BLACK POWER IN THE BLACK BELT
Long, Margaret
BLACK POWER IN THE BLACK BELT by MARGARET LONG WHILE WHITE FOLKS quail and ™ pundits berate the Student Non violent Coordinating Committee for its new slogan of separate "Black Power," the...
...King's eminence, religion, and eloquence are still beloved above visceral dreams of revenge...
...In a tidy little cafe across from the tree-shaded courthouse square, coke and coffee drinkers discussed the coming election and how well Lowndes County whites had gotten along with Negroes until Snicks came in...
...And then, marching, they sang Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round...
...Mrs...
...We'll show them how nice we can be to them at the courthouse...
...Alice Moore and Frank Miles, Jr., are up for the offices of tax assessor and tax collector, respectively...
...The Federal government is trying to get people together...
...The county government should be mixed...
...BLACK POWER IN THE BLACK BELT by MARGARET LONG WHILE WHITE FOLKS quail and ™ pundits berate the Student Non violent Coordinating Committee for its new slogan of separate "Black Power," the cry runs like fire through Deep South, Black Belt counties...
...Don't meddle, don't pick a fight, but fight back...
...King pealed in bronzy bell tones...
...thirty-five-year-old Emory Ross, also of a prominent and propertied Negro family, is running for this office...
...And people was afraid to let 'em come in their homes, so they walked the streets...
...But the money, to educate illiterates and train the unskilled and dispossessed for jobs, went through anyway...
...During the harassed march next day to the courthouse—their prayers and memorial to the dead boys drowned out by jeers, horns, and firecrackers, their ranks scattered by attacking trucks and some of them struck with bottles, sticks, and fists—the insulted people exhibited as much defiance to armed, outnumbering whites as any non-violent demonstration in the South...
...We have something more powerful and our time has come...
...Similarly, careful white people protested any new "takeover," but affirmed Negro "rights to be free...
...Ever since that assassination I been feelin' like gittin' me a stick and goin' out and makin' you niggers do like you oughta do," she finished in a fierce, grandmotherly threat...
...Mants said at a recent rally: "We got to protect these candidates...
...A merry, sweaty, earthgrimed man spoke happily and laughed mischievously from the wheel of his ancient car, as his women and children looked on bright-eyed...
...Logan mused...
...The Negro people lifted his words on "amen's" and soft cries of "tell it, leader," and applauded his hot declaration that any man who advised Neshoba Negroes marching 250 strong, with women and children, to hit back at 500 armed whites, "is a fooir But Young did not inspire the wild exhilaration Roberts aroused...
...Things we used to stand for we won't put up with any more...
...King to win the debate...
...Let the world know," he proclaimed, "that the white man is the most brutal man on the face of this earth...
...So, it devolved on Dr...
...We aims to get Black Power...
...This is the first time we've ever had registered voters, and it's a big change in the county...
...Yes, eventually, we'll have Negroes in office...
...A black old woman, gnarled with years and work, her eyes ablaze and her voice hoarse with outrage, fled from a truck to the sidewalk among silent white onlookers and shouted into their faces: "You done killed our boys...
...the crowd roared, with some contesting cries of "Freedom...
...They taken it on theirselves and they died for you...
...We want to share in things...
...Don't be surprised if somebody tries to kill 'em...
...And when we got scared and talked real weak, the Snick boys with us took it up and talked real loud...
...I don't believe in it, that we should take over...
...We'll get our children in a place that's already comfortable...
...You cain't turn us 'round...
...I think we gonna git some colored folks in the courthouse...
...The compelling Mr...
...We ain't shoo tin' nobody or th'owin' bombs in their house at their women and children...
...I don't have the least idea that way...
...At each fearful foray of trucks, vans, and cars into their march, the Negroes gave way, then stood firm and roared into the faces of the white assailants, "Freedom...
...As the first young whites in a hot-rod convertible swooped with horn blowing and cutout roaring into the march, in a side-swiping assault, the people fell away to safety and the response sounded—startled, high sounds of women and children and an ominous rumble of male protest in one great voice of anger and reproach...
...That night when the big march encamped at Yazoo City for a rally angrily inspirited by the insult and violence of the morning in Philadelphia, the marchers and hundreds of townspeople applauded, shouted, and frequently laughed with joy at speakers celebrating Black Power and white bloodshed...
...Every one of us oughta be in the march tomorrow, but we ain't gonna be...
...Such is Black Power in a few Deep South counties—the stirring cry, the surging pride, the political drive, the unleashed anger, the patient little beginnings of black self-help—and the big risk...
