Matthew Pitt: A Civil Rights Watershed in Biloxi, Mississippi
The waters beside Biloxi, Mississippi, were tranquil on April 24, 1960. But Bishop James Black’s account of how the harrowing hours later dubbed “Bloody Sunday” unfolded for African-American residents sounds eerily like preparations taken for a menacing, fast-approaching storm. “I remember so well being told to shut our home lights off,” said Black, a teenager at the time. “Get down on the floor, get away from the windows.”
It wasn’t a rainstorm that residents battened down for, but mob reprisals. Hours earlier Black and 125 other African-Americans had congregated at the beach, playing games and soaking sunrays near the circuit of advancing and retreating tides. This signified no simple act of beach leisure, but group dissent. At the time, the city’s entire 26-mile-long shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico was segregated. Led by physician Gilbert Mason, the black community sought to rectify restricted access by enacting a series of “wade-in” protests. Chaos and violence, though, quickly marred this particular demonstration....
This approach represented the doctor’s modus operandi, according to NAACP Biloxi Branch President James Crowell III, who was mentored by Mason. “The thing that amazed me about Dr. Mason was his mind,” said Crowell. “His ability to think things through and be so wise: not only as a physician, but as a community leader.”...
While making a mark in medicine, Mason engaged in political discourse with patients, proposing ways they might support the still-nascent civil rights struggle. A scoutmaster position brought him in contact with adolescents looking to lend their labor. These younger participants included Black and Clemon Jimerson, who had yet to turn 15 years old. Still, the injustice Jimerson endured dismayed him. “I always wanted to go on the beach, and didn’t know why I couldn’t,” he said. “Whenever we took the city bus, we had to enter through the front door and pay. Then we had to get off again, and go to the back door. We couldn’t just walk down the aisle. That worried and bothered me.”...
Before the third wade-in, Mason directed protesters to relinquish items that could be construed as weapons, even a pocketbook nail file. Protesters split into groups, stationed near prominent downtown locales: the cemetery, lighthouse and hospital. Mason shuttled between stations, monitoring proceedings in his vehicle.
Some attendees, like Jimerson, started swimming. The band of beachgoers held nothing but food, footballs, and umbrellas to shield them from the sun’s glint. Wilmer B. McDaniel, operator of a funeral home, carried softball equipment. Black and Jimerson anticipated whites swooping in—both had braced for epithets, not an arsenal. “They came with all kinds of weapons: chains, tire irons,” said Black, now a pastor in Biloxi. “No one expected the violence that erupted. We weren’t prepared for it. We were overwhelmed by their numbers. They came like flies over the area.”
One member of the approaching white mob soon struck McDaniel—the opening salvo in a brutal barrage. “I saw McDaniel beaten to within an inch of his life,” said Black. “He fell, and was hit with chains, and the sand became bloody.” As the attack persisted, McDaniel’s pleading wife shielded his body with hers....
When night fell, riots rose up. White mobs rolled through black neighborhoods, issuing threats and firing guns. Former Mississippi Governor William Winter, who served as state tax collector at the time, recalls feeling “great admiration for the courage” of the protesters, dovetailing with “disappointment, even disgust, that a group of people would deny them access to the beach. Not only deny them access, but inflict physical violence.”
The event was galvanizing. One white merchant’s involvement in the assaults galled the community, triggering a boycott of his store located in Biloxi’s African-American section. “This man was part of the gang, beating on us,” said Black. “And he still had the audacity to come back the next evening, and open his store.” Not for long: the boycott forced him to shutter his business....
Current efforts have further commemorated this struggle. A historic marker, unveiled in 2009, honored “Bloody Sunday” and its hard-won achievement. The year prior, a stretch of U.S. Highway 90 was named after Mason. Governor Winter hopes the overdue recognition continues. “It is another shameful chapter in our past,” said Winter. “Those events need to be remembered, so that another generation—black and white—can understand how much progress we’ve made.”...