Rocky mountain news closed, that was a sad day for everybody. There went a number of jobs in journalism that were never to be recovered and as the denver post continue to shrink, thats when things began to get real tough specially for the press club and other competing places where they use today meet, the University Club or the pencil code club and others that have felt the effect but thats when things really changed here. We have a local come in that was going to take a look at some things, maybe offer some advise and he said in a way, made a very good point, because these days while i look at it much per positively than he did, this is a great museum and for people who arent typically going to experience the essence of prize and be able to come and be around that for an event, yeah, it makes it a good museum. Its as important as it can be at any point in time if you if you truly honor the past and you want the future to be as positive as it possibly could be. For the different press club to go away would be tragic because all of that history would be lost. Everybody knee comes new walks into the front door and walk around and they say, i had no idea, and by the time they leave, they want to return. I dont know how many places you can find like that but i know this place is always like that. For more information on book tvs recent visit to denver and many other destinations on our citys tour, go to cspan. Org slash citiestour. [inaudible conversations] welcome, everyone. Ayes chris with the Mississippi Department of archives and history. Y. If youve not already, please silence your cell phones. Welcome to the civil rights History Panel number two sponsored by pigott and johnson. We would also thank the mississippi legislature. We could not ask for a grander setting for it. Thank you to the authors, the panelists, they are all authors, their books are all for sale a downstairs here if youve not bought them. I urge you to check them out. Our panelists will also be signing the books, theres a schedule for when theyll bebe signing in the brochure and they should all be available downstairs later if they have not already. But thank you for doing this with us, our moderator today isp pamela junior, the director of the Smith Robertson cultural center. Good afternoon, im pamela junior, the director of smithal Robertson Mees yuim and culture center. Let me tell you how much of an honor specially in this room and the things that happened here but mostly because we have the phenomenal authors. Lets just give them a hand already, please. [applause] book, im such a big fan. They said, yaw really read the book, yes, i did. We have martha wyatt, shes written the book my triumph over prejudice, a memoir raising a large family in Jefferson County mississippi coming of age during the years of the Civil Rights Movement. And our next book Delta Rainbow byb sal sally thompson. She has lived in memphis, tennessee for over 50 years, youre a tennessean. She has authored three blocks. Next is Patricia Michelle boyett, director of rehours center at Loyola University which she teaches courses on race and gender and oppression and resistance and she authors t book right to revolt and our next panelist is so the hefners left the home. I was in the back talking and when i was thinking about civil rights and mississippi and all the power players that were such a large part of where we are today, legacies, those soldierses, marchers that made it possible and to have authors to be able to write about the wonderful people are to do a memoir, with that i am going to let the authors talk for about five minutes starting here. Good afternoon, my name is martha wyatt, my book from a child up until 1990. I didnt play a major part in civil rights but a major part of my life. I wrote about growing and my whole world was black. I never came in contact with white people until 1967 when i was integrated in schools andoo that was an eyeopener for me because my first day of schoolme you see all the white faces, almost like im looking at today and you begin to wonder when people say, well, i feel black, i felt black that day, but i no longer feel black, i just feel like a person and i try not to look i dont meet color, i meet people and i dont forget where ive come from but i dont want to continue to live in thet past. I want to remember where i am today and i hope that when you read my story, you will understand where im coming from. I think that to say that my life has been easy, it hasnt and i dont take anything for granted. But i just feel its time for me to live who i want to be today and as 66 years old im going to live my life and not going to let anyone dictate to me how to live that life. I hope you as a reader will find your truth and live the dream. Very good, very good. Good afternoon, im sal Salah Abdeslam sally thomson. The death and wisdom that you all have gathered today has been such a fabulous day and i want to thank you so much. What martha is saying is so important and the stories that i have told in Delta Rainbow, thel irrepressible Betty Bobo Pearson is a remarkable story. I grew up in california. Phis. I move today memphis. I didnt know mississippi. I had wonderful mississippi relatives but and friends from mississippi but i never got to know mississippi until another friend of mine said i had just finished a second book and she said, what are you going tois write about, i dont know, well, you should write a book about Betty Bobo Pearson. She is the most remarkable women i have ever known and i said, hmm, okay, well, lets do investigation and so we started going down to sumner and clarksdale and wea started talking to people who knew betty and betty now is living in california. They had one child and she is 94 years old. I mean, its just she is an amazing woman, but shes an amazing woman from the start. She is a seventh generation mississippian whose parentage