Integration Comes to Madison Parish
From August 14, 1975 Centennial Edition Madison Journal

Madison Parish has always had an unusually high population of blacks in proportion to whites.

In the years following reconstruction, the ratio was 10 to one, the highest of any parish in Louisiana. For this reason white Madisonians intensely feared the power of black voters, and were relieved to see them stripped of the ballot.

The 1898 Louisiana constitution established the first methods to legally prevent blacks from voting: an education requirement, including a demonstration of the applicant's ability to read and write by the filling out of a form (said to contain "traps for the unwary.”); a property requirement of $300 assessed value and paid-up taxes, a poll tax and the "grandfather clause." The latter was a requirement that any new prospective voter must have had a grandfather registered to vote, which obviously excluded blacks.

The U. S. Supreme Court eventually invalidated the grandfather clause. The Louisiana constitutional convention of 1921 replaced it with an "interpretation test," which required applicants for registration to be able to read and write and to interpret a section of the state or federal constitutions.

The voucher requirement was later substituted for the interpretation test. Under the Louisiana Constitution, a prospective registrant had to be identified by two registered voters to be permitted to register himself.

Under this requirement, blacks could be disenfranchised in any community only if all the whites refused to identify any black before the registrar. No law—state or local could prohibit blacks from voting if two white voters were willing to identify them. Yet in a very few Louisiana parishes (four out of 64 in 1956), the white citizenry was so unanimously opposed to blacks voting that no whites would dare identify a black.

Such was the case in Madison Parish until 1962. Martin Williams, an early leader in the local civil rights movement, described the situation: "They had this thing so darn tight, there wasn't any way in the world you would get two white people to go up there (to the Registrar's office) with you "Even your banker, he wouldn't go with you. And your mayor wouldn't go. Chief of police wouldn't go. Nobody would go. They didn't know you! The guy who was selling you all your groceries and your insurance and everything else, he'd come get your money, but if you said, 'Come go with me,' he'd forget you—he don't know you."

BLACKS ORGANIZE

Yet few blacks wanted to or attempted to register until World War II. Tallulah Police Chief Zelma Wyche credits his experiences in the Army with inspiring him to work in the civil rights movement. "Right in the army camp a white soldier and a black soldier couldn't sleep together; a white soldier and a black soldier couldn't eat together; a white soldier and a black soldier just barely could go to a theater together. And here you are fighting and you can't vote. A man without a country, but you're fighting for a country."

Much more than discrimination in service was involved in changing the attitudes of blacks. The war years were a period of great disruption in the blacks' old patterns of living. Many went from the plantations in the sleepy delta country to the weapons factories in large northern and western cities. (It is said that so many local blacks moved to Las Vegas in these years that a road there was named "Tallulah Street.’’)

Quite a few blacks, whether serving as servicemen or as wartime laborers, were suddenly thrown into new situations in a completely new world. With the planter-tenant relationship no longer around to keep them subservient, blacks began to take pride in themselves and in their role in keeping the war machine moving. They simply could not stomach a return to the old ways of living.

And as advances in farm machinery began to kill off the tenant system, blacks got jobs in Tallulah and in bigger cities. They no longer owed the white man anything, or depended on him for basic necessities. It was only natural that they would no longer be content with a subordinate role.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was organized in Tallulah in the early 1940s by a group of about 29 blacks. Some of the early members according to Wyche, were himself, Gilbert Coggs, M.T. Griffin, Walter Webster, Martin Williams, W.L. Harris, Joe Phillips, Harrison Brown, Earl Thomas, Ike Oliver, Rev. McDaniel, Rev. T.H. Turner, Rev. Theodore Israel, Rev. Willie Haynes, Major Williams, Mariah Nichols, and Amanda Goodlow.

The NAACP later was outlawed in Madison Parish, and blacks had to form other organizations. The NAACP was not very effective, but it was the first organized black attempt in Madison to achieve civil rights. Wyche is proud of his role in the civil rights movement: "We were doing things before Martin Luther King ever thought of (doing anything). We didn't even know Martin Luther King when we started."

THE RIGHT TO VOTE

The first right that blacks achieved (and probably the hardest to attain) was the right to register to vote. It was a political impossibility for white Madisonians to allow blacks to vote as long as the state voucher requirement permitted blacks to be disenfranchised.

