Mound Bayou, Mississippi

Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, Founder and Mayor  

The following is a complete excerpt from 1975 Application for Historic status for I.T. Montgomery House in Mound Bayou. It tells part of the story of the town's founding. The house attained listing on the National Register as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Located in the Mississippi Delta region of Bolivar County, the town of Mound Bayou was one of a number of black settlements which was established during the post-Reconstruction period. It represents one of many important attempts by blacks of that era to establish independent communities in which they could exercise self-government. 

The present town of Mound Bayou had its inception in a former settlement. Isaiah Thornton Montgomery and his cousin Benjamin Green were the slaves of the family of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis. As an alternative to the institution of slavery, it was Jefferson Davis' idea that blacks be isolated on their own settlements. At the conclusion of the Civil War, in 1865, an actual settlement was established on the former Jefferson plantation of Brierfield at Davis' Bend, twenty miles south of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. 

The settlement survived for eighteen years. However, because of the problem of recurring floods of the Mississippi, the relatives and friends of Montgomery and Green, all of whom were former slaves of the Davis plantation, abandoned the small settlement and moved to Vicksburg where they awaited another opportunity to establish their own community. 

The Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad was granted a large tract of land in the state. This grant was made to encourage the development of agriculture, trade and commerce in the fertile delta along the Mississippi River from Memphis to Vicksburg. As a result, fruition was given to the establishment of Mound Bayou. It was the belief of railroad company officials that only members of the black race had the ability to adapt to life in a semi-tropical climate which was conducive to maleria (sic). 

The assistance of Isaiah Montgomery was sought in soliciting black workers. He, realizing the possibilities that it offered for another attempt at black self-government, began an immediate investigation of its feasability (sic). He finally decided upon the site of the present town of Mound Bayou, named for a large Indian Mound, located at the site of the convergence of two bayous which drained the region. Many of the settlers of the former colony came to Mound Bayou in July 1887, and began to carve a town out of the wilderness and swampland. It was the inspiration of Montgomery that caused other blacks from Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia to join the effort. These settlers had one common motivation: they wished to live free from the annoying and unnecessary restraints imposed by continued residence to basic concepts of universal equality.  

The prosperity Mound Bayou experienced, almost from its inception, was attributed to its location along the railroad. Communication was facilitated by trade with other regions of the country by the railroad. Its location in the fertile Mississippi Delta region allowed Mound Bayou to produce cotton on a scale greater than that of any other region in the state. Under the leadership of Montgomery, Mound Bayou by the turn of the century had developed into one of the most prosperous and thriving communities in the state. 

In 1904, the Bank of Mound Bayou was founded by John Francis and Charles Banks. Its rapid growth necessitated the amendment of its original charter to increase its capital from $10,000 to $25,000. By 1907, the largest enterprise of its kind in the state, the Mound Bayou Oil Mill and Manufacturing Company was erected at an investment cost of $100,000. Finally, in 1912, Mound Bayou's petition to Mississippi Governor Earl Brewer for a town charter and status as a town was immediately accepted. 

The charter established an aldermanic form of government with a mayor, town marshall, and five aldermen as the elected officials. Throughout most of the town's history, these positions have been held by black men and women. In the realm of education, teaching and learning played a significant role from the town's beginning. 

In 1892, the two co-founders, Isaiah Montgomery and Benjamin Green, recognizing the importance of schools, donated a tract of land for educational purposes. Montgomery's sister, Mary, a former student of Oberlin College, was the town's first teacher giving instruction in her home. The American Missionary Association joined with Montgomery and Green in their efforts and for twenty years the organization assisted them by sending money, supplies and teachers to what soon became known as the Mound Bayou Normal and Industrial Institute. Professor B. F. Ousley was the first principal, serving in that capacity for more than sixteen years. Finally, in 1920, the school was enlarged into the Mound Bayou Consolidated Public School. 

