Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas

24. “Annual Report” (1964)

24. “Annual Report” (1964) The following document describes both the Arkansas Project’s initial civil rights campaigns in Little Rock and Pine Bluff as well as further initiatives in Lincoln, Phillips, and St. Francis Counties. By 1964, SNCC had established a high degree of visibility in Arkansas and had wrested enough concessions from local business leaders and authorities to make it a widely acknowledged force to be reckoned with among those who wished to maintain the mechanisms of white supremacy in Arkansas. ANNUAL REPORT 1964 To: THE STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE FROM: THE ARKANSAS PROJECT 402 ½ N. CEDAR STREET PINE BLUFF, ARKANSAS ARKANSAS PROJECT STAFF: JAMES JONES BRUCE JORDAN CLIFFORD VAUGHS MILDRED NEAL IRIS GREENBERG WILLIAM HANSEN, PROJECT DIRECTOR 194 Source: Box 10, folder 17, “Arkansas Projects, Jan. 27–May 8, 1964,” Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959–1972, Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta ANNUAL REPORT Arkansas has a total population of almost 1.8 million people of which around 420,000 are nonwhite. The nonwhites account for about twentyfive percent of the state’s total population. The largest city and the capital is Little Rock with a population of 140,000. Arkansas ranks 49th, ahead of only Mississippi, in all aspects of life that point to a good standard of living. Arkansas has four seats in the United States House of Representatives. The four are: E.C. Gathings (1st District), Wilbur Mills (2nd District), James Trimble (3rd District), and Oren Harris (4th District). The Arkansas delegation of six (four Senators and two representatives ) has often been characterized, man for man, as the most powerful in the entire Congress. Mills is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and Harris is the Chairman of the House Commerce Committee. Fulbright is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and McClellan is the Chairman of the Senate Investigations Committee. Gathings is very influential in the House Agriculture Committee and probably the most important man in Congress concerning cotton legislation. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee first came to Arkansas in September of 1962 at the request of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations. The Council was interested in having something done about the lunch counters in downtown Little Rock that still refused to serve Negroes. There had been an abortive attempt at this in 1960 but the sit-ins were stopped for a number of reasons. As a result in early November of 1962 students from Philander Smith College in Little Rock began sitting-in at the Woolworth and Walgreen lunch counter. Arrests only occurred on one occasion and then only two people, Worth Long and Bill Hansen were arrested. After the two were in jail for three days and PSC students sponsored several mass marches through the city they were released and the white community agreed to open the counters. This was done with minimum of difficulty on the 2nd of January in 1963. The negotiating committee that had been set up continued to negotiate and since then all of Little Rock’s theaters and all of its hotels have opened to Negroes. Besides the hotels, lunch counters, and theaters, many restaurants in downtown Little Rock have been opened and also the department stores have hired Negro sales people and have agreed to hire more. During the first week in 1963, Bill Hansen and Ben Grinage, a new addition to the staff, went to Pine Bluff to begin developing a comprehensive and voter registration in East Arkansas. Pine Bluff is forty-five miles “ANNUAL REPORT” (1964) 195 southeast of Little Rock. East Arkansas is the western end of the infamous “black belt” that stretches across the south. It is in the Mississippi River Delta on the West side of the river. It is characterized by a rural economy; its income being derived mainly from the raising of cotton, soybeans , and rice. Arkansas is the fourth largest cotton producing state (following Texas, California, and Mississippi) in the United States. It is also the largest rice producing state in the union. The delta counties range from 40% to 61% nonwhite. Pine Bluff was chosen as the point of initial activity in the delta for a number of reasons. It is located geographically in the center of the Arkansas part of the delta. The delta’s northern point is around West Memphis, Arkansas and it stretches south to the Louisiana State line. Pine Bluff...