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James Charles Evers was an American civil rights activist, businessman, radio personality, and politician. Evers was known for his role in the civil rights movement along with his younger brother Medgar Evers. After serving in World War II, Evers began his career as a disc jockey at WHOC in Philadelphia, Mississippi. In 1954, he was made the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) State Voter Registration chairman. After his brother's assassination in 1963, Evers took over his position as field director of the NAACP in Mississippi. In this role, he organized and led many demonstrations for the rights of African Americans.
Lowndes County is in the central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 10,311. Its county seat is Hayneville. The county is named in honor of William Lowndes, a member of the United States Congress from South Carolina.
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Fayette County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 41,990. Its county seat is Somerville. The county was named after the Marquis de la Fayette, French hero of the American Revolution. A part of the Memphis, TN-MS-AR Metropolitan Statistical Area, Fayette County is culturally alike to the Mississippi Delta and was a major area of cotton plantations dependent on slave labor in the nineteenth century.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a national trade union center that is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 60 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million active and retired workers. The AFL-CIO engages in substantial political spending and activism, typically in support of progressive and pro-labor policies.
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.
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The March Against Fear was a major 1966 demonstration in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Activist James Meredith launched the event on June 5, 1966, intending to make a solitary walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi via the Mississippi Delta, starting at Memphis's Peabody Hotel and proceeding to the Mississippi state line, then continuing through, respectively, the Mississippi cities of Hernando, Grenada, Greenwood, Indianola, Belzoni, Yazoo City, and Canton before arriving at Jackson's City Hall. The total distance marched was approximately 270 miles over a period of 21 days. The goal was to counter the continuing racism in the Mississippi Delta after passage of federal civil rights legislation in the previous two years and to encourage African Americans in the state to register to vote. He invited only individual black men to join him and did not want it to be a large media event dominated by major civil rights organizations.
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The Memphis sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, in response to the deaths of sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. The deaths served as a breaking point for more than 1,300 African American men from the Memphis Department of Public Works as they demanded higher wages, time and a half overtime, dues check-off, safety measures, and pay for the rainy days when they were told to go home.
Unita Zelma Blackwell was an American civil rights activist who was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Blackwell was a project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi. She was also a founder of the US–China Peoples Friendship Association, a group dedicated to promoting cultural exchange between the United States and China. She also served as an advisor to six US presidents: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.
Claude Clossey Williams (1895–1979) was a Presbyterian minister active for more than 50 years in civil rights, race relations, and labor advocacy. He worked with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, founded the People's Institute for Applied Religion, and served as the national vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. He was also the director of Commonwealth College in Mena, Arkansas, from 1937–1939.
Hollis Watkins was an American activist who was part of the Civil Rights Movement activities in the state of Mississippi during the 1960s. He became a member and organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1961, was a county organizer for 1964's "Freedom Summer", and assisted the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to unseat the regular Mississippi delegation from their chairs at the 1964 Democratic Party national convention in Atlantic City. He founded Southern Echo, a group that gives support to other grass-roots organizations in Mississippi. He also was a founder of the Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.
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Maxine (Atkins) Smith born in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, was an academic, civil rights activist, and school board official.
Vicki Gabriner (1942-2018) was an American civil rights activist, feminist and LGBT rights activist who became an activist when she was just a student. She was briefly a member of Weathermen, which was the radical student activist group in the late 1960s. In 2002, Gabriner was honored at the Women Who Dared event in Boston.
The Fayette County Civic and Welfare League was established in 1959 in order to advocate for equal voting rights for the African American community in Fayette County, Tennessee. Through a rigorous voter registration drive, local African Americans were able to change the political climate of the county and gain national attention for the work toward equality during the 1950s-1960s era of the Civil Rights Movement
Viola Harris McFerren (1931–2013) was a civil rights activist in Fayette County, Tennessee. Born October 19, 1931, she went on to found the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League Inc., which was later called the Original Fayette Civic Welfare League Inc. After attending a high school for African Americans in 1947, McFerren later become involved in desegregating public schools, with her involvement in the McFerren v. County Board of Education of Fayette County Tennessee, which led to dismantling three “racially identifiable schools” and deconstructing a new school and its policies.
Leon Lynch was an American trade union leader. He was the first African American to be an international vice president of any major labor union, serving in that role for the United Steelworkers from 1976 to 2006. He was elected to the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO in 1995 and served on that body until he retired in 2008. He was co-chair of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and a member of the Democratic National Committee.
References
- 1 2 3 Tent City... "Home of the Brave". Washington, D.C.: Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO. p. 12.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Hamburger, Robert (1973). Our Portion of Hell, Fayette County, TN: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Links Books. ISBN 0825630223.
- 1 2 Viola McFerren. Oral history interview. Civil Rights Oral History Project. Special Collection Division, Nashville Public Library.
