Civil Rights in Twilight: The End of the Civil Rights...

Civil Rights in Twilight: The End of the Civil Rights Movement Era in 1973Author(s): Christopher Paul LehmanSource: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jan., 2006), pp. 415-428Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40035018 .

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CIVIL RIGHTS IN TWILIGHT The End of the Civil Rights Movement

Era in 1973

CHRISTOPHER PAUL LEHMAN St. Cloud State University

Despite inattention given to the civil rights movement in 1973, it was very much alive then. The major groups of the movement still existed. In addition, anticivil rights groups funded by Mississippi and Alabama taxpayers continued to spy on movement participants. However, both the movement and its opposition did not effectively adjust to federally imposed desegregation under the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Their simultaneous disintegration in 1 973 effectively ended the civil rights movement era.

Keywords: Alabama; Mississippi; civil disobedience; civil rights movement; desegregation

In 1973, several people publicly reflected on the history of the African American civil rights movement. That year happened to mark the 10th anniversary of some of the more memorable events of the movement. Governor William Waller of Mississippi dedi- cated June 12, 1973 as Medgar Evers Day in memory of the civil rights leader, slain on that date in 1963. In August 1973, author Alice Walker wrote an essay for The New York Times Magazine on her thoughts of the 10 years since the March on Washington. In "Staying Home in Mississippi," she recalled her involvement in the demonstration and noted progress made in Mississippi's race relations since then (Walker, 1973).

Many of these observers referred to the movement as dead in 1 973. To be sure, the media lost interest in it in the 1970s. Reporters instead covered domestic strife concerning U.S. military participation in the Vietnam conflict, and women received media exposure

JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 36 No. 3, January 2006 415-428 DOI: 10.1177/0021934705280412 © 2006 Sage Publications

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that had once belonged to the movement by demonstrating for the cause of equal rights according to gender. Then, in 1973, the Water- gate scandal and the Arab-Israeli war became dominant news sto- ries. As a result, they pushed African American concerns further away from the front pages.

Despite the inattention, the civil rights movement was not dead but rather very much alive in 1973. The major groups of the movement - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Stu- dent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - still existed. In addition, organized resistance to the movement, especially the FBI and groups sponsored by anti-integration state governments, remained in operation. However, both the movement and its opposition suffered from external and internal problems for years. These issues came to a destructive and fatal peak in 1973, effectively ending the civil rights movement era.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) - a state agency created in 1956 to preserve segregation in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling of school segregation as unconstitu- tional in Brown v. Board of Education - was a shell of itself in 1973. Members of the governor's administration, state legislators, and private citizens composed MSSC membership. They hired investigators to spy on civil rights activists and supporters of desegregation (Katagiri, 2001, pp. 6, 7). After Congress ended legal segregation with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, the days of the MSSC were numbered. As domestic opposition to U.S. combat in Vietnam increased, the commission expanded its surveillance to include militant Blacks and antiwar activists. However, these nemeses to the group had little to do with its original purpose of protecting the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi (Dittmer, 1998, pp. 177, 185).

More important, the MSSC no longer had the support of its most powerful ex-officio member - the governor. In 1971, when Waller - the attorney who tried for a conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the murder of Evers - ran for governor, one of his promises was to shut down the MSSC. After winning the election,



Lehman / CIVIL RIGHTS IN TWILIGHT 4 1 7

he failed in his first attempt to close it in 1972. Nevertheless, from his inauguration onward, the commission was on borrowed time. He did as little as possible for the agency; for example, he made the obligatory gubernatorial appointments to it and retained the office staff but attended no meetings. Also, his appointments of African Americans to government offices showed his opposition to the agency's historic defense of segregation (Katagiri, 2001, pp. 221, 222).

Despite the governor's reluctance, the organization still found plenty of work to do the following year. As the United States ended its military involvement in the Vietnam conflict in early 1973, the agency kept investigators focused on suspected Black militants. In March, investigator Mack Mohead acquired data on the "Negro leadership" of the town of Clarksdale, saying that the leaders there suspended protests while waiting for a federal court to decide whether to readmit three suspended African American students. The commission also policed the pan-African group Republic of New Africa (RNA), which planned to celebrate March 30 and 31, 1973, as Solidarity Day and offered "workshops, spiritual ral- lies, and other demonstrations" for the event. Investigator E. C. Fortenberry warned the MSSC that the RNA planned to "create a new coalition of militants" from the participants (MSSC, 1973a, pp. 1-2).

