Insensitive Red Cross staffers administered a system of vouchers which were apparently intended to make relief available on the basis of need, but there appeared to be no rhyme or reason behind their decisions to grant clothing or goods vouchers to one family but not to another similarly situated or worse off. I had lost my automobiles and all of my clothing except two jumpsuits. My home and office were badly damaged. I had a pair of flip-flops but no shoes. There were no stores open in our area, and no transportation was available to take us elsewhere. In this situation, I attempted to get a pair of shoes from the Red Cross. Red Cross relief workers denied me any shoes, because, as the Red Cross worker put it, “Well, you’re a doctor and you don’t need help.” I said, “Yeah, but Camille did not know that when she took everything I own.” Family members eventually sent us some shoes and clothing. However, others were denied who had no family resources to fall back upon. Families in need of relief found themselves bounced from the Red Cross to the Small Business Administration and back to the Red Cross for recovery loans and grants for housing repairs or to replace clothes, furniture, and household items. If a family qualified for an SBA recovery loan, the Red Cross was no longer involved. Only after the SBA found a family ineligible would the Red Cross step in with long-term assistance. My nurse, Mrs. Melvina Davis Smith, received emergency food aid from the Red Cross right after the hurricane, as did thousands of others like her. She, like other victims, was then sent to the SBA to determine her loan eligibility. The SBA denied her husband and her a loan because she was considered too old; at fifty-two, she could not be relied upon to pay back a ten-thousand-dollar loan before retirement or death overtook her. Denied at the SBA, she and many others were thrown back on the Red Cross for long-term help.
The local Red Cross chapter, like most Mississippi institutions, had a recent history of discrimination. Only in 1969 was the first black person, Dr. John Kelly, named to the local Red Cross board. Now, as events unfolded after Camille, old attitudes and habits reappeared. Black folks appeared to be the last to be waited on and the last to receive Red Cross services. Clothing and food came to us last. Many people, worn down by the red tape, intricate bureaucratic processes, and sense of humiliation, just gave up, saying, “I don’t want to be made to feel like I am begging.” By September 9, 1969, so few black folks had been served, and of these so many complained of bad treatment at Red Cross hands, that the NAACP branch conducted a survey of 143 families to determine their needs and the responsiveness of the Red Cross in meeting those needs in the three weeks after the storm hit. We discovered that almost all of the 143 families surveyed were dissatisfied. We found that twenty families had received emergency aid from the Red Cross immediately after the storm, but had not been told that they would have to register again for long-term recovery assistance. Twenty-five other families had been given forms to fill out for long-term assistance but had not returned the forms because the need to return them had not been emphasized. The Red Cross made it a prerequisite that individuals apply to the Small Business Administration for loans before completing their Red Cross applications for long-term aid. The Red Cross had not called any public meetings to explain these procedures to residents in the storm impact area. Sixty families had returned forms requesting long-term assistance, but no Red Cross caseworkers had called upon them by September 19. Another thirty-two families had their cases closed, and most were not satisfied with their disposition and wanted the cases reopened.
With these facts in hand, the executive committee of the Biloxi branch met with the director of Red Cross operations on September 19» 1969» to present our findings and try to effect changes in the Red Cross approach to our community. We demanded that Red Cross personnel stop denigrating black folks seeking help. We demanded that more local blacks be hired to work with Red Cross relief services as a means of helping the agency present a fair and friendly face to those in need. We asked that either the Biloxi branch of the NAACP be permitted to bring handicapped, elderly, and disabled persons to Red Cross headquarters for immediate service, or that the Red Cross allow NAACP volunteers to take necessary forms, information, and services to these victims. Finally, we asked that the Red Cross files be opened to the branch so as to cross-index Red Cross information with our survey information. We made it known that we would be prepared to stage street demonstrations if the problems were not resolved. As a consequence of this confrontation, which was coupled with follow-up letter writing and branch meetings, business really picked up at the Red Cross. Three local blacks were hired. The Biloxi branch was permitted to aid the elderly, handicapped, and disabled, and the Red Cross files were opened for our research and inspection.
However, the grudging demeanor and denigrating attitudes of Red Cross service workers did not go away. Many poor persons, white and black, made four, five, six, or more visits to the Red Cross. Each time they were made to wait in line for a considerable time and then turned away and told to return another day. After repeated appointments many found themselves denied aid, or they were given such small amounts of assistance as to make the time invested in waiting appear to be a wasted effort. Our Biloxi NAACP began investigating cases closed unsatisfactorily as they were brought to our attention. When we thought there were good grounds for reopening a case, we wrote letters asking the Red Cross to reconsider its decision. These efforts usually produced positive results. However, because local NAACP intervention was vital to so many people, there were days when my office looked more like a social welfare agency than a medical practice. We were certainly willing to take on these chores as part of our broadened human rights commitment, and we undertook interventions on behalf of white as well as black citizens. However, we felt that a more rational, professional, systematic, fair, and courteous Red Cross effort would have made it unnecessary for us to expend so much energy and time in this way.
