JACKSON

By John R. Salter, Jr. [Hunter Gray] MY BOOK IS THE ONLY FULLY DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORIC AND MASSIVE JACKSON MOVEMENT OF 1962-63. IN FACT, IT'S THE MOST DETAILED ACCOUNT OF ANY MAJOR CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF THE '60s. IT HAS NOW BEEN PUBLISHED AND ISSUED IN ITS ENLARGED AND UPDATED VERSION BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS. PLEASE SEE DETAILS BELOW.

SCROLL DOWN FOR INFORMATION ON THE NEW BOOK AND SOME REVIEWS AND MORE ON THE WOOLWORTH SIT IN. MY "AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH" (2012) IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE ALONG WITH A RECENT -- AUGUST 2012 -- PIECE OF MINE: "PROGRESS: A MOSTLY DEEP SOUTH TALE."

COMMENTS BY HUNTER BEAR: (10/25/2011)

This note does not call for a response from anyone. People are busy.

I've already received some fine comments about the the new version of my book, Jackson Mississippi. (Susan Klopfer, a Southern Movement writer, did a most positive review forthwith!) One comment came from Mary Ann, an old friend and former Tougaloo student of mine and a strong and committed worker on behalf of our Jackson Boycott Movement out of which we developed the mass, non-violent Jackson Movement. She writes:

Hi Mr. Salter, finally received your book in the mail yesterday. Was anxious to read the new introduction. Initially I was confused as to what this had to do with Jackson, Ms. but as I continued to read , I had an aha moment . It dawned on me. These experiences made you into the person we came to know , love and appreciate in Jackson/Tougaloo, Ms.

					WWW,

					MARY ANN

					 

					Those are very kind 
					words -- and it's certainly mutual.  (WWW, I should add, was 
					the slogan of our Jackson struggle:  WE WILL WIN.)  And Mary 
					Ann's apt comments have led me to write this:

I and my good family have been having an interesting life these past many decades. We'd do it all over again. And we're not at the end of the trail by a long stretch.

But, interesting and productive as I think it's been, I very much doubt that any autobiography I did -- as per the repeated suggestions and encouragement of good friend Bill Mandel -- would ever find its way into print. By the same token, I doubt that anyone would be interested in doing a biographical book on me. The just now out third version of my book, Jackson Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), is, as I indicate in its new and substantial Introduction, "an organizer's book."

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Jackson-Mississippi,674910.aspx

Growing up in Northern Arizona, in a setting replete with social justice issues and committed early on to grassroots and activist community organizing, I, personally, have always been especially interested in the lives of effective activists. Two of those, autobiographies, had a very significant and enduring impact on me back in 1955 when I was 21: Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (New York: International Publishers, 1929 and subsequent editions) and Ralph Chaplin's Wobbly: The Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.) And there followed many other works, from social justice fighters of many ethnicities and cultures.

I, my family, and many friends have long felt there should be some sort of widely available account of who I and my family are, where we come from, what we stand for -- and what we've accomplished over many turbulent decades. While my book obviously focuses very basically and heavily on the carefully organized and ultimately massive Jackson Movement of 1962-63, its original epilogue, "Reflections on an Odyssey," covers a number of my subsequent campaigns into 1978. And now, the new Introduction -- about 9,500 words -- updates organizing and related matters to the present, has some Mississippi, provides personal and family background, motivational insight, and some of my key reflections as a life-long activist Organizer.

Taken in total, and standing alone, this book is my basic memoir. I expect it to be useful to a wide variety of social justice activists of all ages -- and very much younger and developing people of all backgrounds.

Hunter Gray (John R. Salter, Jr.) October 25 2011

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

Prologue comments from Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark to her list of colleagues: 9/14/05
Hi Everyone:
I received this note from Hunter Gray Bear (John Salter). Hunter Bear was my
professor at Tougaloo College and one of the sharpest organizers in both the
southern civil rights movement and labor movement in the USA. He agreed to
serve as advisor to a the newly organized Jackson, Ms NAACP North Jackson
Youth Council in 1961. This was no small decision. Under his tutorledge and
guidance and with the oversight of Medgar Wylie Evers, the North Jackson
NAACP Youth Council would produce a mass movement and the most successful
boycott of a downtown district in the deep south. Only, Ida B Wells boycott
of Memphis in the 19th century can compare. Jackson. Ms' downtown folded and
has never reopened with its string of shops and department stores. This was
no easy work and like Medgar and so many others Hunter Bear was targeted for
death. He was seriously wounded by the southern racists in a freak car
accident (point of death), beaten a number of times in demonstrations but
refused to yield even from pressure within the struggle. Those years are
detailed in a book by Hunter Bear (John R Salter) entitled: Jackson,
Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism. The book is out
of print, but should be in most college libraries. Today, Hunter Bear has
returned to his native land in the West and to his Native roots to continue
organizing and building grass roots struggle and a new generation of
youthful organizers.
Hear him for he worthy to be heard.
Colia L. Clark

