“People in Action: New Harassment”
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: June 23, 1962
Location: New York, N.Y.
Genre: Published Article
Topic: Voter registration
Details
As King prepared to address a rally at Little Union Baptist Church in Shreveport on 8 June, local police arrested SCLC officials Wyatt Tee Walker and Harry Blake and subjected them to a mental competency examination.1 In this article published in the New York Amsterdam News, King decries the “lunacy test” as an example of the “absurdity of the lengths to which the racist opposition will go to thwart the Freedom Movement in the South.” Concluding the article, King asks if segregationists will learn that their efforts to stop integration are “as vain as trying to hold back the tides of the sea.” Walker and Blake were found mentally competent and permitted to post bond on 9 June.
The racist opposition in the Deep South has worked far into the night dreaming up the many not-so-subtle devices to thwart the accelerated civil rights thrust of the Negro community. The most familiar since the outlawing of the old devices—the grandfather clause and the white primary—have been the literacy tests, polltaxes etc.2 However, with the advent of the Sit-In movement in 1960, architects of evil went to work anew. They have now developed such legal devices (aimed primarily at the nonviolent approach) as “anti-trespass” ordinances that carry heavy penalties, breach of the peace and inciting to riot statutes, and more recently in the sovereign state of Louisiana, criminal anarchy charges that require cash bail in cash in excess of $10,000.00 on each charge.3
Now another device of harassment is born again in the sovereign state of Louisiana. The criminal anarchy statute was invoked in Baton Rouge. The new harassment is the coroner’s commitment or lunacy test. The lunacy test statute was applied in Shreveport, bastion of the White Citizens Council.
Just last Friday, the Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker, executive director of SCLC, Bernard Lee, Field Secretary and myself were scheduled to go into Shreveport to aid in kicking off an intensified voter registration drive. Two and one-half hours before plane time, Harry Blake, our SCLC Field Secretary in north Louisiana telephoned the home office in Atlanta to advise us that the racists threatened to kill us if we came to Shreveport. Naturally, we decided to go anyway, despite the fact that the climate of law and order in this north Louisiana city is very bad.4
Director Walker and Harry Blake made some precautionary arrangement (as much as can be taken in this kind of circumstance) particularly in the immediate area of the Little Union Baptist Church, site of the rally.
While they were checking on the men who were guarding the church, the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Chief of Police, J. Earl Downs and Harvey D. Teasley, accosted Walker and Blake and insisted that they go inside the church. Previously, the Commissioner had refused police protection for “that nigger King and his crowd” when asked by the local leaders. Our staff director questioned Downs as to whether his change of heart about police protection would include the area of the church. When Mr. Walker insisted on an answer to his query, he and Blake were arrested on a “loitering” charge and taken to the Shreveport city jail where they were booked and finger printed.5
In an affidavit, filed with the Department of Justice, Mr. Walker describes their amazement when they were mysteriously transferred to the Caddo Parish (county) jail under coroner commitments signed by Chief Teasley. They were to be held without bond until the county coroner could examine them and determine whether they were “mentally competent.”6
The Chief of Police was reported in the New York Times as saying this was regular procedure. The Times indicated that they checked with other law enforcement officials around the state and no one could explain the practice and had never heard of it.
Interestingly enough, Wyatt Tee Walker graduated at the top of his class in undergraduate school with a B.S. in chemistry and physics and from graduate school with a B.D. in theology. He compiled a brilliant record during the eight years he served the 1000-member Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburgh, Virginia. In the two-year period of his administration as director of SCLC, our organization has developed from a five-member staff, $63,000 a year program to a thirty-member staff, $475,000 program. This is the man whose mental competence the Louisiana officials doubted.
The lesson of this account is but to demonstrate once again the absurdity of the lengths to which the racist opposition will go to thwart the Freedom Movement in the South. Will they ever learn that it is as vain as trying to hold back the tides of the sea.7
1. The stop in Shreveport was part of SCLC’s People to People tours. Walker and Blake were arrested for loitering as they checked security around the church after King had received death threats (Claude Sitton, “2 Negro Leaders Seized in South,” New York Times, 10 June 1962). Harry Blake (1934– ), born in Portland, Arkansas, graduated from Bishop College in Dallas, Texas, in 1959. In 1960, Blake, who was serving as interim pastor of Elizabeth Baptist Church in Belcher, Louisiana, was hired as a field secretary for SCLC, a position he held until 1963. From 1961 until 1966 he was pastor of Lake Bethlehem Baptist Church in Shreveport. Blake had served as pastor of Shreveport’s Mount Canaan Baptist Church since 1966. A lifetime member of the NAACP, Blake also served as general secretary of the National Baptist Convention (2000–2009) and president of the Louisiana Baptist State Convention (1995–2010).
2. Oklahoma’s “grandfather clause,” which exempted from literacy tests those who were descended from pre-1866 voters, was ruled unconstitutional in Guinn and Beal v. United States (238 U.S. 347 [1915]). The Democratic Party of Texas’s resolution that only white citizens could become members and, therefore, vote during the primary election was deemed unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright (321 U.S. 649 [1944]).
3. On 12 February Ronnie Moore, chairman of the Baton Rouge chapter of CORE, was charged with criminal anarchy for his membership in “an organization seeking to ‘subvert’ the government of the state,” with bond set at $12,500 (CORE, Newsletter, “CORE-lator, no. 95,” April 1962).
4. Prior to King’s visit, local SCLC affiliates were subjected to bouts of violence. On 18 February 1962, the home of C. O. Simpkins, head of SCLC’s Shreveport affiliate known as the United Christian Movement, was bombed. Three months later, Simpkins’s summer home was also bombed and burned to the ground (King, “People in Action: Can We Ever Repay Them?,” New York Amsterdam News, 9 June 1962). Additionally, Blake had suffered minor wounds from a drive-by shooting in October 1960 (“Attempt Made on Life of Local Civil Rights Leader,” Shreveport Sun, 22 October 1960). King’s draft of the article appended the following sentence: “We are confronted with many hard decision like this but it is part of the code of our work: If we knew for sure that we would not be coming back, we would still go!” (Draft, “New Harassment: The Lunacy Test,” 23 June 1962).
5. Teasley offered a different account, stating that several whites from a local segregationist group were picketing the church and had drawn the attention of local blacks, including Walker and Blake. Fearing violence, the police ordered everyone to disperse, but Walker and Blake refused to obey and were arrested (Sitton, “2 Negro Leaders Seized in South,” 10 June 1962). According to his affidavit, Walker agreed to go inside the church, but first wanted to ensure that police protection extended around the back of the church. While he awaited confirmation, Walker was arrested and charged with loitering (Walker, Affidavit, 11 June 1962).
6. According to Walker, the examination consisted of forty minutes of questions such as “if you had the choice to defend the state of Georgia or the United States, which would you choose?”; “do you feel people are against you?”; and “you really do believe what you say, don’t you?” (Walker, Affidavit). After the men’s competence was established by county coroner Stuart DeLee, the United Christian Movement bonded Walker and Blake out on 9 June. In a 27 June 1962 letter to Walker, Burke Marshall, assistant attorney general, said the Justice Department had made contact with local officials in Shreveport to ensure that Walker and Dr. King would be protected. “I understand that adequate police action was taken,” Marshall wrote. Marshall also said that his department had investigated Walker’s arrest and found “no basis for any federal action with respect to it.”
7. King references the legend of “King Canute on the Seashore.”
Source: New York Amsterdam News, 23 June 1962.