Obie Clark was born October 31, 1932, near DeKalb, Mississippi. He earned a degree from Mississippi Industrial College and did additional college work at the University of Minnesota. For many years he taught school in Meridian, Mississippi. During the 1960s, he became active with the NAACP and school desegregation. Mr. Clark continues to live in Meridian where he operates a funeral home.

This is an interview for the Mississippi Oral History Program of The University of Southern Mississippi. The interview is with Mr. Obie Clark of Meridian, Mississippi, and is being recorded on September 30, 1997. The interviewer is Charles Bolton.

Bolton: I guess I just want to start off first just by finding out just a little bit of background information about you. Could you tell me when and where you were born, sir?

Clark: I was born and raised in rural Kemper County, that's twenty-five miles north of Meridian, in a rural family of eight children and Mom and Papa. So we lived twelve miles from De Kalb, south of De Kalb, Mississippi, at the county seat. And I went to the one-room, one-teacher elementary school there in De Kalb.

Bolton: When were you born?

Clark: I was born in October 31, 1932, Halloween.

Bolton: Halloween, coming up pretty soon.

Clark: Yeah.

Bolton: OK. What did your dad do?

Clark: My dad was a farmer. We [were] independent. We had our own land, two mules, and we lived off the land principally. That truck out there is what my daddy purchased with what we called the cash crop: cotton. We grew cotton for cash, but everything else we grew for the family to survive on, corn and other things. We lived off the land.

Bolton: Were there a lot of black landowners in that neighborhood at that time?

Clark: At that time, yes. We were, as a matter of fact, we had, still have, 258 acres there in the estate. And we were surrounded by my grandfather on my daddy's side, [who] had 300 and something acres, and then my momma's daddy; we [were] sort of sandwiched in between them. And the land was basically owned by black people and sort of sat down in the middle of land owned by the various paper companies like Weyerhaeuser and so forth. So we were poor, but we didn't realize we were poor, you know.

Bolton: Of course, that was in the middle of the Depression too, right?

Clark: Yeah, yeah.

Bolton: Of course, you grew up too in the era of segregation. Were you aware of that growing up, that, you know -

Clark: Oh yes, oh yes. As a matter of fact, the general store, Mr. John Long, the late John Long, owned the cotton gin, he owned the gristmill. Of course, the cotton gin was used to, you know, process cotton from seed to baled cotton.

Bolton: Right.

Clark: He had the gristmill, which took corn and made it into meal, cornmeal, and he also had the general store. But he had kids our age, you know, we all grew up together, Ben Ross, Willie James, Susie, Ted. But when we reached our teenagers, our parents called us in more or less and began telling us it was time for us to start using titles and refer to these kids, Mr. John Long's kids.

Bolton: Even though you've been playing with them?

Clark: Been playing with them all our lives, but they said, "It's time you start saying Mr. Ben Ross, Mr. Willie James." Our own age. And then, when they would send us to the store, the general store, during the weekdays - the residence was next to the store - and they would tell us, "If the store is not open, be sure to go around to the back door of the residence to knock." They would tell us not to go to the front, because that would have been offensive and unacceptable. And the reason they told us that is that they were looking out for our safety. Black people had a place as second-class citizens. And our parents taught us where that place was in order to get along themselves. They would tell us about other families who tried, other families whose daddy or somebody tried to exercise first-class citizenship, and they would tell us all the horrible things that happened to those people. They showed us oak trees where black men were hung and shot until the rope broke. And how they drug them behind wagons and buggies, you know, through the rural towns. They knew what would happen to a black person who attempted to live as a first-class citizen, so they taught us how to -

Bolton: Trying to warn you?

Clark: Yeah, they taught us how to be second-class citizens.

Bolton: Have you heard stories - I know Kemper County was known as "Bloody Kemper" during Reconstruction - have you heard stories about that growing up?

Clark: That's what we grew up with, "Bloody Kemper." And it was bloody. Because we knew people in our own neighborhood who ran away, who were murdered, people that we knew. Willie Bell and Minnie, two black females adjacent to where we lived, were found in the middle of the road just brutalized like dogs.

Bolton: Was that when you were growing up?

Clark: Yeah. And that place, you know, we lived next to where they were killed. Just in the middle of the road like bloody dogs. And of course, we were afraid, you know, of death and also violence.

Bolton: Did that one-room school you went to, did you get a good education there? What was the nature of that school you went to?

Clark: The thing that I enjoyed about that school and remember most about it [was] the teacher, Louvenia Wilson. She would send us boys out to get kindling to make the fire for the heater. I enjoyed that more than anything else about that school. That's what I remember most about it. Course we went looking for kindling, and also, it was sort of like a social gathering, a social trip for us boys, you know, playing. But when I left there, went to De Kalb, the first high school for African Americans in the county was Whisenton, W-H-I-S-E-N-T-O-N. A gentleman, a black man from Canton, Mississippi, came over and organized a school there. And the school was named after him: Whisenton High School.

Bolton: So there hadn't been a high school for blacks in the county before then?

Clark: No, no. And the strange thing about it is that we had to live in a dormitory. Mr. Whisenton knew there was a transportation problem, because they didn't have no way to get the kids from the rural area into the school. So he built a dormitory, a boy's dormitory and a girl's dormitory. So in getting a high school education, we had to live for part of the time there, had to live away from home, twelve miles, in a dormitory. But then along about my eleventh and twelfth grade, the school board started contracting the black men in the community, they were buying these trucks, like 2 2 ton trucks, and they would use their carpenter skills and build a wooden body on that truck. And that's what we went to school in, when we started being transported to school.

