
          A Passionate, First-Hand Story of One Place in the Movement.
          Reviewed by Cooper, MichaelMichael Cooper
          Vol. 12, No. 3, 1990, pp. 20-21
          
          JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI: An American Chronicle of Struggle and
Schism by John R Salter Jr. (Malabar, Florida: Robert
E. Krueger Publishing Co., Inc. 1987. 256 pp., no price).
          John Salter's book, which evokes the emotions, the frustrations,
and the fears of Jackson in the early 1960s, is particularly valuable
because so little has been written about the civil_rights movement in
Mississippi's capital and largest city.
          Salter and his wife were drawn from Arizona to Mississippi in 1961
by the growing civil_rights movement. A sociology professor, Salter
got a job teaching at Tougaloo College. Soon afterward he became the
sponsor of the local NAACP Youth Council.
          Under his guidance the council's eager young_people became
activists. They launched a boycott of the Mississippi State Fair. With
leaflets, press releases, and word of mouth the youth group persuaded
black_people to shun the fair. This victory inspired a more ambitious
project, a boycott of downtown Jackson businesses during the 1962
Christmas buying-season. A short list of demands was drawn up, bail
money was raised, and pickets were selected to launch the boycott in
early December. The first day downtown the young men and women were
met by paddy wagons and an army of policemen who promptly arrested all
six pickets. Undeterred by the overwhelming show of force, the young
people picketed for weeks and the boycott I was a success.
          The Youth Council had one impressive victory after another. In
addition to its successful boycotts of the state fair and of downtown
stores, the group had quietly desegregated public events at then
all-white Millsaps College, conducted a voter_registration drive, and
campaigned for black politicians.
          The catalyst for this activism was Salter. In a long foreword to
the book, the Reverend R Edwin King, Jr., a native Mississippian and
Methodist minister, says Salter was, "The key strategist in the
massive community organizing effort." As such, Salter joined the
state's small band of civil_rights activists, which included Amzie
Moore, Medgar Evers, Tom Johnson, and a handful of others. Being a
prominent civil_rights activist was a double-edged honor. To the
ubiquitous Citizens Council he was an outside agitator, a man marked
for retribution.
          Despite harassing phone calls, the angry glares of white neighbors,
and constant surveillance by men in an unmarked car, Salter persevered
and the local movement attracted more and more participants. The
national NAACP, however, wasn't responding with bail money and other
assistance. While praising the organization's local officials, Medgar
Evers and Aaron Henry, Salter is quite critical of the national
NAACP's role in Jackson.
          "We knew, for example, that Aaron Henry had frequently felt that
the national office was being slow to assist the struggle in
Mississippi; and we knew that Aaron Henry himself had been criticized
by the national office for his friendliness and cooperation with such
groups as COR1S, SCLC, and SNCC." Salter also says that the
NAACP's National Executive Board was indecisive on the use of direct
action "as well as on the issue of involvement in Mississippi."
Overall, Salter felt that "the national office of the NAACP was not
much interested in our campaign in Jackson."
          But that interest changed after sit-ins at Woolworth's and a
demonstration where five hundred young_people were arrested and locked
up in a barbed-wire stockade became national news. Not so
coincidentally, Salter implies, the national NAACP suddenly took
notice of the Jackson movement.
          NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins flew to Jackson and joined a
demonstration in which he and two hundred other people were
arrested. Soon afterward the national NAACP took over the Jackson
movement and moved it into a new phase, of less direct action and more
legal action. Salter's leadership was circumvented. Although he
continued to argue for more demonstrations, the move meet's momentum
seemed spent until the murder of Medgar Evers incited Jackson's black
community.
          The Evers funeral attracted five thousand people, in-

cluding Martin
Luther King Jr. Several hundred mourners made an impromptu march
downtown resulting in a police riot and dozens of bloody
arrests. Salter was blamed by both the white community and the alarmed
black_community for the march and the violence. Discredited in the
eyes of the more cautious black_people, he was maneuvered out of
leadership.
          Although no longer a principal leader, Salter was still the target
of white hatred. In what might have been attempted murder, he and
fellow activist Edwin King were seriously injured in a car crash. Both
men recovered, and soon afterward Salter left Mississippi to work as
an organizer in eastern North_Carolina with the Southern Conference
Educational Fund.
          Some readers will object to Salter's less than flattering portrayal of
the national NAACP and of Jackson's black ministers. As he describes
it, the NAACP was too preoccupied with its own agenda and its own
glory to worry much about the people of Mississippi.
          Salter has too little empathy with local black ministers who didn't
participate in the protests. In Mississippi's civil_rights battles
it's not surprising there were so few brave people; it's surprising
there were so many. Black_people in particular had everything to
fear. Everything--home, family, friends, and livelihood--was at
stake. At best a local black activist might suffer economic reprisals;
at worst he or she might be gunned down. When Jackson turned violent,
Salter's wife and child went to Minnesota. And soon afterward Salter
himself left the state. Few local black_people could so move.
          Salter's book does not pretend to be objective journalism. He did
not ask the NAACP officials or the black ministers for their
versions. Rather, the book is a passionate, first-hand account of the
Jackson movement by one of its central figures. Jackson, Mississippi was first published in 1979. The
Robert E. Krueger Publishing Company deserves plaudits for this new
edition.
          
            Writer Michael Cooper has been researching
Mississippi.
          
        
