I'd rate myself a fair student of the history taught during my days in school. I was no scholar mind you, but I did enjoy studying the history of the country I call home. All of these years later, I realize that, ironically, I was living through the history that would be taught in today's classrooms. Well, I hope it's being taught, anyway.
I'm now a member of the older generation, and today's schoolchildren may not appreciate enough how we got to where we are today. Many of them, especially Black children, aren't aware that the many freedoms they take for granted come with a price. They were fought for and, indeed, sometimes earned in blood.
I clearly remember my school days at Eureka Elementary School. In the early 1960s, America's classrooms were racially segregated by law. Like so many things then, we children asked no questions and, if we did, we were simply reminded that's just the way things were. Change was coming, though.
The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the nation's premier civil rights legislation. The act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, required equal access to public places and employment, enforced desegregation of schools, and codified the right to vote. The act did not end wholesale discrimination, but it was an important building block.
Hattiesburg though, along with Mississippi and much of the South, was slow to catch up to the future, hanging their hats on the still familiar and often dubiously used "states rights" argument.
In the mid-1960s, there were no Black clerks at Hattiesburg's downtown department stores, no Black police officers. The only place you'd see Black people working at City Hall or the Forrest County Courthouse was in janitorial positions.
Then there was Hattiesburg's bus system, which, at the time, bustled. There were multiple stops at downtown locations where you might have to get a transfer to board a second bus to reach your final destination. Routes traveled through overwhelmingly Black neighborhoods. And yet, in spite of the new Civil Rights Act, no Black bus drivers were employed by the system.
Still a child in the mid-1960s, I didn't fully grasp the importance of the fight for change that was about to take place around me.
In 1967, C.E. Smith, founder of the historic Smith Drug Co., the Rev. E.E. Grimmett of St. Paul United Methodist Church, along with others, including the Forrest County Branch of the NAACP, led a boycott of downtown merchants. Its purpose was to forge fair employment opportunities for Blacks at downtown's retail stores, including jobs for us in the city's banks, service and civic institutions.
The boycott also included the Hattiesburg transit system, which, as noted, would not hire Black bus drivers. All the more alarming, considering Blacks made up a supermajority of ridership.
During my grade school years, summer vacation was something every school kid, no matter their race, looked forward to. No school, no homework for three months. By the time August arrived though, the summer blues had set in. It was time for back-to-school shopping, which meant a necessary but unloved trip to downtown Hattiesburg with my mom for new clothes, shoes and, of course, notebooks and pencils. That annual trip was interrupted in the summer of 1967.
In the 1960s, downtown Hattiesburg was the retail hub for the Hub City, anchored by national chains Sears, JCPenney and Woolworth's, along with local retail icons Waldoff's, The Vogue and Fine Bros.-Matison Co.
I clearly remember that summer, especially when it came time for the dreaded back-to-school shopping trip. That year, my mother's mentor and best friend, Mrs. Jemye Heath, was a school teacher with her at Eureka Elementary and participated in the boycott of downtown. Like it or not, I did, too. We children were under strict instruction not to enter downtown's stores. That August, Mrs. Heath and my mother drove their children to downtown Laurel for our back-to-school shopping.
In Hattiesburg, meanwhile, stores were not only boycotted but some were picketed by protesters carrying signs demanding change and fairness. Sometimes as many as 35 people would picket a single store. Singing spirituals or repeating chants as they marched, unsurprisingly, the picketing led to complaints from retailers. According to court records, the chants might be directed at particular store owners and were, allegedly, of a threatening nature. Dozens of arrests were made and, eventually, a lawsuit was filed — C.E. Smith vs. Paul E. Grady, Mayor of the City of Hattiesburg — to quell the situation, preventing things from getting incendiary.
That summer, as the boycotts and less-heated picketing continued, Blacks were not shopping in downtown Hattiesburg at all.
The city's once-vibrant bus system was virtually devoid of passengers. Black passengers who'd routinely ridden the buses found other ways to get to work and around town. Those fortunate enough to have automobiles, a luxury in those days, helped fill the transportation gap by offering rides to friends and neighbors. Others chose to walk to their destinations. It couldn't have been easy, getting around town during a brutal South Mississippi summer. Still, the boycott was so effective it temporarily shut down Hattiesburg's bus system.
Sacrifice was a necessary part of the team effort. The fight for equal rights and fairness was worth it and, at the end of the day, paid off. When the boycott ended, a pleasantly awkward and new normal began to settle over Hattiesburg. I remember how astonishing it was to finally see Black people working as sales associates at Waldoff's or as tellers at First National Bank on Main Street. And, yes, Black men were driving the buses that passed our house on Fairley Street. At long last, my being Black didn't prevent me from enjoying the same freedoms white children my age had known all of their lives.
Today, I'm afraid that many Black children take those rights for granted, the way white children in the 1960s did with theirs. Besides the United States history class I took at Hattiesburg High School, a class in Mississippi history was required learning when I was a student at a newly-integrated Hawkins Junior High. I took that class in the late 1960s, barely a year after the boycotts had ended. Mississippi's history, and Hattiesburg's, were still being written, even as I studied it in school.
More than 50 years later, today's students must be taught the unvarnished history of our state, the history that I, along with many of you, have lived. It's important that Mississippi's children of all races know how far our state and nation have come. They have a right to know, and a need to know. As for us grownups, it is our duty to teach it. And the reason is simple.
Knowledge strengthens our understanding of each other.
Elijah Jones is a proud Hattiesburg native who enjoys writing. Email him at edjhubtown@aol.com.
