Another helpful source that illuminated the pressure experienced by Blacks in Greenwood was The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. This entire book serves as a fascinating record and powerful reminder of the critical role the American press filled during the civil rights movement. Details in this chapter include information from page 313. This book was written by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, and published in 2007 by Vintage Books.
John Dittmer’s book Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi also detailed the harrowing experiences of Blacks in the Delta during the civil rights movement. Stories for this chapter came from page 46. Dittmer’s book was published in 1995 by the University of Illinois Press.
A truly excellent book that details the way the civil rights movement swept through the nation is Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63. Page 713 details how regularly delivered food from the federal government was blocked in order to punish Blacks for trying to assert their rights.
Activists who were part of organizations like SNCC, CORE, COFO, and SCLC had to find ways to communicate without having their long-distance calls routed through operators who might not connect the calls to their requested destination. Civil rights workers came up with a system of communication in which calls could be placed to a specific number in cities like Greenwood or Atlanta. The phones were answered around the clock, and then the information provided was typed up and turned into a WATS report. This ensured that if someone was in danger or being harassed, they could get word to someone.
A WATS report filed on July 21, 1964, includes the account of an eyewitness who saw police officers throwing bricks through the windows of three cafés on McLaurin the previous evening. One of those cafés was Booker’s Place. The report can be found here: crmvet.org/docs/wats/wats64-0721_cofo.pdf.
Get Off This Place
Details about the overall impact of the 1927 Mississippi River Flood come from the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica article “The Mississippi River Flood,” which can be found at the following website: britannica.com/event/Mississippi-River-flood-of-1927. Other quotes from this chapter come from Rising Tide, specifically pages 156, 183, 313, and 319.
A Catalyst
I read the excerpt about my mother’s uncle, Charlie Cooley, in a book called Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement, written by Townsend Davis and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1999.
A Magical Town
I never had the opportunity to meet Sara Miller, but I challenge anyone not to feel deep affection for her after reading her collected memoirs, which were published by her daughter Mary Carol Miller on the following website: daughterofthedelta.com.
In 2013 West Washington Books published Volume 1 of Greenwood: Mississippi Memories. This treasure of photographs and memories was collected by Mary Carol Miller, Allan Hammons, and Donny Whitehead. Volume 2 and Volume 3 were both published the following year, in 2014. The photographs in these three books, along with their thoughtful introductions and insightful photo notations, were critical in helping me tell the story of Greenwood’s early years.
Other sources for this chapter include an article about Mary Carol Miller on the website Today in Mississippi. The article, “Penchant for Preservation,” was written by Debbie Stringer and can be found here: todayinmississippi.com/index.php/?/featured_article/article/3734.
Details about US Flood Policy in the early 1800s come from an article called “Bioregional Approach to Southern History: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” published on January 28, 2010, by Mikko Saikku with the University of Helsinki. The article can be found in the archives of SouthernSpaces.org.
Information about stores and businesses that opened during Greenwood’s early days can be found both in Greenwood: Mississippi Memories and the website aboutgreenwoodms.com, which was created by Donny Whitehead.
The story about the origin of Hambone’s Meditations can be found both in Greenwood: Mississippi Memories and in an article by Franklin Harris published in 2015. The article was written for the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia and can be found on the Ferris State University website at the following web address: ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/dec15/index.htm.
A Testing Ground for Democracy
Mary Carol Miller’s website Daughter of the Delta was again a wonderful resource for this chapter. Detailed recollections about Emmett Till’s murder came from Voice of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s by Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer. Voices of Freedom was published by Bantam Books in 1990. Another helpful source was an article on PBS’s website related to the show The American Experience. The article, “People and Events: Mamie Till Bradley (1921–2003),” can be found at the following website: pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/p_parents.html.
Town on Fire
Howard Zinn’s description of the Greenwood SNCC office came from a book by Martin Duberman called Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left, which was published by the New Press in 2012. This chapter also relied on some of the posts from Daughter of the Delta and Dittmer’s Local People. Also helpful was an article in the Boston Globe written by Eric Moskowitz called “They Heard the Call of Freedom: A Summer That Haunts.”
Information about treatment of Blacks by police officers came from Silas McGee, Cobb’s The Most Southern Place on Earth, Willie Bailey, and Johnnie Walls.
A Moralist
The newspaper articles quoted in this chapter are as follows:
Trenton, New Jersey, Trentonian
Sharon, Pennsylvania, Herald, Rick Du Brow, May 2, 1966, D.23,181
Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel, April 30, 1966 D. 76,639
What’s On? TV Radio, Ben Gross, A New Day is Dawning in Mississippi (New York Daily News)
Newsday, On Television, Barbara Delatiner, April 6, 1966
Lafayette, Indiana, Journal and Courier, April 30, 1966, D. 42,569
Seattle, Washington, Times, May 2, 1966, CJ Skreen Magic Missing in Broadcasting
More citations can be found at www.yvettecreates.com.
A History Lesson
To learn more about the horrific murder of Malcolm Wright, visit the Northeastern School of Law website: nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/malcolm-wright/.
Information about the treatment of Black female bodies came from The African-American Odyssey: Volume Two Since 1863 by Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. The second edition was published by Pearson Education in 2003.
Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom was instrumental to what I learned in this chapter.
A Murder Story
The majority of the content in this chapter was taken from the court transcripts of the Lloyd Cork murder trial.
Booker’s Song
Information about Senator James Eastland’s personal finances are from “The Struggle for Voting Rights in Mississippi—The Early Years,” which is part of the website Civil Rights Movement Veterans (www.crmvet.org). This website includes a plethora of firsthand accounts of movement activists. The article used as a resource for this chapter can be found at the following link: http://www.crmvet.org/info/voter_ms.pdf.
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson, published by Simon and Schuster in 2017, was the source for Carolyn Bryant’s groundbreaking revelation.
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The Song and the Silence Page 27