Bolton: That would have been like in the late ‘40s?

Clark: Yeah. And the late Sen. John Stennis in campaigning for reelection, when those school buses, those trucks, dangerous trucks, were running up and down the road with a load of us students on the back, and our white counterparts were in the yellow school buses, part of the late Senator Stennis's campaign were to the people, the white people of Kemper County, not to worry about it. He made a statement that his little granddaughter, Elizabeth, would be picking cotton before Negro children rode in yellow buses, you see. And that was like, don't worry about it, you see ‘em riding on the back of these trucks, that's as far as they're going.

Bolton: Did you come to Meridian after you got out of high school?

Clark: Well, after high school, I had this notion that the good life was in a northern city. I had observed relatives, uncles and all, who grew up on the farm, working in the fields, in the woods, would leave some time and would go to the northern cities. Then when they come back, they looked different.

Bolton: How would they look different?

Clark: They would look different because their skin was more radiant, they gained weight, and just looked more - they looked better. And so that was the impression that I had, that there must be something good up there. So when I graduated from high school, I had absolutely no intention of going to college, I didn't even think about going to college. My plans were somehow to get to Chicago or Detroit, and things were going to be all right. I had four uncles who had gone to World War II, my momma's brothers, and they came back after World War II, and they didn't want to go back to the farm. So they came to Meridian, to the Mississippi Employment Office, to find jobs to do, as they called it, public work. The Mississippi Employment Office informed them that they didn't have any work for them. But each Friday a bus left Meridian going to Michigan, to help GM meet its national manpower shortage after the war. And so they caught the bus to Michigan, and that's where they raised their families and lived. So after high school my plan was to get the bus, or somehow get up there. But then, in September, after school had started, we were in the back field, my family and I, and we had finished picking cotton, we were doing what you call scraping cotton, and -

Bolton: Sounds like you're getting up what's left?

Clark: Yeah. And the secondary.

Bolton: Right.

Clark: So then, we saw these three men approach us. And I identified one of them as my high school chemistry teacher and coach and the other one was a teenager really, who had already graduated ahead of me. And, believe it or not, in September, Mississippi Industrial College, which is a Methodist-supported school in Holly Springs, Mississippi, [was] recruiting football players, in September. And so, when the recruiter came and explained to my daddy, and said, in that back field, that they would give me a four-year athletic scholarship based on the recommendation from my high school coach and it wouldn't cost him anything. So with that to deal with, my daddy, he sort of talked, but he always interrupted himself by clearing his throat like "hm, hm." So my daddy, I can see him now, he stood up and said, "Well, OK, that's all right." Said, "But, hm, but in two weeks I'm going to need him back, we have to get that corn down there." So I went to Mississippi Industrial College, they had already played a game, you know, got on the team for two weeks. After two weeks, sure enough, I came back, got the corn in and went back. But then after that first year I got drafted.

Bolton: Was that the Korean War?

Clark: The Korean War, which interrupted my college education for two years. After that, I went back to Mississippi Industrial College, and I graduated there in 1958. And here again, my classmates were - now, back then in 1958, a black man or woman with a college degree in Mississippi couldn't do nothing but teach. There were no other options. You either taught school or you went somewhere else and did something, you couldn't do it here in the state. There were no opportunities, absolutely none. So my option at that point was to get back on my original plan after I graduated from high school to go to Detroit. My classmates was scurrying all over the state, you know, interviewing for teaching positions and all, and I didn't even put an application in.

Bolton: You didn't want to teach?

Clark: I didn't want to teach. I was going to get back on my plan to go to the big city. But two weeks before graduation, same man, high school coach and chemistry teacher, got promoted to a principalship in the county there, Kemper County. And he wrote me a letter, asked me to consider coming and teaching at his school and coaching boys' and girls' basketball. And he told me that I would get a subsidy for coaching. He didn't tell me how much. So I came on. I lived at home that first year and taught school at Porterville High School, which was a building with a little auditorium in it, had six rooms, grade one through twelve.

Bolton: So a little bit better than that one-room school, but not a whole lot?

Clark: No. Outside toilets.

Bolton: It had outside toilets?

Clark: Outside toilets, no running water, and that was the high school that we attended, that I taught in, and coached boys and girls basketball. The thing that I enjoyed about it most was the coaching part, but -

Bolton: I guess, in the middle of all this, the Brown decision had come out, the Brown v. Board.

Clark: Yeah, yeah.

Bolton: What was your reaction when you heard about that decision? Did you think it was going to change anything in Mississippi?

