Selected Testimony on Black Voter Suppression in Mississippi

Background: Testimony in the Bilbo hearings provided evidence of the wide range of tactics voting officials in Mississippi used to thwart African Americans who attempted to register and vote. Actual violence was less common than the threat of violence, and white election officials created a variety of bureaucratic obstacles at every stage of the process, all within the law but obviously applied only to Black voters. Many Black Mississippians testified that they did not even attempt to register because they were afraid of what would happen if they did. Several others testified that while they had been allowed to cast a vote, their votes were automatically challenged and placed in an envelope rather than the official ballot box, and they were unable to receive an explanation for why.

(Edward Knott, Jr., of Meridian, Mississippi, p. 116): Well, on July 2, about 5:30, I went to the poll alone. I marked the ballot, walked around a truck—didn’t anybody direct me to the box, only stared at me and watched me. When I came back I saw the box between a man’s legs, he had his legs over the box. And the gentleman who was watching me behind, as I was attempting to put the ballot in the box, he said, “I challenge that.” I said, “I don’t understand,” and I asked the lady, “What does this gentleman mean?” She said, “Any person who feels he has a reason to challenge a vote can challenge it.” I said, “O.K. How will I know what he is challenging the vote for?” She told me to go to the circuit clerk’s office the next morning at 9 o’clock. . . . I haven’t been told yet why my vote was challenged.

(Willie Douglas Brown, Greenville, Mississippi, p. 78): So we went back, and again the last time I went down was the day of the primary election, and I went down and three of us went together, and it was just at the time they were closing up, and a white veteran came in just ahead of us, and the lady asked him what he wanted, and he told her. I am sure he had never registered before, because he didn’t know anything about what to do when he went in. So she asked him about what time he had been in the service, and he told her when he went in and what time he came out. So she let him register, and he took his ballot and went on. 

She asked us what did we want. We told her, and then the clerk came up and said, “I will attend to these.” He asked us what we wanted, and we told him again. So he said, “You boys have been here before.” We told him “Yes.” He said, “Well, you have to answer some questions before I will qualify you to be able to vote.” So he asked us the questions, and he told us in his own words that “It doesn’t matter how you answer the question, it won’t be satisfactory with me.”

(Leon Dowdy, Greenville, Mississippi, p. 80): I went down to the Washington County Courthouse five times from January to July. . . . The first time I went down, I went down to pay my poll tax, but I saw so many veterans were getting exemptions that I asked could I get one, and so the lady that was collecting the taxes told me to go to the circuit clerk’s office, and he would give me one. I went back, and there was a lady there, and the clerk wasn’t in. She told me to wait until the clerk came in. When he came in he carried me out in the hall, and he told me that there wasn’t any election that I could vote in, and when one would come up he would let me know. I asked him how he would let me know when he hadn’t even asked me my name. He said he would put it in the papers so everyone would know. . . . I went up about two weeks later, and he gave the same story, that he couldn’t register a Negro veteran. 

We went back about June 20, and he had a lot of questions there, two or three pages of questions that he asked us, and he got tired of asking us questions and he said that he didn’t care which way we answered those questions, it wouldn’t come up to his satisfaction; that we was supposed to answer them to his satisfaction; that we could quote the Constitution backward, it wouldn’t come up to his satisfaction; that he was being fair to us. We asked him if he asked everybody those questions, and he said “No,” he asked only the Negro veterans, but for us to be patient, that the time was coming soon where we boys would get our full rights to the ballot. There was no need to stand around and argue, so we left. 

(Medal of honor recipient Etoy Fletcher, farmer, Puckett, Mississippi, pp. 46–49): Well when I went out to register, the circuit clerk told me to go up to another room upstairs to the man that handled the veterans, and when I went up to see this man he told me that we weren’t allowed to vote, and I went on out; and I was standing across the street, waiting for a bus, and a car came up before me and three of the men got out and got around me, and told me to get in the car, and I couldn’t resist, so I got in, and another car followed with two or three men in it, and they took me off down in the woods and whipped me. . . .

Chairman: How soon after you attempted to register was it that these three people hauled you away?

Mr. Fletcher: It was about 30 minutes, or something like that. . . . 

Chairman: Where did you go after you were refused the right to register?

Mr. Fletcher: After I left the courthouse?

Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Fletcher: I went out across the street; I was waiting for a bus.

Chairman: I see. Where was it that these three men grabbed hold of you?

Mr. Fletcher: I was standing on the corner.

Chairman: Had you seen them previously?

Mr. Fletcher: No, sir; I had not. . . .

Chairman: What reasons did they give for whipping you?

Mr. Fletcher: Well, when we were going on out down the road, they asked me where did I get it from that I could come up there and vote. That is practically all, and then they asked me about how long I stayed in the service, and what theaters was I in when I was in the service. That is about all they said while we were going out. . . .

Chairman: Well, what happened after that, where did you go after they whipped you?

Mr. Fletcher: I came on back to Jackson.

Chairman: Did you report the complaint to anybody before you gave it to these investigators?

Mr. Fletcher: I did to the chairman of the AVC. . . .

Chairman: Did you attempt thereafter to register?

Mr. Fletcher: No, sir.

Chairman: Why?

Mr. Fletcher: Well, I didn’t. I was afraid, for one thing. . . .

Senator Thomas: You say they whipped you. Tell us what you mean.

Mr. Fletcher: They took, they said it was a piece of car cable, something wrapped, about that long [indicating], doubled, and they had me to lie down on the ground, they had me to pull my clothes off, and one whipped a while and then another one, until they finished.

Senator Thomas: Where did they hit you?

Mr. Fletcher: On the legs. . . . I figured they hit me about probably seven or eight times each, or maybe more.

Source: Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Senatorial Campaign Expenditures, 1946, pursuant to S. Res. 224, A Resolution to Appoint a Special Committee to Investigate Senatorial Campaign Contributions and Expenditures in the 1946 Elections, Together with the Views of Mr. Bridges and Mr. Hickenlooper (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), 46–49, 78, 80, 116.