A Different Day Read online

  Inside a plantation worker’s home, Melrose, Louisiana, June 1940. As the pictures decorating this bedroom suggest, religion was a central part of many black people's lives. LC-USF34-54651-D, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Despite these problems, black churches could and did act as agents of social change. Religion was an empowering force in many black people's lives, providing hope and a sense of being valued that counteracted messages of black inferiority and worthlessness projected by the white supremacist social system. Churches were places where African Americans met not only to pray, but also to socialize, disseminate information, make plans, and raise money to carry them out. In the early twentieth century religious institutions were central elements in school-building programs and other community projects. Moreover, they provided important social services such as health care, sickness and disability insurance, and assistance for those who were unemployed or too old to work.35

  For a small fee, black Louisianans could join any number of other organizations that offered similar safeguards. In West Feliciana Parish, members of the Morning Star Society received medical and burial benefits for fifty cents per month. The Progressive Funeral Home owned by Dora B. Davis of Bunkie operated a hearse and ambulance service over a radius of two hundred miles, catering to over seven thousand people in six parishes. Black churches in Iberville, Pointe Coupee, East Feliciana, and West Feliciana Parishes contributed one dollar a month to the Home Mission Baptist Association in Baton Rouge in return for the care of elderly and infirm church members. The Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver, an organization of black Catholics founded in 1909, drew a large proportion of its membership from Louisiana. Aware that African Americans were “ruthlessly exploited economically” and that Catholics were persecuted in many parts of the United States, the order aimed to provide financial help, comfort for sick or disabled members, and opportunities for socializing.36

  African Americans created a complex, overlapping system of benevolent societies, fraternal orders, insurance agencies, parent-teacher associations, and youth groups that reached into isolated rural areas as well as towns and cities in Louisiana. With the exception of a few exclusively male fraternal orders, membership and meetings were open to all. By enhancing economic security and assisting those in need, these organizations contributed greatly to the well-being of individuals and communities. In addition, they encouraged participation in efforts to improve conditions for black people. Activities sponsored by these institutions included attempts to increase employment opportunities for African Americans, alleviate racial tension, and improve health, sanitation, and educational facilities. According to one report, such concerns were less likely to be rejected by white people when they were raised by general community groups instead of more overtly political organizations like the NAACP. The author observed that although they seemed innocuous, many societies did “tend to show a civic interest that can only be made manifest through them yet they have no claim to the name of a so-called civic organization. These civic interests are accepted by many of the opposite race because their attitude towards the sponsoring group is not warped by preconceived ideas of their functions that may have been called out by a civic named club.”37

  Black community institutions were subversive in other ways as well. Churches and society halls provided some of the few spaces where rural black people were relatively free from white supervision, and within their walls African Americans engaged in decision-making and other political processes that were denied them in the wider society. The St. Mary Parish Benevolent Society, for instance, established guidelines for acceptable behavior among its members and set fines for those who engaged in gambling or fighting. Many African Americans viewed these transgressions as harmful to their communities, but they were often ignored by local law enforcement officers as long as no white people were hurt. The society also provided short-term, interest-free loans, offering members an alternative to falling further into debt to white creditors in cases of emergency. At monthly meetings of the Bethel Baptist Church in Natchitoches Parish, representatives of the church's various districts followed standard parliamentary procedures as they discussed and voted on issues such as the disbursement of funds to needy members, censure and fining of those who were guilty of misbehavior, and long-term policies and programs.38

  The social networks that rural black people established in their churches and societies went some way toward combating plantation owners’ efforts to keep them isolated and unaware of developments in the outside world. In 1928 one observer wrote: “Every negro mouth is a transmitter and ear a receiver. If anything of importance happens on a plantation to-night, every negro for forty miles around will know it by morning.”39 Throughout the twentieth century, this kind of “wireless telegraphy” was instrumental in enabling African Americans to seize opportunities to press their demands for equality when political or social developments encouraged them to do so. In 1934, for instance, black Louisianans who belonged to the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World managed to collect ten thousand signatures for a petition endorsing a federal antilynching bill then being considered by Congress. Black community institutions assisted in the organization of the LFU in the 1930s, and they were vital to the success of voter registration efforts and other forms of black protest after World War II.40

  Despite the important sustaining roles they played and their potential political uses, churches and societies were not strong enough to overcome black Louisianans’ general poverty and powerlessness in the Jim Crow era. Disfranchisement and lack of access to the law forced black people to find other ways to fight injustice. Given white Louisianans’ frequent use of beatings, whippings, and lynchings, it should not be surprising that African Americans also sometimes resorted to aggressive tactics. In 1921 the NAACP's New York headquarters received the following report of an incident that occurred in Iberville Parish: “We heard a sugar cane farmer horsewhipped one of his Negro laborers—the Negro took the thrashing then shot the owner—four times. The white man went to his house for his gun—the Negro met him coming out of the door—and shot him again—this time in the mouth—then rear! . . . He was put in to jail and lynched that same night. The white man meanwhile lies in Baton Rouge hospital.”41

