Thunder of Freedom: Black Leadership and the Transformation of 1960s Mississippi

11. The November 1966 Elections and Coalition Building

195 11 The November 1966 Elections and Coalition Building Fall 1966–January 1967 After the Meredith March excitement calmed down, we got back to work. Sometimes national politics caught our attention, such as the formation of the Black Panther Party in California that October, but for the most part, we were immersed in Holmes County politics. That summer, new outside volunteers came in to do grunt work and planning—whatever the movement leaders needed. One of the sharpest was Bob Colman, a white Australian who was a quick learner and very energetic. He was well suited to work with local people, Henry, and me. He worked well on his own as well as with a team. Local women began copying the names of the registered voters from the lists in the circuit clerk’s books in the courthouse and the federal examiner’s records in the post office. The local staff got assistance from the outside workers in typing up and filing the names of voters for the coming election campaigns. Top leaders like Walter Bruce, Ralthus Hayes, and Howard Taft Bailey worked with Henry and Colman to set up a block captain–precinct leader system that covered all the precincts in the five beats of the county. Grassroots movement people became leaders just by signing on. They volunteered to be block captains or precinct leaders. We were thankful we were working in Mississippi and not Alabama, where general elections were being held in 1966. SNCC was feverishly pushing black turnout in Lowndes and other Alabama counties, while we had another whole year to lay groundwork for our real election test. 196 BUILDING POLITICAL STRATEGIES Setting up the block captains took months of organizing. It affected more than 150 local FDP members. During that same summer, Henry and I, along with Colman, held leadership training workshops for the members of the executive committee to coordinate them with the grassroots workers at the block-captain level. We wrote and mimeographed an Executive Member’s Manual describing the concept of a “political machine.” We used the manual as a focus for our discussions and gave a copy of it to everyone who came to the workshops. Whether or not to run black candidates was not dealt with as publicly as our organizing was. Although outside workers often assumed having a black sheriff candidate and running blacks for as many offices as possible was necessary, many local leaders—even some at the top—had reservations . The outside volunteers often used the term black sheriff, but it wasn’t brought up for public discussion at meetings. A yes-no question on the Block Captain’s Canvass Sheet about a black sheriff candidate in 1967 was aimed at getting the block captains and the people comfortable using the term. Privately, in conversations with Henry, Hayes and other leaders expressed reservations and fears about a black takeover. At that time, Hayes was respected and regarded as the foremost county FDP leader. He was strong, with a calm courage and greater political sophistication than most in the county, and he had serious misgivings about putting in a black sheriff in 1967. Of course, the actual candidate’s qualifications would determine his chances. It was essential that a black sheriff, when elected, needed to do a better job than any white had ever done before. Hayes felt the position of blacks in the county could be hurt much more by a bad black sheriff than by a bad white one. He preferred to have a bad white elected in 1967 rather than a bad black, for that would serve to ready the people for even more resistance. Hayes wanted to give whites enough rope to hang themselves rather than to latch onto a rope that might hang blacks. Many outside workers thought this a conservative position, but the instincts and judgment of a local leader—particularly a key leader or anyone who spoke from a lifetime of Holmes experiences—were difficult to dispute. Walter Bruce, the dynamic leader in Beat 2, which included Second Pilgrims Rest and Durant, was building a strong, effective grassroots or- Walter Bruce, a strong leader, spent several dangerous years “opening up” the predominantly white hill towns of Durant, West, and Goodman. As the 1967 Freedom Democratic Party county campaign coordinator, he led training workshops in a different community each night of the week. 198 BUILDING POLITICAL STRATEGIES ganization. Bruce was a...