had come into mississippi into the delta, established their plantations and had gone through and so she was of that class of plantation owners who grew up knowing that there was something she had incredible loyalty to her family but she had a sense of purpose that was different from a lot of people and, for instance, i will tell you one brief story, when she was in old miss, 1942 now, she was a senior in her philosophy class and had to write an essay about anything she wanted to write about and she wrote about why the schools of mississippi should bepi sho integrated. Well, the professor was really very, very taken with this essay and he said, i submitted to the competition which would give you a full scholarship to a fouryear graduate school in new york at colombia. He said, fine, thats okay. She went about her business and about six weeks later, he calleu her into his office and said, i betty, youve won the scholarship and she was estatic and borrowed a car to clarksdale and ran into her daddy yes, daddy s office and said no daughter of mine is going to yankeeland. What are you saying, schemes and haulerred but she was so loyal to her family she decided that she could not defy her father. She wasnt going to defy her father and so so she turned down scholarship. She thought, i have to show my father that im a grown woman now, she went up to the Marine Recruiting Office which had just opened, the marines decided that they would have a womens unit, reserve and she jane it had marines. Jo [laughter] and then she drove home and said, daddy, i have joined the marines and she was delighted. Anyway, she served her time in the marines and the next really remarkable part, she came home, married another mississippimissi planner and and which was just the plantation is delta plantation which was right outside of sumner and she attended the emmett trial and watched what was going on and it really changed her life and she became convinced that she had to do something to try to show the world that all mississippians didnt believe in segregation or didnt believe that all White Mississippians white were the superior people and she went up to the reporters from New York Times and look magazine and life magazine and london times and said, listen, we have a placece outside of sumner where all of her friends were ignoring, they were denying that the trial was even going on and they were just turning their backseat on thele whole thing and she was astounded so she asked these people, she wanted to show that everyone in mississippi wasnt this way so they came out and she entertained and got to know these people from the times and such and so that became a cause for her to continue, she became on the civil rights commission, she worked with her her home was open to all the freedom writers that were coming down and its a remarkable story and she has gone on and just one incident to tell you that she just oh, i have to say this. Part of what the problem was is she didnt believe in trying to convince people, she knew that k she could only do it through her action and so she joined the naacp and worked that way, but she lost many, many of her delta friends and most importantly it created this incredible skissisi in her family and to the point where she wanted her daughter to know her grandparents, she wanted to keep close to her family and so they just didnt talk about it. Ut it was just one of those things that nearly broke her heart and it even got worse but that you have to read the book to find about that. [laughter] but she moved to california because thats where her daughter and family were living into the retirement. At the anal of 88 she became the president after three years of that retirement home and in the next two years after that she was nominated for the most outstanding for the state of california of in the retirement home, so anyway, she is one of those mississippi daughters that you should be proud of. Very good. Hi, im Patricia Boyett and i want to thank everybody foro organizing the mississippi book festival and im honored to be on this panel and i thank you for including. Is i opened my book on january 66. They are on a mission from the imperil wizard of the white nights to murder daymer. Rs, to daymer was an upperclass African American who owned store, mills and so forth and he was a very powerful civil rights activist. He had been a former president of the Forest County branch of naacp. He had been one of the lead plaintiffs in one of the most important right cases which is u. S. Versus lynn. All of those things, of course, furated bowers. He had eight children, several of them at the time were away. Y. Many of his children served in the military. One was living in germany wait to go hear if he was going to go to vietnam. But three of his children were living at the home at the time and when the klansmen arrived, blew out the windows and goal was to kill all the occupants inside. When the special agent in charge of mississippi, roy moore, he was headquartered in jackson heard of the crime, he immediately dispatched an army of fbi agents what i call the central woods, the war on the klan had started at tend of the summer of 64 when they found the bodies of activists. It had actually there wasas very little federal intervention in pine woods. It had come and gone because the it was Forest County had been very adept at making county that it was a modern county. Once the Civil Rights Movement really got going in the this part of the area there was earlier efforts but wasnt really until 62 where it really exploded the the powers that be there, some of them were moderate, moderate is always a difficult word to fully define because it meant Different Things for different people. Somewhat moderate in the sense that they were segregationist but opposed violence for moral reasons. Some of them were segregationist but oppressed violence. The media