Toward the end of 1959, my friends foiled an assassination plot in which the would-be paid murderer, a black man, actually gained entry into my home. We were still living in the Nixon Street Apartments at the time. I was at home one evening when this dude knocked on the door wanting to see me. I recognized the man. Though I did not consider him a personal friend, I had treated members of his family. We let him in the door. I noticed that he had a big bulge in his pocket. Before I knew it, my security guards rushed into the apartment. They would not leave me alone with this man. Our would-be assailant started fumbling around aimlessly and talking about needing a house call. When I declined to go with him, he left. Later we were told that some whites had put a black nightclub manager up to hiring this hit man. My guards had learned about the plot but had not told me. They knew exactly what was going on when the man showed up at my door with his pocket bulging. We knew the club manager who had hired him, but we never found out exactly who was ultimately behind this plot.
Meanwhile, I had sent our beach petition with the thick packet of Knox Walker’s research to Dr. James Nabrit at Howard University School of Law. Nabrit turned over our material and maps to his law students and professors for further research and argument in Howard University Law School’s moot court. The law students picked the case apart, debated it, and rendered a verdict just as if they were before the Supreme Court. Again, all of this was done on my initiative. There was no NAACP involvement at this point. I found out that Dr. Nabrit would be coming to the all-black Louisiana Teachers’ Association meeting in New Orleans in November of 1959. I asked him for an audience so that we could discuss his opinion of our case. He agreed to a meeting. On November 23, 1959, I gathered up our petition, maps, and copies of minute book entries and drove over to New Orleans, by myself, to see Nabrit. I met him at the home of Dan Byrd, executive director of the Louisiana Teachers’ Association. Here we talked at length about the background of the beach problem in Harrison County. Nabrit asked a lot of questions and finally pointed to the map on which I had redlined the portions of the beach reclaimed with public money. He said, “We find that there’s no reason why you can’t go anywhere along that beach.” Nabrit asked me to bring my attorney and Felix Dunn for a second meeting the next night. It was late when I got back to Biloxi, but I went ahead and called Felix and Knox Walker to ask if they would go back to New Orleans with me the next night. I had given Knox Walker a good fee for his services, and when he heard that Nabrit wanted to talk to him in person, Knox agreed to go. So did Dr. Dunn. I really think that Knox Walker was always proud that we had brought him in on this. Nabrit cross-examined Knox and Dr. Dunn about the facts in the case. Satisfied that he knew all that he needed to know, Nabrit told Knox about Howard University law school’s conclusion that the public money spent on seawall and beach construction and the supervisors’ agreement to open the beach to the public in perpetuity gave black people the same rights to the beach as anyone else. I was elated with these findings and wanted to implement a mass wade-in right then.
Our petition to the Harrison County Board of Supervisors was still hanging in limbo. With all of the threats flying, it appeared useless to go back to the board of supervisors or to city officials with our problem. A lawsuit looked like the best course of action. However, we believed that we would have to get ourselves arrested in order to move the dispute into court. We suspected that we would lose in the local courts, but we wanted to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. We began talking up a large-scale wade-in for the spring of 1960. At a mass meeting on October 22, 1959, the Harrison County Civic Action Committee had adopted the goal of carrying out a county-wide wade-in. We had named the plan Operation Surf. We knew that getting large numbers of people involved would take time and many additional meetings and rallies. If we were successful, mass arrests in the spring would produce the court challenge we needed.
When Knox Walker told us that he would take our case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for ten thousand dollars, we had already started raising money for the fight. Ten thousand dollars was quite a large sum in 1959 and 1960. We touched everybody we could think of for money. We wrote to our friends, classmates, and black organizations statewide and nationwide soliciting support for our cause. In January of 1960, Felix Dunn and I made a trip up to Clarksdale to see if Aaron Henry could point us to some good donors. There was as yet no mention of bringing in the NAACP legal staff. On this same trip we called on Grand Master James Gillam, the top official for Mississippi’s black M. W. Stringer Grand Lodge of Prince Hall-Affiliated Masonic lodges. We also tried to see the top state black Elks Lodge officer, Mr. Cochran. These black lodge organizations sent donations. Money started trickling in little by little. A retired black physician in New Jersey sent a letter congratulating me for taking up the fight for the beach and enclosed ten or fifteen dollars. Black lodges and benevolent groups sent ten dollars here and there. Some churches contributed a little. Felix Dunn put some money up, but in the end most of what was paid to Knox Walker for his services came out of my pocket. Of course, I was the one who eventually got into the most trouble with the law, and Knox had to go to trial with me twice in 1960.