It was the only school for black children in the county. Moving into a three-story, fireproof brick building with sixteen well-equipped classrooms, an auditorium, the school had an enrollment of 850 students. The school's first two principals, Professor J. M. Mosley and Professor John H. Powell, were graduates of Alcorn College in Lorman, Mississippi. In addition to the conventional diploma-granting curriculum, the high school soon offered vocational training in the industrial arts, agriculture, stenography, typing and bookkeeping. 

By the turn of the century, Mound Bayou had begun massive improvements in its physical appearance. Numerous shops, stores, fraternal buildings, institutional buildings and private residences were constructed. It was likewise during this period, 1910, that the Isaiah T. Montgomery house was constructed. This house stands typical of the progress and the development of the town. 

It was through the direct efforts of I.T. Montgomery, who was founder and first mayor of the town, which inspired and helped lead the town to its productive years. Montgomery possessed a diversified background with experience in accounting, real estate and civil engineering--not to include his effectiveness as a politician. Montgomery was most active in the Republican Party, and he represented Bolivar County in the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890.

Having vested interests in real estate, Montgomery grew in this black community, to be one of the wealthiest men in this county, black or white. Isaiah T. Montgomery died in 1924 leaving a legacy of industrious leadership. Through his successful accomplishments during the post-Reconstruction era, he negated the accepted postulate that blacks were incapable of independent community development and self-government.

The house is a 1910 red brick structure of two stories over a full above-grade basement, irregular in plan, with hipped roof and gables over projections. The front has a spacious porch with square Doric columns resting on brick piers extending to grade, and is reached by a wide flight of masonry steps. The windows are single light double-hung wooden sash. The double front doors have a transom, full width of the opening. The com ice is of simple treatment consisting of frieze board and extended eaves board  

Qualified Immunity--Why is it un-understandable?

Qualified immunity isn't an easy concept to grasp. There isn't an elevator pitch. It's pretty involved. But let's start with this:

Every person in the United States has rights that are protected. Also true is the fact that governments have made themselves and their 'agents' somewhat invincible when it comes to lawsuits. 

Recall that this country supposedly wanted to break up with King George III, in part because he was unaccountable; he was immune from prosecution. Our bewigged forebears didn't like that. It's known as sovereign immunity, and it's part of why they dumped him.

However, when the chips were down and the quill pens were out, the ancestral legislators of the so-called Land of the Free decided that well, maybe a little immunity wasn't such a bad thing for them, as a government. And so, they put sovereign immunity into the Constitution. There's a little YouTube primer here. 

Then the states put sovereign immunity into their statutes as well. They also added governmental immunity, which gives protection from suit to state and local governments and agencies.

It was only natural that this immunity would trickle down to the individual, and so you have qualified immunity for an agent of the state. But qualified immunity was developed solely by the courts--the judicial branch instead of the legislative branch.

In real life, qualified immunity takes away the rights supposedly guaranteed to the people by the government, and says, "okay, now prove that you can have these rights, and once you've done that, prove that they were violated." 

That's what this post is about: these rights have never been granted to everyone, and haven't been protected or enforced by any level of government with consistency and equity. 

Qualified immunity means you can get injured, wrongly arrested, beaten, wrongly convicted, maliciously prosecuted, killed--it's endless--and you likely won't have any recourse if those deeds have been committed by law enforcement. It will take years and even decades to get a final decision on whether your case can even be brought for trial. That's right. You have to bring suit to see if you can bring suit. And you're paying for it all the while, unless an advocacy organization has agreed to help you.

It becomes even more convoluted if a federal officer violated your rights; they are virtually untouchable, and were recently made more so by the U.S. Supreme Court in Egbert v. Boule.

If you've done some reading on the civil rights struggle during the 1960's, it's clear that Black Americans did not have the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. These rights were kept from them through violence, intimidation, control of the workforce, mass incarceration, sharecropping, and more. Much of this was enforced or committed by local police, who were acting illegally, immorally, and unethically. It wasn't just happening in law enforcement: these violent and repressive tactics were permitted by the criminal legal system as well. 

Qualified immunity actively supports the violation of civil rights, and increases police misconduct and leaves victims without any recourse. Qualified immunity can be eliminated at the State level. Do you know what your state statute says about immunity for government officials? 

