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights and Poverty Bills—passed. They knew everything. I did not and still do not want to hear what they have to say. I remember many nights at the Freedom Meetings when we had the whole membership writing letters to our Representatives, and many of the people who now get on television and in the newspapers, talking about what they did or are doing, were not even registered voters then themselves. God knows, we needed them then. When they knew various kinds of reprisals were over, they clicked [cliqued] up and stepped out like the sun in Clarksdale, fighting the people who had done the work. Fighting those who had and still have the respect of the community. One lesson I learned very well before I left Clarksdale is to check and double check before I sign a document by reading it. One day I was very busy working at the Neighborhood Center and a person said to me, ‘Roy, sign your name on this list; we are going to have a meeting later with the

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program director Gustave Roessler.3 The only persons admitted will be those whose names are on the list.’ They lied. It was a grievance against Bennie Gooden, charging him with committing a crime that carries a severe punishment if convicted.4 Bennie went to Mrs. Pigee’s house and she got on the case waking up the whole town; Andy Carr, David Self, Rev. J. D. Rayford, Rev. R. L. Drew and many more. The next day a female employee at the Neighborhood Center said that she never would have become a part of the mess if she had known it would cause all of that. She said the man who approached her asking her to tell her story said they only wanted to get Bennie Gooden fired from his job as Assistant Director of COI. She was in tears and afraid because that Mrs. Pigee is talking about us trying to make an example out of Gooden and that she does not believe these accusations are true, and if he is fired all of us will be fired and can go back to the lowpaying jobs we had before, wherever in the cottonfields. The idea of Mississippi Blacks and Whites using the progress made in [the] Civil Rights struggle to cook up a diabolic plot against a Black man, all of us could be arrested and charged with conspiracy and liable [libel] if we could not prove the charges true, I did not hear another word about these charges they had against Gooden. He kept that job until he got a better-paying one. Mrs. Pigee said, ‘Roy I want the soul-searching answer to a gut question. You participated fully in the Civil Rights Movement. You know the positive and the negative sides. Would you do it again?’ I would give serious thoughts to what my activities would be but I would do the whole thing over, the going to jail, picketing or whatever. The best thing that ever happened to me was the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP and my advisor. I had heard all of my life that God works in Mysterious ways and now I am a witness because if I had never become involved in the Civil Rights Movement, my grandparents and I probably would still be living in an old dilapidated house on a White man’s farm. God has blessed me with a good job in Chicago. I am purchasing a home in Gary, Indiana, and driving a new car. The experiences I shared in the Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council will always be a major part of my life, even though a little clique has torn up the Youth Council; I thank God its history is documented. The things we did were always ‘a first’ for me. They were not child’s play but heavy experiences. The traveling: I had never been out of the state of Mississippi; I went 3. Gustave Roessler (1918–91): An investment broker who served as president of the local Citizens’ Council and became Director of Coahoma Opportunities, Inc. 4. Bennie Gooden (1936–2009): NAACP member, educator, and later a real estate developer. At this point he was deputy director of Coahoma Opportunities, Inc.

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so many places until some of my friends who were afraid, or their parent would not let them participate, got jealous and started calling Joe Higgins who was vice president of the Youth Council and myself ‘Mrs. Pigee’s boys.’ We wrote letters to our congressmen, senators, governor and the president of the USA. We organized groups, pickets, demonstrated, got arrested, went to jail, petitioned, wrote proposals, sang, danced, role played, made public speeches, taught individuals and groups in the voter education program. The learning, sharing, enjoyment and suffering enriched my life and again I thank God for Mrs. Pigee, the NAACP and all the rich wholesome experiences. I hope and pray that she will continue work with the Pigee Youth Council of NAACP and other youth groups because I have never had an instructor, advisor or leader who related to the youth totally before nor since. I cannot tell my story without telling hers and thanking her.”

MRS. BERNICE DREW DANIEL

[Mrs. Pigee:] “Mrs. Bernice Drew Daniel, you came to Clarksdale in the heat of the Civil Rights Struggle.5 You married into the Movement. Will you give a synopsis of your activities, hindsight and present status of the dying Movement?” [Mrs. Drew Daniel:] “I married Rev. R. L. Drew in 1959. He was the Vice President of the Coahoma County Branch of the NAACP; I was teaching in the public school system in Memphis, Tennessee, where I had taught for twelve years. I have a Master’s degree in Elementary Education. I taught one year in Memphis after we married. I resigned there. I had been promised a job teaching in the Coahoma County public school system. This was a sacrifice because the salary I would have received, if I had been hired, was $3,000.00 less than I was paid in Memphis but I still made the choice to work here. The same day my resignation became final in Memphis, an Assistant of the school drove to Memphis, called me that night and told me the school rules had been changed and the only job that had been affected at Lyon Elementary School was the job that was supposed to be mine. That was my first bitter experience because of my husband’s Civil Rights activities. I called the Gene Supervisor, the person who had asked me to come to work in Coahoma County, asking her about my job.6 Her reply was, ‘You better stay in Memphis.’ I said, ‘I have made a commitment to come to Clarksdale 5. Bernice T. Drew Daniel (1926–88). 6. The meaning of the “Gene Supervisor” is lost in Mrs. Pigee’s transcription, but it might refer to the assistant superintendent for segregated black schools.

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to live.’ I went to Aaron Henry, the president of the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP and Mississippi State Conference of NAACP. He told me I better let that alone; nobody was going to step out there with me. My husband and I decided we would do the best we could with the small business we had when we married. He was in the funeral home business. We were the only family in the funeral home business in Clarksdale, active in the Movement at that time. We had what is now our office, Royal Funeral Home. My husband was propositioned in that he was told if he would withdraw his name from that 1964 School Board Petition, his wife could have any job she wanted. He did not yield. We kept our dignity and trust in God. My husband participated fully; he would go to demonstrations and meetings, stay a week or two, and I would stay here and work. We had no children to fill in for us. God blessed our business. We now have a business in Sardis and Charleston, Mississippi. I used to wish I could go on the marches. A few of us made many sacrifices. We used to pool our resources—food, homes, money and cars. We added a flower shop to our business. The flower shop grew out of the struggles. During the time we were boycotting, every time we serviced a funeral there was a flower crisis. Therefore, with no formal training in flower designing, we opened the flower shop with artificial flowers. Our supplier was a White man out of Collierville, Tennessee. He stopped servicing us. For a short time, we begged him and then we decided we were not displaying any intelligence to beg and pay for his merchandise. From that, I began to stock live flowers. “Mrs. Drew-Daniel, if you had to do it all over, would you?” “Yes, Mrs. Pigee, the Civil Rights Struggle served as a source of strength to me, however it seems that the favors are being given to those who did nothing to help make the major changes. I haven’t lost a thing. Yes, I would do it again. I remember the night Aaron Henry was arrested and we stood vigil all night. Yes, I would do it all over. Rev. Drew ran for public office here in the same small town where he made so many sacrifices and the same people he made the sacrifices for did not support him. But, I would do the same thing all over again.

MR. RAYFORD JR.

[Mrs. Pigee:] “Mr. Rayford, during the Civil Rights Movement, you were on numerous assignments but right now I am basically interested in the one [when] you went on down to Ruleville in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Would you fill me in on the details?”

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[Mr. Rayford:] “Yes, Mrs. Pigee, three of us went from COFO House. This was the Council of Federated Organizations. We were all working together or trying to at that time. We went to Ruleville having called previously and made an appointment with the Mayor.” “Do you remember his name?” “I do not remember the Mayor’s name nor the names of his Board of Aldermen.7 But I do remember what went on. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember the names of my colleagues. There was one white boy and a black girl. These were all heroes because it took courage to get out there and stand out front and be counted during those times. These were times when we expected COFO House to be burned down during the night, but that’s another story. We went on to Ruleville, where we had an appointment with the Mayor. We asked him what he could do to advance black people in employment. He was not very helpful nor was he very positive. He said something to the effect that he was not really conversant with the activities of COFO and he had been told they were all Communist. He concentrated his attentions on my white colleague. There was some conversation there and the young man defended himself.” “He resented this white man being a part of the committee?” “First he attempted to drive a wedge between us. When he had gotten the information that he was not a native Mississippian.” “He used the outside thing on this white man?” “Oh yes, he stated ‘you are an outside agitator.’ He then turned to me and attempted to use the same axis against me.” “Why you? You were born here?” “I guess he assumed because we were sitting down talking to him intelligently that it just could not be a Mississippi Negro. So, he just went on as if I too were an outsider. I said, ‘No, Mr. Mayor, I was born right down here in Vance and my home is in Clarksdale.’ That presented him with somewhat of a problem because naturally, being born here, I knew where he was coming from. He mentioned the outside agitator kind of thing and I said, ‘Mr. Mayor, it seems to me you have been influenced by too much literature from the white newspapers. They are the ones who put out that outside agitator Communist kind of propaganda.’ The Mayor was not very helpful in this meeting and I don’t recall anything that came out of it except the very next day the Ku Klux Klan erected and burned a large cross on his lawn.” “Do you think the KKK or the White Citizens’ Council resented him having a conference with your group?” 7. Mayor Charles M. Dorrough.

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“Yes, I think it was a very definite attempt to pressure him not to yield nor to negotiate further with us. That is really about the extent of that particular conference. We were followed by a strange truck when we left in route to Clarksdale and we had to make several detours. This was the time of Mrs. Liuzzo and other assassinations.”8 “A truck too? That was during the time white men were carrying rifles on their trucks.” “Oh, Yes! In addition to the fact that we were driving one of those littlebitty old Volkswagens and we did not want to get into any problems so we avoided as much as we could this kind of minacious traffic.” “You tried to elude them?” “Right. It isn’t the kind of thing where you can name a name or point to a face, but you know when trouble is following you.” “Did he (the Mayor) promise he would do anything about hiring any blacks?” “No, we did not get any promises. I understand later, I believe it was the Ruleville Toy Company did change its policy and did begin to employ black men and women. That is the extent of that trip; of course there were some others I don’t recall them as a matter of fact. I don’t think I would like to recall those moments in those years, because they were trying and they were very troubled times.” “Being born in Quitman County, growing up in Tallahatchie County, graduating from Higgins High School here and going on to further your education in law and other subjects at Toledo University, then on to other higher institutions of learning and coming back home to work in the Civil Rights Movement, we all have hindsight; now to see what has been accomplished, what has been prostituted, the freedoms we have not yet gained, the self-bickering among blacks; if you had to do it all over again, would you put your life on the line again?” “That’s a very difficult question, Mrs. Pigee. I would probably not. Remember, when I came back to Mississippi, I was employed and I quit a good paying job in order to come back here to work for gratis. After it was over, I had to go back and start all over in other employment. Another thing too, consider that in 1955 when I got out of high school my intentions were to go to law school. There was not a law school a black man could go to in the state of Mississippi, so quite naturally if I wanted to pursue my legal career, I had to leave the state. I was a pre-law student at Toledo University and I 8. Referring to the March 25, 1965, Klan murder of Viola Liuzzo, a white housewife from Michigan who traveled to Alabama to assist in the logistics of the Montgomery to Selma March. She died when a carful of men pursuing her shot into her car as she shuttled marchers.

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studied law at Columbia University. In 1965 [1955] when I came back here to apply for admission to Ole Miss neither my lawyer nor I could go to Ole Miss. The situation has changed now. They are accepting blacks.” “That’s why I asked the question would you do it again? It was our activities that opened Ole Miss. Your father knows when James Meredith made application to the University of Mississippi, it was such a long drawn-out process that the Attorney General who was then John Doar came to my house and I called Rev. Rayford and a few more people; we had a long heated discussion and I told Mr. Doar that it was frustrating to me to have to tell and retell the Justice Department just keep telling and retelling.9 Why not question the power structure the white folks we had told them on. Why keep questioning us? He left the house. I don’t know how far he went, it couldn’t have been far. He came back and knocked on the door again. He told me, ‘I want to let you know, Mrs. Pigee, that James Meredith is really going to Ole Miss. Don’t become discouraged. People in Washington are impressed by your persistency.’ He also told me the date Meredith would be admitted. He went but it was because a few of us hung in there so that’s why I ask this gutsy, nitty-gritty, soul-searching question; if you had to do it over again, would you?” “I would not. It was a price that had to be paid, but I don’t think I would want to be the one that was payola. If I sat back and just waited for opportunities to open up, then I could have one of the $15,000 or $20,000 dollar jobs, my name would not be used and abused, I would be one of the good Negroes and everything would be rosy.” “That’s what has happened here in this community. There are so many things and somewhere we will have to stop and evaluate it, we will have to stop and talk about it because the black people who have come forth with the best jobs are the ones who have contributed absolutely nothing to the Civil Rights Movement and with the COI program having a white man undereducated as the highest paid and the boss of a black man with a Master’s Degree, I know the black people in Clarksdale would not accept this man if he was a black man.” “Mrs. Pigee, the last time I was at the board meeting of the COI, which was several years ago, I said exactly this directly to this white gentleman I am mentioning. I believe he made some kind of remark to the effect that I was not a part of the program and not a part of the plans and I told him, 9. James Meredith (1933–): first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi (1962). John Doar (1921–2014): served as the deputy assistant and then the assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department (1960–67) and spent a lot of time in the South, particularly Mississippi.

