Also on the guest list were Kenneth Norman Head and Buck Horton, both of Vidalia. They were linked, along with Glover and local law officers, with the disappearance of Joseph Edwards. Three months before the fish fry, two FBI agents asked to see Head’s driver’s license. As Head pulled the license from his wallet, a silver coin fell to the ground. One of the agents inspected the piece, an 1878 Liberty Head silver dollar. “Is this a lucky piece?” he asked. No, Head answered, it was just an old silver dollar he hoped to sell to a collector one day.26
From Ferriday came E. D. Morace, James L. Scarborough, and Woodrow “Blue” Holloway, all present or former officers in the Ferriday-Clayton Klan. Scarborough served as Exalted Cyclops in 1965 and was involved in wrecking crew projects. Sonny Taylor came from his home in Harrisonburg in neighboring Catahoula Parish. While two informants said Ernest Avants of Mississippi attended the fish fry, others didn’t recall seeing him there.
After eating, Lee and Taylor left the gathering, returning a while later with two dummy grenades, a two-foot-long stick of dynamite, one roll of dynamite fuse, and one roll of pink primer cord the diameter of a cigarette. Jack Seale put a match to a section of the dynamite fuse, but it burned out. When he moved to touch the match to the pink fuse, Taylor warned him he would blow everyone up if he did that. Then the Klansmen attempted to make black powder by mixing pieces of dynamite, charcoal, sulphur, and borax. They placed the black powder mixture into a dummy grenade with the dynamite fuse stuck in the end. They lit the fuse, but it didn’t explode.27
Although there was no success that day, Glover keenly observed the experiments with Metcalfe in mind. FBI agents would later interview known attendees of the fish fry, but none would remember discussing Metcalfe, not even those later recruited by the FBI as informants. Yet Glover had succeeded in one thing: If he successfully bombed Metcalfe, every man who had been at the fish fry would be considered part of a conspiracy and therefore be less prone to snitch.
One SDG member never made the meeting. Tommie Lee Jones was a suspect in several crimes, including the beatings of black men in Concordia Parish and Adams County and the arson of Jake’s Place in Natchez. En route to the fish fry from his home in Natchez, he was arrested by Ferriday police for pistol-whipping a black man with a .25 caliber revolver. Jones claimed that the man had cut him off on the highway. At the scene of the accident, the officers observed blood pouring from a cut to the victim’s head, the imprint of the pistol butt clearly visible. Inside Jones’s car was a massive German shepherd. The officers instantly tagged Jones a “smart mouth” and took him to the Ferriday jail, where he was booked for assault with a gun and disturbing the peace. Once the officers realized that Jones was a notorious Klansman, fearing trouble due to the tense racial climate, they informed Mayor Woodie Davis that they had Jones in custody. The mayor, who was at a softball game, instructed the police to set bond at $500 and lock up Jones until the bond was made. Jones called his wife, who called Scarborough.28
Before midnight, a number of Klansmen were at the Ferriday police station. Scarborough paid the $500 bond in $20 bills. The charges against Jones were reduced because the arresting officer feared the Klan might retaliate against the black man if Jones was convicted of a felony. Jones was found guilty of disturbing the peace and received a suspended sentence of sixty days in jail or a $150 fine. He paid $50 total on July 3. The remaining balance was waived.29
IN LATE AUGUST, Lee summoned Morace to his house and said that he and Taylor had “a nigger they wanted to get,” without identifying the target. Lee indicated that he and Taylor had failed in an attempt to set off an explosive charge placed on an oak stump and wired to the spark plugs of Lee’s 1952 Chevrolet. However, when they touched the wires to the ignition coil, the charge “blew the stump to bits.” Lee wondered if the coil, an electrical transformer that ignited the spark plugs, held a constant electric charge. Morace, who was a mechanic, said that it did, but if the car switch was off, there was no charge. Lee wondered if the coil on a six-cylinder Chevrolet could be reached from underneath the car. Morace said he didn’t know.30
