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THE STUDENT VOICE VOL. 5 NO. 19 STUDENT VOIC E. INt;. 6 Ra ymond
S tree t , N . W. Alla n ia. Georgia 303 14 AUGUST 5, 19f4
FOP BLASTS MISS. DEMO CONVENTION
lic . the Freedom Democratic Party issued a statement calling
the convention "the greatest ex-ample of hypocritica l polir.tcal
expediency in A merican his-tory."
JACKSON, MISS. - In an ob-vious an empt to s idestep a
pre-convent ion clash with the national party, Mississippi' s
all-white Democratic Party named lUlin-st r ucted delega tes to the
na -t ional convention and took steps [0 place both pledged and un-
" By resolving that in Seprem-pledged e lector s on the ballot ber
both pledged and unpledged in November. e lectors will be placed on
the
Immediate ly afte r the ccnven- ballot , the Miss issippi party
hop-tion' s dec is ions were m ade pub- es [ 0 te mpt the na tional
par ty
..... _____________ ~ with at least the poss ibility of
Ark. Workers Face their supporting the nationa l can-didates in
November. But this transparent ruse was used io1960 While
Harassment and it Is common knowledge that at that time the Mis
siSSippi par-ty threw its whole we ight behind
AT NEW YORK MEETING From left to right, Bayard Rustin ;
Greenberg of the Lega l Defense Fund, Inc •• Whitney Young. Urban
League; James Farmer of CORE : Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; Dr. Martin
Luther King . Jr.; J ohn Lewis . SNCC Chairman; A. P hilip
Randolph. of "the Negro A me ric an Labor Council; and Cour tla nd
Cox . SNCC Program Director.
ISNCC, CORE Refuse Action Moratorium HELENA, ARK. - Voter
re-
gis t rat ion worke rs from SNCC the unpledged electors and de-
NEW YORK, N. Y. - The Stu- of SNCC to di sc uss s icuations in
nounced the na t ional candidates," have faced constant har ass-
dent Nonviolent Coordina ting individua l Negro communities in
mellt f.CUllJ police off Ic1als and r--------------i Comm ittee
(SNCC) and CORE which we are not work ing." other whites here .
have refused to sign a s tatement When asked why SNCC had
Negroes fr iendly with SNCC HOLLY SPR INGS, MISS - Sum- calling
for a moratorium on ac- refrained from s igning the anti-workers
have been warned not to mer volunteer Wayne Yancey,21, tion
protests until after the demonstration state me nt, Lewis house
them. and policemen have of Chicago, was killed in a hend- November
e lection. T he sta te- sa id "We arc conducting a mas-encouraged
Negroes to run white on automobile collision Aug. 1. ment was
signed by NAACP head s ive voter r egistration campaign SNCC
staffers out of town. Roy Wllkins. Dr. Martin Luthe r in Southwest
Georgia , Centr al Yancey was working in Holly
Bill Hansen, director of the Springs and Marshall County. King,
Jr. , Urban League head Alabama, East Arkansas and Arkansas
Project, reported the He attended Cooley Vocational WhiOley Young
and Negro labor throughout the state of Mississ-fo loowing
incidents : High School in Chicago. and had leader ' A. P hilip
Randolph. ipp i. In the South and throughout
• a carload of white men A second s tatement. condemn- thi s
countr y in communities like finished three years at Mobile
threatened SNCC worker Lar- Economy School in Ann Arbor , ing
violence and the panic ipa- Harlem, Negr oes must be allow-ry
Siegel Mich. tion of " extremists " in the civ il ed [0 protest,
