Michael Furgiuele

HIST 604 – Spring 2005

Title: Griggs-Fleming/Greene Assignment          

Date: April 21, 2005

 

While reviewing the video presentations of Eyes on the Prize and lectures, the materials purport the high-profile actions of movement leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X while the media captured and projected the images of violence, boycotts, and mass demonstrations throughout the world.  However, the books written by Cynthia Griggs-Fleming and Melissa Fay Greene both detailed rural society from the 1940s through the 1970s and that these small communities in the Deep South mirrored the actions conducted in Montgomery, Little Rock and Washington, D.C. 

In her book, In the Shadow of Selma, Cynthia Griggs-Fleming utilized the small setting of Wilcox County, Alabama as a microscope of the racial struggle for equality that was underway from the time of Reconstruction following the Civil War through the end-of-the twentieth century.  In describing the actions of this small rural composite in the Deep South, Fleming reflected the actions of the nation.

 

From the creation of Wilcox County which “consisted of land from the surrounding counties of Clarke, Monroe, and Dallas” (Fleming 2004, p.1), the struggle for civil rights and equality in education, legal justice, politics, employment, and housing reflected the nation’s journey that both northern and southern states alike undertook in the name of progress.  Throughout its turbulent history, Wilcox County’s African American leaders and civil rights organizations mirrored the efforts of its national leadership to achieve equality while suffering the methods of intimidation and torture to suppress them.  Similarly, like the feeling of southern states, in general, following the civil war, Wilcox’s white residents mirrored the fear and hatred toward their black inhabitants.   Eventually, the small, isolated regions of Wilcox County found themselves in the heart of the civil rights movement.

 

Like many southern states after the Civil War, Alabama found that “the worst fears of white Wilcox residents were realized” (Fleming 2004, p.9) with the passage of the First Reconstruction Act of 1867.  This monumental law tore apart the white-only ruling of political power in America by empowering the ex-slaves of the nation to vote.  Like other legislative enacted from 1867 to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the passage of legislation, alone, would not ensure that the African American was provide with equality and protection under the U.S. Constitution. Similarly, like the legislation enacted and the rulings by the Supreme Court on civil rights, this bill was one of the many waiting games played by the Federal and State governments of the United States.  As such, shortly after the passage of the 1867 act, Wilcox leaders began a century-long project of disfranchisement “through the last decades of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, white Wilcox residents built a social order on the mirror image assumptions of white superiority and black inferiority” (Fleming 2004, p.15).

 

The newly adopted freedmen of the south found themselves free of slavery, but without property and power.  At the close of the nineteenth-century, the former plantations of the south turned into a “system of sharecropping and tenant farming that took the place of slavery” and entrapped “the county’s ex-slaves and their descendants in a debt trap” (Fleming 2004, p.25). Sharecropping, tenant farming, and later paternalism would remain until after the close of World War II maintaining the disfranchisement of African Americans who “ought to be happy and thankful for the privilege of enjoying the civilization that the white man is giving to them in America”[1].  Like many areas of the south, the “laborers in Wilcox County were hemmed in on all sides, from the cradle to the grave” (Fleming 2004, p.26).  The sharecropper experience was associated with a low standard of living, long hours, and illnesses due to inadequate health care understanding and assistance.  With dwindling resources and a desire to expand their horizons, African American laborers followed the practice seen throughout the south and moved north to find better jobs and a higher standard of living.  In fact, “the largest number of African Americans left the South during the World War I era, between 1916 and 1920” (Fleming 2004, p.31).

 

Wilcox County followed the nation in hope and aspirations for the progress of future generations through education.  As early as the 1860s, missionaries descended on Wilcox’s African American residents to provide basic literacy skills.  However, the white establishment resisted their efforts.  Like the feeling of southern leadership, Wilcox’s white residence believed that the missionaries were associated with the ‘outsider’ mentality that arrived to disrupt their status quo. They believed the missionaries would change not only the mind of the former slaves, but also their attitude and manners – especially the way they handled themselves when in the presence of white citizens.  As such, many of the northern idealists suffered harassment and attacks.  However, as Fleming points out “In fact, Wilcox plantation owners were even reluctant to provide tax-supported schooling for children of their own race” (Fleming 2004, p.37) which indicated the deep south resistance to education over participation in farming and planting.  Labor, not intelligence, was more useful to the Wilcox residents – and they did not want to believe that education was more important to African Americans than their own white citizens were.  Again, Wilcox residents were not alone in this philosophy.  Prior to the Civil War, education in general, received little attention.  Schools were in need of development; children in need of basic literacy skills; and teachers were in need of universal training. Some reform measures passed in the late 1800s with the Blair Bill, which provided funding for both white and black school students.  However, as evidenced throughout the south, the apportionment of funding was concentrated in white schools.  For Wilcox County African American students, the answer eventually came in the form of a permanent foundation of education by a new set of missionaries including Eliza B. Wallace who fought with tenacity to free the children of Wilcox from the fields and into the schoolrooms (Fleming 2004). The African American struggle for educational equality in Wilcox mirroring other students and schools throughout the south.  The fight for educational independence, however, was not without problems.  The school was burned to the ground and the teachers harassed by the white establishment – but they would persevere, expand and survive.