These problems were compounded by the fact that large numbers of people in the black community were left unemployed because of damage to local businesses, and state government failed to make information available on how to file for unemployment compensation in such an emergency situation. Further, few citizens on the Biloxi peninsula and fewer black citizens had flood insurance on their dwellings and household furnishings. Those of us who did have insurance were caught in a bind between urgent needs to make repairs and the machinations of adjustors and insurance companies who often offered immediate checks for those willing to take low-estimate settlements. Those who could afford to hold out longer often found that their insurance benefits somehow magically increased, but not usually to the full value of items lost or needing repair. We therefore had an immediate need for legal services. There was a legal aid office operating on a federal legal services grant in the Biloxi courthouse. We were concerned that the fact that there were no black attorneys on staff tended to make needy black persons reticent about seeking help there. We were able to get several black attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to come down from Jackson to offer assistance, but the district attorney declined their offers to assist the county’s own legal aid attorneys. In fairness, I must say that there were no reports of discrimination on the part of local legal aid attorneys in handling these many insurance claims. Our concern was that the lack of black faces might discourage people from seeking the legal aid they needed in dealing with insurance companies.
Emergency housing was another pressing need. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development responded by sending hundreds of mobile home units to the affected area. However, when the trailer units first arrived, there was little information about the conditions on which this form of long-term housing assistance would be made available. The result was far fewer black applicants than would have been expected given the serious damage to dwellings in the black neighborhoods. Mr. Matt Lyons of the Biloxi Housing Authority consulted the Biloxi branch’s executive committee. We were quick to identify a serious lack of communications and the existence of inaccurate rumors that kept b
lack folks from applying for these units, which were set up on existing housing authority sites. The specter of long-term unemployment in the wake of the storm damage made many families fearful of taking on additional rent or house payments, which were rumored to range as high as sixty-five to eighty-five dollars per month. The Biloxi branch took responsibility for distributing accurate information about the more generous terms available based on need. The response from HUD was sufficient to insure that, within a few weeks, no one was without adequate shelter for the winter. We did raise complaints about continuing patterns of segregation in public housing. Three of Biloxi’s four existing public housing developments were desegregated, but one site remained virtually all white despite our constant protests.
On another front, black community leaders across the coast held out hope that clean-up and reconstruction efforts in the wake of the storm would be a stimulus to black entrepreneurship. With plenty of work to go around we hoped that small contractors and black contractors would get a fair share. However, for a small operator to be successful in a cleanup or reconstruction bid, a substantial up-front capital outlay was often necessary in order to purchase additional tractors, trucks, or other equipment and tools. The SBA seemed just the agency to provide loans for such capital outlays, and with lots of work guaranteed it looked like minority operators might now easily qualify for equipment loans. Dr. Felix Dunn, the president of the Gulfport branch of the NAACP, became the point man for gathering and distributing SBA information to minority contractors. Unfortunately the great hope felt at early SBA staff meetings with minority contractors in Gulfport and Biloxi went largely unfulfilled. Red tape at the SBA was as bad or worse than Red Cross red tape. The SBA proved to be difficult in its insistence on collateral to back loans to expand minority operations. Even where sufficient collateral existed, there were long delays between application submissions and loan approvals. Dr. Dunn’s personal SBA application for loans to repair his home and office entailed at least a five-month waiting period for approval. As a result there were far fewer minority SBA loans than our assumptions of fairness had led us to expect.
Local NAACP leaders brought these problems to the attention of local authorities where appropriate, but we also laid our observations boldly before the U.S. Senate Special Subcommittee on Disaster Relief, which held hearings in Biloxi in January of 1970. The subcommittee was chaired by Senator Edmund Muskie and included Senator Bob Dole, Senator Birch Bayh, and Senator William Spong. From three days of hearings in Biloxi and additional hearings in Virginia, this subcommittee proposed legislation which totally reformed federal emergency responses and led to the creation of the modern Federal Emergency Management Agency. I gave lengthy testimony, as did Mrs. Marjorie Reese of our branch, Dr. Felix Dunn of the Gulfport branch, and Dr. J. O. Tate of Pass Christian. Our local NAACP leadership candidly and publicly brought each of our concerns to the senators. We gave voice to the dispossessed. We felt that we were heard. We had the satisfaction of seeing federal legislation enacted to meet many of our concerns. The responses of FEMA and the Red Cross to recent storms have shown a vast improvement in speed, fairness, and sensitivity. We think that the candor and assertiveness of a dedicated group of local civil rights activists in Mississippi in the late 1960s and early 1970s contributed substantially to that improvement.