Depicted on the cover of this new and expanded edition of my book, is our Woolworth Sit-In, May 28 1963, at Jackson. This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. [Recently, many "end-of-the-Century" photo collections have carried large renditions of it.] A huge mob gathered, with open police support and, while the three of us sat there for three hours, I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things. Seated, left to right, are myself, Ms. Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Ms. Anne Moody. Other sit-ins -- some in a split-off section and some briefly with our heavily targeted part -- were Mr. Memphis Norman (himself brutally struck and kicked unconscious), Ms. Pearlena Lewis, Ms. Lois Chaffee, Mr. James Beard, Mr. George Raymond, and Mr. Walter Williams. Dr. A.D. Beittel, President of Tougaloo College, and himself a much older man, joined us at the conclusion of the affair.

My book first appeared in 1979 and was later reissued as a slightly expanded paper edition in 1987. All told, it drew over three dozen very positive reviews. A few excerpts:

Jessica Mitford called it "An excellent book about Jackson...A thrilling first-hand account."

James W. Silver [author of Mississippi: The Closed Society]: "I was so impressed with his book, Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism, that I purchased copies for my three children born in Mississippi . . .Of course I knew about his courageous course at Tougaloo College long before that. . .He is unquestionably a rare find who combines dedication with an exceedingly purposeful life."

UMOJA: A SCHOLARLY JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES -- J.S. Himes: "Jackson, Mississippi is a gold-mine of raw data..."

Anne Braden in Southern Fight-Back (Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice) termed it "...an invaluable study in how community movements are built and how they can be thwarted -- in this case, by, among other forces, the federal government."

Jim Woodward, Socialist Monthly Changes (International Socialists): "Salter explains how the Jackson movement was built. . .and how it was derailed. He blames the demise of the movement on the national office of the NAACP and the Kennedy administration. . . The point is not that no gains were made in Jackson in 1962-63. While the actual settlement with the city was meager, cracking the barrier of fear in the Black community was a substantial accomplishment. The point is that the Jackson movement was prevented from reaching its potential -- by people who were supposedly its friends and allies. Jackson, of course, was not the first place in history this has occurred -- and it won't be the last. But if we are to learn from the past, we had better understand what has happened. Salter's book is an excellent place to start in studying the civil rights movement, for it tells us not only what went wrong, but also what was right. That part of the story is as inspiring as it is fascinating."

". . .a fascinating account of the Jackson movement of 1962-63 by its chief strategist and organizer." John Dittmer in The Civil Rights Movement in America [Charles W. Eagles, editor, Jackson and London: The University Press of Mississippi, 1986.]

In Win Magazine, Clyde R. Appleton wrote: "This book should be read. It should be studied. There are lessons here for everyone who has been, is, or will be taking part in the people's struggle for peace and justice."

"Salter's Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism, is a peerless account of the Jackson movement and its inner workings." Reed Massengill in Portrait of a Racist: A Revelatory Biography of Byron de la Beckwith, Written By His Own Nephew [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994.]

Perk Perkins in Sojourners said, "Salter's closeness to the struggle and his demythologizing impulse give the book its power and drama...paints a graphic picture of the struggle for freedom."

Neil McMillen (History, University of Southern Mississippi), said in The Journal of Mississippi History, "No other study yet in print so carefully details the inner life of a local protest movement...written by a thoughtful activist who recognizes the value of reasoned discourse."

Joseph R. Hacala, S.J., writing in Best Sellers said, "A moving and contemporary account...vivid, stirring."

Alene Jones [Texas Christian University] in Explorations in Sights and Sounds : "...fascinating book...excellent...written in a thorough and logical manner...this book will be profitable to students in a variety of professions...I strongly recommend that this book be read by people in general and by blacks in particular."

James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns: "Your book is splendid."

Jay Weinstein, in Social Forces: "In Jackson, Mississippi, John Salter provides a sympathetic, carefully reasoned, and highly readable first-person sociological account of the events surrounding Evers' murder and its actual and symbolic connections with this transition in the Civil Rights Movement. Salter skillfully details the roles played by key actors and organizations -- including his own role as a participant and observer."