for they are very • a policeman told a local He had been ac tive In
civil rights movement wa s signed by fru s tra ted. despera te and
r est-Negro that whites didn ' t allow r ights in Chicago, and had
been NAACP, SCLC. the Urban Lea- less. Ther e is a need for some
Negroes in their neighbor- an -e!?ted there sever al times. gue ,
Randolph and CORE . SNCC sort of crea tive expression." hoods and
Negroes shouldn"t Cha irman John Lewis r efused to The state ment
was proposed
allow white s In the irs. "'~:'::::::':;----1~S~i~g~n,;"
~S~a~y~in~g~'~'
;.;.~i=s~n~o~t~t!h:e~po~l~ic~y~~C~O~N~T~IN:U~E~D~O~N~P~A~GiE~'~4~':::~
• a judge at a tria l of a white ' FOP spokesmen sa id. man who
assaulted a Negr o Some regular Democrats had during an integra
tion attempt been expected [0 ask for de le-ordered some Negr oes
to ga tes pledged to Republic an can-leave the courtroom. didate
Barry Goldwater. • gr oups of white men have The Freedom Democr
atic Par-bee n ma king night-time vi s it s ty is planning to
challenge the to the home of a l oca l Negr o all-white MiSSiss
ippi regulars at who houses SNCC wQ r kers . the convention in
Atlantic C ity. Telephone threats have been The FOP has rece ived
support rece ived from nine Northe rn s tate dele-• a Negro home
was shot into gations, and thi s week. Georgia' s, five times. only
Negro Senator, A tcorney Le -
Local Negroes ha ve r eported roy J ohnson, announced he would "
mostly unsuccessful" attempts support the FOP. J ohnson is to enter
all white public places. one of four Negr oes named a even after
the passage of the 1964 delegate to the convention from Civil
Rights Act. Geor gia .
Operating from a c entral office The FOP 2nd Congressional in
Pine Bluff . SNCC worker s Dis trict Convention was he ld this ar e
organizing thr oughout the Delta portion of the s ta te. CONTINUED
ON PAGE 4
... and the search continues TheL~1\ tltifwty (Miss.) not [0 be
lieve what they r ead
Messenger has printe
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PAGE 2 AUGUST 5, 1964
EEDOM SCHO ther s and sIsters of the 110 high school students
who walked out of school when four of their number were arr esteu
on a s it-in charge at the Greyhound hus sta tion in 1961.
"1 think the Fl'cedom School is inspiring the people to lend a
1t,IJld in the fight, " Fea ther-stone reports . "The older peo-ple
ar e looking to the young people, ,mel theil' cOllrage, is rubbing
off. The school makes the kiLls fee l they ha ve n' t been
forgutten. It makes them fed that at last something is coming down
to help them. The y fee l the school is for them:'
" 1 am Mississippi bred, 1 am Mississippi f ed,
The McCoinb school swrted in the backyard of the SNCC Free-dom.
House a week after it was bombed. For one week, stlldents conducted
c lasses in the blister-ing hea t only yards away from the spot
where three explosions ripped away one wu ll . Now they al'e in a
church.
I asked for your c hurches , and YOLI turned me down,
But I'll do my work if I have to do it on the ground,
YOli will not speak fur filar of be ing heard,
So YOll crowl in you shell and say, " Do not distrub,"
YOll th ink because you've turn-ed me (lwa y.
You' ve protected yourself Cor another day.
Bue tomorrow surely will come, A nd your enemy will sUll be
there with the r ising sun, He'll be there tomorrow as all
tomorrows in the past, And he 'll follow YOLI into the
future if you le t him pass.