  Individual reactions like these occurred with some frequency, with white antagonists often receiving more grievous wounds than those suffered by the Iberville Parish sugar planter. In 1926 black sharecropper Joe Hardy raised what he thought was a good crop on the plantation of John S. Glover in Caddo Parish. Expecting to clear several hundred dollars, he was surprised when Glover claimed that he owed sixty dollars instead. Hardy did not want to risk any trouble so he said nothing at the time. Later, he approached a neighboring planter who agreed to hire him for the next year and to pay his debt to Glover. When Hardy took his new employer's check to Glover, the planter attacked him and in the fight that followed, Hardy shot and killed his former landlord.42

  A similar incident occurred near Franklinton, Washington Parish, a decade later. One morning in July 1934, white stock inspector Joe Magee stopped at the home of John Wilson, a prosperous black farmer, and became involved in an argument with Wilson's son Jerome about whether or not a mule he saw standing in the corral had been dipped. After the altercation Magee telephoned the sheriff, saying that he had been mobbed and threatened by the Wilson family. A short while later Magee returned to the Wilsons’ farm with Deputy Sheriff Delos C. Woods and two other white men. Jerome told them to take the mule for dipping if they wanted to. When Woods told him that they had come not just for the mule but for him also, Jerome asked to see an arrest warrant. Woods responded by grabbing Jerome, and when the black man resisted, the deputy shot and wounded both Jerome and one of his brothers. Jerome staggered into the house and returned with his gun. He fired one shot, the white men shot back, and either Jerome's or someone else's bullet killed Deputy Woods.43

  Although African Americans generally tried to avoid dangerous
situations, when they did encounter circumstances like those faced by Joe Hardy and Jerome Wilson it was not unusual for them to fight back.44 In the decades before national leaders and organizations began advocating nonviolent protest as a strategy to overcome racism, most rural black people placed more faith in their shotguns than in appeals to the consciences of white people when harm threatened. Johnnie Jones's father did not rely solely on his white friends to protect his son from violence after the car accident mentioned in Chapter 2. With the whole family expecting a mob to arrive at their house, Jones recalled, “My daddy didn't, didn't back up, he just loaded up his shot gun and loaded up his .44, that's the kind of pistol he had, and just waited for whatever would come, but nothing ever came.” Black lawyer Lolis Elie remembered being told about a similar incident when he was a young boy. In the 1930s Elie's mother was visiting her foster parents in Pointe Coupee Parish when the sheriff drove by and called out “Hey gal” as she walked along the road toward their house. She ignored him, and when he pulled the car over in front of her and asked why she had not answered him, she replied, “My name ain't ‘Hey gal,’ my daddy ain't no white man, and I don't have to answer you if I don't want to.” Her foster mother witnessed this exchange with horror. After Elie's mother entered the house, the older woman scolded her and locked all the doors and windows, expecting the sheriff and his deputies to come back and kill them. But when Elie's grandfather came home and heard what had happened, he told them to unlock everything and stationed himself outside with his shotgun. “They may come through that gate,” he said, “but ain't none of them gonna be alive to get to my porch.”45

  African Americans who chose to defend themselves against harassment or violence took enormous risks, especially if a white person was killed or injured in the process. Jerome Wilson was eventually lynched for his role in the shooting of Delos Woods. Joe Hardy narrowly escaped this fate, but most were not so lucky. A black man in Tallulah and another from Caddo Parish both paid with their lives after shooting their white employers. In a tragic incident that occurred near Alexandria in 1928, an angry mob retaliated against William Blackman's entire family after he shot a deputy in self-defense and was shot and killed himself. The mob lynched Blackman's two brothers, burned seven homes, and drove all his remaining relatives out of the parish.46

  “Homicide” was the reason given for nearly 2,000 recorded lynchings that occurred in the South between 1882 and 1946. “Felonious assault” accounted for another 202 of these murders, “robbery and theft” for 231, and “insult to white person” for 84.47 Perhaps nothing more effectively captures the ambiguous meaning of infrapolitical activity than these statistics. On one hand, they show that African Americans were far from acquiescent in the first half of the twentieth century. On the other, they reveal the limits of protest in a setting where white people's political, economic, and firepower always overwhelmed any resources that black people had access to.