Sarah Cooper, in Wisconsin Magazine of History: "Activist and sociologist John R. Salter, Jr., has written a first-rate, firsthand account of one of the major grass-roots struggles of the southern Civil Rights Era: the Jackson movement of 1961-1963, which undertook to desegregate public facilities and win decent treatment for the city's black residents...Salter suggests, however, that it is not the vacillation of the Jackson moderates, but the insidious pressure of the national NAACP leadership in New York and the shadow of the Kennedy Administration that ultimately accounts for the dissolution of the movement after Evers' death...."

Vinton Prince, Jr. in The Journal of Southern History: "Scholars interested in the Civil Rights Movement during the early sixties will find John R. Salter, Jr.'s, Jackson, Mississippi esssential reading. He conveys the courage of the demonstrators, the fury of the mob, and the pervasive sense of hate in Jackson extremely well. Less exciting, but more valuable for historians, are his comments on the internal workings and strains of the Jackson movement."

In Southern Exposure, Frank Adams said, "Salter offers a blow-by-blow account of a movement and its destruction which will be difficult to refute. In the final analysis we learn that when the politics of civil rights took precedence over civil action, then Evers, Salter, King, and, tragically, Jackson's black community's struggle for freedom became expendable. As a book for organizers, Salter's book deserves a place beside Alinsky's more publicized Rules for Radicals or the lesser-known classics Tin Horns and Calico by Henry Christian, Heroes and Heretics by Barrows Dunham, or the recent novel by John Nichols, The Milagro Beanfield War..."

David Ranney, in Monthly Review: "Salter lets the story unfold for the reader in a distinctively low-keyed and insightful way. He lets us in on his thoughts and feelings concerning the hopeful/terrible events exploding around him...In many ways, Jackson, Mississippi offers us hope through its demonstration of the ever present potential of a blossoming of a movement of oppressed peoples. Nothing could be quite as dismal as the picture Salter paints of Jackson in the fall of 1961. "Mississippi," he says, "was functioning in the purest and most cold-blooded sense of the word as a garrison state that viewed itself not only as being prepared for war, but as already fighting a war." ...Salter's story suggests a path...The left today would do well to consider this path very carefully..."

And in Social Development Issues (University of Iowa), Gary Lowe: "Salter's book is not splashy. He quietly tells of the evolution of a very vital and dangerous effort to create social change. As a text/case book for community organization, Salter's book is of great value. . .After all is said and done, Salter emerges with hope, and so might we all."

AND FROM AMAZON: [Professor Samuel Friedman, author of Teamster Rank and File: Power, Bureaucracy, and Rebellion at Work and in a Union -- followed by David Fields, a union organizer.]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:

Scott Winter is an old friend -- who took several of my classes [including Honors courses] at the University of North Dakota. He is now on the Journalism/Mass Communications faculty at the University of Nebraska. He has kindly passed on some good words from Adam Nossiter, New York Times, and author of the excellent book, Of Long Memory: Mississippi And The Murder of Medgar Evers. [ Nice to see kind words on a rather cold and rainy Idaho morn -- with some snow coming.] My long website page on Medgar and our historic Jackson Movement is one of the most consistently visited pages on our Hunterbear website.

Hunterbear:

I forgot to send you a note earlier this semester. I had Adam Nossiter speak in my Journalism 101 class in September. Do you remember him? He researched and wrote a Medgar Evers book. He's with the New York Times again, working as a correspondent in New Orleans. He wrote great stuff during hurricane Katrina. I was really impressed by him. I mentioned your name to him in front of the class and he said "Sure, I know of John Salter. He's a great man who did great things in Jackson, and wrote an amazing book about it." He clearly used the book as a key resource, along with his interviews and court documents. Anyway, 120 journalism freshmen got a dose of facts about poverty in the Deep South and it was empirically the best day of class all year.

Take care of yourself,
Scott

(photo of Adam in my class attached.)
-----
Scott Winter
Lecturer and Recruiter
College of Journalism and Mass Comm
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

AUTHOR'S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (2012) PLUS MY AUGUST 2012 PIECE: "PROGRESS: A MOSTLY DEEP SOUTH TALE"

This is a veteran Organizer's book -- by a life-long activist organizer and sociologist -- and an extremely detailed first hand account of one of the major Southern civil rights movements of the 1960s: the Jackson Movement of 1962-63 which burst forth in the very heart of the hard-core white supremacist/segregationist resistance. Among the vast number of repressive and often bloody measures levied against the Jackson Movement by Mississippi, was the murder of NAACP Field Secretary, Medgar W. Evers.