More Reading
Qualified Immunity (americanbar.org)

What Is Qualified Immunity, and What Does It Have to Do With Police Reform? - Lawfare (lawfareblog.com)

Hamdi Mohamud--Wrongly arrested and incarcerated in 2011. Still waiting for justice in 2022.

Here is just one case that shows some of what's involved in seeking restitution for a violation of constitutional 'rights'. It's life-changing and frightening, and it can happen to anyone. 

Hamdi Mohamud

Hamdi Mohamud, Credit: Institute for Justice

• Rights violation took place in 2011
• Ms. Mohamud was wrongly incarcerated for two years at age 16. One of those years was spent in federal prison.
• Still waiting for her case to be heard in 2022

Hamdi Mohamud was arrested at the age of 16 and incarcerated for 2 years without a trial based solely on false information provided by a police officer. Eleven years after her initial arrest and eventual release, the case against the officer that provided bogus evidence against her still has not been allowed to go to trial.

In June 2011, 16 year old Hamdi Mohamud and a friend were innocent bystanders during a fight involving three older girls. St. Paul police officers responded when Muna, one of the older girls, attacked the others with a knife. Unknown to responding officers at the scene, Muna was an informant in separate investigation by a federal task force. Heather Weyker, an officer on that task force, hearing about the incident, convinced responding officers to free Muna, and arrest the other girls in an effort to protect her own informant in an investigation that later turned out to be meritless.

The day after the initial baseless arrests, officer Weyker filed a federal criminal complaint and affidavit with information that she knew to be false in an effort to enforce the detention of the innocent girls without probable cause. There are many news stories about Officer Weyker's documented lies. Although Hamdi was never involved in the initial altercation and should never have been charged with any crime, she ended up spending 2 years in detention, including 1 year in federal prison without ever receiving a trial.

Upon dismissal of the charges against her, Ms. Mohamud sought to hold officer Weyker accountable for her actions. Like many victims of police misconduct, she then entered a world of protracted litigation that victims are forced to engage in if they seek any recourse for a violation of their Constitutional rights.

Police routinely claim qualified immunity to have cases against them dismissed before trial, and they are able to appeal denials of their claims all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Victims can only bring cases of police misconduct to court if all appeals for qualified immunity have been denied and this can take years.

Officer Weyker was initially denied qualified immunity and Ms. Mohamud's case against the officer was allowed to proceed. Weyker appealed, and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because Weyker was deputized as part of a federal task force at the time, Ms. Mohamud could not sue Weyker in her capacity as a federal officer.
 
In a follow-up appeal filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, the issue was summarized as follows:
 
“The officer, Respondent Heather Weyker, was denied qualified immunity because ‘a reasonable officer would know that deliberately misleading another officer into arresting an innocent individual to protect a sham investigation is unlawful.’
 
To resolve the growing circuit split on the application of Ziglar v. Abbasi, the question presented is: Whether a constitutional remedy is available against federal officers for individual instances of law enforcement overreach in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”
 
Ms. Mohamud is represented by the Institute for Justice. See more details of the case and access court documents here.

The Institute for Justice also has a helpful FAQ on qualified immunity here. For a brief explainer of qualified immunity, see this post.

You Have to Search for your History

 May 17-21

On the banks of the Arkansas River, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is the Selma Memorial that commemorates "Bloody Sunday". In the scant teachings our country doles out about the civil rights struggle, you may have seen the shocking footage of that day. You may know less about the organization leading up to it, the reason for the march, and what happened afterwards. 

As author Gay Talese points out in this video, most of the moments we see are "isolated examples of atrociousness. We told the world that this quarter of a mile is the story, and it has remained the story for over fifty years. . . but really, Selma hasn't changed that much. . ."

Talese is confirming my own experience that many of us have seen these few vignettes of outrageous racist violence against non-violent protestors, but we never get to see the whole picture. We usually have to look for it, which was my intent with this trip.