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‘You have a negative thing here but I remember sleeping on a cot in Freedom House or COFO House when they were expecting it to burn down.’ I said that was the beginning of the organization and without a beginning where would the organization be now and ‘Where were you then.’ I have not really spoken of COFO in years. I am not looking for recognition nor a pat on the back but people seem to forget so easily where we have come from and that we can go back.” “Justice from blacks and whites is a much-needed item in the community. I told the young people at New Jerusalem M. B. Church. ‘Get your jobs and be successful but never miss an opportunity to advance your fellow man’s justice.’ The conclusion I am coming to is, it is important to keep paying the price and I guess if I were called upon again I would find some way to make the sacrifice, to pay the price that is necessary to advance justice for the black community. If you just come to me and say, ‘Would you do it all over again?’ as a hypothetical question and answer, I would say no. Presented with the problems, facts and with the situations, I would probably make the same sacrifices. “Whatever I say, I know what is in my heart and my heart aches to do whatever helps people even at a sacrifice to myself. Right now I am making $530.00 bi-weekly and the folks who sat on the sidelines and said I am not going to have anything to do with that mess are now making three and four times that. I think that the Lord will take care of me and that’s what I am depending on because he is my only help.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “I know the Lord will take care of us in walking away from my business and working [in] the Civil Rights movement but this is a question I am asking each person I interview who has really worked in the Civil Rights struggle. Somewhere we will have to stop and evaluate our work, ourselves, our lives, our sacrifices, our gains, our losses, our struggles. The only way we can move ahead successfully is through evaluating the past and to really ask ourselves, would we do it again?” [Mr. Rayford:] “Mrs. Pigee, the people who conspired against you and others cannot carry the program forward because they are limited beings, limited insight, limited spiritual strength and selfish. Sooner or later the community will call to the pioneers for help and you will make another contribution. Knowing you, you will not be the person who would say, ‘I told you so and I am not going to have anything to do with that mess.’ I know that you too will find some way of making the sacrifices and help again because after all that’s your nature. As for myself, quitting the job in New York City where I could have had a fine home in Long Island and two cars was a sacrifice. I was working with Newsweek Magazine, 555 Madison Avenue, at

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a time when most monies were being poured into the war efforts. We saw clearly we had to do something to end that nasty war. I left Newsweek and demonstrated against the war, which [was] another sacrifice. About 10,000 of us demonstrated in front of the Justice Department in the nation’s capital and we were arrested as the Attorney General, John Mitchell, watched. The Judge acquitted us. This was the last great war protest before the Viet Nam War ended and I thank God, I was a part of it. As I watched history unfold, I saw the Attorney General, John Mitchell, march off to the same jail he had us thrown into. Dr. Martin Luther King talked about his mountaintop experiences; I know all of us have our mountaintop experiences. Mine came that day as I protested and went to jail against the Nixon Administration’s handling of the Viet Nam war.”

PAUL PIGEE

This was the hardest interview for me to do.10 I had given it serious consideration. You see, I wanted to ask Paul Pigee the nitty-gritty-gutsy soulsearching question I had asked other interviewees but deep within me, I think I was afraid he would tell me exactly what was down inside of him. I knew why a form of fear gripped me, because fear is not a part of my life. In the twenty years of which we had our lives, business, job and total possessions on the sacrificial altar, I had seen Paul change from a young man who would work all day, cook all night or do whatever was necessary to make Coahoma County NAACP Branch function a success to a middle-aged man full of hate and bitterness to the extreme of telling me, “You are a better Christian than I am and because of your firm belief in no retaliation a few people in Clarksdale, particularly a few Coahoma County NAACP branch officers of long standing with whom you served through the boiling point of the struggle, will be spared the pain or privilege of hearing some real cursing and feeling and seeing some fighting for what they thought was secret, dirty, click [clique] tricks toward you; after all you are my wife, the mother of my children. I know you are not always right but you did not deserve the lies they told. I don’t hate them as much as I used to since I prayed about it. You see each of us have our own way of dealing with problems and my way has worked very effectively for me. But I thank God for giving me a new way. If I had to make contributions all over that I made beginning in the fifties even though I would know what the outcome would be I would do it then, 10. Paul Pigee (1921–2004).

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not now. At this stage of my life, when I work all day or night or whatever and come home, I want to do just what I want to do the rest of my life. I do not mind sharing with friends of our own choosing, but not the ones organizational affiliations have forced on us. The one thing that is heaviest on my heart now is, I thought basically that we were sacrificing for the very young, but many of the young black men of whom I come in contact with, know a few things very well. ‘Are they hiring’ and once they are hired, ‘When is break time, lunch time and pay day?’ They come to work irregular and drag around when there. I am disenchanted by this behavior, as some of them have degrees. I am not degreed but I thank God I can read, write and count. I am grateful for common sense and the many skills I am endowed with. I have only been out of work for a short time in my life and when I see so many educators looking for work, I know they are crazy as hell or lazy or both.”

HATTIE MAE GILMORE

“I, Hattie Mae Gilmore, was a cook at Belmont Cafe in Clarksdale, Mississippi, located on Issaquena Avenue.11 It was one of those where whites entered and ate on one side and colored entered and ate on the other side. I lost my job because I led a picket line in front of a white church [on] Father’s Day, June 16, 1963. I was arrested. I am employed now as a cook in the Head Start Center at Jonestown, Mississippi. Losing my job was a blessing to me; the Mississippi Welfare Emergency Relief, of which Mrs. Vera Pigee was state co-chairperson, paid my bills and I worked full time in the Movement. I taught a citizenship class at Pigee’s Beauty Salon. We studied and interpreted the state constitution to help our students become registered voters. Mrs. Pigee tried to recruit Mrs. P. M. Carter, Mrs. Lillian Rodgers Johnson and Mrs. J. E. Hall, all of whom were retired teachers, to go to Dorchester, Georgia, and take the training from the educational staff of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King’s organization. The now-ambassador Andrew Young was director of the program. All of these retired teachers refused. Mrs. Carter said her husband worked as a carpenter for a white realtor and would lose his job if she participated. Mrs. Hall said her daughter Rose was a public school teacher in Coahoma County and would be fired if she participated. I do not remember Mrs. Johnson’s reason. I was able to help others through the Movement. There is no Movement in Clarksdale now, just a few NAACP members. I do not participate 11. Hattie Mae Gilmore (1922–2006).

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in the branch; not because I have any grievance with the NAACP, but I am not going to follow those school teachers who want to lead the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP now. I am willing to let them lead and follow themselves. They try to pressure the people who work in the poverty program to make it mandatory that a person who does not register to vote and join the NAACP cannot work in the program. This is common knowledge in the various programs. I know this is not supposed to be done this way. I am not against people becoming registered voters or joining the NAACP. I have documented records as proof but I am sick of black folk going from one extreme to another. I want to make it crystal clear, I intend to work in the Government Program in Coahoma County, of which I helped make possible, until I retire or until the program is no longer funded. Another common saying around the centers is, if it were not for one person, you would not be here. That is a big lie. No one person is responsible for any program. That would be impossible and since the poverty program is the result of the Civil Rights struggle, Mrs. Pigee was the number one person in active involvement in Coahoma County and she would resent anyone trying to give her individual credit for a program. I am so glad she put this recording device in front of me and asked me to express myself. I began to reflect on the trips we made together to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico; Charleston, S.C.; Denver, Colorado; Savannah, Georgia, and Los Angeles, California, by plane, train, bus and car. I would do it all over again if it needs to be for humanity and every time I have a chance to air my grievances, I shall. More so since those of us who made the contributions are being pushed back by black folk who are trying to grab the spotlight.”

GEORGE TROTTER

“George Trotter is my name.12 I have had thirteen years [of] experience in the public school system. I have a Master’s of Theology and did some work on a doctorate since leaving the classroom. My involvement goes back as far as 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama. We actually had urine and such things thrown at us. Many nights we could not sleep because of tensions that existed in the city. At that time, Dr. King was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. I was a student at Alabama State at the time.13 I got a chance to be involved in the Montgomery Movement and some others that came out of S.C.L.C. When 12. George W. Trotter (1901–81?) 13. Founded in 1867, Alabama State University is one of the oldest historically black colleges in the country, located in Montgomery.

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the hotel accommodations came along, I was involved even though I was teaching by then. At the time of Dr. King’s death, I was teaching at Melrose High School in Memphis, Tennessee.14 I would be in the classroom during the day and involved in various marches, including the Sanitation Strike which brought Dr. King to that fatal night in Memphis, fundraising activities and freedom meetings, including the March on Washington.15 Those days were frightening, especially the nights. You could be walking along and a rustling bush would instantly be of major concern. I remember one incident in Marks, Mississippi, where I was organizing a group. We got penned in one afternoon by persons carrying rifles, sticks and other such paraphernalia. The truck which was to pick us up was running late and yet I was not overly concerned for I was prepared to make the supreme sacrifice if necessary. It was for me a matter of principle. We sang ourselves into tranquility. I was called in by the Shelby County (Memphis, Tennessee) Board of Education and given some threats. I still taught during the day and fed the minds of the young people in the classroom to keep them actively involved.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Knowing what some of us went through to get the ear of the Federal Government to get the Poverty, Civil Rights and other bills passed, as a man of God how do you address yourself to the attitudes of the do-nothings who are now coming forward and trying to penalize those of us who have had our very lives at stake?” [Mr. Trotter:] “There have always been martyrs who served to light the path for others. I guess I wouldn’t call them do-nothings; they were rather frozen people who simply did not have the courage to come forward.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “When they came forward, why weren’t they willing to work with those of us who had brought the Movement thus far?” [Mr. Trotter:] “They did not have a commitment. There were money needs and some of these people secured funds that some of us never got a chance to touch. There were many motives.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “You mentioned martyrs as far back as biblical times; don’t you think we are supposed to learn from other examples and better ourselves?” [Mr. Trotter:] “We must remember that bodies do have weak limbs and some of these people were just that, weak limbs. You could not have had too many at the top, because the body has only one head. Some of them were not of the emotional makeup to have withstood the pressures without coming apart.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Here in Clarksdale, since the do-nothings as I choose to call them have come forward, the activities seem to be nil. Will you address yourself to that?” [Mr. Trotter:] 14. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. occurred on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. 15. March on Washington refers to the planned Poor People’s March that would take place in June 1968.

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“Can you take a donkey and make a race horse of it? The real issues are still there but the do-nothings lied and connived their way into these positions and are still doing so to keep them. They do not have the love or respect of the community. Their attitudes are complacent, nor have they the ability to energize the masses. Some of these people come here with a looking down their nose attitude which in part came from the media. I think it really came from the lack of love for the people and the community. The core of it is self-centeredness. I have been in sales, namely insurance, since leaving the classroom and have no desire to return to it as I am free from frustrations of limited minds, petty attitudes of people I have worked with. I just don’t choose to keep my life on that low of a profile, because eventually it has its effect on you.”

REV. S. LEON WHITNEY

“I was born and reared in Tallulah, Louisiana.16 I volunteered and went to service in the United States Army in World War II at the age of sixteen while in the eleventh grade. I stayed a few years, came back and finished high school and took the G.E.D. Test; three years later I received a degree from Leland College, Baker, Louisiana. I went on to graduate from Virginia Union at Richmond, Virginia, in the school of religion. I taught in the public school system in Louisiana one year and then I was called to the deanship of the Mississippi Baptist seminary. I worked there fourteen years and received a doctor’s degree there. I have a PHD I received from Wayne State University. I was called to the pastorage of the Farrish Street Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. I was attending a court hearing; some students from Tougaloo College had demonstrated against the policy of segregation; for this they were arrested; we had gone down to the courthouse in large numbers to give the students moral support. I was standing across the street from the court house conversing with the late Medgar Wiley Evers. A policeman said there was no room in the court house and those of us who were standing outside would have to leave. He called out to the other policeman, “move them out.” They began to beat upon us with their night sticks and turned German shepherd dogs on us. One bit me on my arm. I believe they were striking at Medgar. I do not think they would have been as belligerent as they were if they had not seen Medgar, because he symbolized all the aggressiveness in the black community which the white policemen 16. Samuel Leon Whitney (1928–90).

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resented. I have always wondered how a white person who could neither read nor write and was extremely ignorant could enjoy the privileges an educated black could not. This happened in 1963 just before Medgar was assassinated. The night Medgar was killed I had just left him about thirty minutes. We had attended a freedom meeting in a church. Ironically the Movement was losing ground. Medgar could do in his death what he could not do in his life. When I got to his house, where he was shot, blood, pieces of bone and flesh were still on the wheel of his car. It goes without saying that without the shedding of blood there is no redemption. It was a gruesome situation but it was the price he paid for the freedom we now enjoy. The Movement per se is floundering because we are so easy to please with such a small piece of the freedom pie. The results of the Movement are still alive in that we have been upgraded in a few jobs and political positions because of the depth of the sacrifices. Elderly unlearned blacks who lived in the rural South were afraid to participate because they were so isolated and would be a target for the Ku Klux Klan. To the surprise of the Klan, I suppose the six black churches that were burned prior to Medgar’s death worked just the opposite, people who were active or not didn’t want anyone bothering their religion. Segregation would have lasted longer in the South if the white folk had not bothered our religion. Black people in the South during the Civil Rights Movement believed the churches were God’s business and they believed that the Lord was on our side and no one was supposed to meddle [in] God’s business. Every catastrophe the white folks used against the black community—the death of Medgar, the burning and bombing of churches, the trumped-up charges or whatever served as a motivation factor. Example, the day Medgar was killed, sixteen of the local ministers there in Jackson, Mississippi, were arrested because we were demonstrating against the system. We really believed the system was responsible for Medgar’s death. We began to sing and pray and they released us without bringing charges against us. Later, I was told, the police department was afraid that with the leaders in jail the crowd would get out of hand. The power of black folk lies in the Christian church and anyone who does not know that is ignorant of a historical fact. 1968, I was called to the pastorage of New Prospect Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, which had a membership of two-hundred. In eleven years, we have grown to approximately two-thousand-five-hundred members. Detroit is as segregated as was the South before the Civil Rights Movement because the system controls. Some plant workers make twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars a year more than a teacher. We are now hung up in a money syndrome. Before the Civil Rights Movement, in the South, the parents, churches, schools and communities were pushing education

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because we knew if the mind was trained, whether or not the person made a lot of money, that individual became a whole person. I would participate again in the Civil Rights Movement, even if I knew I would be bitten by the policeman’s dog and put in jail. Now that I have had a little taste of freedom, I desire to be free more so. There are many aspects of the struggles for which I am grieved; a good jeaster [gesture?] helps provide a person with open doors to better jobs and other opportunities; it also provides the opportunity to be stupid. Sometimes, when you hand an individual, a group or race something on a tray, they do not know the deprivation, suffering and dehumanization that went into what you have given them. They cannot fully appreciate it. I know this is why some of the very young are prostituting the privileges of getting an education, getting and keeping a job and upgrading one’s neighborhood. Mrs. Pigee, part one of your book The Struggle of Struggles is a good account of what actually happened in the Civil Rights Movement. It is necessary that as much firsthand information as possible be written about that area in our history. I also know part two will be as informative, because those of us who were active know the story firsthand. It is necessary to have as many written accounts of what transpired as possible. Any people who do not know their history, be it good, bad or indifferent, are not very well informed. I am grateful to God for having used me in the Movement. I learned many things by being involved. One thing I learned well is that those of us who were involved had to be hound tooth clean, because if a participant were not, the white power structure would put that person in jail for any minor offense for fifty years. We, the members of the black community in America, need to put forth special effort to regain the closeness of the fifties and sixties. I do not intend to leave the impression that all blacks were close. But there was enough closeness to make major changes in the entire system. Here are some points for starters: 1. Meet with the former leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, discuss objectives and directions. 2. Define first-class citizenship and maintenance of ethnic identity. 3. Build our own capitalist system. 4. Establish a common system of communication in order to understand various court decisions.

