Wrongs Beyond Rights

Rolling over 700 square miles in southwestern Tennessee, Fayette County is a Black-belt area where cotton is king, the white man is prince, and Negro sharecroppers for years have easy credit and good will--so long as they keep out of trouble. After Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1957, Fayette County Negroes began to line up in increasing numbers to register as voters. The whites cared less about the law than the fact that in Fayette County, Negroes outnumber whites 14,000 to 10,000.

On primary day a year ago, the white poll watchers panicked and turned away every one of the handful of Negroes who tried to vote. The Negroes went home, formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League, and filed a suit in the federal district court at Memphis. Last April they won a consent decree that outlawed Fayette County's all-white primary, and the number of registered Negro voters rose to 500 v. 5,000 whites. But the whites had another weapon.

Registration & Eviction. "Things began to slow up and get funny," says Scott Franklin, 63, one of the county's three

Negro grocers and a registered voter. First his bread deliveries were stopped. Then his meat deliveries. No longer would wholesalers sell him gasoline, soft drinks, beer, candy. His jukebox was disconnected and carted away. "I'm sorry," said his meat supplier. "There's three of you Negro grocers in the county and 175 of them, and they say if I sell anything to you three, they'll not buy another penny's worth." To survive, Franklin now drives 43 miles to Memphis several times a week, buys from a cash-and-carry warehouse.

William Selby, 77, an odd-jobs man, was evicted from his house. His white grocer and druggist cut off his credit. Two young couples--the John Jamersons and the William Thorns--were also ordered out of their houses; months later, the houses are still vacant. Jobie Mosby, 38, lost his $4-a-day job as a tractor driver. His wife, Fannie Mae, 29, a $2.50-a-day ironing woman, was fired. Neither has found jobs since--and they have eleven children to support. John McFerren, 35, could buy neither groceries nor gasoline for his small country store and filling station. Allen Yancy Jr., 25, a chemistry and mathematics teacher, was dismissed by the school board. He plans to go off to college again this fall, return to Fayette County with a master's degree. "If they won't hire me as a teacher, I'll get another job or farm my Daddy's farm. But I'm not going to move away."

Down & Out. Yancy is an exception. Most graduates of Fayette County's high schools--white and black alike--turn their backs and leave.

"We're breeding down to a population of field hands," says one of the many white merchants who are beginning to wonder whether the boycott might backfire. As the more affluent and educated Negroes pull out, the county's Negro population is becoming poorer and more restless. The whites are left with a heavier tax burden to carry--and a greater fear as well. Says one Negro leader: "There wouldn't have been a bloc vote, except the white people chose to make an issue of it. Now there will be a bloc."

Last week FBI agents moved through Fayette County, trying to determine whether the Negroes' constitutional rights have been violated. The white folks pshawed all that talk of boycotts and blacklists. But the Negroes, using their own underground network of maids and cooks, secured two lists that are secretly circulating among white businessmen: one names 325 registered Negro voters in the county and singles out ten who are said to be "troublemakers"; another lists 70 new voters who registered last June, segregates the 25 Negroes among them. Braving the icy stares and stony silence of the white people, the FBI men studied the lists with profound interest. All the while, the summer sun beat down on Fayette County and on the sign that rises conspicuously along U.S. Highway 64 at the entrance to the county seat of Somerville. It says: REPENT OR PERISH.

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