Later, Lee and Taylor hooked an electrical dynamite cap to the ignition coil, turned the switch, and the cap detonated. Next, they used the same method with C-4 explosives to blow up a tree stump. They alerted Glover that they had succeeded with their assignment. Glover then ordered Taylor to place the charge in Metcalfe’s car; meanwhile, Glover and Lee, both Armstrong employees, would be on the job to create an alibi. Taylor chose a Ferriday Klansman, unidentified in FBI documents, to assist him in the mission. At 2 a.m. on Friday, August 27, Taylor and the other Klansman slid under Metcalfe’s 1955 Chevrolet Delray. They first connected the electrical blasting cap to the ignition coil and then inserted a blasting cap in a red booster can. Next they strengthened the mixture by screwing in three or four white cans of C-4 explosives behind the red can. The charge was placed under the hood near the firewall. The two men crawled from beneath the car and slipped away.31
METCALFE HAD CLOCKED IN at midnight. Originally scheduled to work a regular eight-hour shift, he was asked and agreed to put in four hours overtime. He alerted an NAACP coworker that he would arrive at headquarters late. For months, the NAACP had been pressing the city administration to make major changes. Among the demands were that the city denounce white supremacy groups; that police brutality and Klan intimidation end; that schools, swimming pools, parks, auditoriums, and other public facilities be desegregated; that blacks be hired for city jobs on an equal basis; that blacks be appointed to the school board; that public works be provided in black neighborhoods; that housing codes be enacted; and that blacks be addressed by city workers with the same courtesy as whites and not be referred to as “Boy,” “Uncle,” or “Aunty.”32
Although he rarely expressed personal feelings to anyone, Metcalfe opened up more than once to Marge Baroni, a white activist. Baroni held a deep personal commitment to human rights, partly because of her conversion to Catholicism in 1947 and her nurturing friendship with journalist and social activist Dorothy Day. The daughter of an alcoholic Adams County sharecropper and a no-nonsense Baptist mother, Baroni grew up amid deep-seated racism in communities throughout southwest Mississippi. Metcalfe asked her often why whites so vehemently opposed “giving the Negro a better education and the right to vote.” More than once he wondered, “Why do they hate us so?” Baroni always answered, “I simply do not know.”33
At noon on Friday, August 27, 1965, Metcalfe ended his overtime shift and clocked out. He walked by the guardhouse and along the fence and got into his car parked just outside the plant. When he placed the key in the ignition and turned the switch, the front of the car exploded. The blast was so loud, it was heard blocks away. A worker inside the company’s business office watched the hood sail into the air, whirling like a saucer, before landing near the guard shack.34 Metcalfe was blown from the car, minus his shoes, which were found intact beneath the driver’s seat. The steering wheel landed in the passenger seat. All of the windows were blown out, and shattered glass was spotted twenty feet away. The left fender, front grill, and front bumper separated from the car. Two vehicles parked nearby were damaged.35
Minutes later, as sirens wailed in the background, a caller notified the NAACP office that Metcalfe had been killed by a car bomb. Charles Evers, who was in Jackson, Mississippi, quickly dispatched NAACP representatives to the Jefferson Davis Hospital, where Metcalfe was taken. Mary Lee Toles, who worked in the X-ray department and later became an Adams County judge, was among the first to see Metcalfe, who was alive. His face was bloody and burned. “I didn’t think he was going to make it,” she recalled. Although Metcalfe was gravely injured, doctors reported after surgery that he would recover. He had suffered burns, and his right leg was shattered in three places, his arm broken. Shards of glass and metal had penetrated his face, permanently damaging his right eye.36 Pieces of skin were stripped from his body. Police guarded his hospital room and denied access to reporters. FBI agents
who questioned Metcalfe had no comment for reporters.37
The FBI lab found that “a high order type explosion occurred and an explosive charge had been placed between the steering column and lower left rear of the motor block forward of the firewall.” All broken wires discovered were due to tension breaks, not cuts. Because of the extensive damage, the bureau was unsure “what electrical circuitry was utilized to detonate the explosive charge; however, pieces of wire were removed from the coil.”38
Throughout the afternoon, the NAACP office fielded angry calls from blacks and threats from Klansmen. Evers arrived in town at 4 p.m. The office printed fliers and posted them about town, announcing a mass meeting at No. 9 St. Catherine Street, where Metcalfe lived. Hundreds of shocked and angry supporters attended; a handful cursed police driving by in patrol cars. Evers urged everyone to stay calm and afterward asked the crowd to go home. He warned whites not to travel in black neighborhoods and told the press that if the Justice Department didn’t protect the black community, “the Negroes are going to provide protection for themselves.”39 In Washington, Michigan congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr. addressed the Metcalfe bombing, saying that blacks would “no longer suffer murder and atrocities upon their homes and person without defensive action.”40
