In July 1943 Hazel Brannon Smith wrote in the Lexington Advertiser, her weekly newspaper in Mississippi: “The white man and the black man have dwelt together in peace and harmony in the south for many, many years, because each has known his place and kept it. God must have intended for there to be a great colored race or he would not have created it.”
Seventeen years later, when she received Colby College’s Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for her courage in standing up to the Holmes County Citizens’ Council, she stuck to her segregationist principles.
But Smith’s views evolved. She declined to join the Citizens’ Council, an organization dedicated to enforcing racial segregation by extralegal and even violent means. Over the years, racist attacks and courtroom travesties piled up. Smith was a consistent voice for legal equality and racial justice. Eventually, she decided – and wrote – that segregation was inherently discriminatory.
She paid a price for the evolution and expression of her opinions. A sheriff sued her for libel after she criticized his shooting of an African-American man with little provocation. Advertisers boycotted her newspaper, driving her into debt. The Citizens’ Council started a competing paper. The council had her husband fired from his job as a hospital administrator. A mob burned a cross on her lawn.
Hartman Turnbow was a Holmes County leader in the movement for African-American voter registration. In 1963, in an attempt to check his activism, authorities charged him with firebombing his own house. Smith sprang to her keyboard. Her editorial, laced with outrage over the absurdity of the charges, was one of several that helped her win the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing.
Arrest of bombing victim a grave disservice
It is not moral or just that any man should live in fear, or be compelled to sleep with a loaded gun at his bedside.
Holmes County Deputy Sheriff Andrew P. Smith’s action in arresting a 58-year-old Negro farmer, Hartman Turnbow, for fire bombing his own home has come as a numbing shock to the people of Holmes County.
It is a grave disservice to our county and all our people in these days of increasing racial tension and strife.
White and Negro citizens of Holmes County alike simply could not believe that something like this could happen in our county, that a man and his wife and his 16-year-old daughter could be routed from sleep in the small hours of the morning and be forced to flee their home literally in terror, only to be shot at by intruders outside – then to have the head of the family jailed the same day for doing the dastardly deed by an officer sworn to uphold the law and protect all citizens.
Hazel Brannon Smith
The only evidence presented against the aged Negro man at the preliminary hearing was testimony given by Deputy Smith and that was only an account of the bombing and shooting incident, as reported by Turnbow, to him. Mr. Smith added his own opinions and suppositions, as did County Attorney Pat M. Barrett, who prosecuted the case. As a result the man was bound over under $500 bond for action by the Holmes County Grand Jury in October.
Mr. Barrett, who said he was “not a demolition expert,” nevertheless told the Court that “it just couldn’t have happened. There is no way on God’s earth for that situation over there to have happened like he said it happened.”
Four other Negroes, who had been arrested the same day in connection with the same case, were released for lack of evidence. Not one shred of evidence was presented against them. But they had been held in jail five days and five nights.
This kind of conduct on the part of our highest elected peace officer has done serious injury to relations between the races in Holmes County – where we must be able to live in peace and harmony, or not at all.
It is distressing that no statement has come from Mr. Smith saying that he is continuing his investigation. Perhaps he is. We hope so.
But irreparable damage has been done, and let no one doubt it.
We have always taken pride in being able to manage our affairs ourselves. When we become derelict in our duty and do not faithfully execute our obligations, we may rest assured it will be done for us.
FBI agents and U.S. Justice officials have already made an exhaustive investigation of this bombing and shooting incident.
A suit has already been filed against Deputy Smith, Mr. Barrett, and the District Attorney, stating these Negroes were arrested “on false and baseless charges,” which were in effect an effort to coerce and intimidate Negro citizens of Holmes County and get them to cease voter registration activity. The Federal suit asks for a permanent injunction to prohibit these officers from interfering with voter registration activities, including the prosecution of the charges now filed against Turnbow, who attempted to register to vote here April 9, and Robert Moses, director of SNCC, a voter registration project.
This kind of situation would never have come about in Holmes County if we had honestly discharged our duties and obligations as citizens in the past; if we had demanded that all citizens be accorded equal treatment and protection under the law. This we have not done.
But if we think the present situation is serious, as indeed, it is, we should take a long, hard look at the future.
It can, and probably will, get infinitely worse – unless we have the necessary character and guts to do something about it – and change the things that need to be changed.
Sources: “Hazel Brannon Smith: Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist,” by Mark Newman, Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (2008); Pulitzer Prize Editorials: America’s Best Writing, 1917-2003 (Third Edition), William David Sloan, Laird B. Anderson (eds.), Iowa State Press, 2003, pp. 158-59.