Throughout the year, state politicians debated about the useful- ness of the MSSC. In March, the legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill to fund the agency for an additional year. More than 3 times the number of state representatives voting against the bill supported it, and the 3 nays in the state senate were no match for the 48 ayes. However, on April 17, after the legislature had adjourned for the year, Waller vetoed the bill. In his veto statement, he said that the commission provided "no real indispensable services to the people of this state." He claimed that the state highway patrol or attorney general could perform the labor of the MSSC's investigators ("Funds Vetoed," 1973, p. 28). Indeed, when the agency agreed to meet after the funding lapsed, the members requested that the attorney general's office coordinate the meeting. Still, they fumed over not only the veto but also Waller's timing of it (Katagiri, 2001, pp. 224-226).



4 1 8 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2006

The agency made the most of the possibilities of its salvation. With 1 month remaining before the funding cutoff, the group met twice to discuss its options for survival. In the meeting of June 7, Attorney General A. F. Summer noted that the termination of appropriations did not mean that the commission no longer existed. Moreover, if the 1974 session of the legislature were to override Waller's veto, then funding would resume (MSSC, 1973b, p. 5). Hanging onto this hope, the commissioners met on June 22 - 8 days before the office shutdown - to take measures to put the agency on hold for 6 months until the legislature convened in Janu- ary 1974. The MSSC resolved to place its investigators "on loan" with another department. The members placed their records with Mississippi secretary of state Heber Ladner. They agreed to pay rent on the office through January and allow other state agencies to use the space upon request in the meantime. They also scheduled one final meeting in November, although they would have lost their money by then (MSSC, 1973c, pp. 2-3).

After nearly 5 months, the MSSC did not remain united in its fight against the veto. Only five members attended the meeting of November 9, 1973: citizen members Dan Martin and H. Ted Lam- bert, state lawmakers Tommy Home and Chester Butler, and MSSC director Webb Burke. Even the addition of the substitutes for the lieutenant governor and attorney general barely made half the membership. Moreover, the two substitutes abstained from voting on the passed motion for the MSSC to ask the state legislature to override Governor Waller's veto, thus resulting in 5 of the 13 members voting to save the agency. All agreed, however, that Waller was no longer a productive member. They moved to poll the absent members about petitioning the legislature, but they did not list Waller among the absent. After all, by issuing his veto, he had made clear his stance on the commission (State of Mississippi Official Records of the Attorney General, 1973, p. 1).

The November meeting hardly caused a stir. The commission usually answered questions from reporters after meetings. How- ever, the local newspapers did not even mention a November meeting. To be sure, the MSSC was unattractive news by this time. It was a powerless agency stubbornly seeking money to do politically



Lehman / CIVIL RIGHTS IN TWILIGHT 4 1 9

obsolete work, and even the majority of its members demonstrated that it was not worth saving by their absence from the meeting. Upon convening in January, the legislature allowed the MSSC to remain dead, ending with barely a fraction of the fanfare of its creation.

The Alabama State Sovereignty Commission (ALSC), created 7 years after the MSSC, shared Mississippi's distaste for integration. State governor George Wallace had called for the creation of the agency in 1963. At the time, he faced civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham and threats to segregation at the University of Ala- bama. State officials fashioned the state's commission after the MSSC; the ALSC also spied on civil rights workers and other alleged subversives. The directors of both agencies contacted each other through the 1960s. Still, their enthusiasm could not prevent the ALSC from the effects of federally imposed desegregation (MSSC, 1964).

Despite the ALSC's misfortunes, Wallace remained a loyal sup- porter of his creation. In 1971, he proposed the biennial appropria- tion of $65,000 per year for the commission, and the Alabama legislature passed it. Integration brought upon the state by federal laws did not diminish the importance of the ALSC to Wallace. When making another biennial request for the agency in 1973, he asked for even more funds than before. He sought $68,000 for fiscal year 1974 and $72,000 for 1975 (Holmes, 1973).