POLITICIANS—THEN AND NOW

J. W. SMITH

J. W. Smith served as Circuit Clerk for Coahoma County twenty-eight years, seven terms. The day I went to the Coahoma County seat of government, Circuit Clerk’s Office to register, Smith asked me in a deep voice, “What can I do for you, girl?” I said, “I want to register.” “Register for what?” “To vote in the election of political candidates and other issues or decisions.” “Children cannot register.” “I am twenty-one, Sir.” “Do you have proof?” “I have my birth certificate my mother gave me.” “Let me see it.” Then he opened a book to a section of the United States Constitution and said, “Read this.” I began to read. He threw up his hands and said, “OK, sign your name here.” This was before the literacy test became law. In 1975 when my book The Struggle of Struggles came off the press, Rev. J. D. Rayford and I delivered some books to the Coahoma County Court House. J. W. Smith was in the office of Judge Greek P. Rice.1 He purchased his copy of the book and told me he used to hate me but now he loved me. I told him he did not hate me; he just was afraid of the voters who put and kept him in office; and now he was free because the Lord used a few of us to free whites and blacks and you can openly admit you are human and love a black woman. Give me one reason why you hated me? “You just worried me to death.” “It was not my intention to worry you, sir, I never came to your house, I only came to the court house on official business.” “I guess you are right; I hope you have not been too hard on me in this book.” “I mention you only casually in this book but in part two I will be giving detailed accounts of specific incidents as I experienced them or as they were told to me. I would like an interview with you to give the readers your side of the story.” “I would 1. J. W. Smith became the Circuit Clerk in 1948.

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be honored to give you an interview. I had a black Mama when I was growing up. She whipped me more than my own mother and I loved her.” “You did not show any love or respect to blacks, who came into the court house,” I said. “Give me one example,” he replied. I told the above story about my registration day. April 14, 1978, I called Mr. Smith; he was candid in our conversation until I told him I called to secure the promised interview because I would be discussing the Circuit Clerk’s Office under his administration in part two of The Struggle of Struggles. He did a metamorphosis, said he was old, worn out, had broken his leg and his eye glasses, could not read and was no longer interested but if I wrote about his administration, he knew it would be a good one and he would read it. “There is a principle involved here; my definition of good would not describe your tenure of Circuit Clerk as I knew and heard about it and I will be sharing many of my personal experiences with you and the members of your staff when I brought people to the Circuit Clerk’s Office to register and they were not allowed to register. I will also be taking statements from many people who say you deprived them or tried to deprive them of their rights to become functional citizens in the politics of this country. These are serious charges. Therefore, I think it is necessary to at least hear your story.” “Who are they?” “Mrs. Ella Jefferson from Farrell, Mississippi, told Roy Wright, Rev J. D. Rayford, Mrs. Florida Watson and myself that you gave her a questionnaire when she came to the circuit clerk’s office to register and took it away from her before she finished and told her time was up and that she could not finish it anyway. She would not go back unless I went with her. I came to the court house with her, you gave her the form, she filled it completely and passed the test with no problem. I believe if you had given her ample time, she would have completed the form the first time she came.” There is also Rev. J. D. Rayford, who says, “I Rev. J. D. Rayford went to the circuit clerk’s office in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to register in 1944. Upon entering the office, I told J. W. Smith I wanted to register. He asked me which War I wanted to register for, because he thought the war was just over. I said I had served in World War I and had moved to Clarksdale in 1943 and wanted to register to vote. I also had two sons, James and Bennie Rayford; both served this country in World War II. ‘Here, write your name on this book,’ he said.” I have Mrs. Maggie Davis and Mr. Horace Jefferson’s story and picture taken from the record of the 1970 Voter Registration Drive. Smith said, “As old and sick as I am, I probably will be dead before your next book is finished.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Not if the Lord answers my prayers. I will be doing two things, praying for you and writing part two of The Struggle of Struggles.” Smith hung up the telephone.

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407 Ashton Avenue, Clarksdale, Mississippi September 16, 1970 The Coahoma County Youth Council of the NAACP started its second independence Voter Registration Campaign, July 27, 1970, under a grant from VEP.2 While we were working under VEP, we registered 200 persons. The first Voter Registration Campaign was in July and August of 1968. During this time, we registered 3,500 people in the five (5) weeks we worked. During the first campaign, the literacy test had reasonably been abolished and the Federal Registrar was assisting us. However, working under difficult circumstances, we find that 90% of the non-registered blacks in Coahoma County are elderly, illiterate and handicapped. Here are three living examples of the people we find in the community: 1. Mrs. Maggie Davis is more than 80 years old and has had a stroke. Because of the treatment that blacks had received when they tried to register or come in contact with the law enforcement in any form, she had never tried to register or visit the courthouse or City Hall. In Coahoma County, Clarksdale, Mississippi, one must register at the County Court House and City Hall if they live in the City. We made the final trip to the City Hall and Mrs. Davis wanted to know if she would have to pay anything. 2. This was an experience [of] Reverend J. D. Rayford and Mr. Horace Jefferson, who is 70 years old and has had one leg amputated. He uses a wheelchair for means of transportation around his home and crutches when he goes out. He told Reverend J. D. Rayford to pick him up at 9:00 o’clock and Mr. Jefferson left home at 8:00 o’clock and some small boy on the street told Rev. Rayford the way he went. When he finally succeeded in apprehending him, he said he went to the barber shop, but after he had successfully registered, he admitted that fear was why he left home. He said that he had gone to register a long time ago, but because of the inhuman treatment he received and the literacy test, he was just afraid to go back and try again. 3. The third example was an experience that Mr. Roy B. Wright had in making trips to the Court House and City Hall with people who had already registered, but the reason was that some could not distinguish between voting and registering. There were seven persons working in the Voter Registration Campaign. Four were taskforce workers who campaigned from door to door, made telephone calls, and passed out leaflets. 2. VEP is the Voter Education Project, fully endorsed by the federal government, that raised and distributed funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration in the South.

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Mr. Roy Wright worked as Secretary and transport taskforce worker. Reverend J. D. Rayford worked over the County and transported the persons the workers recruited. Mrs. Vera M. Pigee was the Director, coordinator, and transport taskforce worker. There were three (3) volunteer workers that worked with us during the campaign. There was a black girl from Chicago and two (2) Caucasians that were sent from Congressman Al Lowenstein’s office in New York. Submitted by: Mrs. Vera M. Pigee Organizer/Advisor Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council secretary, Coahoma County Branch of NAACP

Roy B. Wright President of Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP and Secretary of the Voter Registration Campaign

WALTER C. RODGERS

Walter C. Rodgers, Jr., Circuit Clerk; a native Mississippian, born and reared 23 miles from Clarksdale. He is presently serving his third term as Circuit Clerk. In an interview with him he said that [in] the eleven years he had been a public servant for Coahoma County, he was pleased with what he had observed as to how the blacks and whites who transacted business in his office related to each other. In 1971, when the Federal Government recalled “one man, one vote” as guaranteed to each United States Citizen under the 15th Amendment, 18,000 people registered without any kind of negative incident. The statistics of 1970 state that 60% of the [county] population is black. Two of the three employees in the Circuit Clerk’s office are black and each has a specific duty to perform. There is no difference in the efficiency of their work. He said it was an expensive tragedy, that old-type operation he had seen all of his life until a few people did something about correcting them and [gave the] example [of] the four segregated rest rooms when two are serving the purpose now, and one drinking fountain instead of two. He said he did not know who to blame for the past but he was doing his job right, registering all who came if they needed help. He and his employees assisted black and white alike without embarrassing anyone. He does public relations with schools and other groups explaining the jury system, holds workshops with those who work at the polls on election before each election and [he said] that two black men and one white had been sent to New

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York to learn how to set up the voting machines. The three of them set up all voting machines. He said he had worked all of his life and enjoys his work at the Court House. The only part he does not enjoy is a potential registrant who has been convicted of one of the disqualifying crimes and does not have their pardon papers in their possession. Of course, this rarely happens, he said. The crimes are murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, perjury, forgery and obtaining money or goods under false pretenses. When asked about running again, he said he had to work and he enjoyed his work so much, why not?

ROBERT KINCADE—TAX ASSESSOR

Robert P. Kincade, Tax Assessor and Collector for Coahoma County for six and one-half years, served four years as Sheriff ’s Tax Collector (1968–72) as tax collector to Tom Hopson.3 The two offices were separated then and Kincade became County Tax Assessor and Collector. His duties are to make up the tax roll and collect all county taxes and sell tags for any motor vehicle requiring same. Kincade said the working relationship between all employees was good and [that] it was mandatory that each employee get along with other employees and customers. He had not seen any resentment of any white or black customer as to who would serve them. He will aspire for another term if his health and family permit. However, when the real gut issues were raised Kincade was very reluctant to discuss them. He said he did not travel, he had not been farther than Memphis in two years and did not know what people across the nation thought about the State of Mississippi. “My staff men and women have our own restroom and I do not know if closing the white men and women, colored men and women facilities created any problems. I have not heard of any. You will have to ask the person who is in charge of the Court House.”

HENRY ESPY

“My name is Henry Espy. I am manager of Century Funeral Home and I am [a] City Councilman. I was born and reared in Yazoo City, Mississippi. I graduated from Southern University and taught one year at Hammond, 3. Robert P. Kincade (1914–97): he served 5 consecutive terms as Coahoma County’s tax assessor/collector.

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Louisiana.4 I came to Clarksdale in 1965. When I was in college, I worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, and [the] Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. I participated in their demonstrations in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When I came to Clarksdale, I became active in the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP and participated in the NAACP Youth Council Voter Registration, Voter Education and Voter Participation Drive under the direction of Mrs. Vera Pigee, Youth Advisor, and assistant advisors Rev. J. D. Rayford and Roy Wright, President. In 1968, the city of Clarksdale had embarked on a new form of government, Mayor-Commissioner, which would give the city one Mayor at-large and four at-large commissioners. I ran for Councilman and lost by 400 votes to a Vice President of one of the local banks. There were several reasons why I lost. I was new to the city and some say I was too young. There was also confusion in Clarksdale because there was another Black funeral director running and there was apathy on the part of Blacks and Whites, who said they did not mind one black man getting elected but not two. Even though I lost the first time I ran, I did not lose because I established contacts and personal relationships with the registered voters of the City of Clarksdale. Four years later, I won over the same opponent by a 400-vote margin. There are two blacks on the board now but there are fewer blacks employed by the City of Clarksdale now than before I was elected. This came about because the department heads generally remain the same from year to year and because of the construction of a variety of tests designed to keep blacks from being hired in certain positions. There are also white pressure groups who make their views known while the black community takes such a low profile on everyday issues. Blacks only come forward in a crisis situation [such] as a black person being shot or killed. The two black commissioners do not have the lobbying type of pressure groups to support us. When an issue comes to a vote, we only have two of the five votes. There is no fast effort to bring up the rear in voting situations. If there is a parallel between blacks and whites that is drawn, the Mayor is white and cannot possibly vote the other side of the picture taking in consideration that the entire board is supposed to represent the good of all the citizens. It just does not work that way. When we had a formalized system of hiring and a name came up for a job, a white person mostly always got the job. Out of sixty people hired at the Clarksdale Fire Department, two are black. The Police Department hired fifty men of which three are black. This is a crisis I have brought before the board numerous times. Black city employees got in 4. Southern University is a historically black institution located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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trouble and came before the board, instead of two or three weeks’ reprimand and back to work, they are fired. Whites are reprimanded. The treatment of black and white city employees is still handled on a black-white basis. The Civil Rights Movement has made it better for blacks not only in the South but in the nation. We have gained the right to sit at a lunch counter or sit down in the Clarksdale City Hall but cannot get a job while sitting there. There are not many protests coming from the black community now because most of the blacks who got the jobs that came about because of the Civil Rights Movement whether they are in the Poverty Program or in politics [are] those blacks who sat back for whatever reason and did nothing. The stagnation emerged when those who made the contributions and sacrifices said nothing when a black brother or sister got the job and the black person who got the job said, “I got the job; now I better be quiet so my program can get refunded.” However, this is not the solution. I do not pretend to know all the answers but I believe the entire Black community needs to put aside its individual differences and come together as one voice on issues and not only rely upon one person as the leader of the black community. I must RENUMERATE, ONE VOICE! NOT ONE INDIVIDUAL.”

E. C. SMITH

“I, E. C. Smith, am a Coahomaian. I have a specialty degree in biological science and am presently supervisor for Beat 4, Coahoma County, Clarksdale, Mississippi.5 I represent approximately eight thousand people. My duties are to oversee the finances of the county, health, welfare, buildings, road constructions or anything that has to do with the welfare of the people of this county. I participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville, Tennessee, under the direction of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). I do all I can now when an issue arises. There is a very subtle cold war going on. Everyone wants to be a leader. I have always done whatever I could do to help the black cause. I am very sensitive. I know where we are coming from. There is not an organized Movement in Coahoma County at this time. I represent the epitome of black people. I came along at a time when many things were wrong and l knew they were but there was nothing I could do. I had been denied the right to participate in politics and most everything. Before I was elected supervisor, I was chairman of the County Democratic 5. Eddie Charles Smith (1935–2018).