Clark: Well, at first, we thought it was going to change things. We'd be able to have equal access. Of course, by this time, the school board was providing bus transportation, when I came back and started teaching. But they gave us the buses, matter of fact, I drove a school bus too. And they gave us the buses that were worn out. I drove a school bus, a forty-eight passenger bus, sixty-something kids on it. I had to wait until some of the kids got off the bus before I could get on. And then, when I would get on 45 Highway - that was before the interstate system - which was a very dangerous highway, all [of those] truckers and all [of those] hills. I didn't have proper warning lights. I guess I was cursed out more than anybody in the country because those truckers [would] be getting ready to run [those] hills, and I'm stopped right in the middle of the street, no sign, no nothing. I don't know how we made it. But then when I would sit there, can't hardly see around me because so many kids on that old, worn-out bus, I would see the white kids riding on new buses with empty seats. And I had a problem with that, because we had to do a daily, you know, report on the number of kids we picked up and all, and when we turned that in to our principal, he turned it into the superintendent, the superintendent compiled it. The State Department in Jackson thought every kid in Kemper County had a seat on a bus. But it was not true, because they combined the reports sent to Jackson. And then, of course, the other problem I had teaching there was -

(brief interruption)

Bolton: The school you were teaching at and the inequalities; this, I guess, this would be in the late ‘50s?

Clark: Yeah.

Bolton: I know that there was an effort in the state to try, after the Brown decision to finally improve black schools. Did you see any results of that?

Clark: No, not in Kemper County.

Bolton: Not in Kemper County.

Clark: Business as usual.

Bolton: It was business as usual.

Clark: One of the problems I had at that, with the system at that time, we had what they call split sessions.

Bolton: That's so people could work in the fields?

Clark: The African-American kids had split sessions, but our white counterparts had nine months uninterrupted. I had a real problem with that, coping with it. I had a real problem coping with my principal, who - I changed schools, I changed schools. As a matter of fact, they closed the school in Porterville and moved it to Scooba. So I had a new principal, Mr. Spencer, in Scooba. And he would brag about the A's that he made at Tuskegee during the summer months in school administration, and got back to the county and had to go and talk to a high school graduate about anything as it relates to running that school and that is a school board member. You know, some white man who didn't have [any] interest, he had to go and consult with him before he did anything. As a matter of fact, in 1964, I had been to school that summer at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul campus, and it was so hot down here that my classmates up there was surprised. They thought I was crazy coming home. They said, "Are you going back down there?" It actually affected my mind so until I was afraid to come home. When I got to Memphis, Tennessee, on my way back, I pulled off the main highway, went downtown to Beale Street and bought me a .32 revolver to come home.

Bolton: This was in the summer of ‘64?

Clark: Sixty-four.

Bolton: That was a hot summer?

Clark: That was a hot summer.

Bolton: Were you living in Meridian by that time?

Clark: Yeah, yeah. I moved to Meridian in 1959. So, here it was, 1964. OK, now, there was a law enforcement institute at the university, and I would drive in a 1961 blue Volkswagen with a Mississippi license plate on it. And everybody sought me out, matter of fact, I would miss lunch sometime rather than be bothered with all [those] questions and inquiries. I was sort of like a strange animal, you know. People would say, "You're from Mississippi," and all that stuff that's going on down here. As a matter of fact, the professor, who conducted an eight-week law enforcement institute, sought me out. And I [wound] up a guest lecturer to his class. And he posed questions to me like this: that he wanted to know why the black people waited until the ‘60s to start demanding first-class citizenship. He said the appropriate time for him would have been, he would have thought, would have been right after World War II, when black G.I.'s came home after having fought side-by-side with white sailors, soldiers and all, would not have been relegated back to second-class citizenship. He asked me why. And I gave him the same reason I told you a minute ago about how we were taught to be second-class citizens. Primarily, the same reasons, violence still would erupt in the county. I mean it would still erupt in Kemper County and in the state of Mississippi at that time, if you got out of line. Don't care if you were a decorated war hero.

Bolton: It's easy to sit up there in Minnesota and say, "You should do something about it." You want to stay alive, right?

Clark: Yeah, yeah. But that thing that impressed me the most was the slanted news coverage of what was happening down here. It was bad. Now don't get me wrong, it was bad, but it was frightening if all you heard and all you read in the paper were headlines.

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

Clark: Adjusting myself, after having served one year in Korea.

Bolton: You were actually over in Korea?

Clark: Yeah. And, well, I developed strong, strong feelings of patriotism, very strong. As a matter of fact, the closer it got to my departure from Korea, the more those feelings came up. I could be on that compound walking at 5 o'clock and to hear taps being played, didn't have to see the flag being lowered, just hear the taps being played, I would get butterflies. And so, then, when my time came to be rotated back to the states, got to San Francisco, been out of the country the whole twelve months, and so, I had another gentleman, we were traveling in uniforms back to Mississippi. He was from Columbus, and when we got to - we were traveling by train - when we got to Amarillo, Texas, we had a two-hour layover. So we got off the train and eagerly went seeking a restaurant, where we could get some, you know, soul food. This was 1955. And as we went down the street, not knowing where we were going, but looking for a restaurant and each one we would get to were white restaurants. And we by tradition just walked right on by, and we kept getting further and further away from the train station. So then I told my traveling partner, I said - we were in uniforms - I said, "Man, this ain't right." I said, "We just came from Korea defending this country." We made a pledge that we would go into the next restaurant regardless of what. So the next one was all white, and we walked in and saw all those big Texan hats looking along at us. You know we just walked in and sat down being stared at all over the place. Then the waitress came over. I heard her the first time when she told us she couldn't serve us, but I pretended I didn't hear her; I told her I wanted a menu. And when I didn't respond, when we didn't respond to her asking us to leave the first time, then the manager came over and told us that he was going to call the police if we didn't leave, and that did something to me. Sometimes it bothers me now, you know, in terms of the flag. Because I was a very patriotic American in Korea and got back home, and before I got home, was denied service in a public restaurant. I have to force myself to salute the flag at football games. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for my wife. She would be -

Bolton: I can understand that, yeah. How did you get involved in the civil rights movement when you were here in Meridian? Had you been involved before that summer of ‘64 in any organizations like the NAACP or anything like that?