The other branches of Alabama's government, however, found no reason to keep funding the sovereignty commission. In mid- 1973, the legislators voted to cut off the funding. They did not try to hold onto it as desperately as the Mississippi legislators did the MSSC. Then again, the ALSC had become a legal liability by the early 1970s. The agency constantly defended itself in court on charges of civil rights violations. Unfortunately for the commission, the plaintiffs usually won (Holmes, 1974).

Wallace did not protest the funding cutoff. His resolve to let the ALSC die represented a political shift in his handling of racial issues. He then began to reach out to his African American constit- uents, realizing that he would need their votes for reelection in 1974. In November 1973, he crowned the University of Alabama's



420 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JANUARY 2006

first African American to win the homecoming queen title, and he spoke to a gathering of Black politicians, who warmly received him. Not only was the state government willing to end the oppres- sion of African Americans at the hands of the ALSC, but also many African Americans were ready to move beyond the state's segregationist past.

In this new racial climate, the ALSC harbored no illusions about a likely resurrection but rather saw the funding cutoff as the end of the agency. The ALSC, like the MSSC, still existed by law but without funding as of September 30. However, the ALSC's prospects for restoration of funds were even bleaker than those of the MSSC. Alabama's commission could only have survived if legislators had called a special session to restore the money to the group - a very faint prospect, considering that they had eliminated the appropria- tion in the first place. Therefore, with 1 1 days remaining before the scheduled removal of funds, the agency met one last time to shut down. The members resolved to fire their employees instead of placing them on loan. They voted to terminate rental payments for office space (ALSC, 1973b, pp. 4-5). Jack Winfield, executive secretary of the ALSC, agreed to resign and then contract an employee to perform the necessary clerical work to close the commission; by December 4, the group had paid out all outstanding bills and canceled its contracts (ALSC, 1973a).

ALSC employee Martha Witt Smith, one of few segregationist women holding significant political power in the 1960s and 1970s, had more difficulty adjusting to the state's move away from resistance to integration. She had served as the commission's voting consultant for several years, traveling to boards of registrars all over the state to advise the members on how to register African Americans and college students to vote. In 1964, the ALSC hired her to write the interpretive oral and written questions for the state's voter registration test (Thornton, 2002, p. 684). When the legislature canceled ALSC funds, she lobbied the body to draft and pass a law creating a "voting consultant" position under the office of the governor, and she campaigned to fill the proposed office. However, the bill died in the state house of representatives (Holmes, 1973).



Lehman / CIVIL RIGHTS IN TWILIGHT 42 1

With her unemployment imminent upon the closing of the ALSC, she made a desperate appeal at the final meeting of the agency. She asked the commission to reimburse her for the expense of her lobbying for the bill. Instead, the members made very clear that as far as they were concerned, her time and the time of the ALSC had passed. Winfield, in particular, did not want to repay Smith. He stated that Wallace's administration had requested that the ALSC not support the bill and had tried to persuade Smith to cease lobbying. Winfield also had asked Smith to stop, but she refused. The ALSC members unanimously agreed with Winfield and turned down her request for money (ALSC, 1973b, p. 6). After the commission paid her for the last time on October 26, 1973, her long career with the ALSC was over (ALSC, 1973a).

The groups of the civil rights movement rarely exhibited unity but made few attempts to do so by 1973. The NAACP used the legal system to bring about changes in race relations. In contrast, the SCLC and SNCC advocated civil disobedience, which meant breaking a law, but on the basis of its innate immorality. These groups occasionally worked together; in 1966, the SCLC, SNCC, and the Congress of Racial Equality marched through Mississippi to encourage African Americans to take advantage of the recently passed Voting Rights Act by registering to vote. However, as the movement won victories such as the Voting Rights Act but lost key members due to violence, it struggled to make new goals and programs.

The SNCC, the organization that revitalized the movement via direct- action protests such as sit-ins in 1960, lost members over the years, evolving in ways that did not inspire loyalty among the participants. Boycotts in the late 1950s withdrew people from partici- pating in the economy, and resistance to the activists was high. In contrast, the sit-ins placed the students in the businesses and forced the owners to confront opponents of segregation face to face. The new tactic and its success at desegregating facilities inspired a wave of direct-action demonstrations nationwide. SNCC soon formed and immediately became a divided group. Its members either favored sit-ins because of immediate results (i.e., the desegregation




of a lunch counter) or voter registration drives, working toward the long-term goal of voting rights for African Americans. SNCC effectively organized both types of activists. But in the mid-1960s, the group made changes such as the creation of the controversial slogan "Black power" and the removal of White members. Later, when SNCC disavowed nonviolent protest as a tactic and changed the TV in its name from "Nonviolent" to "National" in 1969, almost all of the original members had left. None remained in 1973.