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Party, precinct chairman and district chairman. I work with voters’ rights on the campus of the University of Mississippi doing a survey to determine the number of registered voters there are in Coahoma County. I also work with the NAACP. I work at Coahoma Junior College, where I teach Biology, Anatomy and Zoology. There are seventy members on our staff, which is about five percent white, and a student body of about fourteen hundred. The student body is predominantly black. It is by design one of those subtle kind of things where some people will not be a part of anything they cannot control. Some want to ignore the fact that we are there but that is a lie. We are there and many people who graduated from Coahoma Junior College have gone on to make meaningful contributions to society. The Civil Rights Movement, basically under the guidance of the NAACP, made it possible for other blacks and myself to occupy the public servant positions we now hold. It took the NAACP and other groups to get the major legislations passed. It cost an enormous sum of money to get any meaningful legislation passed. The NAACP served as a gateway into the white community. It bothers me about the job we have or have not done on the making of a gateway or consciousness into the black community. Many blacks have become complacent and feel that the NAACP is of no more use. I do not see how anyone with good sense cannot see that we should cater to the NAACP and reconstruct it by doing whatever is necessary to preserve it because the NAACP is where the strength and power of black people lies. There is a bit of degeneration and breakdown in the family structure. To me the home, the parent or the family has failed to communicate with our young. In some of my lectures, I tell the kids they look better, smell better and have more money but they are lacking in judgment. We have done a lot of things but there is still a lot of things we need. We need to go back to praying with our children and to paddling them when they fail to become disciplined. We have sat around and let a lot of things happen to us without realizing the great impact these things have on our lives because of our insensitivity or unawareness as to what is going on. I am very concerned about the complacency of our youth. They project an image of not caring about anything. They act like the world owes them something. They want everything without giving anything in return. Parents should start to instill in their very young sons that they are males and have a role that someone is looking to him for something, that he will someday be the head of a household, husband and father, that a male is more than muscle and blood for playing football. They are human beings with an individual responsibility. I hope Roots left its impact on the importance of the male role on every black boy who watched it. The Civil Rights movement produced a different breed of leaders. Many people who came

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out of that area have gone on to make other contributions. The Civil Rights Struggle offered a good chance for leaders to be discovered. Some people now think because a person has read eight or nine books and has five or six degrees, they know everything and everybody will follow them. It does not work that way. There is a type of communication that goes on between people without a word being spoken. There is also a type of loyalty and allegiance. Some people have it, some do not. As I reflect back on where we were five years after the Civil Rights Bill was passed, we are in a worse condition now than we were then because we have too many people running in different directions doing their own thing, they say: We need to regroup, take personal inventory, trust each other, stay on top of what is going on, stop watching soap operas and start watching the news and stop being so petty towards each other. Example: ‘Mrs. Pigee is okay, but . . . ’ All of us know of the depths of your involvement and the impact you have had on trying to deliver justice and equality and human dignity not only in Clarksdale but wherever you have gone. You must be a special kind of person to have gone through all of the things you have gone through and still hold your head up high because I know it has not been easy. Many things you did were misunderstood and I want to congratulate you. I know because I am going through some of those same kinds of changes now. I am honored to be included in part two of The Struggle of Struggles. It is of vital importance that this kind of thing be done. Things we must do: 1. We must stop and look at where we were and where we are now. 2. Talk to each other to regain some of the closeness of the sixties. 3. Put prayer back in our schools. 4. Check to see if the things we said we wanted in the fifties and sixties were really what we wanted. 5. Keep on top of local, state and national issues.”

J. W. WRIGHT

“I am J. W. Wright, the first black justice court judge in my district in Coahoma County. I am into my second four-year term, which will expire in 1980.6 I will not seek reelection because I will be eighty-two years old then and besides it is too much tension on my wife and myself. The telephone and doorbell ring all night and people are in and out of the house all night. The position of Justice Court Judge broadens my knowledge of the law. It is 6. James Walter Wright, Jr. (1898–1988).

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not a big paying job. I have really served as a watchdog for eight years in the court room to see that the laws were being administered fairly to black and white. I am the oldest member of the NAACP living in Coahoma County. Many years ago Grand Master James C. Gilliam and I were the only two NAACP members in this county.7 I was active in several Civil Rights groups in Clarksdale before we organized our NAACP Branch. Some people who call themselves leaders of the NAACP here now are doing more harm than good. The people are not going to follow them, because they are the same people who were afraid to come to the meetings a few years ago. Now they want everyone to listen to what they say and they are not saying or doing anything, just trying to get recognition, hunting mastery, wanting to be the big-boss-self-appointed-leaders. They came out crazy; fighting and pushing back the people who made the freedom progress instead of working with the leaders whom the people had chosen, respected and followed. We are making progress in many areas here in jobs. Blacks are working in stores and banks, making a decent salary but they spend their money before they get it. We are not doing much in education. There are plenty of schools but the parents of the kids are basically responsible for their children’s behavior. They should visit the schools, check on their attendance and academic progress. The teachers, churches and entire community are also responsible. I was born and reared in Coahoma County and have spent all of my eighty-one years here. I am a deacon of the Liberty Missionary Baptist Church and I have seen the hand of God work in righteousness for black folk but it bothers me that we are not doing anything now. I know that we cannot stand still, we must move forward or backward and we are not moving forward. It is time for the black community to bury the hatchet between the Civil Rights fighters and the Civil Rights do-nothings. Sit down and talk to each other and choose our own leaders because we see the self- or click [clique]-appointed leaders just will not work. If I had to make the same Civil Rights contributions over, I would do the same thing. I thank God I was not afraid then and I am not afraid now.”

JAMES A. SHANKS

“I am James A. Shanks, the Mayor of Jonestown, Mississippi.8 The population of my town is between twelve and thirteen hundred. Our town was 7. James C. Gilliam (c.1887–1974): worked as a US postal carrier and served as the Grand Master of Freemason lodges in both Clarksdale and Jackson while actively participating in state and local civil rights organizations. 8. James Alexander Shanks (1910–93). Jonestown is in Coahoma County.

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incorporated in 1883 and has had approximately twenty-five Mayors. We have [had] a day care center since I became mayor. Before I get into my present activities, Mrs. Pigee, I want to thank God for the courageous people within the Civil Rights Movement who put their lives on the line so that the plight of the black people could be improved in the United States of America. I was a public school teacher before and during the Movement. Sometimes, I would slip in the freedom meetings. I was afraid if I was seen, I would lose my job. We had to sign an affidavit indicating the organizations we did or did not belong to. I was in the meeting the night the bomb was thrown into the church and you were presiding.9 Again I thank God he used you all to free me. And I am trying to free everyone I can. I was in politics for seven years on the Board of Aldermen. I was one of the first blacks elected as an official in Coahoma County since Reconstruction. We had a Chinese man running for office. Now he is running a grocery store and does not even speak to me. I do not have time to worry about that. I just pray for him. When I was elected mayor, someone put the Chinese person’s name before mine. His name started with a “W” and mine started with an “S.” They put his name where my name should have been. When people voted for me, they would be voting for him. When the tally sheets were pulled out of the voting machine, it was discovered. I called the head man in Washington, D.C. He said that he would get in touch with a man in Oxford, Mississippi, and have him here by nine o’clock. Approximately six or seven hundred people got their shot guns and came to city hall. They stayed here saying nobody was going to move that machine. They did not move it and Sheriff Hopkins sent a white deputy over to Jonestown. I saw the situation getting out of hand because the black people did not want a white man over here. I called the sheriff and told him to send a black deputy. He sent one over and the people were alright. This kind of thing could have happened before, but this was the first time it had been caught. It could have been done by white or black, color doesn’t matter, it is the heart of the people. Some people will grin in your face and cut your throat behind your back. I do not ask people to put me back in office if I do not deserve it. The last time I was elected, I had a black alderman running against me. He could not get enough signatures to get on the ballot. I intend to run for re-election if the people want me. Some of the people want me to be like Mayor Daley of Chicago was, an institution.10 The first grant that I acquired was a community block grant. We were about to lose our insurance rating from the state bureau when I went in office. We received $385,000.00. This was a one hundred percent grant to upgrade our fire plugs, water lines 9. Centennial Baptist Church, April 3, 1963. 10. Richard J. Daley (1902–76): served as mayor of Chicago from 1955 until his death.

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and streets.11 We were then able to maintain our insurance rating. We do not have any gravel streets here now. We got another grant for $500,000.00. This was the maximum in 1977. All of these community block grants were to upgrade our housing. Mississippi Research and Development came in and studied the towns and ours had a higher rating of sub-standard housing than any other town in the county. Eight percent of our housing is sub-standard and eighty percent of these housings are occupied by black people. Most of these occupants are on welfare and social security. We are taking one street at a time trying to upgrade them. We had to pass a southern code regulation to bring these houses up to standard. We are putting up to $14,000.00 in each house. We demolish all houses below fifty percent of the regulation code. This grant is on performance. If we carry out the mandates of H.U.D., we will be able to get an extension. The town had never had a fire truck until 1975. We paid $57,000.00 for it. We now have fire plugs five hundred feet apart to meet the code regulations. The fire truck did not cost the people anything. We have two police cars. We have budget taxes for the people. Next, we got a $69,000.00 grant. We put in a combination of fire and police station. We are trying to get a feeding program for the people because I feel they deserve it. We are putting a recreation center in the middle of town so that the older people can come and enjoy themselves. Out of all the programs I have gotten, seventy-five of the workers are women. The men do not want to work. Some of the men will beat up the women and take their money. Most of the young black men who were unemployed did not have a high school education so that they could qualify for a job. A lot of the young women had finished high school and some had two years in college training. I knew this lady who was seventy-two. She had a walking cane when she got her first check about two weeks ago for $147.00. She threw her cane away. She said that this was the first check that she had ever gotten. She had been working on the plantation and sometimes she had not gotten anything. We have to awaken our people in our communities. I do not know how in the world we are going to do it. The white man has found a way to conquer us by keeping us out of a job. I was reading in Reader’s Digest that black youth have 10.6 unemployment compared to 3.5 white youth unemployment. Whenever you fool around with a person that is unemployed, he is going to steal or get into dope. My concept of living is to try to help people make this world a better place. We try to upgrade people by telling them to start going to Sunday School 11. Fire plugs or fire hydrants.

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and Church. I tell women without husbands that have four or five children, I will help them get a job but for them not to let men lay around them and give them more children without any intention of supporting them but rather taking off like a scalded dog. Some of these people have qualified for lowincome housing since they have these jobs. One lady is a senior citizen. Her daughter is a secretary at the Day Care Center. They have a three-bedroom house. They had been staying on a plantation all of their lives. They moved into their new house before Christmas and they were extremely happy. That makes me feel good. When I have helped change a person’s outlook on life, that’s all they need.”

RICHARD WEBSTER

“I am Richard Webster, mayor of the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, since June 1975 by special election to complete the term of Mayor Nosef, who died in office, and I was elected in 1977.”12 [Mrs. Pigee:] “Before your term I understand there were some changes in local government.” [Mr. Webster:] “In 1969 the government here changed from the three-man board to a five-man board. Prior to that each elected official was termed as a ‘part time officer.’ In 1969 the voters in a referendum changed the form of government to an expanded board with the mayor being the only full-time commissioner.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “We are all aware of the black-white issues in the South. Of the five board members what percentage is black?” [Mr. Webster:] “40%.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Do you think either [sic] of the white persons on the board would take a stand against the majority on a racial issue?” [Mr. Webster:] “Yes, if there was justification in it, I think they would vote on the merit of the issue. There have been lots of changes especially over the last few years and I do not think race would be a considering factor. A few decisions are made on the merit of questions presented.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “How many employees are in city hall?” [Mr. Webster:] “I don’t know.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Have you any idea of the number of black employees and what position they hold?” [Mr. Webster:] “We have four or five blacks. I do not know their titles. We have a key punch operator in the city clerk’s office. The secretary to the personnel director is black. The Water and Light Department employs several blacks in communication.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “I am sorry you don’t have that percentage information. Since this is the same City Hall where just a few years ago, signs were denoting black and white, with one water fountain in the hall, 12. Richard M. Webster, Jr. (1948–2020): served as mayor of Clarksdale 1975–86 and 1997–2001. Joseph D. Nosef Jr. (1939–75).

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for white only.” [Mr. Webster:] “We still have one fountain but it is for all people.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Where there is a five[-person] board, three white and two blacks, this ratio is commonly referred to as window dressing. How do you speak to that?” [Mr. Webster:] “Clarksdale is the only city in Mississippi that has the representative system with blacks on its board.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “It is justified because of what others do not have?” [Mr. Webster:] “I don’t know what you’re aiming at but it shows that a black man can be elected, and that is a better track record than other cities similar in size, larger or smaller. The at-large system is under court challenge in several cities which have its whole board all white.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Do you think any committee could do a better job representing its people if they all had a voice in government?” [Mr. Webster:] “I think we would have a more efficient government if the representation were all inclusive.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Will Clarksdalians always have to pay this now existent sewage bill?” [Mr. Webster:] “Yes, Until the Federal Government decides you no longer need to treat your sewage. We are in the process now of developing a plan through the Environment [Environmental] Protection Agency that ultimately will lead to a tighter sewage treatment plan. Some time down the road I expect to see the cost of sewage correlated with the amount of water a house uses.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “When you came into office we were in the process of removing one sewage bill from my bill. The board removed one of the bills but I never got my refund. Do you remember why?” [Mr. Webster:] “No, not right off the cuff. You are going to have a sewage bill.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Yes, I know, but at my beauty shop where I have a business in front of the house and a residence in the back, I was charged two bills instead of one.”[Mr. Webster:] “I can see where you were charged with one commercial account and one residential where it should have been one.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “I was paying commercial rates on the residential utility bills, which I did not mind. I certainly did and still do mind paying two sewage bills.” [Mr. Webster:] “I cannot answer why you didn’t receive a refund but I will look into it.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “I will appreciate it. Where do you think we presently stand with race relations?” [Mr. Webster:] “We still have some problems in Clarksdale but on the whole I think communications have opened up between administration and the black community. Not too long ago we had a group of black concerned citizens who came and discussed a problem with the city attorney and myself. We assured them we would look into the problem. As long as you keep an open mind and line of communication, you can keep major problems at a minimum and perhaps non-existent. Working the problem out around the conference table is certainly more attractive than previous strife.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Is the police department under your jurisdiction?” [Mr. Webster:]

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“No.” [Mrs. Pigee:] “Do you know how many policemen there are and how many of them are black?” [Mr. Webster:] “Uniformed police I think number about forty-two. Black, I would estimate between five and eight. I am not sure about these numbers.”