John R. Salter Jr., an American Indian who grew up in Northern Arizona, and who now identifies himself as Hunter Gray, is a lifetime activist deeply committed to civil rights, Native rights, labor unionization, and civil liberties. Salter came to Tougaloo College, just north of Jackson, Mississippi, as a teacher in 1961. He became the advisor to the Jackson Youth Council of the NAACP and from 1962 through 1963, was the primary organizer of the Jackson Movement, working closely with Medgar W. Evers and also with SNCC and CORE.

Salter was chair of the Movement's Strategy Committee

His book, Jackson Mississippi, is the most detailed account of any major Movement of the 1960s.

The Jackson Movement was the largest grassroots upheaval in the history of Mississippi -- and one of the major Movements of the 1960s. It was a massive non-violent struggle which, staunchly and courageously, incurred extremely brutal repression from all levels of Mississippi government and the white supremacists. It was during this struggle that Medgar Evers was murdered. The Jackson Movement's examples of martyrdom are many indeed.

Salter, himself, was beaten badly and arrested on a number of occasions -- and very severely injured and hospitalized.

Salter (Gray) remained very active in a number of social justice movements from the 1960s to the present in the South and in other parts of the country. His book also provides the brief essence of those endeavors. Among other campaigns, he organized civil rights movements in the Klan-infested and poverty-stricken Northeastern North Carolina Black-Belt counties as a full time civil rights field organizer; directed large scale community organizing on the turbulent Chicago South/Southwest Side; was director of social justice activities for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York; and served as chair of the Native American Community Organizational Training Center out of Chicago.

In 1978, Salter (Gray) and his wife, Eldri, returned to the Southwest where he taught at Navajo Community College (now renamed Dine' College) and organized anti-uranium endeavors throughout the region until the couple moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Gray taught in the American Indian Studies and Honors departments at the University of North Dakota until his retirement in 1994 and was the organizer of several Indian rights campaigns in the Northern Plains. Now residing in Pocatello, Idaho, Gray continues his involvement in eliminating racial and other negative prejudice and discrimination and frequently writes on matters of social justice community organizing and civil liberties.

He has received a number of significant awards for his social justice and organizing work. In 2005, he was honored with the Elder Recognition Award by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Story Tellers.

His large social justice website is Lair of Hunterbear at www.hunterbear.org He is a member of the National Writers Union.

PROGRESS: A MOSTLY DEEP SOUTH TALE (HUNTER GRAY/JOHN R SALTER JR) AUGUST 2012

In the final days of August, 1961, Eldri and I -- just married up in Superior, Wisconsin -- left my family home at Flagstaff, Arizona en route to Mississippi. I had as my vehicle the 1957 Arizona champion drag strip car, a Chev Bell Air. My brother had gotten that some way, couldn't keep up the payments, and Dad took it over. Normally, a cautious driver, the racy vehicle with surrealistic designs on its doors, did something to him. And he loved to drive it 90 mph in second gear -- and 120 in high.The term was not in vogue back in those days but people, including much impressed students of his, who witnessed this would certainly have noted it in our times as "awesome". Before long, though, he got something else and passed the Champ on to me -- always a pretty sedate guy at the wheel. We were pulling a long U-Haul trailer, covered by a tarp.

The closest I'd ever been to Dixie was extreme northwest Texas and northern Oklahoma. It was clear, from central Texas onward, that it was going to be, for us anyway, an adventure: increasingly hot, humid; and vastly more Black people than I'd seen anywhere before, even in the Army. My rural Northern Arizona accent -- sometimes termed "Highland South" by linguists -- seemed somewhat anemic compared to those we now began to hear.

Just inside the Louisiana line, on a conventional two lane highway, we stopped at a rural gas station. The owner, who hustled over, was a rather heavy Anglo, maybe about 40. He was genial. His son, mid-teens, was sitting on a chair in front happily strumming a guitar. It was a pleasant, folksy little scene.

When he had filled our tank and I was handing him cash, he asked where we were going.

"Jackson," I told him.

He nodded approvingly but -- but then went on with one of the cruder "jokes" I'd ever heard. Smiling he said, "How in the Hell can the Kennedys get a man on the moon when they can't get a bus load of n_____ers across Mississippi?" -- a reference to the Freedom Rides which had been much in the news earlier in the summer.

Poker faced, we said nothing, collected our change, and drove on.