*u from a poem by JOYCE: Brown, 16, Freedom School pupil in
McComb, Mississ ippi
This poem was written by a 16-year old Negro girl in McComb
Miss. She and approx imate ly 1,825 other Negroes -- child-ren ,
teen-agers and adults - - ar e attending the 39 F reedom Schools of
the Miss iss ippi Sum -mer Projec t, sponsored b,)' the Council of
Federated Organi-za t ions (COFO). a statewide organiza tion of
local groups a id-ed by fie ld secr etar ies of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). CORE. NAA -C P. and the
Southern Chr istian Leadership Confe r e nce . T hese s tudents --
go ing to " school" in c hurches. private homes, and backyards are
team-ing Negro hi s tory , civ ics , t\ mcrican history , art s and
crafts dl-ama , music , English, arith-metic , algebr3 ::l.lld
chemistry
They are being tallght by 250 Negro and white summer volun-teers
from 40 states in schools which have been se t lip in every
Mississippi city or town of con-s iderable s ize , as well as in
rur
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VOICE AUGUST 5, 1964 PAGE 3
)LS ISSISSIPPI
poor black boy. "1 am a
Council. and an advisory board member of the Patriotic Ameri-can
Youth. a campus youth or-ganization which shares space with the
John Birch Society in a Jackson bookstore. He also received a
special commenda-tion from the state legislature for refusing adm
ittance for the fifth time to John Frazier, a stu-dent at predom
inantly Negro Tougaloo College.
There are many other such ex-amples of suppression of swder,[
rights, and even offaculty r ight s , e.g., the constant
persecution of Ole Miss Professor . James W. Silver. However. what
is even more chilling is the econo-my of school segrega tion in
Miss-
i ssippi . Despite the fact that Alabama
spends less per pupil, black and white , than any state in the
na-tion. the expenditure in the Miss-issippi Delta is even less.
More important. the di sparity betweer. funds spent per white
student and funds spent per black student is even greater.
In Mississippi, the county ap-propriates funds for education ---
accor ding to its own budgel --- in addition to the funds
con-tributed by the s tate. The fol-lowing is the county
appropria-tion. above the state min imum. for in~on per p'lpil in
1960-61: North Pike County (44. % non-white)
(McComb)
white Negro
South Pike COLUUY (Magnolia)
white •••• Negro ••••
Forrest Counry (28% non white)
• $30.89 • • • •• .76
• ••• $59.55 • • • •• 1.35
white Negro
••••• $67.76 • •• 34.19
Hattiesburg Separate
white • • • • • 0 $ll5.96 Negr o • • •• 61.69
Whites who control Mississ-ippi have little respect for
edu-cation. but use it unscrupulously to prevent Negroes from
obtain-ing the basic de mocratic dght. the right to vote.
For instance. while the State Penitentiary Reform Bill was s
till in the Senate. Sen. Howard McDonnell of Biloxi proposed an
amendment which would require that the superintendent of the
penitentiary have two years of college educa tion. Foes of the
amendment said the requirement would force the ouster of the
pre-sent superintendent. C.Eo Brea-zeale . The amendment fa iled
McDonnell then asked that theSu-perintendent be required to have a
high school education. That a-mendment was also defeated.
Yet, the Mississippi legisla-ture ha s established voter
re-gistration requirements which lawyers contend would be
ex-tremely difficult for anyone with-out a law deg r ee to pass ,
if the
... •... I will be buried in a Mississippi grave,
nothing but a poor dead boy." o •• These words were penned
by a 13-year-old youngster , tests are honestly admin istered..
, ~hers for the month of AUgUSl
The Freedom .schOols are a and expects that schools in five
war aga inst this academic pro-verry. It is not just the
cour-ses provided, but the fact that the schools are a focal point
for personal expression against the oppress ion, on the one hand,
and for personal growth and creativ-ity, on the other. The regular
Mississippi school s are funda-mentally opposed to this
ap-proach.
Mrs. Reese says, "The Free-dom Schools mean an exposure to a
totally new field of learning new attitudes about people, new
attitudes about self, and abo ut the right to be dissatisfied with
the status quo. The children have had no conception that
MissiSSippi is a part of the Uni-ted States ; their view of
Ameri-can history is history with no Negroes in it. It's like
making a cake with no butter 0"
Mrs. Reese e xplains that "M iss i ssippi has sold itse lf
short. There are many good minds here which are be ing used as
sacrifi-:::ial lambs. The children are alert and eager to learn .