TRAVEL My first trip out of the state of Mississippi was to Memphis, Tennessee. My mother allowed me to go with my cousin and her husband, Alice and Reacy Hawkins. That trip left a feeling of joy and frustration deep down inside me because there were all of the discriminatory signs and acts of segregation of which I had lived with every day in Glendora, Tutwiler, and Clarksdale, Mississippi. I was not thinking about Tennessee being a deep southern state. In a few years, I had traveled across the South and North and had seen the superficial northern freedom for blacks. No signs, but keep off these jobs, out of these houses and schools anyway. These experiences helped prepare me for my twenty-year role in the Civil Rights struggle. Now blacks can ride [in] the front seat or drive a Greyhound or Trailways bus, and occasionally pilot a commercial jet. My disappointments reached out from other angles now. I had not ridden on a bus since [the] 1964 Public Accommodation Title 11 of the Civil Rights Act was passed until July 1978. I rode [on a] Greyhound trip from Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Chicago, Illinois. When I walked in the Greyhound Terminal in Clarksdale, the difference was obvious, since the day I purchased the first ticket from that window sold to a black person. I am not saying all or the differences I saw were good or bad, but different. The first noticeable change was a black man, Joseph Howard, Greyhound terminal manager of the Clarksdale station. He said he was the first black ticket agent in the South and that he knew he was the recipient of the sweat, blood and tears of the few people who actually led the struggle for freedom. He also stated he was accepting the responsibility which accompanies his job such as giving equal service to black and white Greyhound employees or users of its services. The cafeteria with hot food, cooks and waitresses were no longer there. The replacements were food vendors. The individual upholstered seats were absent and replaced with wood benches. Most of the neatness was also gone. When I boarded the bus, I sat on the first seat at the door and began to talk to the driver. He was white. His regular run is from 156

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Greenville, Mississippi, to Memphis, Tennessee. He said that he agreed with the protestors who wanted equal treatment by the Greyhound Company in jobs, seating and eating facilities but he thought Joe Black was a flunkie for the company instead of being one of the Vice Presidents of the corporation. He remembers once driving a charter while Joe Black loaded the buses. Some black bus drivers were trying to protest against wearing the caps as part of the uniforms, because of their afro hair styles, and he thought the protest was silly. I told him I was glad Joe Black’s title and pay was that of a vice president and could care less about his duties. Being a business woman, many times, I had been the only maid or janitor at my business. I have had my differences with Joe Black and will descent [dissent] with him as often as necessary. I did not know him when some of us were taking Greyhound to court. I do not expect my [any?] back-patting for what I did in the Civil Rights Movement but I agree with my husband: those who did not participate in many cases are the ones who got the jobs and I am tired of them patting themselves on their backs by their arrogant attitudes and hostilities toward those who were used by God in the Movement. I know a home, church, school, club or anything that is being operated without any rules, regulations or restrictions, cannot survive long successfully. If a few black bus drivers would rather have had a head full of kinky hair than a job, that is their privilege. Afro hair styles and dashikis are nothing new. Our ancestors, who came over on the slave boats, had afro hair styles and dashikis. When I left Chicago, a black man was driving the bus. I sat directly behind him. A black lady with a baby sat beside me. I asked the driver how long he had been driving for the Greyhound Company. He said, “I was one of the first black drivers they hired.” “How do you like it?” “Oh, it’s just a job.” “Run that by me again, sir?” He repeated. The lady sitting beside me said, “No, it is more than just a job. The white people would not have fought so hard to keep blacks riding on the back seat and working as cooks and janitors. In addition, the benefits have to be good. I am from Arkansas. I did not participate, but I thank God for those who did. I know it is no accident that I am sitting on this front seat.” April of 1979, I rode Continental Trailways bus roundtrip from Detroit to Memphis, Tennessee. There were two ticket agents in the downtown Detroit terminal, both black. The bus driver, who drove from Detroit to Fort Wayne, Indiana, was black. He wore no cap. There was no scheduled meal stop from Detroit, Michigan, to Memphis, Tennessee. We had a chance to eat in Nashville, Tennessee, because we ran late and missed our connection. Everyone on the bus was griping about the lack of a meal stop. Some had health problems and were not supposed to go without food for long periods of time. I wrote Mr. Lou Highers, Vice President of Operations. He answered immediately. But

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like all large corporations, he said that was not his department, but he would forward the letter on to the Trailways Area Operation Manager. When I called Mrs. Geraldine Stokes, a friend of mine who just happened to be white, I told her I had reservations on Delta Airlines but I was obsessed with the desire to ride Trailways, which I had ridden once in my life. I said I would decide by the time she arrived and I chose Trailways. July of 1976, I was driving on the Friar’s Point, Mississippi, road near the city boundary of Clarksdale and I met the Chief of Police. I turned on Desoto Avenue, a car was in front of me with Coahoma County tags, behind me was a pick-up truck and a car both of which had Coahoma County tags. Before we reached Second Street, there were two policemen and two police cars parked on the side of the street and one parked car with an out-of-state tag of which a white man was the driver. When the policeman threw up his hand for me to stop, the car in front of me and the car and truck behind me stopped also because we were tailgating each other. The policeman told them to drive on and told me to wait until he stopped that other out-of-state car. I asked him if he were only stopping cars with out-of-state tags? He said we were speeding. I told him he let a man go on who was driving faster than I because he was in front of me. The white man who was parked got out of his car and told the policeman to do whatever he was going to do, because he had to go. The policeman stopped the third car. The three of us were told to follow one of the officers to the police station. When we arrived the white man told me he knew that the city police had a trap set for out-of-state traffic and he regretted he would be out of state and could not meet [in] court because he was mad as hell with those country policemen. I told him I would be in court, that the policeman caught a Clarksdale, Mississippi, car with a Michigan tag on it in their trap. The policeman that we had followed to the station recognized me at that time and asked me why I did not tell who I was. I said, “If you had just looked at me instead of looking at the tag, would you have known who I was? It was worth the little money I had to pay to find out what kind of conspiracy the police department is engaged in.” I posted a fifteen-dollar bond and went to my beauty salon, Pigee’s Beauty Salon, 407 Ashton Avenue, Clarksdale, Mississippi, and called Rev. J. D. Rayford and asked him to meet me at city hall for a conference with the mayor. I drove [down] Issaquena to Second Street and I made a right turn. A policeman was in front of me on Second Street. He looked in his rearview mirror and saw that out-of-state tag. He stopped for the traffic light at Sharkey and Second, jumped out of his car and came to my car, which was the first car behind him, and asked to see my driver’s license. I asked him, “What did I do, officer?” He said, “You.” I said, “The out-of-state tag fooled you too. All of the city policemen are working on

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the out-of-state tag conspiracy today. I know the Holy Spirit guided me this extra block. Ordinarily, I would have turned on Third Street as I am on my way to report the Desoto trap to the mayor, not that I think he does not know what you all are doing. I will add your name to my list.” He gave my license back to me and said, “I have known you all of your life.” “Yes, I know you too.” He drove away. I went on to the city hall, where Rev. Rayford was waiting. “I beat you here.” “I ran into another trap.” “You gotta be joking.” “No.” I told Mayor Richard Webster what had happened and showed him documented proof of both incidents. He said he had no knowledge of the police traps of which I spoke, but if it had happened, he would assure me it would not happen again. “Mayor, check the police record for today and it will reflect the usual out-of-state traffic ticketing. The out-of-state car, the policeman told me he was waiting for, was Rev. R. H. Heard, who used to live and pastor here, and was in revival this week at Tunica.” “Mrs. Pigee, what you want me to do?” “Destroy this ticket and stop this madness! I heard about these traps; you and the entire police department can help create better rapport with the people who are driving cars with out-of-state tags because the most of us are from here and are on our vacations visiting with our families, purchasing gasoline, oil, food and some are living in the hotels and motels. This is also the poorest state in the nation and almost the poorest county.” (I checked to see if that data was still current. The Statistical Abstract Record of the U.S.A. 1978, page 407, states 20.4 [percent] of all families in Mississippi live below the poverty level and that a great percentage of Coahoma County families’ income is $2,639.00 a year.) The mayor asked me to come back to see him after my court date. The Judge found me guilty as charged. Rev. Rayford and I went back to the mayor’s office. He said he was sorry but there was not anything he could do. Rev. Rayford asked the mayor if he really understood him to say that he could not correct a wrong the city officer had done to a citizen. He said, “Yes, you understand me. Now that the court has acted, there is nothing I can do.” I said, “But I came to you before I went to court. This is the second time I have come to you with a problem of which you could do nothing about. The first one was two sewage bills which were added to my utility bill under the Newton Dotson administration after I asked him in a public meeting at the Neighborhood Center if he had a child attending the Lula Academy while he was still mayor and running for reelection.1 You and the Board of Commissioners removed the newly added sewage bill but I still have not received my refund, which I want with compounded interest. Again, the mayor said he did not know if he could. I asked him if he paid two sewage bills on any one piece 1. Newton B. Dotson (1926–2017): served one term as mayor of Clarksdale. Lula Academy was a private segregated school.

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of property? “No.” “Why am I getting this special treatment?” We thanked him for his time and left. Until the writing, May 9, 1979, I have not received my refund. Every person who happens to be of another race does not react to out-of-state tags with a hostile attitude. There are some caucasians who project a very positive attitude, which is good and will help attract tourists into the state. In 1977, Rev. J. B. Wood, Rev. J. D. Rayford, Mrs. Wyrene Foster, Mrs. Pearlie Clay and I were returning from the National Baptist Convention which convened in Miami, Florida, en route to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and we stopped at a truck stop just south of Jackson, Mississippi, to say bye and thank you to two drivers of a transfer truck (eighteen-wheeler) we had been talking (modulating) with on the C. B. (Citizens Band Radio). A very intelligent wealthy-looking white man, who was well versed in black dialect, drove up beside us and said, “That is a bad ride you got there” (meaning the car in which we were riding). We smiled and thanked him. We stopped at Church’s Chicken on Highway 49 N in Jackson. That same man honked his car horn and waved to us as he drove by. We stopped at a service station to have our car serviced, he drove up, parked his car, got out and came over to our car and exchanged greetings with us. He welcomed us to the state and inquired as to how we had enjoyed our stay in the state. We told him all of us were native Mississippians. He smiled and said, “Have fun anyway.” The system from the metropolis of New York City to the cottonfields of Mississippi has learned all of the wrong things well. In New York City, a parking ticket was put on my car Monday, November 10, 1977, with the date of Saturday, November 8, and at an address where I had never parked. My friend with whom I was visiting, Mrs. Thelma Ferguson Harrison, and I went to the police precinct and one of the officers with whom we spoke asked if we were sure the ticket had not been put on the car on Saturday? I told him we were positive that we used the car Sunday to worship with Rev. Wyatt T. Walker and there was no ticket on it then. A black officer asked to see the ticket, he smiled and said, “Old fat head messed up again.” I said, “He, she or whatever messed up in a bad way this time, because I am not going to pay this ticket and the officer you referred to as old fat head is not what Harlem needs to add to its already notorious image.” Paul Pigee, who is my husband, and I were motoring from Detroit, Michigan, to Clarksdale, Mississippi, July 21, 1975. Paul was lying down on the back seat. I was driving on Highway 75 South at Wapakoneta, Ohio, and I saw a car parked in the medium [median]. I turned my bright lights on to see if someone was trying to cross in front of me. It was a police car. As soon as I passed where he was parked, he pulled out onto the highway behind me and turned on his flashing light and siren. I drove off the pavement and stopped. He got out of his car and walked over

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to ours. Paul had sat up at this time. He peeped in the back seat at Paul and said, “I thought you were alone.” Paul asked, “Is that why you stopped her?” He said, “No, she was speeding.” “No, she was not speeding: I was talking to my wife.” “Let me see your driver’s license and follow me to the police station.” I posted a twenty-five-dollar bond, told the officer if his job demanded him to ticket innocent people, he should get himself another job because whatever you send out into the universe, good, bad or indifferent, you get back! These kinds of injustices have become a socially accepted phenomenon because most people do not want to lose a day’s pay to protest. This madness reflects a war between the states. We are still fighting the Civil War on the highways of the nation. I know the policemen are doing what they are told to do. If that time, effort and energy were developed to deal with all types of crimes that threatens our daily existence, there would be less crime. There are four policemen in Detroit, Michigan, who are unique in that they gave me two tickets and I protested. They knew they were wrong so consequently they annihilated both tickets, but they were too arrogant to admit to me that they were not going to turn the tickets into the department. I spent time and money to go to court, but the referee [registrar] told me to go home or wherever because they did not have a copy of either of my tickets. I was in Greenville, Mississippi, to attend the Mississippi General Baptist State Convention. I had a reservation at Holiday Inn. After I checked in, I went to the telephone to call my husband. A black man, who was wearing a delegate’s badge, was talking on one of the public telephones. A young white woman, who was a Holiday Inn employee, said loudly in a southern drawl to another employee, “You all are making a lot of telephone calls and we have one checking in today, named Pigee.” I walked over to the desk and asked her if she called me. She said, “No.” I told her I was Mrs. Pigee and I heard [you] call my name. “I was just telling this girl that you had an odd name.” “If you are going to work here you will hear many odd names called and, anyway, my name is supposed to be Mohammed or Mutungi or something similar. You all brought my ancestors over here, screwed up my name and now you are making fun of it right before my face. I will report you and ask your boss to relieve you of this awesome task.” She grinned and said, “I meant no harm.” “Oh yes, you can lie too.” I wrote her boss and received a beautiful letter from him. He informed me that she no longer worked for the hotel chain. I thank God for the uncontrollable desires to travel various ways, such as driving from Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Detroit, Michigan, to Los Angeles, California, New York City, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, and numerous other places alone. I get to see the advantages and regressions of the Civil Rights Struggle.

BLACK ORGANIZATIONS Many experienced black leaders agree that progress is not measured by destroying what one has just for the mere sake of integration. Dr. Zee Anderson Barron said she would never forget why the Knights and Daughters of Tabor Hospital and Fraternal Order was organized.1 She said, “My brotherin-law, Mr. P. M. Smith, carried one of his children to a white hospital, went in the back door, waited a long time and left without the doctor treating the patient. He carried the patient to the Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital in Yazoo City, Mississippi.2 There they entered the front door and was treated with courtesy and respect. That day, he decided to organize Tabor in Mound Bayou. The Afro-Hospital, the first black-owned and operated hospital in the state of Mississippi, and Tabor saved the lives of many black people. I do not believe those fine doctors would have deliberately refused to see and maybe let a person die because they were of a race other than Afro-American. “I went to Columbia University to further my education, because state-supported higher institutions of learning would not admit me because of my color. It had to be color, only because I went to college as an honor student.” Dr. S. Leon Whitney said, “I served this country in World War II. Upon returning, to have white folk who did not go in to service and some who could not read and write, telling me where I could or could not go, just did not make sense. Therefore, I had to work for integration, not that all black institutions were bad. In fact, to the contrary, black students had something to look forward to when the superintendent and principal of a school is black. Nine out of ten times when a school is integrated, the black principal is the one who loses a top slot, no matter what his qualifications 1. The International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor is a black fraternal organization that opened the Taborian hospital in 1942 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, to serve black patients. 2. This hospital in Yazoo City opened in 1928 to cater to black patients and ceased operation in 1966.