Still, the new members managed to keep SNCC afloat. Frances Beal led SNCC's most successful faction of the 1970s: the Third World Women's Alliance. Serving as a means to fight not only rac- ism but also sexism, the group filled a significant void, for both White feminists and the Black civil rights movement frequently neglected to discuss the specific concerns of women of color. SNCC also started such businesses as a coffee shop and a book- store. The FBI monitored the group but, with several SNCC branches folding through the 1970s, largely restricted surveillance to the national officers in New York (Carson, 1981, p. 296).

Throughout 1973, SNCC suffered heavy mortal blows. The Third World Women's Alliance split from SNCC in January. Three months later, the national office in New York closed. By November, the group had stopped publishing its newsletter "due to a lack of writing talent," according to the FBI report. On November 24, the organization held its national conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and decided to drop the acronym "SNCC" entirely and tentatively rename itself the Revolutionary Democratic Party. By this time, the group's strongest chapter was in San Antonio, Texas, but its members did not even attend the conference. Noting SNCC's inactivity and disintegration, the FBI closed its investigation of the group on December 11 (U.S. FBI, 1973, pp. 6, 8, 21).

The SCLC survived 1973 but not without experiencing trauma. After years of setbacks with the group in the aftermath of the killing of SCLC president Martin Luther King, Jr., successor Reverend Ralph Abernathy resigned from the presidency in July. He returned the next month after SCLC officers had begged him to do so. Still, he had to revamp the group in ways that not only reflected the loss of King and the resignations of prominent members Jesse Jackson



Lehman / CIVIL RIGHTS IN TWILIGHT 423

and James Bevel but also drew upon the strengths of the remaining members. That fall, SCLC kept busy by calling for the impeach- ment of President Richard Nixon and for the amnesty of draft dodg- ers of the Vietnam conflict. Still, the group lost focus by taking on so many issues.

Then, the Sugar Bowl controversy came along. The Mid- Winter Sports Association (MWSA), which facilitated the New Orleans bowl game, had been an all-White organization since its inception in 1934. Local African American activists began pressuring the group to desegregate in 1971. Then on November 29, 1973, an ad hoc committee consisting of local members of the NAACP, SCLC, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute gave a press conference, calling for "disruptive actions" if the MWSA did not bring in African American members and hire African Americans for clerical work and ticket selling. Committee attorney Al Chambliss warned, "There's a very good possibility there won't be a Sugar Bowl, if, in fact, the various community organizations and the people demon- strate their concern" (Lewis, 1973, p. 6).

In many ways, the ad hoc committee behaved like the civil rights movement had in the 1960s. The members revealed in the press conference that they would consider using the direct action tech- nique of sit-ins. The tactic had served the movement well in the 1960s, and by 1973, activists for other causes such as opposition to U.S. combat in Vietnam or women's liberation had co-opted the sit- in. Also, on the day after Christmas of that year, the committee held a mass meeting on the boycott at St. Raymond's Catholic Church hall. Mass meetings in churches had historically served as the means for ministers to rally their parishioners and others to involve themselves in civil rights activism; in the mid-1950s, participants in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama organized and devel- oped strategies en masse at church ("Rights Group," 1973, p. 46).

However, not all the Sugar Bowl protest activity was traditional. The ad hoc committee also demonstrated some changes in strategy since the peak years of the movement in the early 1960s. For example, the group maintained SCLC's policy since 1968 of refusing to promise nonviolence on the part of the demonstrators (Peake, 1987, p. 245). Also, the members did not have illusions of a



"beloved community" of Black and White MWSA members; whether the racial groups favored one another was irrelevant. Even the issue of integration itself mattered little to the committee. Par- ticipant Larry Jones flatly stated that the committee concerned itself with the goal of more money instead of integration. To him, the issue of all- White MWSA membership connected with the absence of teams from historically Black colleges and universities in the bowl game via money. "Sugar Bowl participants will receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $570,000 apiece," he noted. "Black colleges could use some of that money" ("Civil Rights Group," 1973, p. 4).