However, beginning in 1946, blacks were in and out of the courthouse every other day trying to get registered. They thought if they made repeated attempts to register, white officials would eventually "give in." Repeated frustration led black residents to retain the only black attorney in that part of the state, James Sharp Jr., as counsel.

In order to test the constitutionality of the identification requirement, Sharp filed a suit in 1954 against the registrar, Mary Kate Ward, on behalf of eight Tallulah blacks, among whom were Williams, Zelma Wyche, and Harrison Brown.

The choice of Mrs. Ward as defendant was only formal, for she had been acting under order of state law. Still, the plaintiffs demanded $5,000 each in damages, amounting to $40,000 against Mrs. Ward. Judge Ben C. Dawkins Jr. set the hearing for Nov.23, 1954. The suit was dismissed.

CONFLICTING REPORTS

Today, almost 21 years later, there are several differences of opinion concerning the reason for the failure of that first suit. The University of Chicago Law Review, which researched the history of voting rights for blacks in 1970-71 under a grant from the American Bar Foundation, stated: "Because of a flat tire, the complainants arrived late at the courthouse, which is located in Monroe, 75 miles from Tallulah. Judge Dawkins called their case first and, the plaintiffs not being present, dismissed the case with prejudice."

Zelma Wyche remembers it differently. "We had eight people to get a hold of. The problem was trying to round up the eight. The lawyer told us all eight of us had to be there. Well, in those days everybody wasn't real brave. And knowing that this suit had been filed, and you had to be there, and your name was going to come out in the paper, that you had filed this suit against this white woman, you don't know what's going to happen behind it.

"Well, so they were sort of slow, hoping that out of the eight, I would be left. They missed me, so I didn't get over there. But our lawyer told us all eight of us had to be there."

The plaintiffs that could be rounded up first were sent on ahead. The second car, with Wyche and others, followed later. They were very cautious and slow in driving, for fear they would be maliciously stopped by a state trooper. The first carload arrived on time, according to Wyche, but instead of going on to the hearing, they waited for the second carload. "So we were late," Wyche said, "but then afterward the lawyer told us, "If just one of you had been on time...”

Martin Williams contends that they weren't late. "The car I was in was there on time. Just as we got in the building the lawyer (Sharp) rushed out and said, 'You're late; why are you so late?' He told us on our letter to be there at nine and we were there at exactly nine.

"We told him, 'You told us to be here at nine and we're here!" ‘No, I said 8:30' and he backs up. I had been doing grand jury duty over there and they never called court in session until about 9:30. You get in the building at 8:30. So he couldn't fool me."

Whatever were the true circumstances, this setback ended for many years the efforts of local blacks to register. They could legally have refiled their original suit, but they didn't for lack of money to pay the lawyer. The suit originally cost $300, which the plaintiffs had paid out of their pockets.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 authorized the Justice Department to initiate suits on behalf of anyone threatened with deprivation of the right to vote. Wyche claims that Madison was "the first darn parish that the Justice Department came in with a lawsuit," and it did that only after much convincing.

However, attorneys in the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department told the University of Chicago Law Review a different story. While preparing a voting discrimination case in East Carroll Parish, the government attorneys periodically visited Tallulah and discussed the Madison Parish situation with local blacks, giving informal assurances that failure of a new attempt to register would initiate an investigation likely to result in the filing of a federal suit.

Black residents hesitated to act despite the obvious desire of government attorneys to begin proceedings. The local black leaders took no action until Aug. 28, 1961, when another registration attempt ended in failure, due to the voucher requirement. The government filed suit on Oct. 21, 1961 against Miss Katherine Ward, who had been appointed registrar following her mother's resignation in 1955.

The government spent thousands of dollars in exhaustive preparation for this and other cases. For each parish in which it brought suit, the Justice Department spent at least 1,200 attorney-hours just analyzing all registration material.

The court found that the voucher requirement unconstitutionally deprived Madison Parish blacks of the right to vote. Judge Dawkins decreed that the voucher no longer would be used to establish identity, and required that the registrar submit periodic reports to the court detailing progress in processing registration applications.