Clark: No. My pastor, the late R.S. Porter in Meridian, was president of the NAACP when I moved here in 1960, ‘59. He was president of the local chapter, so I began to work with him. And in 1969, after about ten years, he did not seek reelection, and I sought the position. All during that time the school districts like Meridian were going with what they called freedom of choice as a means of implementing the Brown decision. And yet we had all-black, inferior schools and the school boards were all white. And they were pledging their resources to the white schools, and we were getting what was left over, like used textbooks. Up in Kemper, the coach would bring, you know, soiled baseballs, cracked baseball bats, and gloves over to our school. And I knew what was happening. He would come right on down to Judge Little in Meridian and buy new stuff for his team, and my principal accepted that. I had a problem with it. I had a problem with Campbell Express Company driving up on our campus at the high school with all kinds of material, equipment for typing. We didn't even have a typing class. And the driver would come in and present the invoice to my principal, and he knew nothing about it. He would call the superintendent. "Oh, that was for the school across there. Take it on over there." You see, they were billing stuff to our schools, making it appear as though the schools were receiving all these goods, but in fact, they were just openly and boldly being funneled over to the white schools. So when I look back and look at the struggle in terms of what black people had to go through in order to obtain an education. And this county, Lauderdale County, you know, the first black high school was 1935.

Bolton: Was that Weschler or Harris?

Clark: No, no. In the county.

Bolton: Oh, in the county.

Clark: Old Stevenson School out in Toomsuba.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: The rural. And then when I look at the system requiring, you know, for farmers to be based on [an] equal plane, we're still behind because we're still the product of parents who raised children who didn't go to school, who could not go to school. And myself, I wanted to, you know, when I was in high school and college and all I always had a flare for law enforcement, so I wanted to be a state trooper. That was sort of my secret ambition. So when the NAACP sued the state for discrimination against black Africans, the day after that court order went into effect, I went out to the local station here and had to, you know, to push back the racist attitudes and all and get to a point where I could ask for an application. And the gentleman who looked up at me and asked me what my birth date was, and I told him. And then he looked up at me and told me I was a year too old. So that is an example of so many career opportunities that we - there were not even options to us. So it was difficult to live with yourself and stay within these perimeters, you know, like you've got to stay over here and do like this. My principal, who was teaching young kids man - back then, everybody got their car tag at the same time of the year, October.

Bolton: This is back in Kemper County?

Clark: Here in Kemper County. Now my principal had a master's degree in school administration, but he was so afraid of the sheriff and the white people in DeKalb until he would make half dozen or a dozen trips twelve miles across from Scooba to DeKalb to get his tag. He was so afraid of the sheriff, he wouldn't go in the courthouse if the sheriff was in there. He'd just drive back and forth -

(The interview continues on tape one, side two.)

Bolton: I wanted to ask you, back in the ‘60s when, you know, you mentioned that freedom of choice desegregation. Did you have kids that were going to school then?

Clark: I worked with the NAACP. I was chairman of the education committee of the local chapter here.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: We went to our local school board. And the strange thing about it, now the black leaders in Meridian didn't really know who the school board members were. They didn't know who really ran our schools. At Harris High School the late W.A. Reed Jr. was the principal over at Harris. All of the concerns that the black leaders had regarding education they took them to Mr. Reed. Mr. Reed had an all-white administration, all-white board he had to satisfy. But the black leaders put all of their concerns for quality education on Mr. Reed's desk and they didn't support him, they didn't help him.

Bolton: So he was like the one contact with the power structure as far as education?

Clark: Yeah. But before the fifth circuit court in 1969, December I believe it was, 1969, the fifth circuit in New Orleans after having listened to arguments about how ineffective the freedom of choice was, the judges down there made their famous ruling that the clock had ticked its last tock on tokenism, and eliminate the dual school system right now, right in the middle of the school year. But now in 1967 the local chapter of the NAACP had gone and tried to meet with our school board to ask them to establish attendance zones. Because we had been recruiting - just testing the system - we had been recruiting and sort of taking people by the hand, families who had the courage to send their kids to the predominately white schools. And it was just token participation. But now that was an order that led to more chaos than education.

Bolton: The one in ‘69?

Clark: Sixty-five.

Bolton: In ‘67 would the school board meet with the NAACP?

Clark: No.

Bolton: They wouldn't?

Clark: No.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: I had asked some of our black leaders who were around our town who were born and raised here -

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

Clark: So I asked some of the black leaders, a black leader, to get us an appointment with the school board. And he came back and told us they were going to meet at noon at the superintendent's office. When my committee got down there with our resolution, I asked the school board to, you know, establish attendance zones. And the administration told us that they didn't know about any meeting and there were no meetings.

Bolton: They didn't show up?

Clark: They didn't show up. So we took the resolution to the president of the board, who was Archie McDonald, president of Citizens National Bank, and that's something I don't want to talk about. And, you know, the black leaders in Meridian, I found this to be the case -

Bolton: Who were some of these leaders?