While we slowly accumulated financial resources, we promoted and planned the mass wade-in. Our target date for Operation Surf was Easter Sunday, April 17, 1960. We hoped to generate simultaneous challenges to the race restrictions all along the twenty-six-mile shoreline from Biloxi to Pass Christian. Under the auspices of the Harrison County Civic Action Committee and the Biloxi Civic League, we held more rounds of meetings in Gulfport and Biloxi, all pointing toward an April 17 wade-in. With things moving at a slow pace after our October petition, folks in Biloxi seemed especially anxious to carry out this new plan. As a matter of fact, our last meeting in preparation for the April 17 wade-in was held in Biloxi at New Bethel Baptist Church. Everybody said, “Doc, we’re right behind you. We’ll be there on Sunday at one o’clock.” Of course, I assured every-body that I would be there. I knew that I would be arrested, so I arranged for Natalie and our friend Mr. Wilmer McDaniel to be ready to bail me out.
At my church on Easter morning, April 17, 1960, as Dr. John Ware, now professor of music at Xavier University, remembers, I made a final appeal for people to join me on the beach that afternoon. At the appointed hour, 1:00 P.M., I rolled up to the beach and parked my car near the Biloxi lighthouse. The place was practically deserted. No one showed up from my church. In fact, nary another black soul appeared on the scene. If I was going onto the beach, it looked like I would have to go by myself. Still, I was determined that even if no one else went, I was going. I stripped down to my swimming trunks, walked onto the sand beach, and went into the water alone. After about ten minutes, a Biloxi motorcycle cop, Officer Vene Lee, pulled up, dismounted, and walked to the edge of the seawall bordering the beach. He yelled, “Boy, don’t you know you can’t swim down here?” I ignored him. Soon he said, “Oh, that ain’t no boy. That’s Dr. Mason.” When he called me by name, I responded. “What’s the matter, officer?” I asked. He said, “You can’t swim here. We’ve told you that you can’t swim here.” I said, “Well, why can’t I swim here?” He just repeated himself, “Well, we’ve told you.” I asked, “Am I under arrest?” He answered, “Yeah, you’re under arrest, but I’ll let you drive your car to police headquarters.” When I got there they took my name, charged me with disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, booked me, and fingerprinted me. When Natalie arrived, she heard Biloxi police chief Herbert McDonnell go on a verbal rampage, cursing and threatening to get someone to beat me up if I ever put my “ass on that goddam beach again.” Natalie and McDaniel immediately bailed me out. Natalie again swore an affidavit to document the chiefs threat. My trial date was set for the next day, Monday, at 6:00 P.M., in city court before Judge Jules Schwan, Sr.
Dr. Dunn reported that he and his wife, Sarah, and their children had attempted to swim at Gulfport that day. As Dr. Dunn told it to me at the time, Mayor R. B. Meado
ws himself asked the Dunns off the beach. Dr. Dunn complied with the mayor’s request. There was some bad talk, but there were no actual arrests or charges filed in Gulfport. This is all that Dr. Dunn reported to me in 1960 as having happened that day. Moreover, Gulfport’s restraint in removing but not arresting Dr. Dunn was never represented to me as in any way implying a softening of that city’s racerestrictive policy on the beach. To the contrary, the Sovereignty Commission files make it clear that Mayor Meadows intended to continue a segregationist policy of excluding blacks from the beach. In a memorandum dated May 4, 1960, agent Zack Van Landingham summarized a conversation he had with the Gulfport mayor on April 29. Van Landingham reported that Mayor Meadows bragged that he had “run Dr. Dunn and his family off the beach” on April 17. Moreover, Meadows allegedly stated to Van Landingham that he (Meadows) was “through handling the Negroes with kid gloves.”5 According to Mrs. Lola Baker, when she and her family attempted to swim off Thornton Avenue in July of 1959, the Gulfport police removed her family from the beach but did not arrest her.6 Forcefully removing blacks from the beach without arresting them appeared to be the Gulfport approach to resisting desegregation.