 

While American endured trails and tribulations over racial equality, war, and depression, Wilcox County once again mirrored the national response.  Wilcox County had a long history of economic problems and few were affected by the crash of the stock market.  However, it was natural problems, like the boll weevil infestation, that attacked the rural county and hit the agricultural area hard, and “Wilcox farmers were terrified of the bug’s potential impact on their already marginal existence” (Fleming 2004, p.68). The devastation brought a resurgence of departure – especially among the African Americans in the county, limited crop production and reduced the overall workforce.  Wilcox County was one of the first to benefit from a New Deal program sponsored by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) (Fleming 2004). The government established subsidy payments to aid farmers and controlled production of many other sharecroppers in the south, the landowners denied Wilcox’s African American and poor white tenant farmers their share of the payments.  Gee's Bend, a community within Wilcox County was hit hard by agricultural and political plights requiring government intervention to avoid reducing the residents to starvation.  As such, the government used the small rural area as a testing ground for a planned community.  The government bought and sold land, and initiated a series of community building projects including a cooperative store and an exchange or cooperative equipment.  The government’s intervention once again took control of local communities and used the opportunity to identify and remedy other needs – especially in education, housing and health care.  Fleming noted, “While social services were improving, the area’s economic fortunes improved” (Fleming 2004, p.81). In the case of Gee’s Bend, the government intervention was positive rather than one of ‘occupation’ as would be noted in later civil rights issues in Montgomery and Birmingham as well as other cities throughout the south.

As economic and social reforms improved the living conditions in the county, African American residents began to develop a new sense of self-worth, owning their own property and working within the government cooperatives.  While the African American citizens applauded this enhanced freedom, they felt as though they continued to live under strict moral and racial etiquette.  In fact, an incident, which occurred in the late 1930s, reinforced the image of oppression for African Americans when Jonah Martin stole money from a white storeowner.  Members of Camden city’s white community took flight after the young man.  Martin ran into an officer trying to arrest him and killed him. To Wilcox natives, “Obviously, this was a catastrophic breach in Wilcox County’s racial etiquette” (Fleming 2004, p.92).  The posse assembled hunted down the young man, and killed him on the spot. Afterwards, they dragged his body back to the county courthouse and left it on the lawn for white residents to gawk and to intimidate the African American community.  The image mirrored the atrocities committed against the African American communities throughout the south as a means to reinforce the status quo and reinforce the image of white supremacy.

Wilcox County residents found “life during the war years continued at the same leisurely pace that had characterized life in Wilcox County for generations” (Fleming 2004, p.105).  At the close of the war, Wilcox County reflected national issues as young service men returned to their homes.  The African American veterans were no longer willing to wait for their place in society and were determined to change the course of their life.  Additionally, and unfortunately, the legal proceedings started by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had little impact on the lives of the southern African Americans.  Politicians from Roosevelt to Kennedy played games with the lives and respect of African Americans to obtain needed votes from southern democrats – most of who were firmly entrenched in segregation and black disfranchisement. However, African American citizens in Wilcox embraced voting and the assistance of various civil rights groups in finding their voice in the rural south.

The Student Coordinating Committee (SNCC) augmented the NAACP through the 1940s into the 1960s combined with the Wilcox County Civic and Progressive League – a locally based civic organization aimed at encouraging citizenship and voting rights as a means of affecting change.  Combined, these organizations educated the citizens of their constitutional rights and their shared their philosophy and methods of effecting change in their society.  Wilcox again reflected the national concerns for equality and support – but also drew the wrath of the white political systems that used various intimidation and torture methods to repress the African American voters.  In comparison to national observations during the time, “the course of the freedom struggle in Wilcox County emphatically underscored class differences among members of the local black community as they struggled to organize themselves effectively” (Fleming 2004, p.146).