Clark: I'm going to call those who are dead.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: The late Albert Jones, Connie Moore, [Rev.] R.S. Porter, people like that. Now I discovered already before that - when I first got here I discovered - that there was some close bonding between the black leaders and the white leaders, close bonding. They were in touch on every issue. However, most of the contact was done through the late chief of police, the late Chief Gunn. He was sort of the official liaison between the white people and the black community. So, in other words, most issues that concerned the black community we had to meet with Chief Gunn, including education. And then I started looking at how imbalanced the system was. And as a young man back then, this bonding, you know, and then I would hear Chief Gunn, if there was something that got the white folks' attention, Chief Gunn would make one phone call, he would call Albert Jones. Albert Jones would call us in, and we would go into the meeting with the chief. And he would sit there, and some of us he couldn't even call our names, and he would tell us that Meridian had a proud history of racial harmony because of you boys. "You boys have done a good job. We have not had the kind of problems they had in Jackson, Hattiesburg, and all," and I kept hearing that. And then we had a Methodist minister, the Rev. J.C. Killingsworth, who was assigned to Meridian, and they were scared of him. Every time Killingsworth would seem sort of halfway getting active, the chief would call a lot of, he called meetings. He would have a file on his knee. "Now Killingsworth is dangerous. Y'all watch him. You stay away from him."

And I found out what he was talking about when black people in Jackson, Mississippi, came to the conclusion that the public pools and parks belonged to them also. They tried to use the swimming facilities over there and the city of Jackson closed them. The city over here made notes, and they formed a private swimming association. And they leased the public pool, Highland Park, to the private swimming association. So in order to use the public swimming pools you have to be a member of the private swimming association. There is a $25 joining fee, and then you had to have five members of the association recommendation. So the black leaders wouldn't address issues like that. So Reverend Killingsworth and I retained the lawyers because, you know, we sued the city. This was in 1969 and we got an out-of-court settlement. They allowed membership for me and him and our families. We could take our families on our membership. You know we could take guests for fifty cents a head. So Reverend Killingsworth and I were determined my son, Cedric - thirty-something years old now, thirty-two - symbolically, was the first black foot to go in that pool, on the same day that Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon. But anyway, it got to be a costly proposition for Killingsworth and I - for I had two kids and Killingsworth's kids were all grown - to keep bodies in that pool all day. And the white people got on to it over in August, July and August when it got hot, they started going at night. So Killingsworth would take the day shift and I would take the night shift. But we had to take guests over at fifty cents a head. So we went to one of the leaders, Reverend Porter, who had twelve children, and urged him to join for twenty-five dollars, and we'd get his children to go on his membership. So Porter was not supportive. We went to George Young who had five children and asked George Young to do the same thing. George Young's response was his children could go to Magnolia free. That's a black pool. But that bonding thing just kept on bothering me. And then when I would go pay my light bill, my water bill, and see no blacks on the police force, fire department, and all like that, I came to the conclusion that the chief was right that Meridian did have a rich history of racial harmony, but we've paid a hell of a price for it. So much so that the black people just leaving here by the hundreds in order to make decent livings elsewhere.

Bolton: Would you say that these black leaders maybe didn't have as much contact with the black community? I mean were they -

Clark: They were playing both sides.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: But they were selling the black community out.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: They were selling the black community out.

Bolton: Had you become involved with any other civil rights groups like the Freedom Democratic Party? Were you involved in that at all?

Clark: I was just a passive participant.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: Now at one time I was a member of the state board of ACLU. Went to meetings until the staff - I read in the paper one day that our staff were representing the Ku Klux Klan on a freedom of speech issue when the Harrison County School Board denied them a permit to use a football field or something for a rally. And when I went over there, my mind was made up that I could not be part of an organization who could support the Klan in any form or fashion. The lawyers tried to explain it to us from a constitutional point of view but my mind was closed. I told them goodbye. I worked with the lawyers committee for a long time too.

Bolton: Just back to the schools for a minute, you said that when they had that big order in ‘69 I guess, and it was in the spring of ‘70 they did the schools, you said it was more chaos than education. What did you mean by that?

Clark: Well, actually the order went into effect in January 1970, right in the middle of the school year. For example, here in Meridian we were ordered to come back to the court with a plan for grades six through twelfth, no, seven through the twelfth, the beginning of that second semester. And we were given until September to develop a plan for K through six. And the school board, with black leaders' approval, basically drew up attendance zones that were gerrymandered to be sure that white kids in kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade [were] in a majority. And that resulted in putting kids, southside, low socioeconomic backgrounds, with kids from north Meridian at the junior high level, out at Northwest. And the first day chaos broke out, fights, just racial unrest and hostility.

Bolton: Wasn't there a student boycott that spring in Meridian?

Clark: Yeah, we boycotted every school, every school, because they displaced some principals and other black administrators. And the kind of stuff that was going on at the school, the racist principals, you know, furnishing information of our students to white parents, you know. It just, it was chaos.

Bolton: I remember reading about one, maybe, I don't know if he was an administrator or teacher, but Dan Jennings who -

Clark: Don?

Bolton: Don Jennings, he sued. He was suing because he thought he had been fired unfairly?

