In 1982, millions of blacks living in the rural counties an small towns of the “New South”

still dealt with the terrors of Jim Crow and racial exploitation which sparked the civil rights

movement in the 1950s. It was more vivid in Mississippi. In 1949, black farmers owned 80,842

commercial cotton-producing farms in Mississippi black belt region, about 66 percent of all

cotton farms in the state. During the 1950s and 1960s, corporations which went into agricultural

production aggressively pushed thousands of these small rural farmers out of business. By 1964,

the number of black owned cotton farms declined to 21,939 statewide. The figure dropped to

only 1000 five years later.1

Black farmers had extreme difficulty obtaining capital. Many insurance companies,

which financed the bulk of farm loans, require loans to be at least $100,000. While commercial

banks lend lesser amounts, they often require payment within five years, a term too short for a

black landowner. Federal land back tended to require amounts of collateral that are too great for

blacks to qualify. The federal government did little to reverse the decline in black farming.

The general economic decline for most Mississippi blacks since the 1960s has been

accompanied by the resurrection of white racist terrorism and political violence. The tortured

body of one unidentified black man was found floating down the river in Cleveland, MS. The

man’s sex organs had been hacked off and the coroner later reported finding his penis in his

stomach. On January 11, 1981, the body of 45-year-old Lloyd Douglas Gray was found hanging

1 Hampton, Henry, Steve Fager, and Sarah Flynn. 1990. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950's Through the 1980's. New York: Bantam Books.

from a tree in Tallahatchie County, MS. The coroner pronounced Gray’s death as a suicide, and

no autopsy was performed.

A month later, the body of 32 year old Roy Washington was found in Cypress Creek, in

Holmes County, MS. Washington was badly beaten in the head and face. His hands were

bounded behind him and then he was shot in the head at point-blank range. The corpse was

weighed down with a car jack and wrapped by barbed wire. Scars around his neck indicated that

he had also been lynched. Local white newspapers were quiet about the murder.

Holmes County police did not aggressively pursue leads in the case and even followed a

black reporter around while he conducted his own investigation. The majority of the other black

men who were found beaten or hanging in MS have also been officially labeled suicides.

Familiar with the pattern of racial violence, one black resident of Tallahatchie County declares,

“If they say it was suicide, it was probably a lynching.”2

The Case of Eddie Carthan

Eddie Carthan understands Mississippi, its heritage of segregation, racial brutalities, and

economic exploitation of the black working class and rural poor. As a youngster he attended the

“Freedom Schools” conducted by idealistic activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee. He witnessed the political intimidation of black farmers who tried to register to vote.

In his hometown of Tchula, MS, the population was 85 percent black. Thirty percent of the

2 Marable, Manning. 1991. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990. 2 ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

towns adults were unemployed in 1982; 66 percent were on welfare; 81 percent of all Tchula’s

housing units were classified as “deteriorating.” 3

As the first black mayor of a MS delta town, elected on a reform platform in 1977,

Carthan thought that “ I could represent those who had come through slavery, knowing nothing

about voting, about going to a motel, sitting in the front of a bus or eating in a restaurant.” But

Carthan’s election was an intolerable threat to the racist power structure of Holmes County and

indirectly, of the entire state.

Carthan recognized that the county, which was statistically the tenth poorest in the US,

could not develop without massive federal assistance. The mayor obtained CETA funds to

weatherize and remodel Tchula’s homes. A nutrition project was established to provide meals to

senior citizens and the handicapped. A federal grant was solicited for the projected construction

of a public library. A child care program was begun specifically for mothers who worked or who

lived on AFDC payments. A public health clinic was started in Tchula, and plans were made for

a cable TV system, door-to-door mail service, and the construction of public and tennis courts. In

less than three years, Carthan obtained $3 million in federal and private support for the town, and

created 80 new jobs.

But change in a repressive society does not come about without opposition. Upon

Carthan’s election, a political representative of the “four most powerful men in the state-more

powerful than the governor,” offered the mayor a $10,000 bribe if he agreed to do things “the

way they have always be done.” When Carthan refused the bribe, the forces of reaction began to

move.

3 McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.

Two “loyal” blacks on the town council sided with the lone white alderman, John Edgar

Hayes, to undermine Carthan’s progressive program. In 1979 they forced the clack city clerk to

resign, replacing her with a local white; forced the black water supervisor to resign, replacing

him with the sister-in-law of the white county supervisor; and refused to pay costs for the city’s

telephone and light bill. Carthan’s salary was lowered from $600 to $60 per month.

When local black supporters of Carthan protested, the alderman voted to increase their

property taxes. For two months, they refused to pay city employees. To intimidate Carthan, they

locked city hall for eight weeks and place white police chief Sharkey Ford at the front door.

Shotgun in hand, Ford was ordered to shoot anyone who tries to enter. Carthan’s family began to

receive threatening phone calls and racist letters.

