The Blood of Emmett Till(34)

Representative Wilma Sledge announced the birth of the Citizens’ Council movement from the floor of the Mississippi legislature, adding, “It is not the intent or purpose of the Citizens’ Councils to be used as a political machine.” They made haste, however, to claim credit for the passage of two constitutional amendments adopted in late 1954 and began to throw their weight behind politicians who backed their program.34 The Councils also gained the early support of Senator Eastland, scores of elected officials, and the Hederman family, which controlled the Jackson Daily News and the Clarion-Ledger.35 Their membership rolls soon included governors, legislators, and mayors and virtually all who aspired to those offices. In only a few months the Citizens’ Council had become a huge organization that could speak for nearly all vested authority in Mississippi. “The Councils were eminently respectable,” writes the historian Charles Payne, “and in Mississippi were hard to distinguish from the state government.”36 In fact, the state government eventually provided a good deal of funding for them. By 1955 the Jackson (MS) Daily News was printing Citizens’ Council press releases as though they were reported news. Newspaper advertisements for Council membership gave no address or telephone number for those wishing to join but instead directed the reader to inquire at “your local bank.”37

Some of the Council’s power came from its sophisticated communications apparatus. This quickly mutated from a single duplicating machine to a propaganda mill spanning radio, television, and a phalanx of speakers for any occasion. It soon included legislators, governors, U.S. senators, mayors, and virtually anyone who aspired to electoral office.38 Much of this noise machine focused on correcting supposedly unfair or inaccurate views of the South in general and Mississippi in particular. But the river of mail that poured out of Council offices was largely race-hate literature printed by Ellet Lawrence, a man whose unmatched power in the organization came from his ownership of a Jackson printing company. Titles included such “educational material” as “The Ugly Truth about the NAACP, Mixed Schools and Mixed Blood.”39 The mainstay of Council literature remained sexually provocative photographs of black men and white women drinking, dancing, or embracing, accompanied by breathless rants against race-mixing.40

This incendiary propaganda was taken as gospel truth by much of the white South. This helps explain the response of Council members to the scorn the world heaped on Mississippi in the wake of the lynching of Emmett Till. Outside condemnation enraged white Mississippians, most of whom saw the press reports as grossly unfair. To resist these slanders against the Magnolia State, the Citizens’ Council leadership launched its own monthly newspaper, the Citizen, in the eleven states of the former Confederacy plus Missouri.41 William Simmons became the first editor and wrote most of the stories for what soon became forty thousand subscribers. The paper illuminated the views and activities of the Councils and portrayed black Southerners as loyal darkies, utter buffoons, or, as one observer put it, “the Mau Mau in Africa.”42

Economic reprisals against anyone, black or white, who favored racial equality were the Councils’ standard method. Black teachers who overstepped Jim Crow’s boundaries, openly favored racial equality, or were known to have joined the NAACP could count on losing their job. Black sharecroppers who registered to vote, signed a school desegregation petition, attended an NAACP meeting, or otherwise made known their dissatisfaction with the prevailing social order were in for trouble. “We won’t gin their cotton; we won’t allow them credit; and we’ll move them out of their houses if necessary, to keep them in line,” said one Yazoo County planter.43

Council members would obtain the names of dissidents and then contact their employers. If the employers were sympathetic, the member would ask them to tell the offending employees to take a vacation. If they ceased the offending activity, the employer might let them come back to work. If not, the “vacation” was permanent. In cases where the intransigent citizen was an independent merchant, farmer, or craftsman, credit could be cut off or wholesalers persuaded to stop providing necessary supplies. If these means did not prove effective, a visit from a local Citizens’ Council member was in order. “They’d come and tell them, ‘You’ve lived in this community a long time and if you want to stay here in peace, you’d better get your name off this list,’?” explained Medgar Evers. Personal visits tended to be persuasive as the implied threats grew more and more clear. The Citizens’ Councils could publicly declare their unwillingness to use violence because other whites, including Council members, were reliably willing to exercise it, and African Americans, without meaningful benefit of laws or police, were grossly exposed. The NAACP did what little it could. “We are investigating every case of intimidation that comes to our attention and action is being taken as fast as we can move,” reported Ruby Hurley of the NAACP’s Southeast Regional Office in September 1955. “We have conferred with officials in the Department of Justice about the murders and other acts of violence and intimidation which have occurred in Mississippi.”44

The state NAACP president E. J. Stringer reported all manner of pressures and reprisals against him in the wake of the 1954 school petitions. His dental supplies vendor suddenly refused him credit. His insurance company canceled his policies. Loyal patients told him they had to patronize other dentists or risk losing their job. The IRS audited his finances. Banks in Mississippi refused to loan him money. His wife lost her teaching job. Death threats made answering the telephone a dicey proposition. The Stringers began to sleep in a middle bedroom as a precaution against bombings. “I had weapons in my house,” he recalled. “And not only in my house, I had weapons on me when I went to my office, because I knew people were out to get me.” He kept a pistol out of sight but close at hand even when he worked on teeth or did his paperwork. “I would take my revolver with me and put it in the drawer, right where I worked.” Brave soul that he was, Stringer decided not to run for reelection in late 1954, and Dr. A. H. McCoy, a physician from Jackson, replaced him.45