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happen to be. What I am really saying is, a person needs more than one of anything to choose from. Basically, I think many of the young blacks do not really understand what integration is all about. The principle involved here is to be able to make one’s own choice. It deprives an individual of his or her dignity to have someone, who does not have your best interest at heart, telling you where to go to school, eat, sleep and live.” I agree with Dr. Barron, Dr. Whitney and others who address themselves to the black organization question. The Afro-Hospital is the only hospital I have ever been a patient in. My mother was one of its charter members. The first hospital, my daughter, Mary Jane, was admitted to, was the Taborian Hospital. I have had no need for hospital services the last ten years. Maybe the closing of the Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital shocked me into a permanent state of perfect health. In my research, I question the reason for the closing. There were charges of misappropriation of funds, inability to meet state health department requirements and many other reasons were discussed. It is mind boggling to think that a black undereducated man could put in operational order a hospital more than fifty years ago; with the fixed renumeration blacks were receiving then, and with our degrees, enormous salaries and federal government funding, we let a life-saving, historical, black establishment fold. This raises a series of serious questions. Where is all of the Black Pride we display publicly with clinched [clenched] fists, afro hair styles, black pride pins and dashikis? Are we trying to kid others into thinking we finally got our act together or are we satisfying our own egos? If all the people who had been treated at the Afro-Hospital, when it was in most cases the only facility of its kind open to them, had made a small contribution of $10.00, the hospital would be operating now with a first-class rating. Maybe we should stop, look, think, communicate and drop the formality and show the real soul gratitude to the person, place or thing that have served us. And if anyone, black or white, were embezzling funds from the organization, the State of Mississippi has a legal channel that should have been used. I shall share this experience with you: not for the purpose of stirring up hate, trouble or misunderstanding, but to let both, black and white, know what happened and to prevent its reoccurrence. I almost lived at the thenCoahoma County Hospital (Northwest Mississippi Medical Center) now, because the hospital was receiving money from the Hill-Burton Fund and discriminating against blacks.3 Until this day, May 23, 1979, I have never been 3. Hill-Burton funds come from the 1946 law for free and reduced-cost healthcare providing federal grants and loans to health care facilities that agree not to discriminate based on the ability to pay. The program ended in 1997.

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a recipient of its services but I resent the mere thought of not being permitted to use the total facility as I choose to. We kept reporting the discriminatory practice of the Coahoma County Hospital until the federal government finally sent an investigator. The administration staff of the hospital had been previously notified that the representative would visit the hospital. Rev. J. D. Rayford and I went with him. When we arrived at the hospital all of the white and colored signs had been moved. One of the white staff members served as our guide through the hospital: he carried us in a room where a black and white man were sharing a room, we listened as the guide told the investigator how equal all patients were treated and how free they were to use all facilities When we left the hospital, I asked the investigator, who was white, if he was satisfied with what he had been told about the discriminatory practice being discontinued? “Yes.” “I am not satisfied, most everything he told you was a total fabrication. I would like for you to go on a tour of the hospital with us.” “When?” “Now.” “I will have to call my office to clear a return trip; anyway, I don’t think it is necessary, I am pleased with what I have seen and heard, but to satisfy you, I will call and I will have to tell them as far as I am concerned, the hospital is in compliance.” “Will you give us a chance to prove to you that the hospital is not in compliance?” “Yes.” He went in to my Beauty Shop and made the call; the person with whom he spoke asked to speak with me, he asked me why I was not satisfied? “Many reasons, sir, but one reason is giving me a brain spell, that is the white man who is in the bed in the hospital room with the black man because he is not sick. He is a poor man and is being used by the system.” “There is nothing in the guidelines that says you cannot go back unannounced.” When we drove up to the Hospital the sick man was well, dressed, and leaving the hospital, driving a piece of yellow, heavy county machinery (road grader). I told the investigator, that’s him. He jumped out of the car and ran over to the man on the machine; Rev. Rayford and I followed the investigator. He said, “Good morning, sir, we met before this morning.” “I don’t think so.” “The game is over, how long have you been a patient in this hospital?” “Just about two hours.” “Why did you come here?” “I had a stomach ache.” “Who told you to pretend you were ill?” “No one, sir. I don’t want to get into trouble with the government; my stomach was hurting, but I feel better now and must go back to work.” “What doctor treated you?” “No doctor treated me, sir, a nurse gave me something for my stomach.” “The nurse admitted and dismissed you?” “Sir, I don’t want no trouble.” “What is the nurse’s name who treated you?” He did not answer, he hopped up on the tractor and drove away. We went directly to the room where the black and white men were in bed, and the investigator asked the black man when did the white man come into the room?” “I don’t know, sir.

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I am sick and I need to see the doctor now. That’s all I know, I don’t want to get into a mess. When you leave those white folks will kill me.” A white woman with a white uniform on came into the room. When she saw us, she turned to walk away. The investigator asked her if she was the nurse who checked the man in and out of this bed? “No, I am just an aide. I don’t check anybody in or out of the hospital.” “Who sent you to this room?” “My, my,” she said. We went to the front desk. The man who had been our guide was there. “May I see the chart of the white man who was sharing the room with the black man this morning?” “That was an emergency and there is no record.” “No record. Come with us, sir, Mrs. Pigee is going to take me through the hospital.” We went to the colored waiting room, and the investigator asked the black men and women who were waiting there why they were not in the room with the other people? “This is the waiting room for colored people, we wait here all the time.” The investigator said to the staff person, who was with us, you did not bring us in this room this morning. As we made our exit, I said, “Now I am satisfied.” The investigator had a look of unbelief on his face. He said this is awfully frustrating. “Mrs. Pigee, we need you on our staff, it is hard to investigate; these southern gentlemen and southern belles, they would have gotten away with this one if you had not been so confident they were putting on a show for me.”

WHY A few questions and examples black America should think about. Why blacks do not petition the Supreme Court to outlaw the Ku Klux Klan? Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries, New American Edition, page 210, defines the KU KLUX KLAN as a lawless secret society, founded 1865, to oppose granting of privileges to the freed Negro. There are two current news events which support Webster’s definition of the KKK. Detroit Free Press, January 5, 1977, “Freedom Rider Sues FBI for beating by KKK in 1961.” The 6:00 o’clock news on May 26, 1979, reported [that] the KKK in Decatur, Alabama, tried to stop a group of blacks from marching. Why does the Federal Government let a secret society function in this country whose major purpose is to deprive other individuals and groups of their civil rights? Would that same Federal Government let a black group operate whose purpose for function was to prohibit white people from exercising their rights as individuals or group? There are many documented cases of the KKK depriving blacks and whites of their Civil Rights and their lives. If the whites were trying to help the blacks express themselves as first class citizens, why does the Federal Government have a double standard, one for blacks and one for whites? A classic example is: The late Medgar Wiley Evers reported to the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP branches that he had reported to the Justice Department, the Committee on Civil Rights and the NAACP that the officials at the Mississippi State Penitentiary would not allow Clyde Kennard to keep his appointment at the cancer clinic after the prison doctors diagnosed him to be a cancer patient. Clyde was incarcerated on crumpet [trumped]-up charges after he tried to enroll at Mississippi Southern University at Hattiesburg, Mississippi.1 Clarksdale Press Register, Wednesday, December 28, 1977, “Former Attorney General John Mitchell: on medical furlough, from Maxwell 1. Clyde Kennard (1927–63): the state sentenced him to seven years at Parchman Penitentiary. Gov. Ross Barnett refused to pardon him so he could receive life-saving treatment, finally releasing him on parole in January 1963, but he died that July.

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Federal Prison Camp, for treatment of an arthritic hip. He must return January 15, 1978.” “Another Watergate Cover Up Prisoner, H. R. Haldeman, received a furlough to reestablish family ties.” Reported in the Detroit Free Press, December 22, 1977, “Why do white males dominate the job market?” Detroit Free Press, December 22, 1977, “Johnny Carson’s latest contract: more money, less work for $2.5 million a year.” In an interview with the Michigan Chronicle, December 18, 1976, Reverend Benjamin J. Hooks said, “A few Blacks had served on some of the Federal Government Commissions but for the most part Blacks have not served on the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Maritime Commission, the Nuclear Energy Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Interstate Commerce Commission and no Blacks had served on the Federal Communications Commission until I came on.”2 March 13, 1979 Channel 50 News, “White men hold better-paying jobs than Black men and live longer. Black men are losing the little gains made in the equal job market.” This information was taken from government and private sources. Why do we allow ourselves to be victims of many social ills which we could have prevented? The entire American citizenry, that believed in prayer, did nothing and let those who say they do not believe in prayer petition the highest court in this nation to outlaw prayer in the public schools. Suppose we look at the situation from another angle; those of us who believe in prayer are a part of this country also; we have rights, we pay taxes and our children are part of the classroom participators. It seems to me that the wise old justices would have activated an alternative plan such as not making the prayer period mandatory, leaving those students who wanted to participate a choice. Now suppose we look at the aftermath of this piece of legislation: Rev. Jesse Jackson said in an interview on The Phil Donahue Show that he visited a black school in Chicago, where graffiti was written on the walls, the boys were shooting dice and the girls were almost nude. He visited a white school the same day in a Chicago suburb; the white students were tripping out on drugs and standing against the school building, having dry sex.3 Why do we allow ourselves to be ripped off by welfare cheats?

2. Benjamin L. Hooks (1925–2010): lawyer, minister, and civil rights leader who served as the executive director of the NAACP 1977–93. 3. Jesse Jackson (1941–): he appeared on The Phil Donahue Show on October 29, 1979.

SUMMARY Before the Civil Rights Struggle of the fifties and sixties, the white man had decided the height of the star on which a black person could hitch his or her social, economical and educational aspirations. In spite of the White Citizens’ Council, Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy law enforcement agencies, some blacks have chosen the height, width and depth of their own star on which they would hang their aspirations. This is evident in the chapter on Individual Institutions. The Black uprisings of the fifties and sixties carried untold unrest, sufferings, hate, love, closeness and an obsession to be free. It also carried the lives of black and white men and women from their small children. The grandmother of Civil Rights Organizations [is] the NAACP, of which retired Justice Earl Warren said in a speech to the Detroit Branch of NAACP that he was honored to be its speaker, because the organization had sent more civil rights cases to the highest court of this nation than all other groups combined. NAACP branches and individuals sent cases from across the nation but the majority of them came from the southern states. The area of which the Supreme Court justice spoke is the same time period which the Movement participants speak. They are too numerous to quote them all but one I recall is this: One Sunday morning, members of the Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP and I had gone to the Memphis, Tennessee, Airport to meet Jackie Robinson and his wife Rachel and take them to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Jackie was to speak for the Coahoma County Branch of NAACP. He embraced me and said, “Mrs. Pigee, there has been a lot of water under the bridge since I first met you. It wasn’t easy to take a flight as early as we had to leave New York to get here in time for your program. Rachel and I know we owe more than we can ever repay to the NAACP. I cannot forget the early years of my career in baseball when I could not get accommodations in hotels and my white colleagues who were earning less money than I could. Gradually doors began to open and other groups began 168

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to emerge and claim to be the force responsible for barriers being broken. When I retired, I began to do some research to find out actually who had done what. The NAACP is number one. I knew then that there had to be a lot of people out there making it happen. I began to look around. I came to Jackson, Mississippi, to an NAACP state conference meeting where I met Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry, Vera Pigee and other Civil Rights workers. Today, here we are.” “Do one more favor for me today? When we get to Clarksdale, go to Chapel Hill Church with me. The message our Pastor Rev. L. R. Skipper brings will be reenergizing even for a great guy like you. After service, you will have dinner and a period to relax.” He said, “OK.” Fifteen years after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, some teenagers think the account of contemporary black history in Part One of The Struggles of Struggles is fiction. I have received many calls from students who were doing reports on the book. The call I received Tuesday, May 15, 1979, was interesting. The student said she had not finished reading the book and she was excited about the material but her instructor had emphasized the necessity of following the plot and she had not been able to establish the setting of the plot by the characters. “We are really communicating as the characters did not set the plot. There is a plot but it was set after the Civil War basically by white southerners in the form of continued slavery sanctioned by the federal, state and local governments to keep minorities, especially blacks, segregated and discriminated. Now the plot of the characters was to demolish the entire system of segregation and discrimination in the United States of America.” The leadership role in government, NAACP and any group which relates to the Civil Rights of all people requires more than spotlight-snatching, paycheck[-grabbers] and trip-seekers. It requires a total commitment; something a person must be possessed with before they get in these positions. The commitment of which Movement participants speak has been embedded in Ambassador Andrew Young and it was obvious as he worked with and preached to the poor, under-learned and unlearned throughout the South with Dr. Martin Luther King. He was so committed. When he needed someone to supervise SCLC Citizenship Classes in Mississippi, he came to my house and brought Mrs. Dorothy Cotton and Mrs. Septima Clark. He told me he knew I was busy but he needed someone and those were the kinds of people Jesus used. I accepted the challenge. Today, I am glad I did. Rev. Ben Hooks was and still is obsessed with the right kind of leadership ability. We met him in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in the late fifties. He was the speaker for the first night session of Negro Regional Leadership Council.1 1. T. R. M. Howard (1908–76): entrepreneur, organizer, and surgeon, founded the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in 1951 in Mound Bayou to promote civil rights, black

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Vera Pigee presided, Rev. R. L. Drew introduced Hooks, Rev. J. D. Rayford conducted the devotion, and the original Coahoma County Youth Council of NAACP brought a panel theme: “Mississippi Must Change.” Panel members were: Miss Mary Jane Pigee, chairperson; Miss Viola Yarbrough, religion; Miss Sarah Gaston, education; Miss Wilma Jones, woman’s suffrage; Mr. John Hatchet, economics. About two weeks later I was told it was said we can have a nicht [night] meeting because Ben Hooks a, preacher and lawyer from Memphis, Tennessee, is crazy enough to speak and Vera Pigee, a beautician and NAACPer from her heart is crazy enough to bring her youth council to perform and preside. We need leaders compensated and uncompensated to project the Medgar Evers and Dr. Martin Luther King image in that when in their presence one did not see or feel the self-projecting image but the desire to be free.

economics, voting rights, and self-help. Drawing thousands to the annual meetings, the organization waned in 1956 when Howard left the state and other organizations picked up the baton.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION Africa in Perspective, Hayden Book Company Inc. by F. Seth Singleton and John Shingler Behold the Walls, Publisher Jim Wire, by Clara Luper Bond Receipt, No. 12897, Augiaize County Ohio, Gordon W. Cumming, Clerk Channel 50 Documentary, March 13, 1979 Clarksdale Press Register, December 28, 1977 Congressional Record, February 2, 1965, Volume 1, Pages 161–66 Court Bond Receipt, August 5, 1976 Clarksdale, Mississippi. Detroit Free Press, December 22, 1977 Detroit Free Press, April 3, 1979 Good Housekeeping, April 1978, Page 150 Michigan Chronicle, December 18, 1976 NBC Documentary, February 12, 13, 14, 1978 Taped Interviews [by Mrs. Pigee], 1978, 79 The Day They Marched, Page 34 by Johnson Publishing Co. Inc. 1963, Chicago, Illinois

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TIMELINE Feb. 12, 1909 Nov. 15, 1921 Sept. 2, 1924

NAACP founded. Paul Pigee born. Vera Mae Berry born.