The situation worsened in 1980. In April 1980, Ford finally resigned. Carthan appointed a

black officer, Johnny Dale, as temporary police chief. At a special meeting of the City Council

called specifically to hire a permanent police chief, Carthan’s opponents left the session before a

vote could occur. Walking to a local convenience store, they immediately phoned Jim Andrew,

the white whom Carthan defeated for mayor in the previous election. Andrews was told to take

over as police chief. Without an oath or being bonded, Andrews put on an uniform, picked up a

service revolver, and took over the police department.

When Mayor Carthan learned about Andrews’ actions, he located two regular police

officers and several auxiliary policemen. Carthan and his police officers confronted Andrews at

city hall. Andrews refused to leave and pulled his gun when Carthan informed him that he would

be arrested if he did not leave. Andrews finally disarmed nonviolently. Subsequently, both

Carthan and Andrews filed charges against each other, but only Andrews charges were acted

upon. On April 12, 1981, Carthan and six co-defendants were convicted on charges of simple

assault of a “law enforcement officer.” The co-defendant received three years suspended

sentences and fines. Eddie Carthan was ordered to spend three years in the State Penitentiary.

Carthan legal troubles were not over. A local white businessman claimed that he had paid

Carthan a bribe for signing papers for a bank loan, which federal authorities saw was

fraudulently obtained. Although the federal government’s attorney conceded that Carthan’s

signature on the documents presented to the bank for a loan was forged, the mayor was

convicted. The board of aldermen then installed Roosevelt Granderson, a known drug dealer, as

mayor. In 1981 Carthan’s two remaining supporters on the board were defeated after an election

that later was shown to be full of irregularities. Carthan’s white predecessor was also returned to

the mayor’s seat.4

Three weeks later, Vincent Bolden and David Hester of East St. Louis robbed

Granderson’s store, took him in the back and killed him. The prosecution, ignoring evidence that

Hester had once sold Granderson $200,000 worth of cocaine, claimed Carthan had hired the men

to kill his old opponent. The prosecution struck a deal first with Bolden, and when that fell apart

then with Hester. In exchange for testifying that Carthan had hired the two, Hester was to get off

4 Bloom, Jack. 1987. Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

with a lesser charge.

Local Black farmers raised the $115,000 bail required to get Carthan out of jail. Actor

Ossie Davis went on a 66-city tour to raise funds and build support for the struggle to free

Carthan. After Carthan was acquitted on the murder charge in 1982, he traveled around the

country to support other victims of frame-ups, and to thank the many organizations that had

helped his struggle for freedom. After his father died in 1983, Carthan began growing cotton,

soybeans and wheat on the fertile land of the Delta farm his father had left him.

In the 1980s and ’90s he led a struggle by Mississippi small farmers fighting to keep

their land. He fought cotton gin owners who refused to gin the cotton grown by Black farmers,

forcing them to travel 30 or more miles to have it done at a higher cost. He exposed the

connections between the gin owners and local banks that discriminated against poor Black

farmers.

After his father's death in 1983, Carthan began farming his family's land, raising cotton,

soybeans, and wheat on 600 acres near Tchula. He was pushed out of farming in 1997 by the

cost- price squeeze that all small farmers face, exacerbated by the government's discriminatory

lending policies toward farmers who are Black. Now he rents out his land to other farmers.

"The Mississippi Family Farmers, which is a statewide organization formed in 1985,

predates the current USDA suit," Carthan explained in a recent interview with these Militant

correspondents held in his busy hardware store. "So many Black farmers had problems with

government and local lending institutions. The white plantation owners, banks, and FmHA

(Farmers Home Administration) were trying to get rid of Black farmers, so we came together to

save Black farmers and to encourage young people and women to get into the business." The

FmHA, now part of the USDA's Farm Service Agency, was set up in the 1930s under mass

pressure, to provide loans to working farmers on better terms than the commercial banks.

"In the 1980s and early '90s, we held meetings and forums and workshops, trying to help

farmers get the help they needed from the government. When no help was forthcoming, we tried

to file an antidiscrimination suit ourselves in the early '90s against the USDA. But we had

trouble getting lawyers and the money to file," Carthan noted. Finally, they decided to join with

other Black farmers from Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and other states in the current

lawsuit, which includes some 125 farmers from Mississippi. 5

5 Weisbort, Robert. 1990. Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

ALMA MITCHELL CARNEGIE of Holmes Co., Mississippi was a 66-yr-old intensely fired

spirit at Mileston in 1963 when she and her 76-yr-old husband Charlie were the oldest of the

First 14 — Holmes's first to take an organized, dangerous step together: to go to the Courthouse

to try to register to vote. For decades she'd gone to semi-clandestine Movement meetings around

Mississippi and had hidden 1930s farm worker organizers and 1960s SNCC (Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee) workers in her home. Important as a conscience, often too idealistic

for others, she didn't try to lead as much as to follow the right path.

 — Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner, from Some People of That Place exhibit.

OZELL MITCHELL of Holmes Co., Mississippi independent farmer at Mileston was 58 in late

'62, when he and farmer friend Ben Square drove the 30 miles to Greenwood in Leflore Co.

where SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was holding Freedom Meetings.