I was at the riverside memorial in Selma one afternoon, reading Charles Person's book Buses Are A-comin' when a woman walked past. Not many people were around--Selma is very quiet, most businesses were out of business or closed, so there wasn't much happening. For some reason I made eye contact--something I had generally avoided during this trip. I can't remember what we started talking about, but I must have a sixth sense about people from the Pacific Northwest because she was from Seattle also. Another solo traveler on the Civil Rights Trail, she was headed from Selma to Birmingham, and had just been to the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery.

We both expressed similar incredulities, which centered largely on our lack of civil rights education and our own search to face up to and eliminate racism. When we talked about seeing the lynching memorial in Montgomery, she said she had seen one portion where there were an overwhelming number of 'unknown' people who had all been lynched on the same day. That evening, she asked a friend about it. The two of them regularly talk race and rights. He did know about the lynching--it happened the day before an election. All of those 'unknown' people had been killed to stop them from voting. 

Her friend said something like, "You have to search for your history", when she expressed frustration about the hiddenness of these facts. That's really the truth about American education: what you learn in K-12 is sanitized, politicized, and infantilized. A useful education teaches you how to search for and critique your own history, whatever that may be. Looking at everything that has roiled the U.S. over the last five years, it's an undertaking I hope some will engage in seriously. Even then, it's up for interpretation given who generally has the storytelling rights.

Additional Reading/Listening/Watching

Assignment America: Selma, by Gay Talese, New York Times

1619, a podcast by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Roy Wood Jr. (comedian) interviews Freedom Rider Charles Person (below), May 26, 2021

Birmingham Alabama

May 13-15

Birmingham, AL

A.G. Gaston (right) in front of his motel with R.A. Hester. City of Birmingham Archives

Arthur George Gaston died in 1996 with a net worth of $130 million. He was an innovator from the beginning, first earning some cash by letting the neighborhood kids ride his tire swing in exchange for their buttons, which the children's parents would buy back from him. As a young adult, he was a miner in Birmingham and provided lunches and burial insurance to his coworkers.

Gaston opened a business school, a funeral home, a savings and loan, and the A.G. Gaston Motel, which was listed in the Green Book. While he generally laid low to keep out of conflict with white society, he did provide financial assistance to the Civil Rights movement, and opened his motel to activists in the early 60's.

Dr. King stayed there during the Children's Crusade in 1963, a march in which children left school to walk downtown and talk with the mayor about segregation in Birmingham. Bull Connor, "Public Safety" officer, stopped the marches by using fire hoses and police dogs against the students. Here is the National Park Service narrative about the Motel and why it is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.

The events of the Children's Crusade led to the arrest of Dr. King. Gaston's Motel was bombed; two devices exploded near Dr. King's room. Four months later, on September 15, 1963, four Klan members killed four girls and injured 14 others. The four who died were Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair. Addie Mae's sister, Sarah, was partially blinded in the explosion. 

Gaston put up $160,000 bond for Dr. King.

A postcard from the Gaston Motel

2019 unveiling of A.G. Gaston Boulevard signs at the Gaston Motel. Bham Now

Gaston Motel renovations underway during my visit. The firm completing the renovation is A.G. Gaston Construction.

A.G. Gaston Building, right across the street from the Motel. I love this building.

More about Birmingham's people and industry

Hosea Hudson was an ironworker, and organizer, and a member of the Communist Party. He also sang bass in the L&N Quartet. He grew up as a Georgia sharecropper and worked in Atlanta and Nashville before heading to New York City to train with the Communist Party USA. Hudson settled in Birmingham as a WPA worker, joining the United Steelworkers of America during WWII. Ultimately, he was fired and blacklisted because of his communist affiliations. Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington designated February 26, 1980 as "Hosea Hudson Day". Nell Irvin Painter worked with Hudson on her biography of him, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: The Life and times of a Black Radical.  Hudson wrote his own book in 1972 entitled Black Worker in the Deep South: A Personal Record.  

