Power, Poverty, and Peace
Mississippi's Grassroots Militants and the Summer of '66
Jason Morgan Ward
Mississippi State University
In mid-August 1966, fifteen hundred Mississippians crammed into Jackson's Masonic
Temple to show their support for the War on Poverty. For a crowd made up mostly of poor and
working-class African Americans, that meant saving the Child Development Group of
Mississippi (CDGM). Nearing the end of its second summer, the groundbreaking Head Start
preschool system was already fighting for its life. Bowing to pressure from Mississippi's
segregationist politicians, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in Washington had slashed
nearly $30 million from CDGM's latest funding request. Given the OEO's stated goal of
"maximum feasible participation by the poor," the funding shortfall represented a crippling blow
to those who saw CDGM—a black-run, black-staffed community action program—as the next
phase in an evolving and unfinished freedom struggle.
Like many who staffed CDGM's Head Start centers, Jimana Sumrall came to Jackson to
save more than her job. Through CDGM, Sumrall at last saw a path to empowerment and
advancement for black Mississippians. Yet, in the wake of the landmark civil rights legislation
of the mid-1960s, grassroots activists contended not just with domestic opposition but with
foreign entanglements as well. "If they can spend $2 billion a day to fight a war in Viet Nam,"
Sumrall declared, "surely they can give you $41 [million] to run schools for a year."i The
audience roared approval, but the money never came.
For Jimana Sumrall, the politics of power, poverty, and peace collided in the summer of
1966. The week after that CDGM rally in Jackson, her home county's draft board targeted her
son—a civil rights worker branded by white officials as a "black power" militant.ii As Mrs.
Sumrall battled to save Head Start preschools, John Otis Sumrall spoke at northern peace rallies
and fought his induction in federal court. For mother and son—and for hundreds of grassroots
activists who continued direct action campaigns and community organizing work into the late
1960s—the distinction between civil rights and Black Power mattered little. Instead, grassroots
militants focused on the unfinished work of economic empowerment and community
development. Their expansive view of freedom clashed not only with the local white power
structure but also with Washington bureaucrats and, increasingly, American foreign policy.
If the Sumralls seemed unlikely revolutionaries, their home county seemed an unlikely
hotbed of revolution. A rolling expanse of mill villages and pine forests on the Alabama border,
Clarke County remained well off the beaten path of civil rights protests and media coverage well
into the 1960s. Indeed, if anyone had heard of Clarke County before 1966, they had probably
run across stories of its gory past. During both world wars, whites had lynched black youth from
a river bridge near the town of Shubuta. In January 1919, a young Walter White—future
NAACP head—traveled to Clarke County to investigate a brutal quadruple lynching. A quarter
century later, after vigilantes lynched two teenage boys for allegedly accosting a young white
girl, Langston Hughes memorialized Ernest Green and Charlie Lang in a poem. Thirteen years
later, after Mississippi whites lynched another fifteen-year-old boy on similar charges, Hughes
reminded readers of Clarke County's body count. "Surely," he lamented, "Mississippi must lead
the world in the lynching of children."iii
Clarke County's relative isolation and bloody reputation provided a ready explanation for
the lack of organized protest. But local African Americans defied that violent legacy with a
multifaceted and self-consciously militant protest movement.iv Measured by a conventional
timeline that begins with court decisions and ends with congressional legislation, counties like
Clarke seem relative latecomers to the civil rights movement. Furthermore, the local direct
action campaigns that continued in the wake of Stokely Carmichael's call for "Black Power" defy
sharp distinctions between eras of black activism. On the ground, the transition "From Civil
Rights to Black Power"—to borrow from this panel's theme—was blurred at best for rural
activists who imbibed and debated competing protest philosophies but ultimately defined the
ongoing freedom struggle in their own terms.
From its earliest stirrings, Clark County's freedom fighters placed their struggle in a
longer story of repression and self-reliance. When civil rights workers and CDGM organizers
arrived in the mid-1960s, the invariably encountered stories of the Hanging Bridge. Indeed, John
Otis Sumrall frequently drove northern volunteers down to Shubuta to see the place "where they
hang the Negroes."v But Sumrall also followed the example of Rufus McRee, a local plumber
whose small hotel served as the county's movement headquarters. The son of a Black-and-Tan
Republican who had attempted to start a local NAACP chapter in the 1930s, Rufus McRee not
only built the county's only black hotel in 1947 but also extended the water lines that stopped at
the edge of the black neighborhood—making him the first black man in Quitman, Mississippi, to
have running water.vi Like McRee's plumbing expertise, Otto Sumrall's cement finishing
business gave his family relative economic independence and a sense of obligation. When the
civil rights movement literally moved in next door—their small brick house stood next to the
McRee Hotel—the Sumralls allowed workers to sleep in her home. “Some whites here asked
where [my husband] worked," Jimana Sumrall recalled, "I suppose to fire him for my goings on.