Theirs was a bold act. Danger increased when they invited the young SNCC organizers to set up

a meeting at Mileston. In March '63 Mitchell and others hid and housed the outside workers, got

a Mileston church (Sanctified) to allow meetings in their building. In April, Mitchell and 13

others took their first organized step together: the "First 14" drove to the Courthouse to attempt

to "redish" (register to vote).

 — Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner, from Some People of That Place exhibit. Place

Ollie Mitchell on the porch with his grandchildren

Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education

Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 1218 (1969) was a 1969 case for

the Supreme Court of the United States ordering desegregation of schools in the American

South.

Background

Justice Felix Frankfurter demanded that the opinion in 1955's Brown v. Board of Education II

order desegregation with the (somewhat contradictory) phrase of "all deliberate speed". The

phrase gave the South an excuse to defy the law of the land. For fifteen years, schools in the

South remained segregated, until the Supreme Court's opinion in Alexander v. Holmes County

Board of Education.

Early in the summer of 1969, the appeals court had asked the US Department of Health,

Education, and Welfare to submit desegregation plans for thirty-three school districts in

Mississippi, so HEW could order them implemented at the beginning of the school year. HEW

was responsible for drawing up desegregation plans, as mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

and had submitted the plans on time. At the last minute, however, both HEW and the Justice

Department asked the courts for extensions until December 1, claiming that the plans would

result in confusion and setbacks. This was the first time the federal government had supported a

desegregation delay in the federal courts. The Fifth Circuit granted the delay, and no specific

date for implementing the actual desegregation plans was set.

Justice Hugo Black, the supervisory Justice for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and

senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, saw this delay as Nixon's payoff to the South, as

part of the "Southern Strategy" that had helped Nixon win the presidential election. The NAACP

contacted Black to contest the delay in desegregation. On September 3, Black received a memo

from the Justice Department - Solicitor General Griswold was urging that Black permit the

Mississippi delay. Black reluctantly permitted the delay as supervisory Justice, but invited the

NAACP to bring the case to the Supreme Court as soon as possible. They did.

Issue

The desegregation orders of Brown I and Brown II were not followed and schools in the

South were desegregating slowly if at all. During lower court battles over segregation, school

districts would remain segregated until all appeals were exhausted. The petitioners, represented

by Jack Greenberg, asked that the Court order the original HEW plans implemented, and

proposed that the Court shift the burden of proof, making desegregation the main objective of for

them.

Internal Court deliberations

New Chief Justice Warren Burger, appointed by President Nixon, did not at first think

that the requested delay was unreasonable. Senior Associate Justice Hugo Black saw allowing

any delay as a signal to the South to further delay desegregation; he suggested a short, simple

order mandating immediate integration, with no mention of debate over plans or delay. He

threatened to dissent from any opinion mentioning the word "plan," which would shatter a much-

desired unanimous Court opinion. Justice William O. Douglas supported Black.

Justice Harlan was not going along with any notion of "immediate desegregation", but he

did support the overturning of the Fifth Circuit's delay.

Justices Stewart, White, and Brennan were all initially put off by Black's demands for immediate

desegregation.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court's only African-American, suggested an

implementation deadline of January, the beginning of the next school semester.

A majority of justices agreed on reversing the appeals court's decisions to grant a delay in

the submission of plans, and on keeping the Court of Appeals in control, and on keeping the

federal district court uninvolved, due to its years of allowing stalling.

Warren Burger, along with Justices White and Harlan, drafted an early opinion with no

"outside" deadline, but the court's three most liberal justices - Brennan, Marshall, and Douglas -

rejected that draft, knowing it would be unpalatable to Justice Black. The basic Court breakdown

was 4 in favor of immediate desegregation and no full Court opinion (Black, Douglas, Brennan,

and Marshall), and another 4 wanting a more practical, less absolute opinion. Justice William J.

Brennan, JR's draft, made with the help of Justices Douglas and Marshall, and later presented to

Justice Black, ordered immediate desegregation and would later come to be the Court's final

opinion, with some edits by Harlan and Burger.

Opinion

The final opinion was a two-page per curiam that reflected the initial demands of Justice

Black. The Court wrote that "The obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school

systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools." The previously-set pace

of "all deliberate speed" was no longer permissible.

Aftermath

The decision was announced on October 29. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina decried

the decision, while praising President Richard Nixon for having "stood with the South in this

case." Former Alabama Governor George Wallace said the new Burger court was "no better than

the Warren Court," and called the Justices "limousine hypocrites." 6

6 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 1218 (1969)

Bibliography

Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 1218 (1969)

Bloom, Jack. 1987. Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Eagles, Charles W., ed. 1986. The Civil Rights Movement in America. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Hampton, Henry, Steve Fager, and Sarah Flynn. 1990. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950's Through the 1980's. New York: Bantam Books.

Liebler, Carol M. 1993. News Sources and the Civil Rights Act of 1990. Howard Journal of Communications 4 (Spring):183-194.

Marable, Manning. 1991. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990. 2 ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press.

Stikoff, Harvard. 1981. The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980. New York: Hill & Wang.

Weisbort, Robert. 1990. Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.