A Third Stage for Civil Rights

By Larry Elgin

In the 1960s, as a law student, I became, successively, a writer for, and then the editor of my law school’s newspaper. In that capacity I began criticizing segregation. One could not write about segregation without saying that it was wrong and unjustifiable. As one of my professors put it, you could not acknowledge that blacks have a soul and justify segregation.

I soon went beyond writing about it. I was drawn into participating in the Civil Rights Movement. A friend of mine since high school, who was also a law school classmate, became active in the Movement and went frequently in that capacity into the heart of the Mississippi Delta, real Faulkner country. He was beaten up by the Klan. He was in the thick of the struggle. He persuaded a number of us fellow students to go down and assist in the Movement.

At one point, the authorities in Mississippi, under pressure from the federal courts, had to integrate the schools, but were still operating segregated school buses. My friend was following one of the buses to document this illegal segregation and the authorities arrested him. He was charged first with reckless driving and then that was altered (with a ball point pen as the trial began) into violation of a state statute making it a crime to follow a motor vehicle too closely. This was in Issaquena County, by the Yazoo River, in its county seat, Meyersville....... Read more