But nobody seemed to know…”vii
While Mrs. Sumrall sympathized with the movement, she feared for her son's safety.
John Otis threw himself into direction action campaigns—first in nearby Meridian and then back
home in Clarke County. During the summer of 1965, Sumrall and other workers affiliated with
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) recruited local volunteers to test the Civil Rights and
Voting Rights Acts. They canvassed potential black voters, staged sit-ins at local diners, and led
a wade-in at the Clarkco State Park's whites-only swimming beach. While state officials had
previously bragged about the lack of "racial agitators [and] troublemakers" in Clarke County, a
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission investigator warned in June 1965, “The incident in
the park appears to have set off a chain re-action which could be dangerous in the near future.”viii
Provocative protest set the stage for other forms of local activism. Just as her son had
embraced the tenets of direct action, Mrs. Sumrall responded to the War on Poverty’s stated goal
of “maximum feasible participation” by the poor in government programs.ix As she explained in
1965: “I had read a lot about being nonviolent and getting knocked around in a march…I wasn't
interested in that. I'm an older woman, I'll leave that to my sons. But when I had a chance to do
something peaceful for progress…I was pleased to take the risk.” For Mrs. Sumrall and
hundreds of other black women, that "something" was the Child Development Group of
Mississippi (CDGM), a pioneering preschool initiative designed by civil rights activists and
funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity.x Like CDGM's planners, Mrs. Sumrall
recognized the program's potential to empower everyday people and invest them in social
change. When black school officials refused to host Head Start programs on campus, Mrs.
Sumrall and other working-class women stepped in. “We decided if there's going to be a Head
Start here for the little children, we'll have to organize it,” she told a CDGM staffer. “They say
we're not good for much, but we're good for taking risks when they won't.”xi
As CDGM expanded rapidly in Clarke County, the direct action campaign ramped up as
well. By the summer of 1966, local grassroots work converged around the intertwined goals of
self-determination and economic opportunity. Indeed, when Stokely Carmichael debuted "Black
Power" in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the March Against Fear, John Otis Sumrall—a fellow
marcher—believed the slogan encapsulated the Clarke County movement's objectives quite well.
While national media debated the meaning of Carmichael's slogan—and feared armed revolt—
grassroots activists returned home to continue direct action campaigns. For Sumrall and his
comrades in Clarke County, Black Power represented butter rather than guns. The latter were
nothing new—more than one desk drawer in the Clarke County COFO office contained a loaded
pistol. Rather, local activists responded to the more comprehensive and aggressive plan of action
that "Black Power" implied. "We're just ready to rebel," claimed Clarke County project director
Warner Buxton, "…against all the things…harmful to our community and to our race…I don't
mean a revolution in terms of physical warfare, as a whole, but I mean a revolution for
revolution's sake."xii
For Sumrall and Buxton, that revolution required psychological and economic
empowerment. As Buxton announced in a movement newsletter, "I am sure you do not want
your children to grow up in the same fear that you and I grew up in, Ready to tremble time you
hear the word 'Whiteman'…"xiii Even in a county infamous for brutal repression, activists
recognized that white power hinged as much on economic coercion as physical violence. Black
apathy, movement leaders argued, meant "putting up with any thing [the white man] does or
wants to do because he lets you have a few groceries on credit or because you are on the welfare
and if you don't stay right with Mr. Charlie he will have you took off."xiv While movement
leaders promoted cooperatives as a means to "get out of the white…kitchens and earn a decent
living," federal poverty programs ultimately posed the greatest threat to white economic
control.xv
As the most significant and controversial avenue for economic empowerment, CDGM
drew fire from local whites and powerful politicians alike. Black Head Start workers wielded
unprecedented economic clout as federal grants flowed south. When administrators purchased
for food and supplies—and workers cashed federal paychecks—at local white-owned businesses,
they flexed that newfound muscle. Recognizing both their unprecedented leverage and the
inseparability of political and economic power, local activists focused on the county's southern
end. Shubuta—the home of the Hanging Bridge and the only black-majority town in a whitemajority county—symbolized the vestiges of white supremacy and the potential of black power.
Home to several thriving Head Start centers, Shubuta also dramatized the threat that the blackrun federal poverty programs posed to white economic control.
