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4. Theron Lynd and the End of an Era
- University Press of Mississippi
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Z 36 Z chapter 4 TherOn Lynd and The end Of an era Change was also coming to Forrest County—or was it? The first stirrings actually occurred during the 1955 campaign for county office. A new face presented himself to the white electorate. What was Theron Lynd thinking? Why did he want to do it? Ever since high school, Lynd had worked in his father’s business as a wholesale distributor of petroleum products. It seemed like a good job. He had started as a service station operator, then moved to truck delivery salesman and, for twelve years, office and bulk plant manager. Then, in March 1955, Lynd made public on the front page of the Hattiesburg American his puzzling decision to run in the August primary against Luther Cox, the longtime circuit clerk of Forrest County. Cox had served in World War I as a combat infantryman in France. He was an Elk, a 32d degree Mason, a noted pitcher on his college baseball team, a tennis player, and a golfer.1 Most important to the white electorate, Cox had blocked all but a dozen blacks from the registration rolls. Born in Moss Point on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast in 1920, Lynd had come with his parents to Hattiesburg at the age of three months and been raised there. He was thirtyZfive, six feet, two and a half inches tall, and he asserted his good health despite his weight, which fluctuated between 320 and 350 pounds. He had played right tackle for his school football teams. As he later recalled: “I won no conference honors, but lettered two years. I filled quite a large hole in the line, whether I was standing, sitting or bottom side up.”2 Lynd was popular at school and served as vice president of his high school senior class. Lynd attended Mississippi Southern in Hattiesburg, but transferred to Mississippi State’s School of Business and Industry, where he received a B.S. degree in 1943. Like Cox, Lynd was both a Mason and a member of Theron Lynd and the end of an era Z 37 Z Broad Street Methodist Church. He was also on various boards. Fishing was his only hobby. Lynd ran on a platform of banalities: “This important county office should have a man of high moral character, honest, courteous, efficient, capable, active and sober, and a man who will protect the best interests of our citizens.” There was no public sign that Theron Lynd understood that his main task as circuit clerk would be to deny black people the right to vote. Eight years later, when Lynd had moved from a quixotic challenger to an incumbent under attack from the United States Department of Justice, the American paid more than its earlier nominal attention to him: Speaking softly, he never seemed angry or off balance when cross-examined , rather he was easy going and composed . . . At times his voice drops almost to a purr . . . He wears specially-made clothing and special -order shoes. His white short-sleeved sports shirts seem roughly the size of a pup-tent and he fills a king-size chair to overflowing. When he carries the big courtroom ledgers they look little larger than classroom notebooks.3 As it turned out, Lynd was not the only opponent for Cox, but it was Lynd who made it to the runoff with him. He lost that election, but was ready when Luther Cox died three years later, on December 13, 1958. In the best tradition of the time, Mrs. Cox was handed her husband’s job. But she was only willing to serve until a special election was conducted on February 10, 1959. In Alabama, the rising star of the federal trial judiciary, Frank M. JohnZ son, Jr., had ordered voter registration records of three Alabama counties made available to the staff of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In ForZ rest County, the white electorate had to decide whether Lynd’s having put himself forward in 1955 was a plus or a minus. Seven others paid the $5 filing fee and become candidates for the $44,000 a year position of circuit clerk: six men and one woman; four Baptists, two Methodists, and a Presbyterian. Three of them forthrightly addressed their announcements of candidacy “TO THE WHITE DEMOCRATIC VOTZ ERS OF FORREST COUNTY.” All of them expressed the same basic intenZ tion: “to continue the policies that have been in force in this office since...