If they had something to learn, they'd be happy to learn it:'
Both Mrs. Reese and Feather-stone find them selves faced with
the lUlexpected problem of a pu-pil-teacher ratio which is grow-ing
too large. Mrs. Reese tells of one teacher who is so popular that
he r class has increased from IS to 27 students -- who come every
day. Wahm an is now re-cruiting an additiona l 100 tea-
new communities will be opened then.
Both Fea therstone and Wahman point to the Negro history cur-ric
ulum as possibly the most valuable legacy of the Freedom Schools
this summer. "Th~ only thing our kids knew about Negro history,"
Feather stone says, "is about Booker T . Washington and George
Washington Carver and his peanuts."
But subjects like chemistry and algebra are also popUlar.
Fea-ther s tone told by pupils in the McComb school that Negro
child-ren are taught algebra in high school, but white -children
begin the subject in the sixth grade •. Wahman says that when the
che-mistry teacher left the Gulfport Freedom School, his 15
students also left in protest, and return only when another was
sent into the school.
Mrs. Reese gives an idea what the Hattiesburg schools are
ac-complishing : "The children are learning that somebody is
sup-posed to listen to them. They are writing letters to the editor
of Hatt iesburg newspapers, and learning where to direct their
complaints .. A t first, the child-ren were somewhat awe-stricken
with the white teachers, at their whiteness, their hair, but many
are learning to appreciate them as hum an beings. "When you get an
appr eciation of yourself, then you can put the other indi-vidual
into hi s proper focus."
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PAGE 4 _~~ _ _
~-=-=::-:::A~U_G~US.:-=-.:T....:..5':.-I:.:%.::.:4' _ ___ _ ___ _ _
T::=-_ ___ ..!S~lUr:t:!!D~EN~T~V~O)!I:C:C~E
SHOOTINGS, BEATINGS, BOMBINGS AND BURNINGS CHUtCHES
DESTtOYfD
BRANDON, MISS - The four-teenth church burning since the Summer
Proje"cu began was re-poned here July 31.
The Pleasant Grove Bapti st Church on Highway 80 three mil-es
from here was burned to the grolUld.
Unlike some recent church burn ings in the s tate , Pleasant
Grove had been connected with civil rights activity.
A Mrs. Palmer. whose gr and-father built the c hurch and was the
first pastor sa id she had made speeches about the Miss-issippi
Summer Project at the church. Other reports indicated, however.
that there had been no civil rights activity connected with the
destroyed building.
Fire offic ials from Brandon sa id the church was destroyed so
badly when they arrived, they could do nothing to sa ve it.
Churches have been burned in McComb. J ackson. Madison COWlty.
near Greenwood, in Hat-tiesburg and Moss Point.
In Meridian. the MOWlt Moriah Bapti st Church was discovered
July 30 burned to the ground.
Deputy Sher~ Alton Allen said there was no 'evidence of foul
play~
There have been no arrests in any of the church burnings.
NIGHTtlDEtS ATTACK BATESVILLE, MISS. - N ight-
riders fired three shots past the home of a Negro who Is housing
two volunteers in theMississippi Summer Project July 31.
Kathy Amatnick. 20, a volun-teer. reported the shots were fired
around 11: 30. No one was injured.
The owner of the home. Robert Miles. had received threats. and
on July 25, his home was tear-ga ssed.
During the past week, 100 P an-ola County Negroes wer e regi s
t-ered. The Justice Department was successful in initiating a
"freeze" suit in Panola . demand-ing that registration s tandards
for white s and Negroes be the same.
OffICE SHOT AT GREENWOOD, MISS - Shots
were fired into the SNCC office Aug. 1 and a 93-pound swnmer
volunteer was ::.rreste d f or assault with a deadly weapon.
Carol K-ornile ld, 21, of Bayside, N.Y •• was held under $1,000
bail in the Leflore County J ail.
