Economic Pressure Fayette and Haywood counties had been dominated by a handful of white families who controlled county politics and the local economy for over four decades. These same individuals had a strong grip over the countys White Citizens Council as well. Having lost on the registration and election issue, the group responded to the political challenge by instituting an informal but effective economic freeze against registered black citizens-and their local supporters among white citizens-in the spring of 1960. The embargo was probably an attempt to drive politically active Negros from the county by economic ruin. Services were refused to blacks that had voted or attempted to vote: insurance policies were canceled, bank loans were rejected, jobs were lost, store credit (which had long kept farm workers riveted to landowners) was suddenly denied. Farms and families were left without the means to purchase commodities or supplies. The economic pressure forced families to travel to Memphis for even the most basic supplies. Under threats, regional gasoline dealers who did business in the county refused to supply black businesses. One deputy sheriff even waited at the county line and turned back gasoline shipments bound for FCCWL chairman John McFerrens store. At the insistence of the Justice Department the FBI instituted a second investigation in the county in July. Though businessmen hotly denied that the illegal boycott was a coordinated effort, the existence of an informal blacklist was finally discovered. A copy of the list was smuggled out of one Somerville business, duplicated, and publicized in Ebony that fall as part of a six-page article about the Fayette County situation. In September, the Justice Department filed charges against 27 local busi-nesses and two banks in Haywood County, charging them with using economic pressure to discourage black citizens from voting. Two months later in the 1960 election, black voters swung the election and pulled the Repub-lican Party into power in Fayette County for the first time in its history. The Founding of Tent City Pressure within the county increased again in the late fall of 1960. Within a month of the November county election and the resulting Republican takeover, a few white Fayette and Haywood county landowners began evicting their black tenant laborers and families. With nowhere to go and virtually no other options open, black landowner Shepherd Towles offered to let homeless families stay on his farm, about five miles south of Somerville. The FCCWL hurriedly acquired fourteen canvas tents as Army surplus from a sympathetic white businessman (who remains anonymous to this day) and pitched them on Towles field. Earlie B. Williams and his family moved into the first tent on December 14, 1960. Eighty-one people from eleven families were housed in the ersatz settlement by March, 1961. The settlement was officially known as Fayette County Freedom Village but is better known as simply Tent City. Evictions continued until 345 families from Fayette and Haywood counties had been pushed into homelessness. Not all of them migrated to the canvas community, but more tents went up and a second Tent City sprouted fifteen miles south on the Gertrude Beasleys property near Moscow. The location of this second, larger site was kept secret to reduce the possibility of violence or reprisal. The canvas communities remained in place and occupied for over two years while the county remained embattled. Living conditions at both sites of Tent City made life challenging. Most families had left their homes in early winter with only the barest essentials, which included little furniture or other amenities. Small wood-burning stoves provided both heat and a cooking surface. There was no electricity, and water was available only by hauling it in buckets from Towles own well. Once over-use ran that one dry, another had to be drilled. Laundry was done in iron kettles heated over outdoor fires. Initially the tents were floored only with beaten dirt or cardboard. In January, 1961 wooden flooring began being installed in the tents. Still, some residents felt that the tents were an improvement over the housing they had occupied only months earlier.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:46:57 +0000
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