Clark: Well, at Northwest, he and attorney Jim Williams, James Williams, both of them, they were teachers at Northwest. Now Northwest was where you had the mix of the low end of the socioeconomic level with the high end, black kids from north Meridian, and both of them were teachers there. So we had kids going home telling their parents about experiences they had that day, and the parents were having a lot of black kids arrested in the municipal court. And Don Jennings and Jim Williams were the only two teachers at that school who went to court and tried to support the black families and their children, and both of them were not rehired. Don went to federal court. Both of them went to federal court but they lost. Don Jennings left and Jim Williams he left too, but he went to law school. So he's back in the community.

Bolton: Did some other civil rights issues, say like desegregation of public facilities and voting rights, how was that handled in Meridian? How did that go, like, say, the attempt to register people to vote?

Clark: Well, we'd never had much of a problem here in Lauderdale County with that.

Bolton: Had there always been a lot of black voters?

Clark: No, we went through this metamorphic process, in which our votes really were not significant to begin with after the Voting Rights Act. So then when the numbers started increasing, the white politicians would come to the black leaders. We had a relationship because of that bonding. We used to call them backdoor sweethearts. They would come to us at Enterprise Funeral Home in the middle of the night or after hours and meet and make all these promises. We had a pretty strong political organization in the black community, and we endorsed candidates the Monday night before the Tuesday election to keep the backlash, white backlash, from hurting us, but now -

Bolton: Because whites wouldn't support a candidate that this committee had endorsed?

Clark: Yeah.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: You see, the Ku Klux Klan at that time published a weekly or a monthly newsletter.

Bolton: Here in Meridian?

Clark: Here in Meridian.

Bolton: Was the Klan pretty strong here?

Clark: At that time it was. But now they were putting out their newsletter, and they named whites who were soft on race issues. They had a listing in their newspaper. The late Al Key, that's how we supported him. We didn't know anything about Al Key. But the week before the election his name came up on the Ku Klux Klan list. So we just made observation that if he's not good for the Klan he must be good for us.

Bolton: That's probably a smart observation.

Clark: Yeah. We just went ahead on and supported him and that's how he got elected with our support.

Bolton: OK. Let me just shift gears just a bit and just ask you, have you been in the funeral business since you came to Meridian?

Clark: No.

Bolton: OK. What were you doing in the ‘60s?

Clark: Teaching.

Bolton: Oh, you were teaching. You taught also here in Meridian?

Clark: I taught until 1960. No, no, I stayed in Kemper County from 1958 until 1967.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: And then one of the first statewide antipoverty programs were established.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: And I resigned from teaching and started working -

Bolton: Which school were you teaching at here in Meridian?

Clark: I've never taught.

Bolton: Oh, you still were teaching in Kemper County.

Clark: Yeah, I commuted back and forth.

Bolton: I see, OK.

Clark: Until 1967.

Bolton: I see, OK.

Clark: I resigned in 1967 and went to work with a statewide antipoverty program. And I worked in that area until 1985, and we've been in the funeral business since 1988.

Bolton: How effective were those antipoverty programs? I mean were you working as an administrator or -

Clark: Yeah.

Bolton: OK. Were they useful or were they -

Clark: Well, in some areas like Head Start or jobs programs, I could make a list of ten programs, and I'd say half of them were beneficial and the other half, to me, perpetuated the welfare mentality and kept people from progress. For example, housing. Investors, rich people, saw, especially during the ‘70s when interest rates went up sky high, they started putting their money in public housing, privately-owned individuals. All they wanted, if they had a hundred units here, they wanted 100 percent occupancy, because the government sent them a welfare check every month for those people who were qualified. And I've had managers who tried to, you know, enforce the lease, you know, be sure that all the people who lived in these houses were on a lease. And the owners said, "No, don't do it." They just let them stay there because all they was interested in was getting that check.

Bolton: Right.

Clark: So, yes, something good came from it and something bad.

Bolton: Would you say overall that the civil rights movement was a success in Meridian? I guess what I'm asking is how much have things changed from when you grew up as a kid in Kemper County?

Clark: On the surface you would think we've had great changes, but beneath the surface it ain't much better than it was then, not much better. Check the 1990 census and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you stripped away everything and just evaluated the situation based on economics, just purely economics, now economics in terms of how people live and base of support, job or whatnot, and you'll find that in Meridian, Mississippi, which is about 45 percent African American, the per capita income for the city of Meridian for African Americans is $7,000 compared to, overall, $14,000 or $15,000. So in other words, the average black family here thrive on half as much as the average white family. And that's all by design.

(telephone rings, brief interruption)

Bolton: You said that this continuing, was it done by design?

Clark: Yeah, you see, I heard Bob Dole talk about it, I heard Bill Clinton talk about it in the last presidential election, and what has [been] happening, especially to unskilled people or especially African Americans, is the trend now for employers to hire from temporary employment agencies and give them $5.00 an hour, $5.15 an hour I guess now.

Bolton: No benefits.

Clark: No benefits, no employer-employee relationship. And J.C. Penneys, good old J.C. Penneys, trying to organize them right now. Been meeting with employees there, you know, for five dollars and something an hour. A lady say, "Take-home pay, W-2 form last year, $7,000 working full time at J.C. Penney." Got to be professional in their appearance, conduct, and everything else. Peavey's, you know about Peavey's, same thing. So the prevailing wage scale here is such that working people on an average can't hardly make it from payday to payday and it's getting worse. I don't know why the president and the Congress can't see what's happening, because this is not just Meridian, it's all over the country. Private individuals are being paid wages that could go to make life better for our families, for working people.