The 1960s in Wilcox County reflected the aggressive stand that African Americans took throughout the nation.  In other parts of Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his nonviolent protestors took on the leadership of Montgomery and Birmingham in an attempt to desegregate the state policies in housing, education, transportation, and public accommodations[2].  The impacts of these moves reverberated in the rural counties and brought new hope to African Americans that white supremacy was dying.  In their struggle to halt the spread of ‘subversive behavior’ that the African American presented, white residents once again mirrored the national response to African American zeal with intimidation and violence.  However, the path toward freedom launched at the residents of Wilcox’s black communities demonstrated that they were no longer willing to be second-class citizens.  In addition, civil rights leaders and federal agents continued to advance on the rural communities to assist with voter registration, education, and housing issues.  These ‘outsiders’ were not welcomed by the white residents and after several deadly confrontations between whites and blacks, “the anger and suspicion of Wilcox County’s white residents seemed to blossom into full-blow paranoia” (Fleming 2004, p.161).

Conflicts between whites and blacks were not the only stress seen throughout the nation and the small communities of Wilcox County.  Gender and age differences in the county reflected the national trend of issues.  The children of Wilcox County were no longer willing to remain as second-class citizens conforming to their white counterpart’s expectation of them.  Father and son conflicted over philosophies of the civil rights movement.  Parents who long sheltered their children from the realities associated with subjugation and disfranchisement were no longer able to hide the severity that voter registration, desegregation in schools, and full equality brought.

Although the Supreme Court had decided that segregation in the public schools “violates the 14^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection of the laws”[3], by the mid-1960s, “nothing had changed in Wilcox County, so increasing numbers of students, teachers, and parents began to articulate increasingly forceful demands for change” (Fleming 2004, p.194).  These demands reinforced the iron will of both white and black residents with each vowing to fight for their rights.  In August 1966, a federal appeals court finally responded to the issue and ordered the desegregation of the county’s school systems.  As Wilcox County’s African American students began to enter the once all-white schools, their experience was similar to the students from Little Rock, who in 1957 drew international attention by attending an all-white high school[4].  Students were the target of harassment and violence aimed at persuading them from attending school (Fleming 2004).  However, through the perseverance of students, activists, and parents, students slowly integrated into Wilcox County schools.  Unlike cities like Montgomery and Birmingham, the leaders of the rural communities did not close schools completely in order to preserve the white presence.  The struggle for the schools continued through the 1960s and into the 1970s with teachers slowly integrating between all-white and all-black schools, mainly through the placement of ‘outside’ staff.

The changing climate in Wilcox County throughout the 1970s brought a desire for African Americans to reinforce change in the political structure as well. Fleming noted, “Through the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, success continued to elude every black Wilcox candidate who ran for political office” (Fleming 2004, p.247).  In the 1908s, African Americans continued the struggle for desegregation and destruction of the white pillars of supremacy in all areas of local governments following the elections of Prince Arnold to County sheriff and Ralph Ervin who won a successful campaign to be the first African American tax assessor for the county.  Integrated politics continued with changes in the County commission position when Odell Tumblin “became the first female and the first African American school superintendent in the history of Wilcox County” (Fleming 2004, p.265).  Despite the racial changes in the county over the past forty years, the image of Wilcox continues to be one of a rural, depressed, predominately agricultural community.

As the nation struggled with the civil rights movement and the equality of African Americans, Alabama became a state heavily associated with the civil rights movement.  Following the Civil War, Alabama strengthened its resolve and denounced the interference of union politics in their state.  The 1875 Constitution of Alabama provided the superiority of states rights against federal initiatives[5].  In 1895, Booker T. Washington addressed Alabama’s farmers urging ‘racial accommodation’[6].  In the 1940s, marked by infestation, Alabama farmers became the center of the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal politics.  During World War II, Alabama soldiers, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, reinforced African American capabilities in fighting for their country[7].  During the 1950s, civil rights activists charged against discrimination with boycotts in Montgomery[8]. In 1956, Autherine Lucy attempted to desegregate the University of Alabama and was met with comments that integration was moving “too far, too fast” and that she “cannot override prejudice overnight”[9].  In the 1960s, Birmingham and Montgomery drew international attention when civil rights leaders moved against segregation in education, housing, employment and public accommodations as well as the perilous march from Selma to Montgomery to secure voting rights for African Americans.  Wilcox County provided a microcosm of that struggle – reflecting the ideals, triumphs and tragedies associated with the disfranchisement and subjugation of the black community and how through persistence and time, the African American community won its rightful equality.