In August 1966, civil rights workers and CDGM employees in Shubuta presented the
mayor with a list of demands that ranged from improved infrastructure and integrated
recreational facilities to industrial development and job creation.xvi If town leaders spurned these
demands, local activists threatened a boycott of Shubuta merchants.xvii When the mayor
dismissed what he deemed "arrogant, unreasonable demands and threats," local activists planned
a march to rally support for the boycott.xviii Their August 20 demonstration pitted a few dozen
black youth against 250 angry whites. John Otis Sumrall planned to give a rousing speech once
the demonstrators reached Shubuta's tiny town hall, but a phalanx of highway patrolmen diverted
them down a side alley. As the marchers spilled into a vacant lot, club-wielding bystanders
attacked. John Otis Sumrall slipped back to Quitman unscathed.xix He arrived back at
movement headquarters just ahead of the local police, who attempted to arrest him. His mother,
who spotted the policemen from her house next door, hurried over to intervene. When one of the
policemen slapped her across the face, John Otis Sumrall recalled, “I hit one of them and my
mama hit the other one.” After subduing mother and son with a blackjack, the local officers
hauled them both to jail.xx
Given their scuffle with white policemen, the Sumralls had every reason to expect the
local authorities to throw the book at them. Yet county officials released both quickly and
declined to prosecute either. In John Otis's case, the authorities purged his criminal record, in the
words of a Sovereignty Commission investigator, "in an effort to get this man out of [Clarke
County] and in the service."xxi As for his mother, local officials and powerful politicians fought
to put her out of work. While Sumrall fought his induction in the courts, Mississippi politicians
denounced CDGM for funneling federal dollars into civil rights activity and successfully lobbied
to eviscerate its funding and thereby halt its expansion. The Shubuta boycott and march,
CDGM's critics claimed, proved that CDGM fostered black militancy and racial turmoil. They
raised the "Black Power" specter to discredit local activists and poverty workers as subversives,
and John Otis Sumrall—a civil rights activist and CDGM payroll clerk—provided a perfect
target. Mississippi officials deemed the 22-year-old "a militant Negro…who publicly advocates
black power." They quoted snippets from his public statements and claimed that his comrades in
Clarke County had organized a "Black and Brave Coordinating Committee"—an homage to
SNCC that reflects in equal measure Black Power's appeal to rural African American youth and
its lightning-rod potential for anti-civil rights and anti-War on Poverty forces.xxii
While white conservatives attempted to link grassroots activists to racial revolution, the
Sumralls drew their own connections between power, poverty, and peace. In December 1966,
Sumrall took the stage at the “We Won’t Go” conference—an early gathering of antiwar activists
at the University of Chicago. "I don’t know of any reason to go over to Vietnam and fight…,"
he declared, "I’m going to stay here and fight the real battle for freedom.”xxiii As her son fought
his induction, Jimana Sumrall decried the campaign against the Head Start program that she and
other locals had built from the ground up. The same month that her son took the stage in
Chicago, Mrs. Sumrall learned that the OEO had awarded Clarke County’s Head Start centers to
Mississippi Action for Progress, Inc. (MAP)—an agency created by white and black moderates
as an alternative to the controversial CDGM. Just as her son protested the conspiracy to silence
his activism, Mrs. Sumrall decried "takeover" of Head Start programs previously run by poor and
working-class blacks.xxiv Angered by what they perceived as a betrayal and a sellout, most
CDGM workers refused to participate in a county preschool program administered by "three
white men and three Uncle Toms.”xxv Instead, they partnered with a national network of CDGM
supporters—Friends of Children of Mississippi (FCM)—to keep their original preschools open
without government support.
By the end of 1966, the Sumralls and their allies found themselves caught between two
wars. Like grassroots activists, Mississippi authorities drew their own connections between
poverty programs, antiwar activism, and Black Power. For his stand against discriminatory draft
boards, John Otis Sumrall received a five-year jail sentence. When his appeal ran out, Sumrall
went underground for several years before surrendering to federal authorities. Meanwhile, his
former CORE coworker Warner Buxton headed off to Jackson State College, where the
leadership skills he honed the movement helped him rise to the office of student body president.
In 1970, with his friend John OTisstill on the run, Buxton stood outside a bullet-riddled
dormitory where Mississippi state troopers had unloaded 140 rounds—killing two and injuring
twelve.
The Jackson State shootings, occurring just ten days after Kent State, invited tempting
oversimplifications from journalists and politicians attempting to explain antiwar fervor and
"campus unrest." Yet for Buxton, the cycle of poverty and repression that he had fought in
Clarke County had followed him to college. The same disillusionment that led John Otis
Sumrall to fight the draft, Buxton reasoned, fueled students' anger over the "economic
repression…and racism" that filled combat units with black draftees.xxvi While Buxton helped to
defuse violent standoffs in the wake of the shootings, he encouraged students and community
members to "show the world that we are not satisfied the racist political and social structure of
[Mississippi]."xxvii
That comprehensive critique, nurtured through years of movement-building in one of
Mississippi's toughest counties, revealed how grassroots activists like Buxton and Sumrall
embraced a "Black Power" ethos of militancy and self-determination even as they clung to
traditions of nonviolent direct action and community organizing. Their experience highlights as
well the role of white resistance in fracturing the ongoing movement for social change in
Mississippi. Finally, and most importantly for this gathering, they fix needed attention on that
highly fluid moment when "civil rights" and "Black Power" collided—not just on editorial pages,
but in everyday peoples' lives.
i
Patricia James, "People Speak At a CDGM Meeting," Southern Courier, 20-21 August 1966, 2.