She allegedly threw a brick through the window of a store owned
by Greenwood Policel7,an " Slim" Hender son. Henderson pulled a
pregnant woman along a Greenwood street during a Free-dom Day two
weeks ago. (See July 22 SlUDENT VOICE)_ Three other local
Negroes
were al so jailed Aug. 2. and a local volunteer worker, J ohn
Handy, ", was beaten in the jail AUg. I.
Handy, who was char ged with
and policemen drive through the Negro neighborhoods "making
arrests for little or no reason:'
VOLUNTEEtS IEATEN CARTHAGE, MlSS~ - A sum-
mer volunteer and a Iowa min-is ter were beaten in a doctor's
office near here July 31~
John Polacheck. the volunteer, and Rev. Edward K. He ininger.
from Des Moines, Iowa. report-ed they were attacked in the of-fice
of a white doctor in Mad-den. 12 miles from here.
Rev. Heininger said the doc-tor asked him if he was" s tay-ing
with those Negroes in Ha r-mony" where a carom unity cen-ter is
being built by local Ne-groes.
While they we r e speakbtg. Heininger said, "I was suddenly hit
from behind; at the same time they were hitting me with their fists
and the doctor was pushing me from the front into the people who
were hitting me:'
Between five and 10 men did the bea ting, he said.
Both Heininger and polacheck were arres ted and charged with
disturbing the peace. They were
reieased on $100 bond.
"disorderly conduct:' said in a NOT E TO OUR READERS sworn
statement Greenwood po-licemen beat and kicked him and If you are
receiving more than tore his three-inch beard out one STUDENT
VOICE, or if your with their hands . address is incorrect. please
let
MRS, FANNIE LOU HAMER
MISS, DEMOCRATS CONTINUED FROM P AGE I weekend in
Greenville.-
The party received additional support from Massachusetts
De-mocrats . who ar e al ready on r e-cord - with Democr atic
groups from eight other states - against the seating of the regular
De-mocrats. A t least six mem ber s of the delegation from
Massachu-setts "have publicly s tated their support for the seating
of MFDP.
Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville. who opposed Repre-sentative
J amie Whitten of the 2nd Dis trict , is touring Northern states
seek1ng support for the party.
The party has established an office in Washington, at 1353 U
Street, N. W.
ACTION TRUCE us know.
"They threw me up against the t--:::::~==~=-----~ CONTINUED FROM
PAGE 1 concrete wall," Handy said. " I was wearing a rather long
THE STUDENT VOICE by Wilkins after recent riots
Published Once A Week t igg d in H I b th h goatee. They pluc
ked it out r ere ar em yes oot-On Monday s At Atlanta, lIt' g of a
13 year old N ~o
with their hands:' - - eO"" . SNCC worker s r eport Green- By
~~~;~;~u~~ic~~' INC, A survey of local civil rights
wood is " very tense." Cars drive groups acros s the country
in-6 Ray mond Street. N, W, dicated few would follow the pro-
by the office during, the night, _~Atlankl . Geo rl!ia 30314
posed ban.
In Pine Bluff. Ark., J. Albert Bagsby. president of the pine
Bluff Movement. said his followers would be "guided by the local
situation r ather than de-cisions reached on the national
level."
Pittsburgh NAACP leaders sa id they would demonstrate tithe
~Q 'c) T-f1~~ ~ ''VQ ~H b~'t.~
local scene r equired protests. Stanley Branche. head of the
Freedom Now Committee in Chester I P a., 'sa id demonstra-tions
would be continued. Bran-che said protests were lithe only way we
got as far as we have.1t
~("l~~ 't 'crr"kt tv£L-~La , Ol:!6!4:J!W 'L ~!Ol~aa
! pleMpOOM SOLS ~:::>NS !O SPUo?J~.5!.,/\~:~!gllv
'N,N 'I"'IS puowAo~ 9
Two New York leader s, the Rev. Milton Ga la mison and Jesse
Gray. said Harle m protests would go on. The ir sentiments were
echoed by Br onx CORE leader Herbert Callender, who said " as long
as unjus t conditions exist we will demonstrate."