Divine Agitators: The Delta Ministry and Civil Rights in Mississippi

THREE. Hattiesburg, 1964-1967

CHAPTER THREE Hattiesburg, 1964-1967 Although far from the cotton fields of the Delta, Hattiesburg became an important part of the Delta Ministry. At SNCC'S invitation, more than two hundred northern white clergymen, mostly under UPCUSA direction, joined avoter registration drive in the city during the early monthsof1964. The NCCtook over the Hattiesburg Ministers' Project in May and, in effect , began applying the Delta Ministry's program in the city four months before its official launch in Mississippi. In September, the Ministry inherited "a going voter registration program, educational activities, community organization, and white community contacts," created by the combined efforts of COFO, the UPCUSA, and the NCC. Delta Ministry staff and volunteers helped the Hattiesburg civil rights movement maintainits momentum and played a crucial role in coordinating its activities. The Ministry also pressured county authorities into distributing federal surplus commodities to the poor, and, uniquely among Delta Ministry projects, made progress in working with the white population. Convinced that a sustainable, indigenous freedom movement had developed, the Ministry began phasing out the Hattiesburg Project in 1965. However, even before the project finally ended in 1967, the Hattiesburg movement had begun to unravel, divided by organizational rivalries, blunted by white authorities' co-option of African-American leaders, and increasingly neglectful of the interests of the black poor.1 46 Founded in 1884, Hattiesburg, the seat of Forrest County, lies midwaybetween Jackson and the Gulf Coast cities of southeastern Mississippi. The county had a population of 52,722 in 1960, with 34,989 people living in Hattiesburg. African Americans comprised 14,752 (28 percent) of Forrest County's residents. With a median family income of $4,004, they were less poor than blacks in the Delta. Nevertheless, 31 percent of Forrest County's African American families earned less than $3,000 a year, and, according to the Mississippi Board of Health, malnutrition constituted "a major health problem" in the county. Agriculture consisted of small farms, mainly engaged in animal husbandry, with 85 percent of them owned by whites. Opportunities for independent farming in the countryside and for business in Hattiesburg's segregated blackcommunity had created an African American middle class, a phenomenon that was almost entirely absent from the Delta's cotton plantation economy.2 Despite their comparative advantage, African Americans in Hattiesburg and Forrest County suffered greater disenfranchisement than did Delta blacks.Only 12 of 7,406 voting-age blacks were registered in 1961. Their registration predated the election of Theron Lynd as county circuit clerk in 1959. Lynd, a member of the segregationist Forrest County Citizens' Council, refused even to allowblacks to try to register during his first two years in office. Only the filing of a federal government suit against him inJanuary 1961, after Lynd had refused to allow the U.S. Justice Department to examine his records, led him to allow a few blacks to attempt the registration test. Even then, Lynd failed them. In July 1961, the Kennedy administration filed the first of a series of further suits against Lynd in an attempt to ensure equal treatment for black registration applicants. Lynd simply ignored court injunctionsissued againsthim by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after Federal District Judge W Harold Cox, a Mississippi segregationist, consistently refused to support the administration that had appointed him. In July 1963, the Fifth Circuit found Lynd guilty of contempt and ordered him to register forty-three black applicants and cease discrimination. Lynd appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.3 Federal action against Lynd encouraged SNCC, which was looking for new project areas in Mississippi, to begin voter registration work in the Hattiesburg area in 1962. Vernon Dahmer, president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP, asked SNCC to send workers to Hattiesburg. Dahmer, a fifty-four-yearold father of eight whose light skin would have enabled him to pass as white, had prospered on his inherited two-hundred-acre farm. A tireless worker,he had added a sawmilland a grocery store to his inheritance. Committed to change but with his time taken up by business, Dahmer had extended an invitation to SNCC in frustration at the local NAACP'S inactivity. His action cost him the chapter's Hattiesburg 47 presidency. SNCC sent to Dahmer Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins, residents of Pike County the group had recruited during a campaign in southwestern Mississippi a year earlier.4 Palmers Crossing, located five miles south...