Ben Bagdikian on covering the civil rights movement in the early 1960s:<\/p>\n
\nI spent a lot of time in Holmes County, Mississippi, and the county seat,
\nLexington, including the period when I traveled with SNCC and stayed in their
\nsafe houses. At that time, the Mississippi Highway Patrol was, for all practical
\npurposes, part of the White Citizens Council vigilante operation. Both persecuted
\ncivil rights workers and it was just as dangerous when in a “mixed” car (carrying
\nboth whites and blacks) to be followed by the patrol cruiser as by the Klan
\nor the many Klan-like vigilantes. At the time, the sheriff of Holmes County
\nwas notorious for being an enforcer of segregation and a danger to the life
\nand limb of civil rights workers from the north and to the colored people
\nwho cooperated with them. <\/p>\nFor example, the courageous local paper was owned by Hazel Brannon Smith,
\na feisty southerner who was a natural rebel. She once wrote an editorial saying
\nthe sheriff simply must stop shooting Negroes in the back when they were in
\nhis custody and in shackles. I was once interviewing a young native black
\nman working sympathetic to civil rights and when, to my dismay, I received
\na phone call from my office in Washington, D.C. (you always left contacts
\nwhen you went South in case you remained incommunicado for an ominously long
\ntime). Less than two minutes after the phone call, which went through the
\nold-fashioned local switchboard, a pickup truck with shotgun in its rack over
\nthe dashboard, with two men, were driving slowly back and forth on the dirt
\nroad of the house. <\/p>\nI finally left and when I got to the highway, the pickup truck followed
\nme and tried repeatedly to push my car into a tree or into a deep ditch. They
\nfailed. But it was the sheriff who kept all such vigilantes informed and suggested
\nhow they could be helpful (i.e., harmful). <\/p>\nTwenty years later, I went with my wife to visit Hazel Brannon Smith but
\nhad forgotten how to get to her house. I went into the courthouse and asked
\na tough-looking white woman at the desk and she glared silently and then jerked
\nher thumb down a corridor: “Y’all ask the sheriff.” I walked down the hall
\nprepared for a tough time and maybe the old tip-off to remaining enemies of
\n“outsiders.” As I approach the door to the sheriff’s office, I saw his cowboy
\nboots stretched out over the end of an extended lounge chair. As I got closer,
\nI saw more and more of the sheriff’s body, preparing to be insistent and unintimidated,
\nand as I walked looked at more and more of his reclining body, for one reason
\nto see if he had on his gun halter at his waist. Finally, I came to the door
\nand saw his face. He was a black sheriff. <\/p>\nI was stunned. I explained that I had spent years in Holmes County and was
\nlooking for Hazel Brannon Smith. <\/p>\n“Why, sure. Old Hazel’s got a fine, new place that’s a miniature of Tara
\nin Gone with the Wind<\/i>. Let me draw you a map to get to her place.”
\nI found Hazel and her new place was a ridiculous, resplendent copy miniature
\nof Tara. Everything had changed. I felt that Mississippi had rejoined the
\nUnited States. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThis one of a bunch of memories posted at www.reportingcivilrights.org<\/a>; thanks to Jeff of sidesalad.net for sending it along,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ben Bagdikian on covering the civil rights movement in the early 1960s: I spent a lot of time in Holmes County, Mississippi, and the county seat, Lexington, including the period when I traveled with SNCC and stayed in their safe…<\/p>\n