LITERACY TESTS

Miss Ward had already abandoned the voucher requirement, substituting the citizenship and literacy tests just approved by the Louisiana legislature. The applicant had to correctly answer four out of six multiple choice questions on citizenship, government and history, and had to read and write from dictation a portion of the preamble to the U. S. Constitution.

At that time a complete registration was held every four years. In February, 1963, a few months after the institution of the literacy tests, the police jury changed to a system of permanent registration. Under that system, everyone who had registered under the previous requirements—based on age, residence and no criminal conviction—would remain registered as long as they voted, without having to take literacy or citizenship tests. Since the majority of white citizens were already registered, and no blacks were, naturally blacks thought that only they had to take the tests to be registered. Many of them considered the test so difficult that they refused to take it.

"You had to be a little old lawyer to pass (the literacy test)," said Zelma Wyche. "We couldn't even get school teachers to go up and register. They'd say, 'No, I'm not going up there and be ashamed—take that test and fail it.' "

Joe Neal was the first black registered after the identification requirement was lifted; in fact, he was the first black voter in the parish since reconstruction. Zelma Wyche and Harrison Brown followed him in registering. To get more blacks registered, black leaders formed the "Madison Parish Get Registered and Voter's League" with E. L. Nolley as its first president.

Blacks were tutored to get them ready for the test. Wyche: "We had people who couldn't even read or write pass that test after some training.... We got people that we taught to do it—people just determined to pass it, and they went ahead and passed it. And when they passed, it was just like the son-of-a-gun being converted. They were as happy as everything in the world."

Despite the tutoring service, only 327 blacks succeeded in passing the citizenship and literacy tests between the Ward trial and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act gave the Department of Justice authority to automatically suspend literacy tests without going through the courts and to appoint federal observers to oversee elections within any political subdivision designated an "examiner county."

With this new development, black citizens came to the courthouse en masse to register. At that time Miss Ward had no office help and was swamped with applicants: "They came by the droves and hundreds and jammed the halls and office so that it was impossible to work. I finally had them come in one at a time."

Over 1800 blacks registered in about a month and a half. By October, 1967, black registration reached 3,862 voters or 75 per cent of eligible black citizens. Yet the problems and the controversy did not end there. A year after the Voting Rights Act, Harrison Brown won the Democratic primary for a seat on the school board. There was no Republican candidate, so most blacks considered the November 8 general election a mere formality. Brown, however, was defeated by a white write-in candidate who was helped by unusually large number of absentee ballots-512, of which 510 were votes for the write-in candidate cast by white voters.

Brown sued the clerk of court, alleging that he had intentionally discriminated against black voters by making absentee ballots available to ineligible white voters in the general election. The clerk of court supposedly had allowed whites, who did not intend to be out of town on election day, to file absentee ballots ahead of time simply as a matter of convenience.

Judge Dawkins refused to find that the defendants intentionally granted whites illegal advantage in order to discriminate against blacks. But they had failed to give blacks the same privileges they had granted to whites, so the balloting was discriminatory in effect if not in intention. Accordingly, the judge voided the election and ordered a special election for April, 1968. The white candidate again defeated Brown.

A more difficult situation arose in the case of the Feb. 6, 1968 special election for village marshal. Marshal Rogan's death before the expiration of his term necessitated the election, which was joined with the general election. Republican Clayton Cox defeated Democrat Zelma Wyche, a black man.

A problem had arisen shortly before the election was to take place, when the secretary of state's office mistakenly listed the marshal's race on all Ward 4 ballots. As Ward 4 includes areas outside of Tallulah boundaries, the ballots as printed would permit ineligible voters to vote in the special election for village marshal.

To remedy this situation, state officials decided to disconnect the marshal's election from the master lever in all Ward 4 voting machines. Tallulah voters could vote for marshal only by pulling the individual lever above the candidate's name, while out-of-town voting machines had those levers frozen in place.

In other words, if someone voted the straight Democratic party ticket by pulling the master lever, the voting machine would record votes for only 23 of the 24 candidates listed on the ticket. Unfortunately, Zelma Wyche based his whole campaign on asking his supporters, many of whom were illiterates, to vote the straight party ticket.