...Sidney Logan, Jr., the popular son of an old Negro landowner, is running against Sheriff Frank Ryals...
...In Lowndes County, Alabama, where 3,000 Negro voters registered since SNCC came into the eighty per cent Negro community eighteen months ago, the Black Panther Party plans to "take over" with its majority vote and "show the wrhite folks how to run a fair and decent government...
...I don't hate them, and I think they deserve to be free...
...Other times, it suggests the Negroes will be disposed of in more summary Black Belt fashion...
...Everything is guesswork...
...Vice President Ernest Roberts of the Deacons for Defense, a burly, demanding young man, his glossy black head high, his powerful gestures free and emphatic, spoke in a voice like an alarm bell...
...I think," Sheriff Ryals said earnestly, "a lot of you don't understand we're not against the Negroes...
...I wouldn't think all the Negroes would vote for all colored candidates...
...they decided to see some black blood...
...they don't know it, but us got guns, too.' It's no accident that Reverend Jonathan Daniels was killed in August, a month before school desegregation...
...The cry shrilled from children's tender faces, screamed from black and brown girls and old women, and boomed from the men and boys in a thunderous music which sounded fit to split the sky and rearrange the earth of Mississippi...
...But we don't know if they'll vote...
...But they were surprised, they saw some white blood, too . . . We say, attack us, we gonna attack you back...
...If you have to die, die for something, and take somebody before you...
...But the adrenal appeal of the angry new4 slogans, the valiant excitement and resolve of aroused Negroes, the persistence and patience of politicking and planning, demonstrate that an old and unquenchable human force is surging up in many Alabama and Mississippi Black Belt counties...
...On the white side of the county, people appeared calm, cautious, and some of them resigned to a few Negro officeholders...
...We ain't no race problem...
...a walk that was to be Philadelphia Negroes' first demonstration on white streets of the sleepy, leafy, and savage little town...
...Judge Hammond made no predictions about the November election or comment on Negro officer-holders, except to say, "We've got some good, smart, educated nigras in the county...
...we got to have arrests and convictions for these crimes against black people . . . And if we fight back, and law enforcement breaks down in Mississippi, the Federal government will come in here . . . We plan to practice non-violence, but we do not intend for any redneck to abuse any black people any more .. . if they do, there'll be a blood-red Mississippi...
...I worked for fifty cents a day, and then for eight and ten dollars a week, and I thought I was gettin' somewhere...
...They also talk of a black sheriff...
...But I don't believe if you can't read and write you're qualified to vote...
...There seems to be a "protective" association of armed people prepared to defend their community against expected white violence...
...We used to say in Snick, T won't go alone, but we'll go together,' and we walked through hell together . . . We'll all go through hell together here...
...We got to have a Black Panther Party...
...If you don't get Black Power, they'll move you back in slavery...
...Ain't nothin' the matter with us...
...This is the first time in our history Negroes can go to the courthouse and talk loud...
...We've been unfortunate in having things happen that put the spotlight on us...
...Liberal Alabamans long conversant with the social history of this "completely enclosed" little society where Negroes have never had a voice in their own affairs, much less county government, and where "there's no discrimination in violence...
...And the tax collector won't have to argue with the property owners...
...If Negroes are elected, it wouldn't be too bad if they're qualified to run these offices...
...But you want me to tell you one thing...
...Smiling proudly and broadly at the mention of young Logan's candidacy for sheriff, the Logans said Ryals "is a good sheriff," but that they expect to see Sidney elected...
...The elements of Black Power, as stirring and seductive as the pounding slogan is, and the feasibility of Negroes hitting back at white attackers, in a rural white South which owns about all the money, jobs, land, police, guns, courts, National Guard, and state houses, are not immediately apparent to other civil rights organizations or to uneasy white friends of black freedom and advancement...
...They are up to now, anyway...
...We've gotten along with the colored pretty good until these unfortunate things happened, and Lowndes County people didn't do them...
...Negroes on the sidewalk watched him with hot eyes and proud smiles, feeling the fight, rejoicing in their young man's open anger...
...After a fight near the end of the march, when white boys and men moved in and hit Negroes and some struck back, police parted the fighters and protected the procession, at last, back to the red dirt section called "The Independent Quarter...
...Look like if I'm black, I vote for black, don't it...
...Moore, a dark, portly, and gentle lady, at a church meeting...
...My duty will be only to assess taxes, not to collect them...