A.L. Hopkins, “General Investigation in Rankin, Scott, Lauderdale, Clarke, and Jasper Counties…,” 21 October
1966, p. 2, SSC 2-100-0-71-2-1-1, Records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Mississippi
Department of Archives and History, Jackson.
iii
Langston Hughes, "Langston Hughes Wonders Why No Lynching Probes," Chicago Defender, 1 Oct 1955, 4.
iv
Warner Buxton, a young local activist, equated backwoods activism with grassroots militancy. While he believed
that all the organizations under the COFO banner were "working towards the same goal," he contrasted the NAACP
with SNCC and CORE. "[T]he NAACP is not a grass-roots organization like the rest…the leaders work more with
the people in the cities than in the rural communities. And, on the other hand, SNCC, CORE, MFDP work with
everybody. They…go out in the fields and talk to people; they go out in the woods and talk to people; down the
back roads…with the people that really need it." The NAACP's focus on "the big middle class people and the city
people" toned down its politics. "The NAA[sic] is very moderate," Buxton reasoned, "while the other organizations
are strictly militant." See Warner Buxton, Interview 0357, typed transcript, p. 1, Project South, Stanford University
Archives, Palo Alto, California.
v
John Cumbler, interview by author, Louisville, Kentucky, 6 November 2009.
vi
"Community Spotlight Shines on The Rufus & Katie McRee Hotel in Quitman, MS," February 2009, clipping in
File #023-QTM-0026, Historic Preservation Division, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson.
vii
Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes: A Biased Biography of the Child Development Group of Mississippi
(Washington: Youth Policy Institute, 1990), 96.
ii
viii
A. L. Hopkins, “Investigation of activities in Clarkco State Park near Quitman, Mississippi in Clarke County,” 9
June 1965, 2-82-0-63-3-1-1, MSSC.
ix
John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1994), 363.
x
Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes, 96. For the most comprehensive scholarly analysis of CDGM, see
Crystal Sanders, “'To Be Free of Fear: Black Women's Fight for Freedom Through the Child Development Group of
Mississippi," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2011.
xi
Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes, 96.
xii
Buxton interview, 15.
xiii
"The Call to Action," Reel 65, frame 285, SNCC Papers, microfilm.
xiv
Ibid.
xv
Ibid.
xvi
"Shubuta Head-Start Committee," SCR ID# 2-100-0-54-3-1-1, MSSC.
xvii
Community Planning and Improvement Committee to Shubuta Board of Aldermen, 20 July 1966, SCR ID# 2100-0-54-5-1-1, MSSC.
xviii
George S. Busby to "Gentlemen," 3 August 1966, Killingsworth v. Riley file, Lawyers' Committee for Civil
Rights Under Law, reel 113, Southern Civil Rights Litigation Records for the 1960s-microfilm edition.
xix
Patricia James, "A Reporter's Story," Southern Courier, 27-28 August 1966, 1.
xx
Yahya Ibn Shabazz (John Otis Sumrall), phone interview by author, 8 February 2009. An extensive FBI report on
this confrontation confirms Sumrall's account of events. See File 157-6580, Jackson Field Office, Record Group 65
(Records of the FBI), National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
xxi
L. E. Cole, Jr., "Shubuta Head Start Committee…," 20 September 1966, p. 5, SC ID# 2-100-0-57-5-1-1; Mayor
and Police Judge of the City of Quitman, MS, to Selective Service, Local Board No. 13, 16 September 1966, SC
ID#2-100-0-56-1-1-1; both in MSSC.
xxii
A.L. Hopkins, “General Investigation in Rankin, Scott, Lauderdale, Clarke, and Jasper Counties…,” 21 October
1966, p. 2, SSC 2-100-0-71-2-1-1, MSSC.
xxiii
John Otis Sumrall, “Freedom at Home,” We Won’t Go: Personal Accounts of War Objectors, ed. Alice Lynd
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 90.
xxiv
Chester Higgins, “Group Fights for U.S. Funds,” Jet, 2 February 1967, 26.
xxv
Greenberg, The Devil Has Slippery Shoes, 629; "Poverty Unit's Link to Boycott Studied," New York Times, 30
August 1966, 30.
xxvi
Testimony of Warner Buxton, typed transcripts of public hearings, Jackson, Mississippi, August 12-13, 510, Part
I, Reel 25, Frame 229, Records of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest – microfilm.
xxvii
Warner Buxton, "Jackson State: Community or Genocide," 8 June 1970, Gibbs-Green Memorial Collection, vol.
I, Archives and Special Collections, Jackson State University.