The civil rights era in the United States is often perceived as a national movement occurring between 1954 and 1968. The common known features of the civil rights movement include civil disobedience, sit-ins, boycotts, and peaceful marches, as well as a series of court cases fought by the NAACP. The examinations of these events often focus on the cities that gained more attention from the media and the public, e.g. Birmingham, Greensboro, Little Rock, Selma, and Montgomery. While all of this is true, J. Todd Moye, in his book Let the People Decide, presents a different perspective by examining the civil rights movement by focusing on Sunflower County, Mississippi from the mid-forties until the 1980s. Moye’s examination of four decades in a rural community illustrates the periods of transition into and out of the small period that is often exclusively considered the civil rights era. In addition, Moye ties the race struggle to economics, demonstrating the influence of class struggle on race relations, and depicting the impact of the civil rights era on a single rural community.
Moye decided to examine civil rights through the perspective of a southern rural community, but he chose Sunflower County for several reasons. Sunflower County, Mississippi was the birthplace of Senator James Eastland, one of the most powerful desegregationists, who served the U.S. Senate from 1943-78. Sunflower County also happened to have one of the densest populations of blacks at nearly seventy percent. Although a large percentage of the population in Eastland’s hometown was black, his idea of representing the people of his state was strong opposition to human rights. In 1957 he appeared in an interview with Mike Wallace, where he claims that segregation was a choice made by both blacks and whites, “It’s a matter of choice by both races…I’m suggesting that the vast majority of the Negros want their own schools, their own hospitals, their own churches, their own restaurants.” However when Mike Wallace asks, “Their own buses?” Eastland responds “It would be impractical to operate two sets of buses, certainly.”
In 1962 the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee began organizing in Sunflower County. Their initial goal was to gather blacks to vote. Among those willing was Fannie Lou Hamer. The dozen or so blacks who attempted to vote were denied however. Fannie Lou Hamer was evicted after defending her effort to vote to her boss, and as a result became a full time activist. Moye’s story focuses on the disenfranchised blacks that made up the majority of the community in Sunflower County.
Sunflower County was majority blacks, but all of the money and power was in the hands of the few white landowners. Robert B. Patterson formed the Citizens’ Council in Indianola. Patterson’s Citizens’ Council, a white supremacist organization, was made up of middle and upper class white men of Sunflower County. They formed after the Brown decision and used economic intimidation to subvert the collective action of African American’s to achieve social equality.
J. Todd Moye, in Let the People Decide analyzes the effects of the civil rights movement in rural communities, as well as the effects those communities had on the civil rights movement. The juxtaposition of disenfranchised blacks and powerful white men such as James Eastland and those that made up the Citizens’ Council shows a unique view of class and race struggle within a community. It is, in fact, Moye’s inspiration for the book: “This project began one day around 1993 when I learned that Fannie Lou Hamer… and James Eastland had lived within spitting distance of each other” (269). Moye chooses to follow the oral stories of African American’s who made up the majority of Sunflower County’s population. The history of race struggle in Sunflower County is still very much a part of history, but as is always the case, the white people involved wish to leave it in the past. Blacks and whites always see history of racial tension in different perspectives. Blacks acknowledge that they come from a culture that was oppressed in a country they helped build and fought wars for. Whites however, always wish to distant themselves from their past oppression. Until whites can acknowledge that the things they did were wrong, and that they are not that far in the past, perhaps a common truth will smooth over modern tensions. This is Moye’s intention by relating race struggle with class struggle.
Im in college and this blog is neccessary 