(brief interruption)

Bolton: I'm going to go ahead and kind of wrap this up. I know you've got some celebrating to do and I know you need to get back to work. But I just wanted to ask you if there's anything I maybe haven't asked you that you think is important or something you want to add that maybe I've failed to bring out here.

Clark: Well, I was one of the original plaintiffs in the Ayers case.

Bolton: Oh, I didn't know that.

Clark: Yeah. That was before Alvin Chambers became the attorney.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: Ike Madison was the attorney for them. We looked at what we had experienced with the desegregation of the elementary and secondary schools, and we used that as a basis for making decisions as it relates to the colleges and universities. And we sued sixteen junior colleges and eight universities initially. And the lawyers began telling us and explained to us lay people why it was probably the largest lawsuit that had ever been filed in the state of Mississippi, because there were, as I recall, three hundred and eight trustees governing the junior colleges, then the governor and the college board and all that. And then they broke it down and tell us that all these people were going to have to be deposed and all getting ready for trial. So it became almost an unmanageable situation.

And I remember one cold Saturday at Jackson State University when we had sent a copy of our pleadings to the NAACP general counsel, who was Mel Leventhal at the time. And I asked the NAACP to help us litigate this because of the size of the case, of the lawsuit. And Mel came down and had our briefs in front of him, and I remember we had some twenty or twenty-five black lawyers, private practitioners in the meeting. Connie Slaughter-Harvey, Victor Mateer [?], and Mel responded by telling us that we were going against the aims or going against the philosophy of the NAACP, the course that we were taking. Now we were taking the approach, because we had discussed it - at that time Dr. Peoples, who was president of Jackson State - and we felt that if we used the same approach in terms of desegregating the colleges and universities, that the same thing would happen to Dr. Peoples that happened to Mr. Reed, the black principal that had moved to our state. They became assistants and all that. So then we took the position that if the legislature and the college board would assign the funding, you know, follow a more even line, that they would assign the professional schools without race being a factor, then everything else would fall in place. Now the NAACP's approach with elementary and secondary were primarily aimed at the desegregation of the student body. So we lost band directors, we lost teachers, we lost principals, and everything. So we were coming at it from this angle. For example, we used the law school. Said if Jackson State being the only urban university in the state system, why not assign the law school to Jackson State? Why everybody got to go way up there to Oxford? We took that approach and so Mel was saying that we were going in the wrong direction. And I remember with pride, pride, man, the lawyers got up, and they emotionally expressed themselves, telling Mel Leventhal to go on back to New York. Said, "We'll have to do it ourselves." Now I worked the case on up to a point, which we basically dropped the junior colleges. You know we got all we could out of that and left it alone.

Bolton: Right.

Clark: And then Mr. Chambers became the attorney, and I sort of got lost in the process. But I kept up with it all the way through. I think that the truth of the matter is that Alcorn was the land grant college when Mississippi State was organized. And now Mississippi State is the land grant college and Alcorn is a land grant college. All those decisions were made that shifted over to the predominately white schools.

Bolton: I think that's real interesting, you said that y'all tried to learn from what happened with the desegregation -

Clark: You learn because they were painful. It was painful lessons.

Bolton: Do you think that's a lesson learned? I'm trying to just make sure I get this right: is that basically the way that desegregation was done at the lower level, was it all done on white terms?

Clark: Yes.

Bolton: Is that a fair assessment?

Clark: Yeah, yeah.

Bolton: OK.

Clark: And that still is a problem, it still is a problem.

Bolton: OK. What do you think of the settlement of the Ayers case, the one that they worked out? I know you're not actively involved, but I'm sure you kept up with it.

Clark: I'm not pleased with it, because we didn't get what we went in the court with. We didn't get the relief that we sought.

Bolton: So basically they're just saying, "We'll give you a little bit more but we're not going to" -

Clark: Yeah, yeah, we'll improve Jackson State. The law school is still at Ole Miss. You've got a medical school right there.

Bolton: In Jackson?

Clark: In Jackson.

Bolton: But it's controlled by Ole Miss.

Clark: Yes.

Bolton: Yeah.

Clark: We missed it. We didn't get what we went after. If you've got a copy of the original plea and compare that with the settlement, then you will see.

Bolton: Was there anything else that you wanted to maybe, I feel like this is a busy time for you especially, and I don't want to intrude.

Clark: I've had such a broad base of experience until its hard for me to just focus on one thing.

Bolton: Sure, yeah.

Clark: So if I sound like I'm rambling -

Bolton: Well, I think it's been great. I've enjoyed talking to you.

Clark: Because you know that other bill, other areas that's really been a part of my concern is, you know, law enforcement.

Bolton: Well, if you'd like I could come back another time.

Clark: No, no, you do your thing. My sister up in Arkansas said she was going to send me a tape recorder. She wanted me to start putting all this on tape.

Bolton: Well, hopefully this will be a start of it, because you'll get a copy of this.

Clark: OK.

Bolton: It'll take us a little while to make a transcript, but we'll get you one. I know you said you had an interest in law enforcement. I guess going back to the civil rights era and you talked about Chief Gunn. In general, how did the police in Meridian respond to the civil rights movement, beyond Chief Gunn and his relationship he had with black leaders.

Clark: It was sort of strained. At first, well, when I went and applied for the position of highway patrol, I didn't apply, I got an application. Anyway, while I was there, and you always had to have a master's degree -

(The interview continues on tape two, side one.)

