He Changed Mississippi Politics

AARON HENRY

Aaron Henry, leader of the Freedom Democratic Party, argues for seats at the Democratic National Convention at a meeting of the credentials committee in Atlantic City, NJ, August 22, 1964. PHOTO BY AP

In the Mississippi of 1964, picking impact in Mississippi, and as much up a hitchhiker wasn’t so bad. For four courage, as anyone. His Clarksdale home black civil rights leaders, though, picking and drugstore were firebombed. He was up a white man could get you killed. jailed 33 times. Threatening calls were a Everyone exchanged nervous glances. nightly occurrence. But he never flinched.

Doc’s not going to let this Doc, as he was known to friends, hosted guy in the car, is he? and helped countless young civil rights miles up the road, he sheepishly explained workers from the north during Freedom Summer. He led a

“This is the place where all successful boycott of downtown Clarksdale; saw to it that Jackson the civil rights and political TV station WLBT lost its license for racial bias; then became planning of the movement took the station’s chairman; and place for three decades.” filed the suit that integrated Clarksdale’s public schools. He spearheaded the creation — AARON HENRY of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and used it “It was his car, so we couldn’t do anything state’s all-white Democratic Party. … but I wouldn’t have picked up this guy,” Born in Coahoma County, Aaron Henry said McLemore. “Here’s Aaron Henry, state grew up working on the Flowers Plantation president of the NAACP. This guy could have outside of Clarksdale. He spent his childhood been a plant to do something to him.” chopping weeds among young cotton stalks, After Henry dropped off the man a few hard work to collect such soft material. to force the integration of the why he’d brought the hitchhiker aboard. “Well … he needed a ride.” “It said to me: How human is he, how F or the rest of his life he would tell his friends, “I despise everything about cotton.” caring, that he would pick up this hitchhiker,” After graduating high school in 1941, said McLemore. “But Aaron was Aaron, and Henry was drafted into the Army, where the beauty of Aaron Henry was that he was he became a staff sergeant. In various consistent in terms of what he believed, what interviews with historians, he credited he stood for, and who he was as a person.” his military service—from Alabama to It was that consistency, that caring the Pacific—with driving him to fight for human touch coupled with a bulldog equality for black Americans back home. tenacity that helped Henry do what He was not alone. Time and again, many thought impossible. He brought civil rights activists have pointed to their Mississippi’s turf-conscious civil rights service in World War II as leaving them groups together under one umbrella—from unwilling to return to segregation. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian “These were all World War II veterans Leadership Conference to the Student who fought in the war, and had come home Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. and discovered that the freedom they fought “Aaron got to know you almost too for overseas was not theirs at home,” said quickly. He was sort of overwhelming in his former SNCC activist Charles McLaurin, who personality in that not only did he shake used to plot civil rights strategy with Henry. your hand, he hugged you … He didn’t Henry’s passion sparked people know any strangers,” said McLemore. such as McLaurin to be heroes for the Henry, who died in 1997 at age 75, is cause. They risked their lives to help not as well-known as the flashier media Henry and others reach their goals. darlings of the movement, such as King “In Clarksdale, one of my co-workers and I or Andrew Young. But he had as much were walking around the community, talking

to people about registering and voting. This white policeman came up and told us that we were under arrest … He took us down H e didn’t have to wait long. That same year, a new Clarksdale mayor, a segregationist hard-liner, persuaded to the police station and Doc Henry had to the chamber of commerce not to invite black come down and get us,” recalled McLaurin. marching bands from a local high school “It was an attempt to intimidate and Coahoma Junior College to the annual us—to make us leave Clarksdale. Of Christmas parade. The bands had been part course, we didn’t leave. We stayed around of the parade for decades, a matter of great until we had taken care of what Henry pride to black residents. Black students had asked us to come there for.” wanted to lead a march on City Hall. Henry,

McLaurin could leave, but Henry, a however, knew that planning and patience pharmacist who owned a drugstore, had to were the keys to getting a point across. be in Clarksdale every day, firebombs or not. He started a boycott of white merchants.

He put Clarksdale on the map, but Fliers asking “If we can’t PARADE downtown, not in the way the chamber of commerce should we TRADE downtown?” covered might have hoped. His drugstore became the city. Well over half of Clarksdale was a tourist attraction of sorts, where on any black, so the boycott was sure to get given day you might see everyone from King the attention of anyone working a cash to Jackie Robinson to Bobby Kennedy. register. In time, the boycott’s demands

The store didn’t look like anything grew to include better jobs in stores, special—it had the usual Coca-Cola signs courtesy titles, and a biracial committee. out front and posters cluttering the picture The white community windows—but it became a civil rights shrine. did not respond well.