1942

Sept. 1 (n.d)

Mary Jane Pigee born. CORE founded.

1951

Dec. 28

Regional Council of Negro Leadership starts in Mound Bayou. Its first meeting is at the Cleveland Colored High School at 9 a.m.

1953

Sept. 14

Coahoma County Branch of NAACP chartered.

1954

May 17 Dec. 15

US Supreme Court Decision: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Medgar Evers assumes formal duties as the NAACP field secretary assigned to Mississippi. 172

TIMELINE

173

1955

May 31 Aug. 28 Dec. 1

Brown II decision handed down. Emmett Till lynched in Money, Mississippi. Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama.

1957

Jan. 10

SCLC founded.

1960

Spring (n.d.)

April

Coahoma County NAACP Youth Council Branch try their hand at direct action, going to town to buy a frame for the council’s charter and a Bible. SNCC founded.

1961

Jan. 7 July Aug. 23 Sept. 26

Fall (n.d.) November Nov. 23 Nov. 24

Mary Jane Pigee and Guy Carawan perform in Clarksdale’s first integrated concert. National NAACP Convention in Philadelphia; Mary Jane Pigee leads her first picket line. Mary Jane Pigee, Wilma Jones, and Adrian Beard desegregate the Illinois Central Station in Clarksdale. Vera Pigee, Helen O’Neal, and Wilma Jones testify in Federal District Court and in NAACP-sponsored lawsuits in Jackson. Vera Pigee and Idessa Johnson desegregate the Greyhound Bus terminal in Clarksdale. Interstate Commerce Commission orders desegregation of all interstate waiting rooms. Mayor Kincade cancels the invitation for African Americans to participate in Christmas parade. Coahoma County NAACP branch calls for a boycott under the banner “No Parade, No Trade.”

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Dec. 7

TIMELINE

Mrs. Pigee and six other Black leaders are handcuffed publicly and arrested for “conspiring to withhold trade.” Includes Pigee, Melchor, Walter Wright, Drew, Trammell.

1962

Jan. 3

Jan. 21

Spring

Sept. 20

Dec. 26–27

The trial for the Black leaders takes place, and all but Vera Pigee and Laboyd Keys receive six-month jail sentences and $500 fines. Clarksdale police beat Bessie Turner (the dates are contradictory in the records: some cite January 19, another February 6). Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) forms to coordinate voter registration work and the resources of the NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, and CORE. Mary Jane Pigee, Adrian Beard, and Wilma Jones are convicted for breach of peace relating to their sit-in at the Illinois Central Railroad, August 23, 1961. Two black Michigan State students (Ivanhoe Donaldson and Ben Taylor) are stopped by Coahoma County police as they bring in food, clothes, and medical supplies to the Delta to counteract the withdrawal of federal commodities.

1963

Apr. 3 Apr. 23 May 13 June 8 June 11 June 16–21 Sept. 20 Nov. 2–4

Centennial Baptist Church bombed; Dick Gregory present. Mrs. Pigee beaten by Lion Service Station attendant, and she is arrested. Mrs. Pigee in New York campaigning for emergency relief. Around 12:40 a.m. the Pigees’ house shot at and bullet recovered from under the piano. Medgar Evers assassinated in Jackson by Byron de la Beckwith. Demonstrations in Clarksdale. Ernest Jells killed by police in Clarksdale. Freedom Ballot voting takes place—nearly 80,000 cast freedom ballots in a symbolic election. Clarksdale had a bigger voting window, from October 27 to November 5.

TIMELINE

Nov. 12 Nov. 22

175

Mrs. Pigee and Wilma Jones use the “white” restroom at the Coahoma County Courthouse. President John F. Kennedy assassinated.

1964

June 8

June 21 July 2

Mrs. Pigee and others representing COFO testify in a series of hearings in DC to document on-the-ground violence and abuse of the law in Mississippi. Three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, are kidnapped. Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law.

1965

Aug. 6

Sept. 14 Dec. 21

President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act. Calls for federal examiners to register African Americans and removes all restrictions on voting. Elnora Fondren desegregates Clarksdale High School. Mrs. Pigee with Reverends Drew and Rayford testifies at the North District of Mississippi courthouse in Oxford about the poll taxes and literacy testing in Coahoma County.

1972

June 17

The break-in of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Office Building precipitates the scandal that eventually leads to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

1975

Feb. 5 Feb. 7

Mrs. Pigee testifies for federal government, contesting election results. Special election of the Coahoma County NAACP branch at behest of the national office repeats the election between

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TIMELINE

Edna Luckett and Vera Pigee for secretary, originally held December 1972. Luckett wins (215 to 67), and Sara Cannon is assistant secretary. Pigee is on the executive board as a member-at-large. June 19 to July 2 UN World Conference of the International Women’s Year. (n.d.) Publication of Part One of The Struggle of Struggles.

1979

(n.d.)

Publication of Part Two of The Struggle of Struggles.

Oct. 15, 2004 Aug. 18, 2007 Apr. 2, 2014

Paul Pigee transitions. Vera Pigee transitions. Mary Jane Davis transitions.

INDEX Abernathy, Thomas Gerstle, 67 Abraham, Steve, 38 Accredited Kindergarten for Children of Color, 55 affidavits, 51, 65 Africa in Perspective (Singleton and Shingler), 111 Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital, 116, 162, 163 Afro hair styles, 157, 163 Alcorn College, 118 Alexander, Kelly, 34 Allen, John, 110 Allen, S. A., 33 Armstrong, (Mrs.) Vernon, 53 Ashford, Laplois, xix, 37, 38 Bailey, Samuel, 71 Banks, Calvin, xvi Baptist Train Union Congress, 116 Barrier, Ben, 33 Barron, Zee Anderson, 82, 86, 117–19, 162–63 Beal, Frances, xv, xxvi Beard, Adrian, 6, 40, 41, 42 Beard, Catherine, 40 Beautiful Agitators (play), xxi, xxii, xxiii Bell, Derrick, 71 Berry, Lucy Wright, xiii, 13 Berry, W. C., 13, 82, 111 Berry, Wilder, xiii, 13 Black, Joe, 157 Black, Lucille, 33, 34 Black Pride, 163

Black Voices magazine, 93, 94 Black Woman (Cade), xv Boyd, Lucy, 33, 34 Bratt, Paul, 33 Broadwater, Joseph, 71 Brocato, Vincent, 68 Brown, Amos, 22 Brown, James, Jr., xviii, xix, 37 Brown, R. Jess, 40, 41–42 Brown v. Board of Education, xv Burns, Emmett, 31, 32, 92, 93, 96 Cade, Toni, Black Woman, xv Carawan, Guy and Candy, 27–28 Carr, Janice, 95 Carson, Jessie, 96 Carter, (Mrs.) P. M., 135 Centennial Missionary Baptist Church, 52, 55 Century Funeral Home, 116, 145 Chapel Hill Heights, xviii, 52, 54 Chapel Hill Missionary Baptist Church, xviii, 7, 52, 53, 54, 55, 63, 86, 109, 116, 169 Chicago, Illinois, 29 Chisholm, Shirley, xv circuit clerks, 65, 66, 141, 142, 143, 144; J. W. Smith, 141–44; Quitman County Circuit Clerk, 65; Walter Rodgers, 144–45 Citizenship Classes/schools, 169; history of, 52; Pigee’s involvement in, 51, 52, 53, 135 Civil Rights Act/Bills, 16, 77, 82, 86, 89, 125, 149, 156, 169

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178

INDEX

Civil Rights Movement, xii, 110, 120–40, 156 Civil Rights Queen, 89 Clark, Septima, 52, 169 Clarksdale, Mississippi, ix, xii, xiv, xviii, xx, 146–47, 156; Accredited Kindergarten for Children of Color, 55; Bell Telephone Company, 57; Chamber of Commerce, 47, 121; Christmas Parade, 25, 119–20; Crossroads at Clarksdale, x– xii, xxi; Higher Purpose Company, xxv; high school, 34–35, 121; Junior Youth Council, 29; New Hope of Clarksdale Church, 36; Press Register, xiii, xv, xix, 34, 44, 46, 48, 74, 87, 166; Silver Grove Missionary Baptist Church, 13; Water and Light Department, 153 Clay, Pearlie, 160 Clayton, Claude, 91 Coahoma County, Mississippi: court house, 141; Democratic Election Committee, 62; Democratic Party, 147–48; Election Commission, 68; hospital, 163, 164; poverty level, 159; Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress, 116; Voters League, 78; Young Adult Council, 29; Youth Council, xi, xv, 29, 30, 34, 36, 38, 49, 57, 61, 64, 74, 81, 124, 127, 128, 143, 170 Coahoma Junior College, 47, 81, 82, 118, 120, 125, 148; B. F. McLaurin, 81, 118; Coahoma County Agricultural High School, 118 Coahoma Opportunities, Inc. (COI), 125, 127, 132 Colbert, W. J., 89 Coleman, Charles, xxi, xxii, xxiv Collins, Ben C. (Clarksdale police chief), 41, 44, 45, 46, 51 Colmer, Williams Nyers, 67 Columbia University, 132, 162 Commission on Civil Rights, 33, 166 Communist Party, 73, 130 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 56, 57, 72, 120, 146, 147

Connor, Douglas, 96, 97 Cotton, Dorothy, 52, 169 Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), xvii, 31, 56–64, 72, 125, 130, 133 Cox, Mary, 25, 63 Crisis magazine, 72 Crisler, Eula Bell, 94 Crossroads Cultural Arts Center, xxi, xxii Current, Gloster, 5–6, 18, 39, 92, 93, 95 Dansby, B. Baldwin, 117 Darden, Charles R., 22 dashikis, 157, 163 Davis, Cedonia, 64 Davis, Irene, 55 Davis, Maggie, 142–43 Davis, Mary Jane (Pigee) Williams, xi, xv, xviii, xxvi, 17–18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 73, 75, 78–79, 109, 163 Davis, Sylvester, 44 Delta Burial Corporation, 55 Delta State University, xxi Dennis, David (Dave), 54, 58 depositions, 66 Detroit, Michigan, ix–x, xi, 139, 161, 168; Free Press, 166, 167; New Prospect Baptist Church, 109; University of Michigan, 83; Woodlawn Cemetery, xi Doar, John, 132 Dotson, Newton, 159 “double jeopardy,” xv Drew, (Mrs.) Robert L., 53, 128–29 Drew, Robert L., 27, 28, 42, 45, 46, 47, 53, 68, 78, 83–85, 170; Royal Funeral Home, 128 Drew Daniel, Bernice, 53, 128–29 Duffy, John, 67, 68 Eastland, James Oliver, 28 Espy, Henry, 30, 145–47 Evers, Medgar, 22, 29, 55, 56, 57, 63, 94, 96, 138–39, 166, 169, 170 Evers, Myrlie, 95 Ewen, Linda, 110

INDEX

family, xv, xvii, 13–21; Alice Matthews (great-grandmother), 110–14; Hattie Matthews (grandmother), 111; John Matthews (step-great-grandfather), 109; Lucy Wright Berry (mother), xiii, 13, 111; Mary Jane Pigee Davis Williams (daughter), xi, xv, xviii, 17–18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 73, 75, 78–79, 109, 163; Vera (daughter), 17; W. C. Berry (brother), 13, 82, 111; Wilder Berry (father), xiii, 13 Farris, Fitch, 46, 47 Farris Street Missionary Baptist Church, 138 FBI, 61, 73–80 federal court, 69–71 federal government, 65, 137, 154, 166 Ferguson, Thelma, 82 Fields, Flossie Mae, 91 Finley, Sydney (Sid), 18 Flowers, Sylvia, 64 Ford, Fulton, 47, 49 Foster, Wyrene, 160 Friars Point, Mississippi, 158; Friendship of Friars Point church, 36 Frazer, John, 22 Frazier, John, 70 Freedom House, 50, 57, 58, 60, 61, 133 Freedom Rides, 44 Freedom Vote/Ballot, 61–64 F. W. Woolworth (store), 28, 38, 39 Gaither, Thomas W., 63 Gaston, Sarah, 25, 38, 170 Gilliam, James C., 150 Gilmore, Hattie Mae, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 53, 60, 135–36 Gooden, Bennie, 55, 127 Gooden, Earl, 90 Goodloe, Willie, xiv, 48, 62, 90 Goon, Annie Mae, 19, 92 Graham, Larry, 30, 38, 49 Graham, Shirley, 30 Green, Percy, 50 Gregory, Dick, 42, 53 Grey, Anderson, 90