...It has swelled dark hearts, lifted black heads to face the feared whites, drawn thou sands to the dread courthouse to regis ter, advanced black candidates for office, and started cooperatives for economic independence and defense against violent white attack...
...We gonna take over the county...
...They are preparing for violence around election time...
...There is angry scorn of Uncle Toms and boasted resolve to die for power and freedom in Neshoba County, evident in the Philadelphia church rally on the eve of the memorial march—a break-off from the Meredith March —to commemorate the martyrdom of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner...
...This morning the white sheriff had the Ku Klux Klan for deputies...
...And it seems to me if we try to go by ourselves, we're working against the main objective...
...His handsome face smoldered with rage restrained...
...Leah Jones, an intrepid pioneer in the freedom organization, belabored unregistered Negroes as Toms and good-for-nothings, as the congregation laughed and cheered...
...But we on the march, we ain't turnin' 'round...
...Black people in Mississippi are rising up . . . black people in Asia, Africa, the Dominican Republic, are rising up, too . . . if Lyndon Johnson can't handle these crackers in Missis sippi, how he gonna straighten out colored people in Vietnam...
...I just like power \" exclaimed Mrs...
...The Reverend Andrew Young, Southern Christian Leadership Conference intellectual, organizer, and activist, in rebuttal delivered one of the most thoughtful and eloquent appeals in his career as a gifted preacher...
...Lowndes County people talk hotly end hopefully of widespread reassessment of white property, of new revenue for equal black schools and services, 'or prosecution of white people for tax evasion, and the sale of tax-delinquent land...
...They aim to get a share of Lowndes County tax money for school teachers, buildings, roads...
...Then he recounted the triumphs of non-violence, to plead black and white hopes for brotherhood, in his mounting style, blending high-minded philosophy with black cotton-field vernacular, until the gathering laughed, cheered, and "amened" in a mighty chorus...
...I wouldn't like an all-black government in Lowndes," he said...
...This independent party," said Sheriff Ryals, "I don't believe it will gain too far, not right away...
...He protested tactics which "won't protect anybody but a bunch of armed black men strong-arming their way through Mississippi," and envisioned an America "safe for any man, woman, or child to walk the streets, protected as a child of God...
...he ought to have the opportunity like anybody else...
...The sheriff has been a good friend to the colored people...
...They didn't have to come here...
...So, they say, what these people dare to do at the polls, or, poor as they are, can do for themselves, is indeed unpredictable in so unprecedented an aspiration...
...You can't figure by the old rules any more," said the sheriff, a massive, well-kept man with a gentle, reasonable manner...
...But some landowning pillars of the black community and respected objects of white approval (yet scarcely "Toms" in their Black Panther Party support) thoughtfully rejected "takeover," retaliatory violence, and rejection of the wrong-headed white folks, in favor of "sharing the power" and "all of us working together...
...A middle-aged man munching French fries opined, "I f they do get all-black county officers, it won't matter, because we'll just have to get a new set of 'em," an apocryphal and often-heard remark in Negro-majority counties...
...A vigorous, taffy-colored old lady, her fine, strong face was deep-eyed and sad as she remembered "our boys" and that "they had sure started us on freedom...
...Nobody ever come to us and done for us what Snick workers done," declared John T. Hulett, farmer-president of the Freedom Organization...
...Violet Liuzzo on the highway in Lowndes in March of 1965, along with the advent of SNCC organizers and Federal registrars and the big black majority of voters offering candidates, are an alteration so profound in this beautiful, green, cotton, corn, and cattle county that no Negro leader or official will predict what blessings or travail will come out of the ardent black uprising...
...Just don't mess with this march" he warned the rednecks...
...In SNCC-roused counties like Lowndes, you hear the manly, male outcries and the black women's pride and aspiration to Black Power, and see the rejoicing of other Negroes, who don't subscribe to the hit-back, takeover, and go-it-alone gospel, at the new spirit...
...We're with the Black Panthers," said R. C. May, a strong and imposing old black farmer enjoying Sunday afternoon with his wife and daughter on their front porch on a hill up from the winding road, surveying his 148 acres of cotton, corn, hay, vegetables, and a red-wattled turkey strutting around the front steps...
...I assure you . . . I'll do my utmost to see what's to be assessed to get us the right schools, roads, teachers...
...We're in a rather strange situation," said rugged, sun-browned Probate Judge Harrell Hammond, in laconic answers to questions...
...They feel that a black coroner is important to pronounce the causes of Negro deaths...
...Education is needed to vote...
...he repeated...
...I don't think too many of our people want to go by themselves," old Mr...