Wyche's campaign slogan, "Pull the lever with the Rooster (the emblem of the Democratic party in Louisiana which is pictured next to the master party lever

On the ballot)," gave illiterates a tangible symbol to associate with his name and reduced the possibility of pulling the wrong lever.

When Cox defeated Wyche, the Justice Department and the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee sued Clerk of Court Jerome K. (Billy) Post and other state and local officials, claiming that the change in voting procedure had not been announced to the general public or to the candidates involved prior to the election.

Judge Dawkins held that Post and other defendants "at all times acted in good faith, never intending to deprive Negroes of their constitutional and statutory right to vote.” But, since "a substantial number of Negro voters (were) induced to vote according to erroneous instructions and (were) ) thereby prevented from casting effective votes," the actions of the defendants were discriminatory in effect and the election results were voided.

In the new election, held on May 20, 1969, Wyche defeated Cox by a 153-vote margin, to become the first black chief of police of any sizeable (over 10,000 population) town. It was a big moment for Madison Parish blacks, as the new Tallulah marshal was written up in such national magazines as Time and Ebony (Ebony ran a highly slanted story on titled "Black Lawman In KKK territory.")

BLACK TICKET

At this point blacks were the registered majority in both the village of Tallulah and the parish over-all. Black leaders felt they were ready to attempt a take-over of village and party offices by running a full slate of eight candidates in the April, 1970 Democratic primary.

Wyche was re-elected as marshal and Johnnie Crockett won a seat on the Democratic Executive Committee, but none of the other black candidates survived opposition. One month later the defeated black candidates filed a suit against the incumbent executive committee, charging that the registrar had discriminated against black voters by "selective" purges of electors.

The black and white electors purged prior to the primary election had not voted in the previous four years or had changed addresses without notifying the registrar's office. It should be remembered that all of the purges were legal and required under Louisiana law. Blacks contended that illegally registered black voters were dropped from the roles, while many whites—also illegally registered—were not challenged.

Judge Dawkins ruled in September, 1972 that the primary results be invalidated and a new election be held. The judge refused to grant defendants time to make an appeal. However, time was granted by Judge J. P. Coleman of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In March, 1973 a three-judge appellate panel overturned Dawkins' ruling and upheld the 1970 elections. Judge Charles Clark, who wrote the opinion of the panel, said that the plaintiffs should have filed their suit against registration procedures before the election was held, not a month afterward.

This minor setback only increased the will of Madison blacks to organize and register to vote. By the March, 1974 primary for village and Democratic Executive Committee offices, the black registration in Tallulah numbered over 3000, while only about 2500 white Tallulahlans were registered.

Increasing white apathy could only help the blacks' position. The black slate adopted by the Madison Voters League in the 1974 elections was unbeatable.

Blacks swept town council and Democratic Executive Committee, as well as the mayor's and marshal's offices.

Blacks have achieved much more in the last decade than simply amassing political power. In 1965 they began marching on local businesses and governmental offices, and organized a full-scale boycott of Tallulah merchants. Black groups issued a number of demands, many of which were complied with.

Black citizens insisted that white-owned businesses hire blacks for meaningful jobs and stop segregationist policies. These demands were complied with eventually, but not until much of the town was paralyzed economically.

Throughout their efforts to attain equality in various phases of parish life, blacks have been helped in no small way by the federal government. The knowledge that federal attorneys would assist them free of charge in most litigation was a contributing factor in many of their decisions to pursue civil rights actions. Young civil rights workers aided black leaders in organizing civil rights efforts.

Federal observers have overseen every election in the parish since 1966, at an average cost of about $9,000 per election. Ironically, it was the whites—not the blacks—who requested federal observers for the 1974 election.

Many whites have become concerned about the possible manipulation of the illiterate vote by black leaders. People registered as handicapped or illiterate may receive assistance in using voting machines. In the past, many of these people have appeared at the polls with printed cards clipped to their shirt button; these cards have the heading "I want to vote this ticket," beneath which is listed the Voters League candidates.

Election officials operate the voting machines for these illiterates and cast ballots according to the printed cards affixed to their shirts. Some whites see this as an unnecessary "herding" of black illiterates into the corral of the Madison Voters League, and fear that the illiterates are not even aware of who they are voting for.