           

            Like the images reflected by Griggs-Fleming, in her book In the Shadow of Selma, Melissa Fay Greene also provided a look at rural society and how actions of once complacent citizens broke the traditional bonds of subjugation in order to show their strength, solidarity and establish their freedom.

            Like Fleming, Greene provided a look at the civil rights, which provided contrasting images of large-scale citywide demonstrations and urban violence reflected on the national stage and within the Eyes on the Prize series.  Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X were all dead when Greene’s wrote Praying for Sheetrock about the Civil Rights movement in McIntosh County, Georgia.  The demonstrations, held by Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s and 1960s, seem to have escaped the attention of the local citizens of the rural south.  However, Greene identified a number of comparisons that reflect the stages and steps taken by the leaders of the movement carried into the next decade.

            Like the stark image of Sheriff Lummie Jenkins of Wilcox Country, McIntosh County was run by the southern white leadership of their infamous Sheriff Poppell who “was the neighborhood headman who exerted his will and shaped the county” (Greene 1991, p.13).  Poppell conducted his shady dealings and was more concerned with financing his empire of illegal activities rather than worrying about the civil rights and the inequities of blacks in the rural south.  Poppell “amiably kept the peace between the black and white communities and between the law-abiding world and the criminals” (Greene 1991, p.14).  The community, both Black and White lived in relative peace and complacency.  Like many of the testimony of sources through the Eyes on the Prize video series, members of McIntosh County understood their role and place in society[10].  Just as Malcolm X had indicated “the smell and sight of slavery is still in their heads”.[11] White citizens “do not honor slavery or mourn its passing” (Greene 1991, p.19) like many of the white supremacists shown during the era of Brown vs. the Board of Education or the reinforcement of national leaders in support of civil rights[12].  However, like other southerners, citizens of Darien and McIntosh County understood the calm that long-time leaders and residents had with each other and that they did not like the roles played by outsiders who entered their County to agitate their people and lives.  In Darien, “they both had obeyed their early instructions about race and had taken care throughout their lives not to forget their place in the world, the place that had been drilled into them in earliest childhood” (Greene 1991, p.25).

            There were other similarities between the struggle taken place in 1960s and the emerging movement in McIntosh.  The African-Americans of Darien “followed the career of Martin Luther King Jr., but no one among them had ever met him or seen him in person” (Greene 1991, p.21), however, King’s use of the gospel and churches as the platform for reinforcing his commitment to the African-American community was used in Darien as well.  The Black church was the hub of the movement and “that charisma resides in the Black church and is an integral part of the expectations and experiences of African Americans”[13].

            Like other community leaders who grew to symbolize the Civil Rights movement, “the voice of the civil rights sounded first within the mind of Thurnell Alston, years before he received it in the form of news reports from the outside world” (Greene 1991, p.37).  Alston viewed the black struggle for equality within the borders of his small, backward community and like Martin Luther King, Jr. (King 1964) he decided that “he had heard and seen enough and could not, in good conscience, remain passive any longer” (Greene 1991, p.38). 

            Like the bleak images portrayed in Wilcox County of sharecroppers, the life of a southern black in McIntosh County was filled with long, back-braking labor in the fields.  From early childhood, men and boys would work in the field or manufacturing plants to support the large industries while women would work in the community as maids and nannies.  Many of the children did not attend school.  Instead, they worked with their parents in the field, receiving only a few dollars a month for their work. 

            Life in the City of McIntosh County was similar to those throughout the country. As the Civil Rights movement removed the stigma attached to African American and boosted them from second class citizenship throughout the 1950s and 1960s, by the 1970s, there were still “white water fountains and black water fountains, white bathrooms and black bathrooms, white cafeterias and black cafeteria” (Greene 1991, p.43). The ‘white’ water fountains were refrigerated and filtered while blacks drank warm tap water.  Thurnell Alston took up the cause for equality slowly and used the drinking fountain as the instance to seek a small measure of equality for his co-workers.  He approached the white management of a local manufacturing plant and requested a change.  This was the first time that he felt the advantage of working for the people and the African American workers supported him by making him union steward.

            In McIntosh County, the ‘courthouse gangs’ of southern ‘good old boy’ network ‘ran the counties smoothly for years, enforcing race, class, and gender distinctions, while eschewing modern industrial development with its threat of civil equality, higher wages, and the migration of outsiders into their countries” (Greene 1991, p.76).  At the head was the ever-watchful Sheriff Poppell.  Unlike the images of local law enforcement portrayed in Eyes on the Prize, He controlled every aspect of the community – including watching over elected sessions of County government, installing African Americans as token representatives in the police department and local government in an effort to calm the local Black community.  Just as the Federal funds from the AAA had were misdirected in Wilcox County, funds directed for educational and agricultural improvements from the Federal government were continually redirected away from the Black communities, based on Poppell’s direction.  Within his network of friends, even machinery and equipment purchased for county use found themselves redirected toward private efforts and even dropped of inventory lists.