The civil rights movement in New Orleans attracted national attention but on a limited scale. For the first time in 20 years, the victorious team of the Sugar Bowl would become the national college football team champion; the first- and third-ranked teams - the University of Alabama and Notre Dame, respectively - were scheduled to play. Sports reporters nationwide treated the evolution of the ad hoc committee's campaign like a soap opera; they kept readers in suspense as to whether the Sugar Bowl would take place. However, the story did not displace Watergate and the Middle East on the front pages of newspapers. Instead, it remained confined to the sports sections.

Even with support from the national office of the SCLC, the Sugar Bowl campaign did not significantly benefit. National officers seemed unsure as to the goals of the local activists. SCLC vice- president Dr. Bernard Lee vaguely reassured the crowd at the mass meeting that "Dr. Abernathy has assured me that he is well ready to come to New Orleans to do whatever the ad hoc committee deems necessary to get our fair share of whatever the pie is." He proposed to have national officers confer with the MWSA and picket ABC for broadcasting the Sugar Bowl on television (Murphy, 1973, p. 1). In addition, the national SCLC did not take any initiative, but rather took its cues from the local leaders. It was a far cry from 10 years earlier, when Dr. King and other national SCLC leaders moved into Birmingham, Alabama and organized masses for a series of marches; desegregation of the city resulted, but local activists balked





at the aggressiveness of the campaign and the SCLC's use of minors for demonstrations (Thornton, 2002, p. 297).

The lack of support from students showed that the civil rights movement had indeed lost its ability to mobilize the masses. Pro- fessional adults ran the Sugar Bowl campaign, thus giving students little say in its operation. Also, the MWS A did not appoint students to its membership. Therefore, they did not stand to directly benefit from the boycott. The players of both teams appearing in the bowl opted not to participate in the protest activities. One player initially declared, "My first obligation is to my team. I believe a person can take care of his own problems first, his own individually, those in his immediate environment and then try to take care of those in other places." But he then admitted ignorance of the details of the boycott ("Players Shun," 1973, p. 36).

More significant was the voluntary absence of the homecoming queen of the University of Alabama from the boycott. Terry Points, the school's first African American queen, arguably would not have attended the school if not for the movement. Ironically, Wallace, who had tried to prevent integration at the school 10 years earlier, crowned Points. Still, when asked by a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune about the achievements of the movement, she saw them as relative: "Of course the race relations have improved, but then, we [the state of Alabama] were never as bad as anyone else. Some things took longer to change than others." Also ironic was her opposition to the boycott because of opportunities for the athletes via school desegregation. "The players have a future to look forward to, and a bowl game is very important to their careers," she reasoned. "Boycotting the Sugar Bowl would be hurt- ing them, and I don't think the Ad Hoc Committee should put them in that position" (Davis, 1973, p. 6: 3).

The lack of student participation in the boycott partly symbol- ized a major shift in student activity in 1973. With the end of the military draft in January and U.S. troops leaving Vietnam 2 months later, antiwar activism sharply declined on campuses nationwide. Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) returned to some colleges and universities that had banned them a few years earlier. Students




returned to traditional activities such as pledging fraternities and sororities. Many reporters noted the trend of students' prioritiza- tion of academics over activism that fall semester. In October, newspaper columnist William Rusher (1973, p. 2: 2) declared, "The Youth Revolution is over."

Several people joined the students in opposing the boycott. Civil rights leaders in New Orleans publicly criticized the ad hoc committee for its stubbornness. "The committee had won its point but when it got down to the nitty gritty, they did not exercise the reason I would like to see exercised," said one local activist. In addition, one of the new Black MWSA members downplayed the importance of the continued campaign, revealing that those joining the group merely receive a lifetime right to buy tickets to the Sugar Bowl. He sighed, "In a way, the whole thing is ridiculous" ("Civil Rights Group," 1973, p. 4).

Even the SCLC and members of the ad hoc committee backed off of the protest at the last minute. On New Year's eve, hours before the game started, Lee announced that the MWSA had written a promise to implement an affirmative action program giving the organization 30% African American membership by 1975. Sat- isfied that the MWSA had acted in good faith, he withdrew the SCLC from the demonstration. Thirty marchers still picketed the event at Tulane Stadium - far fewer than the activists had expected. Miffed that other committee members were absent, marcher Johnny Jackson, Jr., a Louisiana representative from New Orleans, defi- antly stated, "Our purpose is not to disrupt, just to visually display that all is not well." Notre Dame and Alabama played in the Sugar Bowl that night without interruption ("Protest Voiced," 1974, p. 7: 1).

