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Winson
Hudson
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“Fighting is an everyday thing…don’t never
rest”
(from her autobiography Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs
of a Freedom Fighter)
Winson Hudson first tried to register to vote in 1937, and
was one of the first to succeed twenty five years later. At
one attempt, she pushed through a crowd of men cursing and
blocking the registrar’s door. While she filled out
the application, a man gave her a card with two big red eyes
on it saying, “The eyes of the Klan are upon you. You
have been identified by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
They later firebombed her home for her protest activities.
Despite the setbacks, she continued her activism throughout
her life. She and her sister Dovie joined forces with Medgar
Evers and established a county branch of the NAACP and later
pushed for the first desegregation lawsuit. She was honored
with the NAACP’s Freedom Award for Outstanding Community
Service and the Second Congressional District Unsung Hero
Award. |
Winifred
Green
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“Once my mother said to me, ‘What
did we do wrong?’ I remember saying to her, ‘Granny
taught me, ‘Red and yellow, black and white, they are
precious in his sight,’ and I didn’t know that
she didn’t really mean black people.’”
Winifred Green grew up in a middle class family in Jackson,
Mississippi, where she worshipped at an all white church.
But when she was fourteen, she attended a mixed-race national
convention of the Episcopal Church and realized that segregation
was wrong. She became politically active at Milsaps College
in 1962 where she organized Mississippians for Public Education.
This group of women effectively protested the Legislature’s
attempts to close the public schools to avoid integration.
She traveled throughout the South recruiting Civil Rights
activists and worked with Mae
Bertha Carter’s family whose desegregation story
is also featured in the documentary. She’s won numerous
awards for her efforts and still strives “to see that
children get an education that equips them to be productive
citizens in the 21st century.” |
Betty
Pearson
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“I certainly didn’t plan to right
any wrongs, but there comes a point of no return where you
have to do what is right or feel bad about yourself the rest
of your life.”
Betty Pearson never planned on being an activist but found
herself compelled to act in the face of injustice. At Ole
Miss in the mid-1940s, Pearson encouraged the black women
who ran the college laundry to demand better pay and working
conditions or go on strike. They asked her to represent them
in negotiations with the University administration. She did
it reluctantly but the strike was a success. In 1955, she
was an eyewitness at the Emmett Till trial where 2 men were
accused of murdering a 14 year old black boy for allegedly
whistling at a white woman. Despite the mounting evidence,
she knew the accused white men would never be convicted. This
case became the springboard of the Mississippi Civil Rights
movement. Pearson later served on the advisory committee to
the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She joined the NAACP and
worked toward school desegregation. |
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“I
would not want my daughter to have to go through it because I feel
that I've paid my dues for her.”
| --Constance
Slaughter Harvey |
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