They'll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle

Chapter 15

While the poor people of Mingo County were absorbed in the hot lunch dispute, little attention was given to the fact that, during a special session of the state legislature, Governor Hulett Smith had placed on the agenda antipoverty legislation allowing county courts the authority to take over antipoverty programs. (An assistant state attorney had previously ruled that county courts were ineligible because they could not delegate authority. and all poverty agencies had to consist of at least one-third poor people.) The emergency legislation was sponsored in the state Senate by Noah Floyd and in the House of Delegates by T. I. Varney. Cleo Jones, the Fair Elections Committee 's legal counsel and a delegate from Kanawha County, blasted the bill, but it passed the H ouse by a sixty to twenty-six vote. Jones later said, "There was no emergency whatsoever for this bill. It was a move for politicians in southern counties to take over poverty programs so they could put poor people in line. The ],,'fingo EOC has been regarded as a national model by the OEO for the poor's war on poverty. What worries me is that the efforts of the poor people in Mingo County to correct the problems will be killed by the same people who caused them." With the general election less than three weeks away, the Fair Elections Committee again intensified its efforts to bring a fa ir election to Mingo. As a result of the committee 's work over the past year, the official registration was now under 19,000-a far cry from the 29,000 registered to vote in 1966. Again, requests went out to the Justice De· partment begging for federal observers, as during the previous primary election, and again it appeared that the pleas would be in vain. T he poor people were rallying behind the Republican candidates who had pledged to reverse the County Court's decision to take over the poverty agency. However, very few expected the Republicans to win. During the past thirty years, the Republican candidates for local office had never polled more than two thousand votes, while the Democrats usually ran up a total of twelve thousand to fourteen thousand votes. On Thursday, October 24, members of the Fair Elections Committee and EOC staff members were able to secure affidavits from several of the voters who had been bought by the Floyd machine. Absentee voting had begun in early October, and employees of the county and the state were once again busy hauling voters to the courthouse. In the presence of election observers, they were openly voted. One such case involved Earn Davis, Sr., who made the following statement to Fair Elections Committee workers and, later, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In his own words, he related how Ike Newsome had bought his family's votes: "4 On V-.rednesday evening, October 9, 1968, Ike Newsome stopped at my house and told me if I could get Junior and Lois to go and \'ote an absentee ballot, he would pay them S5.00 each and would pick us u p at 10:00 a.m. Thursday, October 10, 1968. Ike came to our home on Road Branch about 10:00 Thurs· day morning, October 10, 1968, and told us that there was going to be trouble. He said if we voted an absentee ballot, we wouldn't have to be around. I told him that 1 didn't want no trouble and didn't want to be in it, that J'd just as soon go on and vote. Ike took me and my wife, Evelyn, Earn, J r., and Lois Jean, and anOlher boy, mak.ing five of us, in his car to the courthOllse . He had to park the car at the depot, and all of us walked from there to the courthouse. When we got to the courthouse, he took us to Tom Chafin's office where we all sat down. Ike then took LIS one at a time on the elevator, riding with each of us. He took us to the Circuit Clerk's office and told them we wanted to vote. Ike told me to tell the people in charge that I had to go to Pilgrim's Knob, Virginia . I told Ike I was going to see about the rock dust,· but I d id n't say when. He told...