Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Reasonable Doubt

202 ReasonableDoubt August 12, 2008 Somehow the materials I photocopied at the Rolling Fork library shuffled themselves into a tall stack of papers on my desk. When I ran across them again, I found the June 1948 issue of the Staple Cotton Review. It interested me because on the front page was a copy of Governor Fielding Wright’s radio address to the “Negroes of Mississippi.” His speech was aired eighteen months after the shooting in Anguilla. He was a Sharkey County native and a lawyer , who might have represented my father. But the reason this article jumped out of the library files and into my hands was the fact that Dad was then the editor of the Deer Creek Pilot, and he was a press agent for Governor Wright, who said: This morning I am speaking primarily to the negro citizens of Mississippi . . . We are living in troublous times and it is vital and essential that we maintain and preserve the harmonious and traditional relationship which has existed in this state between the white and colored races. It is a matter of common knowledge to all of you who have taken an interest in public affairs that in my inaugural address as governor some four months ago, I took specific issue with certain legislative proposals then being made by President Truman . . . These proposals of President Truman are concerned with the enactment of certain laws embraced within the popular term of “Civil Rights.” chapter nineteen reasonable doubt 203 . . . [O]ur opposition to such legislation is that it is a definite, deliberate and outright invasion of the rights of the states to control their own affairs and meet their own duties and responsibilities. This same radical group pressing this particular proposal is also seeking to abolish separate schools in the South, separate cars on trains, separate seats in the picture shows, and every other form of physical separation between races. Another recommendation made by the President, and one of the main objectives of the many associations claiming to represent the negroes of this nation, is the abolition of segregation . White people of Mississippi and the Southland will not tolerate such a step. The good negro does not want it. The wise of both races recognize the absolute necessity of segregation. With all of this in mind, and with all frankness, as governor of your state, I must tell you that regardless of any recommendation of President Truman, despite any law passed by Congress, and no matter what is said to you by the many associations claiming to represent you, there will continue to be segregation between the races in Mississippi. If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some state other than Mississippi. Governor Wright goes on to say that slow and steady progress is being made on behalf of all Mississippians, regardless of color, and that it is fallacy for the government to interfere with the rights of states to proceed on this issue as they see fit. He continued to serve as governor until 1952. Then he ran for vice president on the same ticket with Strom Thurmond as representatives of the States’ Rights Party. They were defeated. I have absolutely no doubt that my father embraced this line of thinking, as did his brothers, his sister, and my grandmother. reasonable doubt 204 They held onto it with fierce resolve, and not one of them ever looked into the eyes of a black man or woman and saw a human being deserving of respect, fairness, or the right to the same freedoms , let alone the consideration, due to a brother or sister of the larger family of humanity. Knowing that Simon Toombs, a black man, might have been their blood brother would have made their staunch racist views impossible to fully maintain. It would have simultaneously become mandatory to maintain them. If Dad, Bill, and Tom knew about Simon when they went to the Pan Am station , then the same mentality, morality that sanctioned the rape of black women by white men also sanctioned these killings. It was common knowledge in the family that Thomas occasionally took a hiatus from the family, and had his house boy...