In addition to dealing with deficiencies in private and federal disaster relief, the Biloxi branch became concerned with the state of Mississippi’s own tardy recovery response. In the fall of 1969, Governor John Bell Williams appointed a special Governor’s Emergency Council to help plan for and coordinate the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s long-range reconstruction. As first announced, the Governor’s Emergency Council was all white and all male. Having endured the storm of the century, which ignored no person based on race or gender, the Biloxi branch was determined that the state’s recovery planning should not ignore any significant segment of the community. Our local black political power had been growing with increasing voter registration throughout the 1960s. On the coast, because of a sufficient black turnout in the Regular Democratic Party caucuses leading up to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, I was elected a national convention delegate in the Regular (rather than the alternative Freedom Democrat) delegate selection process. The Biloxi branch flexed that political muscle by lodging a vigorous protest when Governor Williams announced the appointment of his all-white, all-male emergency council. We enlisted the assistance of state representative Robert Clark, the first black elected to the Mississippi legislature since the end of Reconstruction. We complained both to the governor and to the Senate Committee on Public Works as it was making plans for the Gulf Coast hearings of the Special Subcommittee on Disaster Relief. Others joined us in objecting to the lack of representation of the total population on this potentially vital recovery board.
Just days before the U.S. Senate Special Subcommittee on Disaster Relief opened its hearings in Biloxi, Governor John Bell Williams decided to expand his emergency council by adding three black men and a white woman to its composition. I was appointed to the expanded Governor’s Emergency Council, along with Dr. Douglas Conner of Starkville and Mr. Travillion, a black funeral director from Pascagoula. We joined prominent bankers and businessmen to help shape the coast’s future. I had just stepped down as chairman of the board of the Harrison County Community Action Agency, and I felt that I was able to bring to the table significant insights about the community that would be unavailable to other members of the council. I hoped that my own familiarity with individuals in high and low places would serve as a leveling influence as we reviewed reconstruction proposals, grant applications, and loan requests.
As a member of the Governor’s Emergency Council, I came to know and respect several other members whose attitudes transcended the state’s image of recalcitrant resistance to change. I was particularly impressed with Meridian businessman Gil Carmichael, who was one of the founders of the modern Mississippi Republican Party. It is sad that many rightwing elements in that party today reject Carmichael’s moderation. Over the past twenty years, the Republican Party in Mississippi has become a comfortable home for many former Democrats who are conservative and segregationist. I never for a moment saw a hint of any racial bias in Gil Carmichael. Gil Carmichael combined a businessman’s acumen and a scholar’s habit of careful thought with a genuine love for humanity. He was in many respects a visionary who held out the hand of friendship to all. I had no doubt that Gil Carmichael shared my view that positive race relationships and a climate affirming human dignity would be keys to Mississippi’s future progress and success in economic development. I was proud that Mississippi could produce such a fine human being. I also learned from attorney Edward Brunini’s astute appraisals of the potential opportunities before us. I valued my acquaintance with Mr. Leo Seal, an important coast banker. I believe that my time on the Governor’s Emergency Council was well spent. No council or committee accomplishes all that is hoped for at its inception. This group did exercise a positive influence in shaping reconstruction policy and priorities, and it was able to provide additional insight and feedback to the federal government that was used in the legislative reshaping of federal emergency responses.
I had made quite a personal journey during the decade of the 1960s. From appearing before a municipal judge and being convicted as a repeat offender for venturing onto a segregated beach, I had moved to the rarified air of the Governor’s Emergency Council. My commitment to civil rights and to local activism remained unchanged. If anything, these broadening experiences made me even more cognizant of the importance of the struggle for human dignity and opportunity to the overall well-being of Mississippi and America. While the nature of the civil rights agenda had changed, the importance of carrying on the struggle had not. The destiny of the nation is, after all, tied inextricably to the fate of “the least of these.”
TEN
Inclusion, Influence, and Public Responsibilities
If you can trust
yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:…
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;…
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it….
—Rudyard Kipling, from “If”
WHEN GEORGE WASHINGTON’S RAGTAG ARMY TOOK THE surrender of the British troops at Yorktown during the American Revolution, a British army band played a tune called “The World Turned Upside Down.” As a part of the second American Revolution, the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, I never heard that tune played, but I certainly understood its meaning. The world of Mississippi politics literally turned upside down in the late 1960s. A poor black boy delivered by a midwife on Riggins Alley in Jackson, Mississippi, had made his way from sitting in the back of the bus to receiving a presidential invitation to the White House, and, with some insistence, to obtaining a state governor’s appointment to his emergency council. This did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because freedom-loving Mississippians in Biloxi and elsewhere filled every “unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run…” By the time of Hurricane Camille, political inclusion was before us. Our influence was rising, and with that influence came responsibility. Beyond the Governor’s Emergency Council, there were other federal, state, and local appointments on the horizon as we moved slowly and sometimes haltingly from systematic exclusion to systematic inclusion. There were new lessons to be learned that could only be learned in taking up a share of the responsibility in decision making for the community at large. From the outside we had learned to diagnose the ills of official policy. Now, we had to make the leap from diagnosis to treatment. African American southerners had to undertake the hard work of helping to build and revitalize their cities, their states, and their nation from inside the political and governmental arena.
Beaches, Blood, and Ballots Page 26