179

Grey, Clara, 59 Griffin, Elizabeth, 31, 93 Griffins, Walter, 90 Guyot, Lawrence, xxvii Hackett, H. Y., 47, 62, 97 Hall, Carsie, 41 Hall, (Mrs.) J. E., 135 Halsell, Grace, xiii–xiv, 6 Harrison, Thelma Ferguson, 160 Hatchett, John, 38, 170 Haven Methodist Church, 27, 62, 81 Head Start, 52, 125, 135 Heard, R. H., 159 Henry, Aaron, xii, xiv, xvi, xviii, 32, 47, 63, 65, 97, 129, 169 Higgins High School, 47, 120, 131 Highers, Lou, 157 Holmes, Carrie, 82 Hooks, Benjamin, 167, 169, 170 Hoskins, Levon, 49 House, Minnie Booker, 6, 7, 55, 116 House’s Kindergarten, 116 Houston, Nick, xxi Howard, Joseph, 156 Huddleston, T. J., 116; Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital, 116, 162, 163; Century Funeral Homes, 116, 145 Hull Elementary School, 78 Hurley, Ruby, 24, 33, 93 Independent Community Improvement Association, xvi integration, 81–82, 121, 162–63 International Women’s Year, xv Interstate Commerce Commission, 44, 45 interviews: Bernice Drew Daniel, 128–29; George Trotter, 136–38; Hattie Mae Gilmore, 135–36; J. D. Rayford, 129–34; Margaret Pharr, 120–21; Minnie Booker House, 116; Paul Pigee, 134–35; Rosa Parks, 122–24; Roy Bell Wright, 124–28; S. Leon Whitney, 138–40; Zee Anderson Barron, 117–19

180

INDEX

Jackson, Annie, 90 Jackson, Cleo, 97 Jackson, Jesse, 167 Jackson, Mississippi, 62, 116–18; Daily News, 71 Jackson College, 116–18 Jacob, Burnett L., 71 Jefferson, Ella, 142 Jefferson, Horace, 142–43 Jenkins, Esau, 52, 53 Jet magazine, xiv Johnson, Idessa, 29, 30, 43, 53 Johnson, Lillian Rodgers, 135 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 54, 72 Johnson, Viola Debro, 54–55 Jones, Leroy, 30 Jones, Walter, 39, 41, 51, 89, 91 Jones, Wilma, xxiii, 6, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 49, 69, 70, 170 Justice Department, 44 Keglar, Berdie C., 66 Kennard, Clyde, 166 Kennedy, John F., 51, 57 Kennedy, Robert F., 72 Kincade, Robert, 145 Kincade, W. S., 45 King, Edwin, 63 King, Martin Luther, Jr., xv, xviii, 52, 76, 134, 135, 136, 169, 170 Knights and Daughters of Tabor Hospital and Fraternal Order, 162 Ku Klux Klan, 23, 73, 130, 139, 166 Lee, Mitchell, 38 Leland College, 138 Liberty Missionary Baptist Church, 150 Liuzzo, Viola, 131 local campaigns, 56; 1965 school desegregation at Clarksdale High School, 34–35, 121; 1960 first semi-public demonstration at F. W. Woolworth’s, 28, 38, 39; 1961 boycott for Christmas Parade ban “No Parade, No Trade,” 25, 26, 47, 119–21; court house bathroom, 51; D&X

Station, 51; Greyhound Bus Station, 26, 42, 43, 44, 47, 69, 156–57; Illinois Central Railroad Station, 6, 26, 27, 40, 41, 42, 69–70, 78, 89; Jackson Airport, 69; Lion Oil Station boycott, 50, 51; picketing, 29, 48, 49, 135; Trailways Bus Companies, 69, 156–58; voter registration, 27, 56, 61, 65, 66, 98, 135, 141–46 Louie, Lillian, 31, 55 Lowenstein, Allard, 49 Luper, Clara, 36–37, 94–95 March on Washington, 137 Martin, E. L., 83–84 McLaurin, B. F., 81, 118 Melchor, John C., 40, 42, 45, 46, 47 Memphis, Tennessee, 41, 47, 51, 69–70, 137, 157, 168 Mississippi, x, xvii; Charleston, 33; Civil Rights Queen, 89; Cryer, xi; Edison Avenue, xi; Glendora, 13, 156; Jonestown, 150–51; Laurel Youth Council, 31; Marks, 137; Mound Bayou, 118, 119, 162, 169; Roundaway, 62; Summer, 64; Sunflower County, 129; Vance, 65; Yazoo City, 116, 162 Mississippi Baptist Seminary, 138 Mississippi Encyclopedia, xxi Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), 63 Mississippi Free Press, 50 Mississippi General Baptist Convention, 116 Mississippi Independent Beauticians Association, xv Mississippi Research and Development, 152 Mississippi Sovereign Commission, xxi Mississippi State Penitentiary, 166 Mississippi State Youth Conference NAACP, 63, 74, 93 Mississippi State Youth NAACP Advisor, 22, 146 Mississippi Today, xxi Mississippi Valley State College, 118 Mississippi Welfare Emergency Relief Committee, 54, 58, 59, 60, 135

INDEX

Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (Payne, Spruill, and Swain), xxi Mitchell, Clarence, 72, 97 Mitchell, John, 66, 134 Mize, Sidney, 71 Montgomery, Alabama, 136 Montgomery Movement, 136 Mooneyham, A. C., 51 Moore, Charles, xxi Mullin, Martha J., 49 Murph, B. E., 22, 31, 96 NAACP, ix, x, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 18, 20–50, 56, 75, 124, 148, 166; Bolivar County NAACP Medgar Evers Youth Council, 29; Clarksdale/Coahoma County Branch, ix, 22, 42, 52, 73, 83–85, 86–98, 109, 128, 129, 134, 136, 146, 168; Clarksdale Junior Youth Council, 29; Coahoma County Freedom Dinner, 24, 34, 97; Coahoma County Young Adult Council, 29; Coahoma County Youth Council, xi, xv, 22–50, 58, 74, 96, 124; Constance Baker Motley, 71; Detroit Branch, 109, 168; Detroit Branch Freedom Dinner, 97; Freedom House, 50, 57, 133; Freedom Song Book, 5; Laurel Youth Council, 31; local/national convention(s), xix, 23–24, 28, 31, 32, 34, 47, 57, 95, 125, 126, 161, 166, 169; Mississippi State Conference, 63; Mississippi State Youth NAACP Advisor, 22, 37, 38, 95, 96, 124; Mississippi State Youth NAACP Conference, 33, 38, 95; Miss NAACP, 96, 97; National Office, 62; National Youth Work Committee, 97; Pigee’s love of, 97–98; Pigee Youth Council, 29; Tallahatchie County, 33, 67; Youth Freedom Choir, 22, 58 Natchez College, 118 National Baptist Convention, xx, 119, 160 Negro Regional Leadership Council, 169 New Jerusalem M. B. Church, 133 New Prospect Baptist Church, 109

181

Newsome, Charlie, 52, 86, 90 Newsweek, 133, 134 New York, 160; Metropolitan M. B. Church Harlem, 59 Nixon, Richard, 99, 134 Oklahoma Missionary Baptist Church, 109 O’Neal, Helen, 69, 70 Parks, Rosa, 122–24 Pearson, Thomas (Babe), 45, 46, 47, 51 Pettis, J. C., 44 Pharr, Margaret, 119–21 Phil Donahue Show, 167 Pigee, Paul, 6, 7, 23, 109, 134–35; North Delta Compress, 78–80 Pigee, Vera: 1961 arrest for conspiracy, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 57; activist mother, ix, xii, xiv, 124–28; autobiography, xii, xiv, xvi; celebration or praise of, xvi, xxii, xxiv, 54–55, 97, 116–48; death, xi; leadership, ix, x, xii, xvii, xix; fear/ fearlessness, xx, xxii, 134, 143; “Lady of Hats,” 34; religious faith, xiii, xix, 133, 139–40; self-publishing, xiii; sexism, xiv; testimony, xxvii, 33, 67–69 Pigee, Vera’s criticism of/conflict with: black men, 32, 54, 81, 88–89, 123; later members in the local NAACP branch, 32, 83–85, 86–99, 115, 134, 136; non– activist leaders (johnny-come-latelys/ do nothings), xvii, xx, xxii, 95, 126, 133, 137–138, 150, 157; other organizations, 57, 58, 59, 64; white people, 58, 74, 75, 77–78, 89, 139, 147, 157; younger people, xvi, xix, 35, 115, 148 Pigee Cove, xviii Pigee’s Beauty Salon, 19, 39, 53, 88, 124, 135, 158, 164 Pigee Youth Council, 29 Poe, Mammie, 38 politicians, 141–55 poverty programs, 125, 126, 147, 152; Basic Adult Education, 53, 76–78; Chapel

182

INDEX

Hill Heights, xviii, 52, 54; Coahoma Opportunities, Inc. (COI), 125, 127, 132; Head Start, 52, 125 Powell, Adam Clayton, 92 Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, xxi Randolph, A. Philip, 120 Rayford, Bennie, 142 Rayford, James, 142 Rayford, J. D., 7, 27, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 68, 70, 73, 74, 82, 83, 87, 88, 89, 90, 141, 142, 143–44, 146, 158, 159, 160, 164, 170 Rayford Chapel Church, 7, 53–55 Redding, Val, 45 Rice, Greek R., 141 Rivers, Richard T., 71 Robinson, Jackie and Rachel, 168 Rodgers, Walter C., 144–45 Roessler, Gustave, 127 Roots (Haley), xv, 110, 148 Roseman, Mark, 37 Rosenwald Schools, 67 Ross, L. A., 51 Royal Funeral Home, 129 Rulesville Toy Company, 131 Shanks, James A., 150–53 Shanlin, Mary Alice Smith Hawkins, 111 sharecropping, xiii, 125 Shingler, John, Africa in Perspective, 111 Silent Grove Church, 53 Simmons, Althea T. L., 86 Singleton, F. Seth, Africa in Perspective, 111 Skipper, L. R., 63, 64, 169 Slack, Tarra, xxii slavery/slaves, 111 Sleeping Car Porters, 120 Smith, E. C., 147–49 Smith, Estella, 82 Smith, E. T., 36 Smith, J. W., 141–44 Smith, P. M., 162

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 53, 56, 120, 135, 136, 146, 169 Southern University, 145 Stamps, C. S., 59 Steinberg, Martha Jane, 99 Stennis, John Cornelius, 28 Stokes, Geraldine, 158 StoryWorks, xxi, xxii Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), xvi, xvii, xxi, 30, 56–57, 59, 62, 63, 120 Sullivan, Charles L., 67, 68 Sunflower County, Mississippi, 129 Supreme Court (United States), 166, 168 Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, 33, 66, 67, 113, 131; Tutwiler, 13; Taborian Hospital, 163; youth programs, ix, 33; Zee Anderson Barron, 82, 86, 117–19, 162, 163 Tennessee, 156; Melrose High School, 137; Memphis, 41, 47, 57, 69–70, 157, 168; Nashville, 147; Sanitation Strike, 137 Till, Emmett, 33, 67 Toledo University, 131 Tougaloo College, 138 Trammell, Theodore, 45, 46, 47 Trotter, George, 136–38 Tunica County, Mississippi, Medgar Evers Tunica County Youth Council, 29 Turner, Bessie, 33 Tyson and Paramount Theater, 49 Un-American activities, 73 United Press International, 45 United States District Court, 68–69 United States Post Office, 49 University of Michigan, 109 University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), 132, 148 US Capitol Historical Society, xxii Vietnam War, 99, 134 violence/harassment, 39, 81–82, 130, 131, 137, 138, 158; against Pigee family, 23, 74,

INDEX

78–80, 82; against Vera Pigee, 33, 35, 36, 50, 69–70, 72, 80, 81, 151, 158–61 Voter Education Project, 143 voter registration, 27, 56, 61, 65, 66, 98, 135, 141–46 Voting Rights Act, xxi, 65, 125, 126 Walgreens, 38 Walker, Prentiss, 69 Ward, Hazel, 7 Washington, Lillie, 88 Watson, Florida, 84, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 142 Wayne County Community College, 6, 97, 109 Wayne State University, 6, 86, 109, 110, 138 Webster, Richard, 119, 153–55, 159 Welch, Jennifer/Jenna, xxi, xxiii, xxiv Wheatley, Joseph H., 76 White Citizens’ Council, 60, 130 white families, help for, 59–61 White’s Department Store, 125 Whiteside, Mary, 117–18 Whitney, Samuel Leon, 109, 138–40, 162–63

Whitten, James L., 67 Wilkins, Roy, xvi, 34 Williams, Grace, 88 Williams, John Bell, 67 Willis, Hank, 82 Wood, J. B., 160 Wright, Aallyah, xxi, xxiv Wright, Howard, 90, 125 Wright, James Walter, 149–50 Wright, John, 48 Wright, Julia, 40 Wright, Nancy, 90, 125 Wright, Roy Bell, 24, 48, 83, 67, 124–28, 143–44, 146 Yarbrough, Adeline, 55 Yarbrough, Bettie J., 34 Yarbrough, Viola, 38, 170 Young, Andrew, 52, 135, 169 Young, Jack, 42 Young, Layla, xxiii, xxvii, xxviii Youth Freedom Choir, 22, 58

183

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Vera Mae Pigee (1924–2007) was born in 1924 near Glendora, Mississippi. After studying cosmetology at an integrated beauty school in Chicago, she returned to Mississippi to manage Pigee’s Beauty Salon in Clarksdale. There she also worked as a civil rights activist, serving as branch secretary to the Coahoma County chapter of the NAACP, a chapter she helped organize with Aaron Henry. She was an advisor to the Mississippi state NAACP Youth Council and ran voter registration drives in the 1960s. Pigee was a cofounder of the Council of Federated Organizations and participated in a demonstration that ultimately desegregated the Greyhound bus terminal in Clarksdale. In the 1970s, Vera Mae Pigee moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she studied sociology and journalism at Wayne State University. She continued speaking about her experiences in the Mississippi civil rights movement and published a two-part autobiography, The Struggle of Struggles. In 1985 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities from Urban Bible College of Detroit, in recognition of her work in the field of civil rights. She later became an ordained Baptist minister and continued working with the NAACP. Dr. Vera Mae Pigee passed away in Detroit on August 18, 2007, at the age of eighty-three. Françoise N. Hamlin is the Royce Family Associate Professor of Teaching Excellence in Africana Studies and History at Brown University. She is author of Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award. These Truly Are The Brave: An Anthology of African American Writings on Citizenship and War is a coedited anthology published by the University of Florida Press in 2015. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her teaching and research, and most recently she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2021–23).