Klan Activity pasture out from Lyon, Mississippi

”I have not been an eyewitness, and I have never talked to anybody that said that they were an eyewitness of Klan activity. But whether there was Klan activity or not, the same activities that the Klan projected were [here]. I'm thinking right now about a man that was acquitted; a black man was acquitted. And I've forgotten now exactly what the charge was. But I understand that it was rape (accused of raping a white lady), and he was acquitted by an all-white jury. But just as he stepped out of the courtroom, a mob grabbed him and lynched him.”  “Here in Clarksdale, around the '20s, somewhere about the middle '20s, that happened. My mother eye witnessed that.”  (Jannie Stone Gooden b.1898 d. unk.)  Bennie goes on to say “And she saw them drag him out of town, and out there I think they shot him. The strange thing about racism and bigotry--you know, as a youth in Clarksdale, things which appear to be apparent are not always apparent. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. At first I didn't know I was black. I didn't know that I was considered poor because everybody around here, everybody you had to deal with, they were in the same predicament. It had to be discovered, and then when I discovered that I was poor and black and different, and my thoughts didn't amount to a hill of beans, I [realized I] was not counted. Because I was considered a leader among my peers, I thought I had some station in life. Only to find out that I was not considered. My thoughts, my well-being was not important whatsoever. I wasn't nothing. That's shocking; that's disturbin”.

 

Brown vs. Board of Education

 

”The problem was implementing, because they wanted to implement it with the people being in charge that had been responsible for the segregation in the first place. So here's a man that caused segregation, caused dehumanization, and now you're going to put him in charge of desegregation, which he didn't want. That doesn't make any sense at all.  Soon after that case was announced and publicized, the then-governor, Hugh White, called a meeting of what he called one hundred black leaders in the state of Mississippi to meet him in Jackson. He wanted to go on record as changing the law. I guess you've already run up on that. “

“Changing the laws that would comply with the federal edicts and what have you, but that we would comply with voluntary segregation. "Y'all don't want to be with the white folks and the white folks don't want to be with y'all. So we're going to go ahead on and change the law so we can comply, but y'all going to voluntarily segregate yourselves." Well, the hundred black men met in Jackson, but they met the night before, and they got together. They selected Rev. H.H. Humes [?] of Greenville, who was head of the Baptist convention, and Dr. T.R.M. Howard from Mound Bayou as a spokesperson. And Reverend Humes and Dr. T.R.M. Howard did a magnificent job because they rejected the governor's request and told them that blacks have had to endure with Jim Crow living and what have you all their lives. "No, we can't agree with you, Mr. Governor." Now, had he gotten some of those people [and] picked them off one by one, he would have gotten a different perspective. But when he called them in a group, and everybody's looking at everybody, everybody's listening to everybody, and you know the prevailing thought among the blacks had to prevail at that meeting. So then he got a good dose of what he did not want. So that's the last attempt.”