The one-man challenge to Jim Crow on Biloxi beach and the reported small group challenge in Gulfport were all that seemed to have materialized of the Operation Surf mass wade-in plan. The city of Biloxi was the only municipality to actually arrest and charge anyone that day. So, I was the only black arrested anywhere on the twenty-six-mile Mississippi Gulf Coast beachfront on April 17, 1960. The county-wide mass wade-in that we had spent months planning and promoting had all but failed to materialize in Biloxi, and it was inconsequential elsewhere. Just eleven months earlier nine of us had initiated the first wade-in. We had spent almost a year following that event trying to overcome the reticence due to fear which existed in the hearts of our people. We had worked hard to build support for Operation Surf in the black community in Gulfport and Biloxi. We had invested time and personal finances in legal research and petitioning. Joseph Austin and Eulice White had lost their jobs. We had endured Klan threats and cross burnings. We had seen our names on a hit list and had dealt with a would-be murderer in our home. We had written letter after letter to raise money for a lawsuit. Wherever we had spoken, black folks had said they were behind us. They had said they supported our goal of free access to the whole beach. After all of this effort, and after so many had professed confidence in our goals and methods, I was quite surprised when no one showed up in Biloxi to wade in with me.
I was surprised, but I was not defeated. I remained confident in the rightness of going to the beach. Like a good Scout I had done my best. The tenth rule of the Boy Scout Law came to mind at that time. “A Scout is brave. He has the courage to face danger in spite of fear and to stand up under the coaxing and jeers of enemies. And defeat does not down him.” I was not down in spirit. At least my second foray onto the beach had gotten the issue into court. If convicted, I still had every intention of appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, even if I had to go it alone. Little did I know that my solitary arrest would inspire a new resolve throughout the black community in Biloxi. Sunday, April 17, 1960, turned out to be the last time I had to go swimming alone. The next Sunday, things were very different.
FIVE
The Bloody Wade-In
The hand of the Lord was upon me, and… set me down in a valley which was full of bones,… and, lo they were very dry. And He said unto me, “Son of Man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” Again He said unto me, “Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: … and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”
—Ezekiel 37:1–6
I WAS ALONE WHEN I WENT ONTO BILOXI BEACH ON SUNday, April 17. I was not alone when I went to court the next night. Something was happening to the spirits of people in the back-of-town section where I lived and worked. On the Monday after my arrest, a group of teenagers from Nichols High School stopped by my office to see me between patients. Ethel Rainey, and, I believe, James Black were in this group. Ethel did most of the talking. I think that she summarized a feeling in the black community about my arrest when she said, “We’ve got a family affair here. Doc, I know you went [to the beach] yesterday by yourself, but if you will organize us, we’ll go back [to the beach] next Sunday.” There in my office, at the behest of Ethel Rainey and her friends, we began organizing a new wade-in attempt in Biloxi for Sunday, April 24. The circle of willing waders quickly broadened to include adults as well as youth. One of those rare moments of action was developing. You could almost feel the rising tide of sentiment. In the neighborhood people were talking, saying things like, “This is my doctor going down on the beach,” or “He’s a member of my church. He’s my lodge brother. I’m going to support him.”
