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73 CHAPTER THREE  I Think Freedom and Talk Freedom DEMANDING DESEGREGATION, 1960–1963 It appears that the Negroes in Mississippi have been given a do-it-yourself kit to carve out for ourselves those freedoms that America and Mississippi guaranteed to all other citizens.—Aaron Henry and Medgar Evers (1961) I am Mrs. Vera Pigee, a wife, a mother, political prisoner, business and professional woman. Wherever I go, even if I am brought in handcuffs, my name is still Mrs. Vera Pigee.—Vera Pigee (1961) “What can a mother, a professional woman, and a Christian contribute to the struggle for human dignity?” asked Vera Pigee. Answering her own question, Pigee mused: “It was my first commitment as a mother to see her [daughter Mary Jane] more fully equipped to cope with the problems of today. Youth is our greatest resource. Daily, I try to impress this simple truth on parents in my community, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has provided a vehicle whereby I have been able to do this with considerable success. A professional woman in Mississippi is something of a rarity. My work is hard but it is never dull, and for this reason: it has a goal, it is not an end in itself. . . . I think freedom and talk freedom with my customers.”1 Pigee had also demonstrated freedom. She and Idessa Johnson, a member of the NAACP branch, had put their bodies on the line in support of the youth. Dressed immaculately in their churchgoing attire, they walked with their carefully coiffed heads held high into the Clarksdale Greyhound bus terminal’s white-only section in the fall of 1961. Pigee was the only woman on the Coahoma County NAACP executive board, and none of the men, whom she char- [74] DEMANDING DESEGREGATION, 1960–1963 acterized as “black proud brothers,” wanted to participate. Desegregating the bus terminal was a personal goal. Pigee knew that her daughter, Mary Jane, a student studying voice and music at Central State College in Wilberforce, Ohio, and former local youth council president, would not use the designated black side of the station traveling home for her Christmas vacation. So Pigee decided to protest “because no one in Clarksdale was willing to do what they should have done long before she was born.”2 Pigee consulted her husband and then fasted and prayed all night. The following morning, she asked Idessa Johnson to accompany her. Rev. J. D. Rayford stood watching on the platform between the two segregated entrances. Taking deep breaths, the women walked to the window and asked for a roundtrip ticket from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Clarksdale and for an express bus schedule . The transaction took place quietly. Turning on their heels, they walked slowly, pausing to marvel at the spacious, air-conditioned, white section. Lingering further, they bent to drink at the water fountain before visiting the ladies’ room.3 Satisfied, they pushed open the doors and walked out. When Mary Jane came home for Christmas, she entered the white side, complaining only about the loss of one piece of luggage and the illegibly written ticket that delayed her journey. When it was time for her to return to school, however, four policemen entered the white waiting room where she sat with her mother and a family friend, Hattie Mae Gilmore. Harassing them with a barrage of questions, the officers threatened arrest. Mary Jane, following her mother’s instructions, wrote down their names and badge numbers, while black men on the Jim Crow side began to leave, fearing the confrontation. Later, the women filed complaints with the NAACP, the Justice Department, the local FBI, the police, and the Interstate Commerce Commission. “We kept repeating the cycle until we won,” Pigee remarked.4 On 27 December 1961, the Clarksdale Press Register reported that all the segregation signs had disappeared from the Greyhound and train terminals. Federal sources confirmed that the police had voluntarily removed the signs after the Justice Department informed the city that it faced a lawsuit. After all, this was after the Supreme Court decision Morgan v. Virginia of 1947, the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott , and a year marked by the Freedom Rides sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).5 Aaron Henry, with tongue in cheek, publicly acknowledged the wonderful Christmas present for black citizens.6 Pigee’s desegregation of the bus terminal symbolized the beginning of a more aggressive style of protest in Clarksdale, one already practiced in other...

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