Some whites also believe that this method is used to enable black leaders to "check up" on the way blacks vote—they claim that fully educated blacks show up to the polls as "functional illiterates" with their votes pre-determined by a printing press.

BLACK SCHOOLS

Most of the social and political changes in Madison Parish have been accepted with grace and equanimity on all sides. Probably the most bitter controversy concerned the integration of parish schools.

Few school officials, white or black, deny that, before the mid-fifties, the school facilities and programs for blacks were unfair and inadequate. Except for McCall and Thomastown High school, most of the parish black schools met in one-room churches and operated on split terms of free blacks for agricultural work. "Negroes only went to school during the time when they could contribute nothing to productivity," said Mrs. Frances Robinson, a former supervisor of high schools.

All this changed, supposedly, in the mid—fifties when these little schools were consolidated in a massive bond issue. Thomastown and Wright Elementary schools and a big addition to McCall were built then.

When this bond issue was passed, the only people who could vote on it were white property owners. This fact seems to indicate that whites were not totally oblivious or unconcerned about the educational needs of blacks. Mrs. Robinson said that Madison Parish was far ahead of other parishes in providing good educational facilities for blacks.

Martin Williams totally disagreed that the parish has ever been ahead in anything; he said that the local NAACP chapter had been putting pressure on the school board for some time to give blacks decent educational facilities.

Williams figured that the board and the voters responded simply to ward off legal action: "People say, 'We better do this; if we don't we'll get a suit on us over here.' So that makes them do certain things a little bit sooner."

M.A Phillips, superintendant of schools when the bond issue was approved, replied: "I believe we always knew we were going to have trouble (with blacks over the poor educational facilities) because the atmosphere was there. To me it wasn't what trouble we were going to have: to me it was what needed to be done to improve the general education for them, because they needed it."

Another bond issue was passed in 1965 to build an addition to McCall High School to relieve overcrowding in black elementary schools. At this point, according to Phillips, blacks had better educational facilities than did white students. But they still could not go to school with white children.

INTEGRATION

About 1965 some civil rights workers met with 47 black children about making an attempt to register at Tallulah High, an all-white school. Martin Williams said that he asked his children at this time if they wanted to participate in this action, but they said, "No." He decided not to involve himself in the matter since none of his children were going.

The 47 black students set a date to go down to the school board office and file their application, but they "chickened out" at the last minute, according to Williams. Williams' daughter Linda met them and began kidding them for not doing what they had said they were going to do. They called her bluff and dared her to go down and file an application, which she did according to her father.

Williams said he didn't know what his daughter was doing or what was going on until he received a phone call from the school board. According to Williams school board officials kept "playing possum" with him and "chewing the rag." He knew it was useless to fill out the application: the whole idea was to have grounds for filing a suit to get the school integrated.

When the school board didn't act on Linda Williams' application Martin Williams called his lawyer and told him to "shoot the suit in." and the story was on the six o'clock news. When asked if he received any harassment from this suit, Williams said, "Nobody bothered me. Everybody treated me better. I'd go to the post office and the bank. I'd just try them. I had a little damage attached to it.” The suit had a harassment clause whereby Williams would get damages if he was bothered.

"I was hoping somebody would spit on me so I'd get $150,000." said Williams laughingly. "But everybody treated me real nice. Went to the bank two or three days later and borrowed $5,000--didn't have any trouble."

The litigation was financed entirely by the NAACP. Judge Dawkins, on Nov. 12, 1965, ordered the School Board to desegregate the first, second, eleventh and twelfth grades. Linda Williams and Ronald Wyche (Zelma Wyche’s son) entered the twelfth grade of Tallulah High School and six others joined the eleventh grade.

In 1966 grades one, two, three, four, nine, ten, eleven and twelve were integrated. The remaining grades were integrated in 1967. From three to 10 blacks entered each grade in formerly all-white schools.

Prior to the entrance of the first black students into Tallulah High, school officials took steps to prevent possible incidents. Phillips: "We told the white students at Tallulah High School how the thing was going to be done... (the black students) were going to come there and be treated like everyone else, and we were not going to tolerate any conflicts between the blacks and the whites; and if there were any conflicts or anything else of that sort; both of them were going to go home—we didn't care who started it."