  The effect that individual, informal acts of resistance had on the southern social system is much more difficult to gauge than the achievements of organized political movements. But evidence suggests that they had at least some impact. Beneath the surface of newspaper articles proclaiming that harmonious “race relations” existed in the region, white Louisianans lived in a constant state of tension with their African American neighbors. In letters to his fiancée, Henry Stewart complained incessantly of problems with black workers on the two plantations he managed in West Feliciana Parish in the early 1900s. Their faults included taking unexpected holidays, disregarding his advice about when to pick their cotton, and leaving at the slightest provocation.48 In 1908, after the arrival of the destructive cotton boll weevil provided an incentive to cut back his cotton crop and rely less heavily on African American labor, Stewart wrote with some relief, “I would not return to the negro and cotton for anything.”49

  Other planters had similar problems. In 1933 a social worker who visited a plantation owner and his wife in Tensas Parish noted that they were having trouble with one family of tenants, writing in her report: “They are very anxious to get rid of this family, for the reason that they keep the plantation in an uproar nearly all the time. This type of people nearly always instill an instin[c]t of fear into their employers, due to their treacherous and revengeful natures. They will not fight in the open, but will burn your house down when your back is turned.”50

  The knowledge that black people were not completely docile had a more significant effect than keeping the white community perpetually on edge. One of the reasons why the Wilson family of Washington Parish had been so successful before the shootout in 1934 was that they knew both how to get along with white people and when to stand up for their rights. Jerome Wilson was the grandson of Isom Wilson, a former slave who achieved land ownership with the help of the family he had served before the Civil War. One day in the early 1900s Isom's daughter Ophelia was plowing a field near a road when a white man rode by and asked, “Say, gal, you want to do a little business?” Ophelia screamed, bringing Isom running across the field with his shotgun. The white man had to flee for his life. According to Horace Mann Bond, “News of that got around, too, and didn't anybody try to joree with any of Isom's girls after that.”51

  As this story suggests, incidents of armed self-defense sometimes had a lasting impact on white behavior. After Jerome Wilson was killed in January 1935, African Americans in Washington Parish were afraid that there might be more lynchings and white people were just as afraid that the black community might retaliate. For several weeks, it seemed, white inhabitants were extremely careful not to offend anyone. “They ain't bother you,” a local black woman reported. “Mr. Barker says they can't be too nice in the stores. They jump around trying to wait on you.” In the early 1940s a school principal claimed that relationships between white and black people in Washington Parish were “very good.” He explained: “It seems that some shooting which occurred about five years ago made things better. We had a series of murders during that time, starting off with the shooting of a white sheriff by an unknown Negro. When a Negro was killed by a white man, then the Negroes would turn around and kill a white man. The white people developed the saying—‘You know, these niggers around here will kill you.’” The shootings prompted a group of prominent white residents to meet with black community leaders to discuss the situation, and after that the violence subsided.52

  Although they courted disaster, the actions of people like Isom and Jerome Wilson drove home to white people the danger of pushing African Americans too far. Just as black people knew that retaliating against white violence risked death, white people were aware that instigating violence also invited death, even if to a much lesser extent. African Americans only had to shoot back occasionally to influence white people's actions. Sporadic use of armed self-defense meant that white supremacists never knew when they might exceed black people's limits of tolerance, with potentially lethal consequences for themselves. That African Americans’ behavior was not always predictable might have been why Johnnie Jones's father and Lolis Elie's grandfather did not have to use their guns in the incidents mentioned earlier, although they were fully prepared to do so.

  Both national and local civil rights leaders in the first half of the twentieth century recognized the role that armed self-defense played in the freedom struggle and encouraged its use. Antilynching campaigner Ida B. Wells-Barnett noted in 1892 that of the many black people who had been the victims of mob violence during the year, the only ones who managed to escape death were those who had guns and used them to fend off their attackers. “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well,” Wells-Barnett wrote, “is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection that the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life.” In a 1916 issue of the
NAACP's Crisis magazine, W. E. B. Du Bois strongly criticized the black people of Gainesville, Florida, for their inaction during a recent lynching. He argued, “The men and women who had nothing to do with the alleged crime should have fought in self-defense to the last ditch if they had killed every white man in the county and themselves been killed. . . . In the last analysis lynching of Negroes is going to stop in the South when the cowardly mob is faced by effective guns in the hands of people determined to sell their souls dearly.” Five years later, in the wake of a riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that followed the attempted lynching of a black youth charged with rape, the Baltimore Afro-American praised the courage of African Americans in the city who had shown that they would “rather die than submit to mob law.”53

  Black newspapers in Louisiana also commented favorably when the victims of attack fought back. After a black man shot and killed a white student during a fight in New Orleans in 1930, the Louisiana Weekly editorialized, “We do not condone the killing of this white student, but we will state that every Negro will not pass lightly by the insults and vituperations heaped upon their heads by roving bands intent on having fun at the expense of their darker brothers.” They also observed that several riots had been averted in the city because African Americans showed their willingness to defend themselves.54 The following year the Weekly praised the actions of a black man who took his son back to a store where a white boy, encouraged by the clerks, had hit him. The man demanded that his son be allowed to fight the white boy on equal terms, and after the white men agreed, the black boy beat his opponent. The report urged African Americans not to accept abuse, saying, “This boy's courage will increase, and as he grows older he will develop the true spirit which our race is so badly in need of.55