Sloss Furnaces

Sloss Furnaces used Black workers for the manual jobs in the plant, and whites for managerial roles. It also used convict leasing, a continuance of the system of slavery that was profitable for businesses and for local governments. The company had its own prison system. Alabama was the last state in the Union to do away with convict leasing in 1928, although many counties in the South continued to use the system. Sloss was segregated, with separate bath houses, separate time clock areas, and separate company picnics.

And some food

I picked up a catfish sandwich and fried green tomatoes at Green Acres Cafe. Delicious.

More reading

Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire, Carol Jenkins

Audio and Video

A.G. Gaston Episode of Driving the Green Book, Alvin Hall and Janee Woods Weber.

A video piece on Gaston's businesses and his support of the Civil Rights movement. 

A video piece on Black workers at Sloss Furnaces.

Direct Action and Activist Discord; Birmingham, AL

May 13-15, Birmingham

I'm doing this trip backwards--that is, I'm doing it the opposite way the arrows show in the guide book. I suppose there's no real wrong way to do this, but it's working for me this way. Starting off with Little Rock was chronologically correct, but of course next I went to Memphis, and the assassination of Dr. King (1968). What Memphis gave me, though, was some familiarity with the leaders and activists I was to meet over and over as I went from Birmingham to Montgomery, to Selma, and finally Jackson, MS, and the Delta.

In Birmingham, a few things came together for me: a prominent part of Green Book, the Freedom Rides (1960-1961), and Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963). If you haven't ever read King's Letter, set aside a few minutes for it. He was jailed in Birmingham for 'parading without a permit'. He wrote the letter on scraps of paper that were smuggled in to him.

Most of us know that Dr. King's strategy was one of non-violence. Not everyone in the movement agreed with that strategy (Kwame Ture was one), but everyone who took part in direct action committed to following non-violence without exception. They were even trained through role-playing to endure violence and humiliating acts against them. King talks about this commitment in his letter. Written in 1963, after the Montgomery Bus Boycott that he was asked to lead in 1955, and after the Freedom Rides (1960-61). With years of experience in both direct action and negotiating with political and law enforcement leadership, Dr King had seen the pattern of tactics used by segregationists and he lays them out in the letter. 

Dr. King's letter could have been written by someone from today's Black Lives Matter protests.  He mentions the following, all of which are present in today's discourse about BLM direct actions:

• City leadership's objection to 'outsiders coming in'
• City leadership insisting on negotiations, which King's movement has done, but leadership did not keep their promises.
• Being told to wait, for any reason. This 'right time' argument is one we see most frequently after mass shootings now, as those against gun control come out and say that now is not the 'right time' to talk about gun control.
• Black people are dying while city leadership keeps moving the goal posts. In short this is a feature of respectability politics, and if you're a supporter of justice movements, it's easy to fall for this argument--you may be the white moderate that Dr. King is talking about.
• City leaders and police calling any protest an 'unlawful assembly' to violently shut down non-violent protests.
• Creating laws or regulations that criminalize or ban first amendment activities.

The 'unlawful assembly' label is applied quickly today, but unequally for different groups.

The BLM protests in Seattle and Portland in the summer of 2020 were quickly labeled by police as 'unlawful assembly', warnings were given that non-lethals would be used if protesters did not disperse. The next thing that would happen is police would begin using tear gas, flash bangs, and then form a line and forcefully and quickly shove protesters back while continuing to use tear gas. Having been in the crowd for a number of these, the last time was enough for me to quit direct action and join a research group instead. 

Unlike the BLM protests, white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys were protected by law enforcement during their protests, and any counter protesters with an anti-racist bent were the target of both law enforcement and the white nationalist group. Oregon's Statesman talks about this disparity, and a Washington Post piece on the teen who shot and killed two BLM protesters and whose attempt to surrender for the killings was ignored by police echo the events of the 1960's direct action events.

Did you lose focus?

The narrative that was put forth by the police--then and now--was that protesters had become violent or begun destroying property. Whether that was true or not, the protesters were considered 'wrong', and government officials did not back down, but rather tightened restrictions. The focus had now become about tactics, and how the protesters behaved. And hey presto, the issue of police brutality against Black Americans, segregation, or voting rights was in the background. Be aware that if you're arguing about what tactics protesters are using, you're missing the point. Go back and remind yourself of the issue being highlighted by the protest and focus on that. Property cannot be the victim of violence, but when property damage occurs during protests, it is often labeled 'violence'. 