            In 1972, “the season of great change began with a shooting on March 22” (Greene 1991, p.117). When a sheriff’s deputy Guy Hutchinson investigated a domestic disturbance involving Ed Finch and his girlfriend, Mary Harmon, he was irritated by the level of commotion and shot Finch in the mouth.  Just as graphic as the killing of Jonah Martin in Wilcox County, the shooting of Ed Finch was a blatant disregard for human and civil rights that caused the town to seek justice and brought the period of deference of Blacks to Whites in Darien to a close.  Many Citizens gathered to “rise to our greatest manhood and womanhood; let leaders emerge among us; let us pit ourselves against Them with a heartbreaking cry for justice that even the deafest of the whites cannot help but hear” (Greene 1991, p.125).  Again, Alston was selected to lead and like many visions of black protestors, he dressed in his best clothes, presented himself to the town to secure convictions of the assault, and demanded changes in the establishment. Although Alston won a small victory in releasing Finch from jail for medical attention, Finch was tried and convicted for his actions by an all-white jury and Hutchinson was reinstated to his position within a month of the shooting. However, the result, Alston was a respected leader in the Black community.  Alston and Nathaniel Grovner reinstated a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and created the McIntosh County Civic Improvement Organization (MCCIO).

            With the installation of the local NAACP and MCCIO organization, Alston generated steam as a representative of African-American equality.  Once again, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and many of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, Alston and his followers used the church as means of sharing their views.  As meetings were held, “every pew in the church was packed; well-dressed people lined the walls and crowded into the rear of the church; and a choir in royal-blue satin robes led the congregation in rich heartfelt music” (Greene 1991, p.143). 

            During the 1970s, the Georgia Legal Services organization brought about a series of legal actions against McIntosh County to affect change.  Like other southern Civil Rights motions, ‘outsiders’ from the north who sought change moved into the south to help.  In addition, members of the local movement used boycotts against the city to pursue similar equalities, which King went after in the 1960s.  Like the list of demands for desegregation and representation of African Americans on local community organizations outlined by King, A list of demands, Grovner, Alston and their followers developed a list of demands to enhance African American representation throughout the County[14].  Claiming, “The Bible teaches that the bottom will rise to the top. Justice will prevail.” (Greene 1991, p.207), the people aspired for more independence from white supremacy.

            In 1978, Thurnell Alston won election as County Commissioner.  Unlike the images of southern voter registration activities in the 1950s and 1960s presented in Eyes on the Prize[15], voter registration for African Americans in McIntosh County was nearly 100% (Greene 1991).  In McIntosh, “There’s never been a time that the black people didn’t control the lections.  We are practically fifty/fifty. Voting as a bloc is what makes it powerful” (Greene 1991, p.210).  The Civil Rights Movement in the north, at this time, struggled for power at the local, state and national level.  Power was political and political power provided change[16].  However, winning the election did not end the injustice in McIntosh.  Power struggle and white resistance followed Alston as it had Carl Stokes, who in 1967-68 won election as Cleveland, Ohio’s first African-American Mayor[17].

            McIntosh County, like Wilcox County, mirrored the nations Civil Rights movement in securing local people to lead the cause of equality and justice. While Wilcox County was part of the movement during the protests and boycotts of the 1950s and 1960s, McIntosh County lagged behind another decade before opening the disfranchised African American struggle for equality against white oppression.  However, in both cases, they reflect the growing empowerment of people to assume control of the communities and their local governments through representation.  Like the conflicts in Chicago during the 1970s in which citizens refused to accept the housing authority verdict of equal housing[18], the communities of the south defended their place in society be securing African Americans within the power machines that decided their fate.

            The images portrayed in the Eyes on the Prize featured the leaders of the Civil Rights movement and their ascent, direction and decay – even death. The writings of Griggs-Fleming and Greene showed how the national upheaval was not limited to the educational crisis in Boston[19]. Nor were they limited to the Poor Peoples riots that took place in over 100 cities[20], or even the boycotts, protests and marches on state capitals in Georgia and Mississippi, but were felt in a microcosm at the extreme-rural level in the Deep South.