As a result of the school's policies, there were and have been very few fights between blacks and whites, according to school officials. The faculties were ordered integrated in 1967. At this time, integration of students operated on the "freedom of choice" method, whereby regardless of race, students, could go to school wherever they wanted without being made to go to any particular school.

By the end of 1968 183 black students had entered formerly all-white schools under the freedom of choice plan, while no whites had chosen to go to all-black schools. At this time the government was becoming dissatisfied with the freedom of choice plan's effectiveness in dismantling the dual school system. The goal of the federal government and of the courts was total integration based on percentages, meaning that the ratio of blacks to whites in the public school system should he the same as the ratio in the community.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered all school boards in June 1969 to submit integration plans. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) proposed a pairing plan for the Madison Parish school system whereby all schools would be totally integrated with 70 per cent black majorities. Each school would serve only a few grades, but would take students from all over the parish.

In rejecting this plan, the Madison Parish School Board stated: "No consideration was given to administrative problems dealing with specialized subject matter areas such as Home Economics, Agriculture, Industrial Arts, Science laboratories, etc. It appears that any 12-year-old child could have shuffled numbers around and come out with a proposed plan just as sensible."

The School Board proposed the zoning plan now in effect. The board and HEW could not agree on a compromise plan. Later that month, Judge Dawkins accepted Madison's desegregation plan, to be put into effect over a three-year period.

The 1969-70 school year was half over when, on Jan. 5, 1970 the Madison Parish School Board was ordered to reassign parish teachers to schools in the same ratio as they were employed by February 1. Local school officials were infuriated that such a sweeping change on such short notice had to take place right in the middle of the school year.

Superintendent Phillips told a Journal reporter at that time: "I've been saying for over three years that HEW and the courts don't care one bit about the public school system and its welfare, just whether or not it is desegregated.... In fact, from previous experience, don't be surprised if a new court order is received before this one takes effect."

Ironically, Phillips' last statement came true two weeks later when Dawkins, under orders of a higher court, reversed his earlier order that students did not have to desegregate until the beginning of the next school year. On January 21 he ruled that Madison Parish schools had to be completely integrated, whether on the zoning or the pairing system, by February 1. Suddenly the school board had only a week to do what had originally planned to be done in three years.

The schools were closed for three days to facilitate the changeover. When they reopened on February 5, they had 500 fewer students. A private school, Madison Academy, had been hastily formed to accommodate the exodus of white students from the school system. The school met in local churches, and many of the teachers left the public schools to teach in the school.

Meanwhile, plans to create a unitary school system were not working. None of the white students assigned to the formerly all-black schools would go. Eleven teachers resigned rather than teach in the black schools.

Local blacks filed suit to transfer the schools to the paired system. The suit failed when Phillips was able to prove he had done everything demanded by the court, and could not make students or teachers go to schools they refused to attend. Thus, a "zoning" system was allowed to prevail.

The beginning of the 1970-71 school year saw many of the white students who, in a panic, had transferred to Madison Academy back in the public schools. A variety of reasons influenced parents' decisions to return their children to the public schools. These included in no particular order: the inability, or unwillingness, to pay tuition to a private school; the desire to preserve their old schools rather than abandon them, and the acceptance of the inevitability of integrated schools. Some merchants, rather than risk losing black trade, chose to send their children to the public schools. Also, many parents employed by the public school system felt an obligation to enroll their children in public schools. Altogether, enough students returned to Tallulah High and Tallulah Elementary schools to create an acceptable balance of whites and blacks in the now desegregated schools. This was, and still is, roughly a 50-50 ratio in the two schools.

Those who could not accept the forced integration decided to build a permanent private high school during the summer of 1970. Actually, it was an expansion of Delta Christian School, an elementary (grades 1-8) school built in 1967. The temporary name of Madison Academy was changed to Tallulah Academy, and it accepted students from the ninth through twelfth grades in September, 1970.

One thing the zoning system did not change, however, was the attendance of whites at the previously all-black schools. Whites zoned into McCall Senior High, McCall Junior High and Wright Elementary have refused to go, and the schools remain practically all-black, even today.

Another recent lawsuit asking that the parish schools be paired was rejected in federal court, the ruling being that the school board was in compliance with desegregation orders handed down by the U. S. District Court in the 1970 ruling.