Police Chief J. T. Robinson and Sheriff Odell Anders publicly expressed confidence that arrests would be made, and the Natchez Democrat condemned the bombing. Privately, however, Anders was at a loss as to what to do. Robinson, consulting daily with federal authorities, worked to keep the peace. Roy K. Moore led ten agents to Natchez and personally directed the Metcalfe probe.41 Meanwhile, Mayor Nosser called the bombing a “dastardly crime.” He quickly agreed to meet with the NAACP to form a biracial committee to seek racial harmony and address some of the black community demands, and he offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bomber. He claimed to have received three anonymous phone calls warning, “We got Metcalfe today and you’re next.”42
As tension continued to build, local and state law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, feared a riot. Two nights after the bombing, young blacks threw rocks at passing cars, breaking windows. Evers feared he couldn’t control them. Heavily armed Klansmen amassed in town. Also rushing to the scene were members of the newly formed Deacons for Defense and Justice, chartered in Jonesboro, Louisiana, in 1964 with a mission to provide armed protection to black communities. When city aldermen rejected a demand to speed up the desegregation process, threats of violence escalated. The city enacted a nightly curfew, primarily in black areas. On September 2, Mississippi governor Paul Johnson announced that he was sending in 650 National Guardsmen from six companies in the 31st Dixie Division, marking the first time the National Guard had been called out for a race-related matter since the September 1962 riot at Ole Miss. Guardsmen pitched tents at the Natchez armory and launched what was labeled “Operation Wet Blanket.” They patrolled in jeeps, five to a car, each man armed with a rifle, sheathed bayonet, and a gas mask.43
IN MID-SEPTEMBER, Jet magazine reported that the most radical thing Metcalfe had done in the days before the bombing was to eat in a restaurant technically desegregated under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The magazine also reported that UKA leader McDaniel complained that “police state” tactics were used against a white bombing suspect. The suspect, Odis Lavell Goode, a wiry Armstrong employee known as a Klansman and a skilled rifle shot, told friends that he had been taken to Jackson and interrogated by the FBI and the MHSP for thirty-six hours. For decades, Natchez residents believed he was the bomber.44
But by 1967, the FBI’s main suspects became Glover, Taylor, and Lee. On August 23, 1965, four days before the bombing, Morace, one of the FBI’s best informants in Concordia Parish, had reported that Lee and Taylor were experimenting with explosives. Eleven days after the bombing, Roy K. Moore and Special Agent Elmer B. Litchfield, the future sheriff of East Baton Rouge Parish, went to Concordia to talk with Morace. Morace said he had talked to Glover on September 1 about the Metcalfe bombing and that Glover had denied knowing anything about it but threw suspicion on Lee. Glover also told Morace that Lee had requested some electric dynamite caps but that Glover had none to give him. The next day, under the FBI’s direction, Morace had coffee with Lee. “I see you got your nigger,” Morace asserted. Lee, like Glover, pretended not to know what he was talking about. And, like Glover, Lee cast suspicion on others, including Taylor and James Ford Seale.45
In early August, after Morace told the FBI about the fish fry at Lee’s home, two agents had gone to Lismore. Lee denied being in the Klan but volunteered that he had been trained to kill while in the army. Morace had also implicated Lee and Glover in the bombing of Hopewell Baptist Church in Catahoula Parish a year earlier. When asked about that bombing, Lee said he knew nothing about it. On September 3, a week after the attack on Metcalfe, the bureau interviewed Lee again. He repeated his denials but alleged that Metcalfe was so unpopular, there were “5,000 people who would want to bomb him.” A week later, Moore, accompanied by three other FBI agents, interviewed Lee yet again. Lee continued his denials, adding that once he decided not to talk about something, he would “die first” before talking.46 Glover was interviewed as well and denied any involvement in the bombing or the Klan.