Clark: OK, you always had to have a master's degree to fill out an application. However, under the old system all you had to do in order to qualify for highway patrol was to be big, burly, and white. I got that application, and the lady just came in there to get that letter notarized. I reflected on it because she had all them fingerprints there, and one of the requirements for qualifying, to fill out an application for highway patrolman then and now, is that you had to go to your local sheriff's department or police department and get all ten digits fingerprinted. That was part of the application process. And I knew back then there were black men who were qualified to be patrolmen who were afraid to go to the courthouse, go to the sheriff's office. But at the same time, as the civil rights movement heightened in Meridian with the freedom riders and all, at that time we had an all-white police force. The leaders felt a need to have black police officers and had kept us out up to that point. So they went out and they found a clean-cut, young black man by the name of James Suttenberry. They gave him a uniform and a stick and they told him to go out to Magnolia Park. That's a black park. Said, "You go out there and just stand around every day and see how the community reacts to you." He did and they didn't get no bad reaction, so they hired three more without civil service protection. They hired a total of six black officers.

Bolton: I remember seeing some footage of, I think it was Chaney's funeral, and there were black police officers in Meridian then.

Clark: Yeah. Well, now that these men worked for thirteen years without civil service status. So in 1969, I believe it was, for a period of six months there, we had twelve black churches burned or bombed in Meridian. And then the Klan shifted its focus from the black community to the Jewish community. And one Sunday morning, I never did understand how many sticks of dynamite were used to bomb the Jewish synagogue here, just leveled it. And I went out there Sunday morning late in the day, and I saw what I had not seen, the mayor, the board of supervisors, the local TV station out there, you know, really on the job.

Bolton: They hadn't done this when black churches were bombed. What was the source of, why was the synagogue bombed? Had they been supportive of the civil rights movement in Meridian?

Clark: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was just they did the same thing in Jackson to stamp out Jewish. And you see, at that point, the Jewish leaders in Jackson and Meridian combined their financial resources and put up cash awards. A lot of folks think the federal government broke the Klan's back here, but it was basically the Jewish leaders putting up their cash awards, and that got the attention of some of those hungry Klansmen. Two of them, two brothers, lived in Meridian, Wayne and Raymond Roberts, who were Klansmen. They went for the money, became informers. So when Thomas Tarrants, the bombmaker, left Jackson that Sunday to come to Meridian to bomb Lee Myers's home they informed the police of what was happening, the Roberts brothers.

And therefore Meridian probably was the first city in the country to have a SWAT team, because the late Chief Gunn had organized a SWAT team. Mike Hatcher, Chief Mike Hatcher, headed it up. They were dressed in black and they had the house surrounded. They saw Harold Thomas with Captain Ainsworth, they moved the family out to a motel. They saw them when they approached the house. He got out with his gun in one hand and the bombs in the other and the dynamite in the other and went up on the lawn. And then when he put it down, they came out shooting. And of course, you know, Captain Ainsworth was killed in a hail of gunfire. And he was driving, somehow he got under the wheel, and they had a hot pursuit. And there were some sailors who were here in town visiting, one sailor got killed because he heard all the guns firing and he came out on the porch, bam, took a stray bullet. Mike Hatcher took a slug in the heart, and they had to take him to Emory University in Atlanta for open heart surgery. He's still living. But now the black officers were right in the line of fire; they could have been killed.

But there were two black officers who had been on the force thirteen years and did not have the protection of civil service. Their family would have got one week's pay. Leslie Roberts and Eddie Griffin, both of them are deceased under questionable circumstances. But it was at that point that I took - now the black leaders told them not to deal with me. But I got with them, got the lawyers committee, and we sued the city and got them thirteen years' retroactive civil service back pay and all like that. And my motivation, primarily, was whether they had passed the civil service exam or not, they were veteran police officers could have been killed in the line of fire. So we've had some bad experiences up in that area too.

Bolton: Would the police in general, would they harass people that say were trying to register to vote or that were sending their kids to the white schools? Was there any type of that activity that went on in Meridian?

Clark: It was not the police as much as it was just the general pressure for people, you know, the employers, kind of economic. It was more economic reprisals than police reprisals for black parents who tried to send their kids to the all-white schools. But our biggest problem with the police have just been, you know, disrespect for black people in general, you know, no respect for them as individuals. Abuse. OK?

Bolton: Anything else? What else have you got on the list.

Clark: I just sort of ad-lib it, ad-lib it.

Bolton: OK. Well, do you want to stop here?

Clark: Yeah.

Bolton: OK. Thanks for talking to me. I certainly appreciate it.

(end of the interview)

Interviewer's Note: After the tape was turned off, Mr. Clark related one additional story of interest. At the time of the school boycott in the spring of 1970 there was a difference of opinion among the black leadership: some wanted to support the boycott, others did not. And at that point, Mr. Clark said that he was tired of all the activities of the black leadership, as he said, selling out the black community, and so he was ready to just get out of the NAACP entirely. But he decided that he didn't want to go out on that kind of note. And he decided that he would try to run for the NAACP presidency, thinking that he would lose but at least he would go out on a positive note. As it turned out, he won that election and became the NAACP president, won the election in a landslide. And as he said, he earned the dislike of the black leadership from that point on. So he was operating after that point in a position where he was not particularly appreciated by either the white leadership or the black leadership of Meridian.