Thus, the last nationally publicized event coordinated by more than one of the "old guard" civil rights movement groups uncere- moniously concluded as the year 1974 approached within minutes. The commissions and the movement fed off each other to survive. The former justified their existence by noting the presence of the latter. Likewise, the movement lived to combat the segregationist policies that the commissions defended. Both sides lost momentum throughout the early 1970s due to funding problems and the inabil-




ity to revamp themselves in the wake of civil rights victories. Their simultaneous collapses in 1973 were no mere coincidences.

REFERENCES

Alabama State Sovereignty Commission. (1973a). Accounts payable general ledger. Mont-

gomery: Alabama Department of Archives and History. Alabama State Sovereignty Commission. (1973b, September 19). Minutes of the meeting of

the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission. Montgomery: Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Carson, C. (1981). In struggle: SNCC and the Black awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Civil rights group demanding more sugar from bowl. ( 1 973, December 1 7). The New Orleans Times-Picayune, p. 4: 4.

Davis, J. M. ( 1 973, December 3 1 ). Alabama queen advises Blacks to play in sugar. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, p. 6: 3.

Dittmer, J. (1998). Dixie 's dirty secret: The true story of how the government, the media, and the mob conspired to combat integration and the Vietnam antiwar movement. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

Funds vetoed for Mississippi board that fought civil rights. (1973, April 22). The New York Times, p. 28.

Holmes, R. (1973, October 4). Sovereignty commission is no more, but chief still on state's

payroll. Montgomery Advertiser. Available from www.montgomeryadvertiser.com Holmes, R. (1974, October 27). State sovereignty commission could be revived. Montgom-

ery Advertiser. Available from www.montgomeryadvertiser.com Katagiri, Y. (2001). The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil rights and states'

rights. Jackson: University Press of Mississippl. Lewis, D. (1973, November 30). Sugar Bowl in peril - Blacks. The New Orleans Times-

Picayune, p. 6. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. ( 1 973a, March 28). Minutes of the meeting of the

Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. ( 1 973b, June 7). Minutes of the meeting of the Mis-

sissippi State Sovereignty Commission. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and

History. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. (1973c, June 22). Minutes of the meeting of the

Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Murphy, J. D. ( 1 973, December 27). Unit may block gates to bowl. The New Orleans Times- Picayune, p. 1 .

Peake, T. R. ( 1 987). Keeping the dream alive: A history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from King to the nineteen-eighties. New York: Peter Lang.

Players shun boycott request. (1973, December 27). The Hartford Courant, p. 36.




Protest voiced despite Black leaders' remarks. (1974, January 1). The New Orleans Times-

Picayune, p. 7.

Rights groups threaten Sugar Bowl (1973, November 30). The New York Times, p. 46. Rusher, W. (1973, October 20). The youth revolution: It never really happened. St. Paul

Pioneer-Dispatch, p. 2: 2. State of Mississippl. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) (1964, April 24).

Letter from Hon. Eli Howell to Hon. Erie Johnston. Jackson, MS: Mississippi Depart- ment of Archives and History.

State of Mississippi Official Records of the Attorney General. (1973, November 9). Minutes

of the meeting of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Thornton, J. M. (2002). Dividing lines: Municipal politics and the struggle for civil rights in

Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1973, December 1 1). Report on the Student National

Coordinating Committee. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Walker, A. ( 1 973, August 26). Staying home in Mississippl. The New York Times Magazine,

pp. 9, 58, 60, 62.

Christopher P. Lehman received his doctorate in Afro-American studies from the

University of Massachusetts atAmherst in 2002. He published "The New Black Ani- mated Images of 1946: Black Characters and Social Commentary in Animated Car- toons " in the summer 2001 issue of the Journal of Popular Film and Television. He is under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press to complete a book on

African American representation in American animated films. He currently works as an assistant professor of the Ethnic Studies Department at Saint Cloud State Univer- sity in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. He gives frequent public speeches on the subject of the

history of Saint Cloud's African American community.



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