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27 3 Warming Up Mississippi The Movement Becomes a Local Thing The only attack worth making is an attack aimed at the overthrow of the existing political structures of the state. They must be torn down completely to make way for new ones. The focus of such an attack must be on the vote and the Delta of Mississippi, including Jackson and Vicksburg. —robert parris moses, Memo to SNCC Executive Committee I n the winter of 1961–62, Jackson, Mississippi, was a busy planning center for the spring and summer of 1962, and the Mississippi Free Press began to appear there. The movement saw the necessity of forming a battle plan for the coming months. Haphazard campaigns, which had characterized 1961, were out. A confrontation with Mississippi’s white power structure had to be created. Fear of reprisal, which had dominated the lives of local African Americans, had to be overcome. Local people willing to join the movement had to be found, and the movement’s commitment to staying in Mississippi had to be established. The Delta, like southwest Mississippi, had its local movement people. Amzie Moore, of Cleveland in Bolivar County and since January 1955 head of the local chapter of the NAACP, had started to get involved when he returned home at the end of World War II. In 1950 a group of African Americans from the Delta set up the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), which helped cut back a wave of lynchings. In 1952 a second meeting was held, featuring a speech by Thurgood Marshall, who was to argue the plaintiffs’ case for the NAACP in Brown v. the Board of Education (1954) and later became a Johnson appointee to U.S. Supreme Court. (Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Kennedy and served as solicitor general under Johnson.) Also at the meeting, Reverend George W. Lee presented a complaint that the African Americans of Humphreys County were not being allowed by local officials to pay the poll tax. 28 student activism and civil rights in mississippi On October 12, 1954, the first of the Citizens’ Councils was created in Indianola , in Sunflower County, home of Sen. James O. Eastland. During this period Reverend Lee went to the Federal District Court (Northern District, Mississippi) to ask the court to enjoin the sheriff of Humphreys County and allow them to pay their poll tax. On May 7, 1955, Lee was murdered in Belzoni, in Humphreys County. In August, Lamar Smith was killed in Brookhaven, Lincoln County, and Emmett Till was lynched in Tallahatchie County in 1955. And in November, Gus Courts, who had been warned by whites to stop his civil rights activity and had refused, was also shot in Belzoni. After being released from the hospital in the all–African American town of Mound Bayou, he was advised to leave the state, which he did. Nevertheless, Amzie Moore and others continued their efforts to organize and educate local African Americans about their civil rights. In 1957, the Mississippi State Legislature passed a law requiring those who wanted to register to vote to pass a test by interpreting the Mississippi Constitution to the satisfaction of the local registrar. Local civil rights work continued, and Moore took Moses on a trip around the Delta in 1960. In 1961, a local meeting place could not be found to house SNCC workers, so Moses went to McComb after he was invited by C. C. Bryant. During the winter of 1961–62, plans were made to work in the Delta. However, before discussing what the student-supported movement and the local Mississippi movement decided on doing in 1961, it is critical to understand just how decisions were made about what to do and how they were to be done. Movement Decision-Making/ Participatory Democracy Carol Baker argues that [Ella] Baker actually introduced the concept of participatory democracy to the progressive movements of the 1960s. Others attribute it to Tom Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society. Whether or not Baker technically introduced the idea, she lived and breathed and modeled it. It was the practice of a new type of inclusive, consensus-oriented democracy, which opened organizational doors to women, young people, and those outside of the cadre of educated elites. —barbara ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles: [3.134.81.206] Project MUSE...

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