...The organization is backing seven candidates for office (other officials' terms have not expired) in the November general election, and is girding against further economic punishment—evictions from land, loss of jobs and credit for crops— by canning summer vegetables for dispossessed followers, organizing a cooperative, and raising money to buy land and build dwellings on it...
...I think some of the colored will vote for Sheriff Ryals...
...We been walkin' with dropped down heads, with a scrunched-up heart, a timid body in the bushes," said a work-worn old farmer...
...I ain't agonna do it no more...
...And they gonna try it again . . . But if you have to die, die for something . . . take somebody before you...
...And for the tax assessor...
...Judge Hammond, whose taciturnity seems that of a man determined to preserve what peace now prevails, and to betray no opinion to offend aroused Negroes or inflame alarmed whites, would not discuss Alabama Governor Wallace...
...The white folks in the courthouse aim to give us nothing...
...But if they continue the organizing, it could keep building...
...All the colored people I talked to smiled approvingly at the slogan "Black Power" and SNCC's democratic, if fierce, incitements in the majorityblack counties...
...When The Man go to hit you in the mouth, you might block the blow," he suggested, lifting his strong forearm to his face and throwing it out again, "and buck him in the mouth, and he gonna be surprised and not so quick to hit you next time . . . He come to burn my house down, he ain't gonna have no house when he gets back home...
...White folks have said segregation or starvation, and if you won't remain a good nigger we're gonna starve you...
...He did talk with profound respect and love of the defeated Big Jim Folsom, a former governor who folksily espoused poor folks, supported labor, shrewdly and comically wooed Negroes, and refrained throughout his heyday from wielding the powerful weapon of racism...
...What Black Power brings to Lowndes County, in the most aroused, organized, and determined Negro push for local political control in the Black Belt, will show the way to eighty-two other Negro majorities in Southern counties— whether to prevail, compromise, or succumb...
...Go tell Miss Anne, you that runs up to the Big House and tells, and tell her like I said it...
...You still got to live in Lowndes County and you still poor people...
...We haven't got time to pay them back for all they've done to us...
...Willie Mae Strickland, and Robert Logan to the board of education...
...If they think we're all non-violent, they better think twice . . . We got to have law...
...The applause and shouts of adulation and agreement showed that Dr...
...We don't hate nobody for the color of their skin...
...And I believe that if some few colored people win in the November election, the intelligent white people will fall in line...
...To remedy shabby education, they want to elect John Henson, Mrs...
...But we ain't scared any more...
...We've got a good tax assessor, a good sheriff...
...But the white man is not the only killer in the world, and we want Johnson—he's the granddaddy of the country—to know it...
...Over at Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Reverend Clint Collier last spring ran third for Congressman from the Fourth District in the primary, with 7,400 votes...
...Our schools are cold in the winter and our children have to run out and get trash and wood to build a fire and keep warm before they can study and learn...
...The young men of SNCC have suffered no police or vigilante persecutions since Carmichael was arrested and held briefly the night Daniels was killed...
...Dangerous Genie "We'll just sell the delinquent white property and use the money for things we need to build us up...
...We'll be black and white together," she concluded, and in a shocked little hush that fell over the meeting at the old, loving, and repudiated phrase, she hurried on...
...Freedom...
...James Meredith's Mississippi March through little towns and heavily black counties, with the beloved person of Martin Luther King and SNCC leader Stokely CarmichaePs exuberant exhortations to Black Power and "hit back," roused many supine and subject colored men and women to defy the white folks, join the march, go to the courthouse and register...
...It's been proven black people all over Mississippi are waking up," cried Willie Ricks, dark, bearded SNCC firebrand from the truck bed which was the speakers' platform for the dense gathering on the grass at dusk...
...And a towering, heavily-built young man, his white shirt torn from his brown back, walked on between two pacifying friends...
...The Lowndes County Freedom Organization, with its menacing Black Panther symbol opposing the Democratic Party's white cock, organized by SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael, Robert Mants, and Courtland Cox, did not take part in the May primary...
...But we always attend the meetings of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, and the Black Panthers are good, very good...
...Not this time, maybe next time...
...I think it would be bad if any new group just took over everything...
...Ain't nobody gonna turn us 'round...
...In next-door Montgomery, householders and hospitals love Lowndes county help, who docilely don't complain about wages, hours, and the whims of Miss Anne or the boss man...
...If one can make a million dollars, that's fine with me...
...I've always had a lot of Negro friends, and I don't think I've ever mistreated a Negro in my life...