Walking through the door, a little bell In March of 1963, with the boycott still in would ring and customers would see place, two white men tossed a Molotov Henry peeking over a cluttered counter cocktail into Henry’s home. It lit the place in the back, his glasses falling down his up, and everyone ran. Henry rushed to nose. There were posters everywhere—civil slap out the flames. One of his guests, rights rallies, candidate placards, boycott U.S. Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, fliers, movement slogans, and always escaped by climbing out a window. the “Missing” poster for civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman “In another era, in another and Mickey Schwerner. That flier remained even after time, if he’d have been another their bodies were found. Henry also made sure that his color, right, he’d have been drugstore catered to African Americans in his community, governor of Mississippi.” from hair straighteners to Lover’s Moon Pomade. — LESLIE MCLEMORE

“This is the place,” he liked to say, “where all the civil rights Later that same month, someone threw and political planning of the movement a firebomb into the drugstore and it blew took place for three decades.” a hole in the roof — a hole that some say

He didn’t just plan. In 1961, in his was never fully repaired, but rather left first speech after being elected to lead so that the charred edges of the roof and the Mississippi NAACP, Henry startled the makeshift repairs to keep the rain white leaders by calling for a direct from coming in acted as a reminder of the assault on segregation: “Our actions dangers civil rights leaders had to endure. will probably result in many of us being Today, the drugstore is gone. Only a guests in the jails of the state. We will vacant lot remains. But black people still make these jails temples of freedom.” stop there, stare at the empty space and nod

Leslie McLemore says that Aaron Henry was one of the most courageous men he ever met. PHOTO BY JARED BURLESON

their heads, a way of paying their respects to a man who helped rid the state of Jim Crow.

Henry loved to tell how when he was arrested for leading a voter registration protest, the city made him work on a crew picking up garbage. It was intended to humiliate him, but he did the work enthusiastically and won the undying admiration of the black community.

He also got revenge of sorts. It took over two years, but the boycott wrung concessions from white businessmen and the black bands returned to the Christmas parade. And newly registered black voters swept Henry into the state House of Representatives, where he served from 1980 to 1996. It was the only place where he did not accomplish a lot. He spent much of his time fighting for doomed legislation, including an attempt to remove the Confederate battle flag from the corner of the state flag.

Clarksdale Mayor Bill Luckett grew up hearing about Aaron Henry.

“I heard of him from the white perspective,” said Luckett. “He was some rabble-rouser activist. ‘Uppity.’ Those are the words you used to describe people of that yoke in that day.”

Still, the two formed a friendship after Luckett finished law school.

“I learned a lot from him,” said Luckett. “He taught me there really are two sides to every story. He made me appreciate that I need to look at things two, three times over to make sure that the greater good is truly served.”

However, even Henry’s friends in the white community understood that there was danger in associating with one of the state’s most visible civil rights leaders. Luckett kept that danger in mind years later, when he attended the wedding of Henry’s daughter, Rebecca.

“I was in the living room of his house at 646 Page Street in September of 1982. I remember how proud he was,” said Luckett. “I also remember how scared I was. I didn’t want to see a firebomb come hurtling through that plate-glass window, knowing it would ruin that nice time.”

Henry also took time to cultivate a friendship with Curtis Wilkie, then a reporter for the Clarksdale Press Register who would go on to become a reporter for the Boston Globe. In time, Henry felt comfortable enough to tease the young journalist and deliver a light-hearted lesson in pronunciation. “He taught me how to pronounce ‘Negro,’” said Wilkie. “The common white pronunciation was ‘Nigra’ with an ‘a.’ ‘Curtis, you gotta clean up your pronunciation. It’s “Negroes.” ‘Well, Aaron, that just sounds affected. I can’t say it that way.’ ‘Well, goddammit. You can pronounce ‘hero,’ can’t you?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, then you can pronounce “Negro.” “And from that day on,” Wilkie said, “I could pronounce ‘Negro.’” Henry’s friendly, hug-prone nature sometimes disguised just how smart he was. “In another era, in another time, if he’d have been another color, right, he’d have been governor of Mississippi,” said McLemore. McLemore called him one of the most courageous men he ever met. “He wasn’t on the line everyday like Medgar Evers was because he was a working pharmacist. … But he was intricately involved and he paid the price. His home was bombed. His drugstore was bombed. All of that happened, but Aaron Henry still didn’t know any strangers.” Design by Alli Moore

WILLIE SIMMONS

Senator Willie Simmons, right, at his restaurant, The Senator’s Place, in Cleveland. PHOTO BY LOGAN KIRKLAND