By Monday evening at 6:00 P.M., when my trial came up in municipal court, it felt as if practically the entire black population of Biloxi had enlisted in my cause. The old Biloxi municipal courthouse sat in the middle of Main Street at its intersection with Howard Avenue. Let me tell you, I was so proud to see the turnout of black folks. Now, there were some right-thinking white folks there, too, but I was so proud to see the black community overcoming its fears to show its support. On the way into the courthouse I saw that things were not well with an angry section of the white community. A crowd of white ruffians pushed and pulled on me and on my attorney, Knox Walker. They tried to keep us from entering the building. Somehow we just walked on through the goons and made our way into the courtroom to the defendant’s table. Inside, at least two hundred Negroes filled all the seats on the side of the courtroom reserved for blacks and stood around the walk. I felt like Moses watching the children of Israel cross the Red Sea. Some of the faces, white and black, in that room are still influential in the community today. Judge Jules Schwan presided. My case was the last one on the city court docket that evening. Officer Vene Lee took the witness stand to describe my swim at the beach on April 17. The officer reported accurately that he had found me swimming about a hundred feet from shore between the Buena Vista Hotel and the Biloxi lighthouse. The city prosecutor, John Sekul, also called Assistant Police Chief Walter Williams and perhaps Mayor Quave to testify that I was a repeat offender. I had been caught on the beach twice within a year’s time. After the first incident, they said correctly, I had been told not to go back, or I would face arrest. They said that I had stated to them that I would go again to the beach, even if arrested. In their view I had been given ample warning after the first offense. My defense was simple. There was no law prohibiting anyone from using the beach. In fact, we argued, the beach was maintained with public money and thus should be open to all members of the public.
When both sides rested, Judge Schwan turned to us and said, “I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m going to take this case under advisement.” I looked at Knox Walker, my attorney, and asked, “What does that mean?” Knox replied, “He wants to think about it.” It was a risky case involving the first civil disobedience activity of any kind in Mississippi. Judge Schwan wanted to delay his pronouncement. Well, of course, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I immediately posted bond to appeal Judge Schwan’s ruling, whenever he might release it. As fate would have it though, he never ruled in the case, so it was never sent over to county court. The Sovereignty Commission files show that delaying the ruling was a concerted strategy which Biloxi officials undertook with the blessing of Governor Ross Barnett. Sovereignty Commission agents reported that both Mayor Quave and Governor Barnett thought that I would ultimately win an appeal, but they thought that if they could delay the court decision long enough, they could wear us out.1
The following Wednesday evening, Dr. Felix Dunn chaired a meeting of the Harrison County Civic Action Committee in Biloxi. There we reported on the events of April 17 and finalized plans for a new Biloxi wad
e-in attempt to be made on April 24. The participants would assemble at my office on Division Street and proceed in three groups to three designated areas on the beach. One group would wade-in at the foot of Gill Avenue west of the lighthouse. A second group would hit the beach a few hundred yards down the beach at the lighthouse itself. A third group was assigned an area a mile farther to the east in front of the Biloxi Hospital. We coached our people on nonviolent tactics. Nothing was to be taken to the beach that could in any way be used as or even construed to be a weapon. No pocketknives, no combs, no hair picks or pins were allowed. If attacked, we would cover our heads and tuck if we could. I did not anticipate any violence. During the previous year, both the mayor and the chief of police had yelled at me, cursed me, and threatened me. However, my actual arrests had been nonviolent, and the arresting officers had been reasonably courteous. I thought that we would be removed from the beach, but that law enforcement would surely protect us from bodily harm. In Biloxi, Mayor Quave and Chief McDonnell had made some rabid statements to me. However, we thought that enough dialogue had gone on with other city and county officials since our October petition that right-thinking white folks would not interfere with our demonstration. Under the impression that county officials had ultimate authority over the beach, Dr. Dunn testified publicly that he had called Sheriff Curtis Dedeaux to inform him of our intentions to carry out a peaceful demonstration on the beach on Sunday, April 24.2 I have no doubt that Dr. Dunn, like any good citizen, expected protection from the sheriff. No one anticipated what was to transpire. I was certainly naive about the meanness of the Biloxi establishment and the meanness of Biloxi’s white rabble.
Beaches, Blood, and Ballots Page 10