We know now that the story of the civil rights protests often framed the protesters in a bad light. The same thing is happening now. We also know that in many cases, law enforcement have committed violent, criminal acts against Black Americans and have lied about it, then and now. Police body cams and bystander video have verified this, as with the murder of George Floyd. It's important to understand why Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem, and for us to refocus on the issues with family and friends. Each one of us has an obligation to bend that arc of the moral universe.

More Reading

The Rise of Respectability Politics, Frederick C. Harris, Dissent Magazine

Stop Hustling Black Death, Imani Perry, The Cut. 

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why MLK was Jailed in Birmingham, Lily Rothman, Time Magazine

FBI Files on Freedom Riders

Note that even though Albert Boutwell (shown above) won the Mayoral election, Birmingham's "Bull" Connor refused to give up his office until directed to do so by the Supreme Court of Alabama.  Connor was the face of institutional racism, with many atrocities against Black residents. He famously told white supremacists they had "fifteen or twenty minutes before I show up" when the Freedom Riders came to Birmingham. You can read about that here.

Canton Freedom House, Canton Mississippi

A note about pictures throughout this blog: not all of these will be great! That's because my main focus is hearing from the people who are sharing their stories. In most cases, I take these to capture the information on plaques, or to help me remember all I've seen.

May 21, 2021

Canton Freedom House is about ten miles outside of Jackson, MS. It's a civil rights museum that shrinks the decades between the Freedom Summer and today. This is a place that was the headquarters for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and was also used by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick"). 

George and Rembert Washington 

George and Rembert Washington are pictured above in front of the store they owned and ran. They also owned the building across the street, which became the Freedom House. Like many who were active in the civil rights movement across the south, the Washingtons' business and buildings were attacked, and Mr. Washington was arrested and fined for 'offenses' like trash-burning.

The plaque above details the Washingtons' involvement in the movement, and some of the consequences of it. the notice below details Mr. Washington's arrests and fines, and some of the violent acts directed at them. One of the curators explained that they learned that putting chicken wire over the windows stopped molotov cocktails from breaking windows and setting the building on fire. The chicken wire had saved them from numerous attacks.

The Freedom Summer was in 1964, with its focus mainly on registering voters in the South. Poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, violence, and straight up murder were some of the tactics that Southern whites used to keep Black voters away from the polls. Only 7 percent of Black Mississippians were registered--the lowest level in the nation.

The formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was also a focus of the Freedom Summer agenda, along with the establishment of Freedom Schools. The Freedom House in Canton is the only such place that has survived, and its curators, who were young teens at the time, remember the activities, the comings and goings of Dr. King, James Meredith (he integrated University of Mississippi), Fannie Lou Hamer, James Farmer, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and others.

During my visit, curator Wesley Rushing told me the personal story of moving to Canton when he was about eleven. Up until then, his family had been sharecroppers on a plantation in the Delta. Because the landowner cheated the farmers, they always 'owed' the owner money at the end of each year. The plantation had a creek running around it, and there was only one way on and off--right past the owner's house. So they couldn't just move without paying what was 'owed'--$900. The family borrowed the money from friends in Canton, paid the owner, and moved off the plantation. 

This is a common sharecropper's story, and many sharecroppers, like Fannie Lou Hamer, were evicted from their homes and what little livelihood they had when they registered to vote, or took part in any of the rights activities. Just outside of Selma, civil rights workers built a tent city for sharecroppers who had been evicted after taking part in marches. The National Park Service has some personal stories here.

Wesley Rushing said he never finished high school because working as a sharecropper meant he could only attend school in December and January, when there was less work to be done. He was so far behind in school, he wouldn't have graduated until his early twenties, and he was already being badly taunted by schoolmates. He went to work in a steel mill and retired with a good salary.