The FBI investigation would never result in an arrest, although there were many state and federal charges—from attempted murder to the transport of explosives across state lines—that would have applied. There were no eyewitnesses. Morace, who could have testified that Lee had questioned him about placing a bomb in a car, was a protected informant. He feared Glover and knew Glover would kill him in a heartbeat if he learned of his loose tongue.
THE NAACP STAGED several marches, but its demands continued to go unheeded. Evers decided to up the ante, calling for a full-scale economic boycott of white-owned businesses that opposed the demands. His pleas for Dr. Martin Luther King to come to Natchez failed. By early October, a court order sought by the city prohibited marching and picketing by civil rights groups and the Klan. Evers vowed to defy the order and did so. As a result, marchers, including children, were arrested. At one point a group of black teenagers, jeered and heckled by whites under McDaniel’s command, moved toward the Klansmen. Police quickly separated the groups. Evers urged all to go home. “Those people out there [whites] don’t know any better,” he said. “They are ignorant.” Hundreds of marchers were arrested.47
When the jail filled, approximately 150 African American protestors were transported by bus to the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Forced to strip, some were made to drink laxatives, denied toilet paper, and told to drink out of the toilets. Guards threatened black males. Among the inmates was Wharlest Jackson’s wife, Exerlena. Despite temperatures in the forties, prisoners were made to stand on wet floors with fans sucking in the frigid air through opened windows. One fourteen-year-old female inmate was sent home early by bus, arriving just in time to be rushed to the hospital, where she delivered a stillborn child.48
Evers invited Pope Paul VI to Mississippi to observe the brutality endured by blacks. By early November, some Natchez businessmen threatened to fire their black employees unless the boycott ended. Whites threatened to fire domestic servants as well. But Evers held firm. NAACP members patrolled the streets, and leaders harassed black people who crossed the picket lines to shop in white stores. Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan, who would ascend to the presidency in 1974, canceled a scheduled speech before an all-white Republican group in Natchez because blacks would be barred from the gathering. Jet reported that few shoppers were seen in downtown Natchez, where business was down by 25 to 50 percent. One merchant cut advertising by 40 percent and laid off a third of his employees as the holiday season kicked off. A photograph in Jet showed Metcalfe sitting up in his hospital bed, his right leg in a cast and his right eye swollen shut. Another photo showed him being visited by Evers and other civil rights activists.49
By early
December, the city caved. It agreed to desegregate public facilities, develop a housing code, hire public employees based on merit (not race), submit a $2.5 million bond proposal for sewer and street construction in black neighborhoods, and revamp the anti-poverty program under a biracial board. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Natchez boycott was run with military precision and ended as one of the most effective boycotts in the history of civil rights. Nosser hoped it signaled “a new era of understanding.”50
In the days to follow, Glover lay low, furious that Metcalfe had survived, and stunned at the courage and steadfastness of the black community and its ultimate victory. His hatred for Metcalfe intensified. He brooded over his failure and bided his time.
VICTIMS
Joseph Edwards disappeared in 1964. A half century later, a new search was begun to locate his body.
(Concordia Sentinel)
Earl Hodges in front of his shop, circa 1950s. Silver Dollar Group Klansmen beat Hodges to death in 1965, fearing he would implicate the KKK in the murder of two black teens.
(Concordia Sentinel)
Frank Morris (center, wearing visor and apron) and workers in front of his shoe shop, circa 1950s. (Photo by William Brown/Concordia Sentinel)
Morris’s bedroom in the back of his Ferriday shoe shop after the 1964 arson.
(FBI file photo)
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