Gallery 5 - A Tremor in the Iceberg

As they tested the new Supreme Court ruling banning segregation in interstate travel, getting to Jackson was not a given. The Alabama National Guard escorted the bus to the state line, where eight Mississippi national guardsmen boarded. From there, the Mississippi Highway Patrol escorted the bus along Highway 80 to Jackson. There, police officers awaited the bus at the Trailways terminal. White volunteers sat in the Black waiting area and Black volunteers sat in the White waiting area. When the volunteers refused to move, they were arrested and charged with “breach of peace.”

Dr. Gilbert Mason launched Operation Surf on April 17, 1960 at Biloxi Beach. He was the only one to wade-in to test the policy of segregated beaches and was arrested immediately. Inspired by his example, 125 people showed up to wade-in on April 24. When they took to the beaches at three locations along the 26-mile stretch, they were immediately attacked while police watched. Later, violence erupted in the town of Biloxi with eight Black and two White residents wounded by gunfire.

The annual Mississippi State Fair in Jackson became a target for Black boycotts. Traditionally, people attended the fair on separate days. In 1961, SNCC Freedom Riders, recently released from Parchman, joined Black college students to organize a boycott of the fair. A small group marched through the fairgrounds with picket signs reading “No Jim Crow Fair for Us!” More than 100 Black youths demonstrated outside the fairgrounds. Black attendance at the fair dropped dramatically. The boycott was repeated the following year.

Sit-ins and pickets brought cries of “Communists!” from Jackson officials and White mobs. The Sovereignty Commission looked for communists at Tougaloo. On May 31, 1963, they arrested some 450 demonstrators—many high school students—marching downtown waving flags and chanting, “We want freedom!” Police drove them in garbage trucks to a temporary jail at the fairgrounds’ livestock pens. A few days later, national NAACP leaders urged compromise, partly due to mounting bail costs, now at $64,000. The Movement temporarily lost momentum.