stays, that forces the federal government to intervene and they we wanted to prevent that from happening so they actually orchestrated a plan to resist the Civil Rights Movement with nonviolent massiveem resistance as much as they could. Instead when you see a lot this is why the area got ignored for a long time, you were used to seeing things in delta where police would attack the protestors right in front of the media, they would allow mobs tot attack, they tried not to haveey that be done in seed of Forest County. T what they did police freedom of movement, police would arrestt people that stepped out of a certain line. This is not to say that there wasnt violence because there was a lot of violence but this was after they were arrested and put the jail. What frustrated leaders was sam bow oersted had headquartered his klan right next door in jones county but had a pretty active klan in Forest County and actually the person who hadounta ronan murdered came from jonesel county. It does have some really radical elements too. If you look at the case and go forward you would think Forest County as a moderate case. Sam bowers, he wasnt worried about it when they came to forest and jones county. He said to klansmen, no jury in mississippi will convict a white man for killing a black man. He had reason to believe that. T. A year after the passage of civil right the Voting Rights act of 65, long after brown versus board of 54. You had nominal desegregation. Theres still so many case that is the fbi has not investigated. He had a reason to believe that he was safe, he could continue to do this. He had been indicted and many klansmen were indicted but they let them out, they let them out to go plan the murderer of daymer. Theres a reason for sure that he thought but underestimated some changes that were going on and underestimated how devoted many of county officials were devote today keep federal government out and what they would do, how can we hold onto segregation and prosecute the case. I should always mention people are complicated, right, theres so many nuances that go on here. Ive interviewed a lot of the local leaders and many of them talk about vernon daymer. They were progressives in the area that were heartbroken about the death. He would lend them the cotton picker. One biologist teacher broke down in his class and told students, this was a friend of mine and so that really mobilized Forest County against the klan. It was also, you know, a lot of times counties could be xenophobic. This case does lead to great changes. It leads to marginalization of the klan. But in a way that also kind of buried this history of Forest County and jones county because a lot of the locals tried to distance themselves from jones county, there was a newspaper article in the press releases and political speeches were, this came from jones county. Jones county is radical and we are not like that but when i dug deep, jones and Forest County were linked in a real brutal racial history. In fact, traces all the way to settle meant days. They had slavery there too. It was populated and a lot of progressive elements, there were people that had interracial relationships and that brings people together and families together. So you have all the nuances there but during reconstruction or turn of century where forest and jones counties become industrialized and commercialized hub of mississippi, you had some really all the forces came together. They needed labor and they needed black labor, they were trying to get sharecroppers to come and they are going to pay them five times as much so a lot of people are going to come to mississippi and then you have ao bigger population, you need commercial outlets because this is segregation, a lot of African Americans cant get services they need because white doctors refuse today see them or white pharmacies and schools are segregated. After you have moderate progressive white that is will help bring in some of those industries, even segregation is going to help because they want a better segregation. African americans are going to capitalize on that and create black capitalism in the area. E so you have this whole progressive thing going on in the sense that you have a sturdy black working class coming in the area and a powerful black e mening and when they try to protest its only suicidal init the area. There were so many lynchings because you have African American that is had economic and black middle class and some upper class. It was hard to control economically. One paper called hattiesburg as the hub for lynchings and African Americans tried to protest and there are so manyd stories like that but it was suicidal to try to do protest so what they focused on was black uplift. By the time in world war ii, when you have a shift that starts to happen, you have some in world war i but the shift begins in world war ii, we were talking about the gsh the government is talk about we areo talking about the freedoms of abroad but youre oppressing African Americans at home andan lynching occurs in 1942 in the middle of this war. Two lynchings actually. And the roosevelt ordered the fbi in there to investigate. T thats the first time it happened in mississippi since reconstruction. You have a moment of turning point there. And you already have this great foundation, Africanamerican Community thats ready to revolt when they get a chance. They start to build that up and build that up. They keep trying to do direct action but its really difficult until 62. I trayed some cases, i trace a case in jones county. Some of you might be familiar with the willy mcgee case. He was an africanamerican who charged with interracial rape of a white woman. Some of you are familiar with James Meredith who desegregated ole miss. And a lot of these cases end very tragically unfortunately. But even with things end tragically doesnt mean that youre not pushing fo