Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote

14. B.F. Bourn, Storekeeper and Freedom Fighter

Z 154 Z chapter 14 B. f. BOurn, sTOrekeePer and freedOM fIghTer As a sixteenZyearZold with a ninthZgrade education, Benjamin Franklin “B. F.” Bourn was a laborer at Meridian Fertilizer, but as an adult, in the era before shopping centers, he ran the grocery and meat market at 523 Mobile Street in the heart of black Hattiesburg. It was profitable, and B. F. acquired eighty acres of farmland in Kelly Settlement, raised cotton, and sometimes had as many as thirtyZseven head of cattle and fifty head of hogs, as well as five houses. In 1946 he was a leader in establishing Forrest County’s NAACP chapter. B. F. and his wife, Arlena Oatis Bourn, a teacher, raised seven children in their big orange house on Old Airport Road in Palmer’s Crossing. All but the eldest attended college. B. F. was determined to try to bring about change. Years after B. F.’s death in 1973, Booker T. Bourn described his faZ ther as “always in the civil rights movement, going all over for meetings.” Booker showed me an NAACP certificate documenting his father’s first fiftyZdollar payment toward life membership in that organization, a payZ ment made in 1969, when fifty dollars was still a lot of money. Booker told me about the fiveZfoot cross that the Klan burned in front of their home. It made B. F. Bourn feel that he had to carry a pistol. Booker explained his father’s economic success: “My daddy was independent of the white man. He didn’t depend on the white man for nothing. We were making a living.” Booker, however, felt he personally had lost jobs at whiteZ controlled companies because he was B. F.’s son. B. F. was our final Tuesday afternoon witness. Since it had occurred prior to Theron Lynd’s taking office, Judge Cox did not permit Bourn to testify that he had been a registered voter prior to Forrest County’s 1949 reregistration or of the subsequent rejections that led to his being one of the plaintiffs in Peay v. Cox. John Doar took Bourn through the four ocZ casions between March 1959 and January 1961 that he went to the circuit B. f. Bourn, storekeeper and freedom fighter Z 155 Z clerk’s office seeking to register but was turned away by one of the female deputy clerks. He “would have to see Mr. Lynd.” Then it was Dugas Shands’s turn: q. Did you send for the Department of Justice in this lawsuit? a. No, sir. q. How did they get your name? a. Well, I don’t know how they got it, but I made some complaints after I was denied. . . . I have made complaints to the Justice DeZ partment, and I have also made complaints to the Civil Rights Department. . . . Shands repeatedly nagged at Bourn, suggesting that he had “sent for” the FBI, reminding him that he was under oath, and finally getting him to adZ mit, under pressure, that he had never actually asked Lynd to register him when he posted bail for Clyde Kennard. Shands demanded, “If you really wanted to register, why didn’t you mention it to Mr. Lynd when you were in there? . . . You don’t know? a. Yes, sir, I do know. Because I actually didn’t go in for that at that time. q. Why didn’t you mention it to him when you saw him at the KenZ nard trial? a. I don’t know that I even saw him at the Kennard trial. Shands tried another tack: q. Have you ever been convicted of any crime? a. No, sir, nothing more than a stop sign, a traffic light and a stop sign. Nothing more than that. The NAACP had been highly supportive of Clyde Kennard, as Kennard tried to defend himself against sham prosecutions. Bourn was a logical perZ son to put up the bond for Kennard to at least keep him out of custody during his trials. It would have helped his testimony if he had spoken to Lynd about registering in those encounters. However, one should not secZ ondZguess the decisions of a highly visible black leader pressured as Brown was. In its 1978 history, the Forrest County NAACP branch described Kennard’s ordeal and subsequent death trying to enter the University of B. f. Bourn, storekeeper and freedom fighter Z 156 Z Southern Mississippi, and asserted its...