...Victor Hugo said there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come . . . Don't worry about guns and Molotov cocktails...
...Small beginnings in terms of what we have," said young Mants...
...I've made up my mind to vote for Negro candidates I feel are able to do the job, and I may not vote for some who don't meet the qualifications...
...King's appeal for the power of nonviolence and coalition with converted, like-minded whites...
...In nearby Sumter, Wilcox, Greene, and Perry counties, Alabama's rural deeps where SNCC is organizing black parties or blocs— they're "Black Bulldogs" in feudal, farming Wilcox—progress is slower than in Lowndes but the Black Power pull seems potent to poor people under ancient white rule...
...We can't be stopped because we're right," Dr...
...The "black consciousness" and new pride of Negroes in "movement" counties often shows vividly in the demeanor of the humblest around the courthouse square, as in Hayneville, the sleepy, serene, and shady county seat of Lowndes, far off the highway and deep in the rich, pastured cotton and cattle country...
...they kill anybody of any color, over a horse, a dog, or a property line," explain the county has about 1,000 well-to-do Negro landowners, some of the descendants of white planters who traditionally maintained two families and endowed their darker sons with the protection of property...
...They're probably a third more Negro voters at the present time...
...Together with Lowndes County, Wilcox Negroes got some $500,000 worth of poverty program in their favor when the Washington Office of Economic Opportunity by-passed state OEO officials to confer the funds through organizations of SCLC...
...proclaimed a poor, proud, and jubilant black man at a late-summer political rally...
...Medgar Evans [murdered NAACP leader] could take a feelin' outa people and put feelin' in 'em...
...Roberts shout ed for "Black Power, black sheriffs, black people making our own decisions, controlling where we live," and when he repeated, "White man attack us—" the crowd finished in a resounding roar, "We attack him back...
...The sudden accession of Negro politics since the murder of Mrs...
...I feel like treating white people like I'd like to be treated myself...
...The March put 4,000 new black voters on the registration rolls in Mississippi...
...This turned out to be the setting of the big debate on Black Pow er—hit-back preachments versus Dr...
...Why," offered C. C. Coleman, the proprietor, and cousin of Tom Coleman, charged with killing Reverend Jonathan Daniels, "I've always served them in here: white people here and colored around on the other side...
...An old lady said, 'We ain't gonna run nowhere...
...I don't think it should be all black, or that it will be," said Anita, a business college student in Memphis...
...Up the rich, green, and silent road, lined with lush farms and splendid giant trees and dotted with sagging shacks and tidy farm houses, the parents of Sidney Logan, and their two bright, good-looking grandchildren, also spoke of "sharing power...
...Anybody scared to join hands now, they'll walk on your back later...
...No'm, I don't think that Negro people will hit back and shoot...
...They shoot in our house and we shoot back...
...I don't know if I'd vote, or if all the Negroes would vote, for all-Negro office-holders...
...It is now zealously campaigning for 1,000 more voters which would bring black voting strength to 4,000, opposing 2,500 or 2,600 white voters...
...Governor Wallace protested the grants, which OEO suspended pending completion of an investigation of the governor's charge that the poverty money was going to Black Panthers and Black Bulldogs for black politics and civil rights...
...But we ain't gonna no more take it...
...Paying his polite respects to the "good people" of the non-violent movement, he declared: "I don't believe there are a million black people in the country who believe in non-violence...
...he'll just turn that over to the black sheriff...
...Sheriff Ryals seemed serene at the possibility of losing his office and devoting himself to his peach-raising and peach-selling business, and his wife remarked that "if any of the white people are mad and worried, they sure aren't showing it...
...He corrected Roberts to point out that Negroes are not a majority in any state, are but ten per cent of the country's people, and have not "numbers of instruments" for victorious violence and retaliation...
...The import of these exhortations, to which the meeting reacted fervently, is not entirely clear...
...He demanded a country "where my three little girls can go to the best school in town at home in Louisiana . . . and I don't want to ride herd on them with a shotgun to get them safely there and back...
...But now this Black Panther Party is putting out a Snick variety of candidates, extreme, agitator, violent types...
...And he promises the Negro movement in Neshoba County (it sprang up with SNCC organizing after the 1964 murders of two SNCC Summer Project missionaries, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and native son James Chaney) that "the next time, or the third time, I'll be your Congressman if we all register to vote and stick together...
...Once we've got Black Power, we've got something going...
...Sometimes it sounds as if the Negroes will be so incompetent they'll be voted out in proper electoral processes...
Vol. 30 • October 1966 • No. 10