At about 2 a.m., with mists rising like ghosts all around us, we hit the very long bridge across the very long and wide River -- pointed directly into Vicksburg, Mississippi. At the end of the bridge, armed border guards wearing wide-brimmed hats, emerged from the darkness and looked us over carefully. One pulled back the tarp on our trailer, checked the routine items inside. Another asked, "Where y'all headed?"

This was not the point to say we were going to Tougaloo, the Negro college just north of Jackson, and that we thought we might well become involved in the incipient civil rights movement in the state. Instead, pragmatically, and figuratively tossing my old Explorer Scout code into the river below, I muttered that we were going to Birmingham to see my uncle. [And I did indeed have an uncle in that city.]

They collected a one dollar toll and with a pro forma, "Welcome to Miss-sippi," waved us into the Closed Society.

Tougaloo had promised us on-campus housing but that was filled up. They found a temporary place for us on the edge of Lamar Avenue, near all-White Millsaps College, with a Black neighborhood right across the street. But we were soon evicted from that a day after we had two Tougaloo students over for supper. The college then found us another place, on a sort of almost low-income White street, Bailey Avenue. We had Black friends over to that one but they slipped in and out at night. Early on, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission began surveilling us, even following Eldri, who was pregnant with Maria, in a big white car with a long aerial when she walked up several blocks to a small grocery store.

Bailey Avenue saw the death one night of our Arizona Champ. It was parked on level turf, right in front of our house. We had gone to bed but, before I slipped off into sleep, I inexplicably arose, partially got dressed, and went out and put the car into neutral gear. The emergency brake was rather poor but, as I've noted, everything was level turf. Eldri was a little puzzled at my action, which I couldn't quite explain, but we were soon asleep.

We were awakened in the middle of the night by a very loud crash immediately outside. Turned out that a drunk driver, coming up Bailey Avenue which was lined with parked vehicles, crashed directly into ours. If it hadn't been in neutral, he would have been killed. My car, smashed, was up on a neighbor's lawn. We immediately replaced it with a brand new litle "robin's egg blue" AMC Rambler. When we were at the junkyard to take a last fond look at the Champ, we were approached by a man from nearby Rankin County very closely resembling the years-later Boss Hogg of the Dukes of Hazard. He was friendy, interested in the car's history, and I think he took the remains of the Champ for whatever purposes.

Quite soon after the Champ died, we had dinner at Tougaloo with good friends, the Zunes family. I recited the events of that night and the small family -- John, Helen, and little Stephen -- listened raptly. They found it all very strange. But actually Eldri and I did not.

Soon thereafter, we moved on-campus.

The Blue Rambler itself died in a famous wreck -- a few days after Martin King and some of his advisors had ridden in it -- on June 18, 1963, on Hanging Moss Road on the north edge of Jackson. It was totaled. I was severely injured and almost killed, as was my colleague, Ed King.

Much happened with us and everyone and everything else in the six years we spent in Dixie -- years forever contained deeply and pervasively within us. Two of our four children were born there; and, almost twenty years later, in early January, 1981, our oldest son, John, was with me when we left the Navajo reservation in our big yellow Chev pickup -- with McKinley County, New Mexico plates -- for Jackson. There I was scheduled to do a very extensive oral history interview with Jon Jones of the State Department of Archives and History. Normally, when coming from the west, we went to the Magnolia State by way of Oklahoma City and Memphis but this time we were taking the original trail that Eldri and I had followed so long before. The conventional two lane had been replaced ages ago by an Interstate.

Just inside the Louisiana line, I glimpsed, through a few trees, a service station on the old, original road and pulled into it. It didn't quite register until we were right close -- and I realized it was the same station of long, long ago. It was a little more worn, as was the very same owner, who came, a little more slowly than before, to us. His son and the guitar were obviously long gone.

The man was initially not genial, but rather cold. John, closest to him, was 15 and we had a big feather hanging conspicuously from the inside mirror bracket. I don't think he really saw me that well or, at that point, noted my 45/70 Marlin lever action rifle in the cab's gun rack. (I only have very traditional firearms.) It occurred to me that he might think we were Hippies -- not always popular in the rural grassroots anywhere in those days. He went to the back of our vehicle to fill it -- but there he had to see our bumper sticker, "MICMAC INDIANS TRAVEL MORE."

When he returned, this time to my window, he was extremely cordial. And he asked, as he had almost twenty years before, where were we headed.

And, as per the old script, I said, "Jackson."

But there was no joke -- not this time, not now.

I gave him a friendly, cursory wave and, smiling, he reciprocated. John and I drove on.

There were no guards on the Mississippi end of the long bridge.

Progress.

In Solidarity,

Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]

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