[2 articles]
[See URL for embedded links.]
A Freedom Rider Returns to Parchman
http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/10/voices-a-freedom-rider-returns-to-parchman.html
By Reilly Morse
October 19, 2010
I rode on the Mississippi Center for Justice's Great Mississippi Road
Trip last weekend. For some folks, the most memorable moment may have
been the stops at the BB King museum, the lunch at Club Ebony, the
visit to Delta State's wall of life casts of blues musicians, the
Bentonia blues performed at Po' Monkeys or the Dockery Plantation.
Maybe it was the surprising fireworks shot off in downtown Greenwood
as part of the wrap party for "The Help," or the music and
storytelling at the Little Zion Church on Money Road, the truest,
most authentic of the three true authentic gravesites of bluesman
Robert Johnson.
For me it was being among the group of people who accompanied Hank
Thomas on his return to Parchman for the first time since he was
imprisoned there in 1961 as one of the original Freedom Riders. Also
along for this ride was Eric Etheridge, author of the terrific
"Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders,"
a book that visually documents the participants in this moment in
history. Hank is chairman of Mississippi Freedom 50th, an event that
will commemorate the work of the Freedom Riders in Mississippi next May.
After his civil rights protest work in the South, Thomas fought in
Vietnam and, decades later, he returned to Vietnam. On the way to
Parchman, he recalled going to the Vietnam Memorial and how, just
like with the memorial, the closer you get, the more you feel the
power. He was reliving part of his life story, and his generosity to
share it with a bus load of people was extraordinary.
Just before the gate, we were cautioned to turn off our cell phones
because otherwise a newly installed system would scramble and wreck
our phone's software. Parchman Farm 1, Silicon Valley 0. At the
entrance was a red drum with a slot to unload any ammo in your
weapons. We were welcomed by Emmitt Sparkman, the superintendent of
the penitentiary. A group photo was taken by the official
photographer and we were instructed to leave all phones and cameras
on the bus. After our IDs were checked, Sparkman invited us into a
meeting room where there were refreshments, a welcome banner, and a
Powerpoint prepared by the staff. We sat down with our plates and
the first slide said, "Mississippi State Penitentiary welcomes the
Freedom Riders."
Then we got into the bus and drove into Parchman to see Unit 17,
which is where the Freedom Riders were imprisoned back in 1961. This
was the first unit on the left past a long row of guard homes on the
right -- a flat-roofed, one-story structure. It was isolated from all
the others by a great distance. Nothing growing around it -- just
dirt. It was surrounded by three or four tall closely-packed barbed
wire fences. One of the inner fences was a series of exposed power
lines spaced inches apart and drawn taut across small porcelain
insulators. As our bus pulled in, the razor wire almost scraped
against the windows -- the bus was a very tight fit.
The unit itself had an entrance foyer and then as we went to the
right we saw the cell block. There were 25 or so cells on each side,
maybe five or six feet wide, 12 to 15 feet deep, with stained walls,
a metal bed, a metal toilet and running water. The gate was made of
open bars with a slot to slide in a tray. There were grate-covered
windows up at the top of the wall that let in sunlight, but you could
only see the soffit of the roof. At the end of the hall were two
rooms. One currently is used to execute prisoners in Mississippi by
lethal injection. One of our group's members had attended an
execution of a client here earlier this year. It had a table with
straps, an overhead microphone, and two viewing rooms.
In the next room was the gas chamber, now no longer used. The chamber
was built out of thick walled, bulbous iron forms and hardware that
seemed to have been borrowed from a submarine. Coming out of the top
of the chamber were some pipes. The chair was black with a box grate
and a container beneath the seat. One of the corrections officers
described how it worked and recounted his first execution there. Some
go ahead and breathe, he said, and some fight it, trying to hold
their breath. It would take about three minutes, and their bodies
would jerk and contort. I noticed right behind the officer there was
an ordinary door where you could simply walk outside. So I did, just
to see what was on the other side of the wall where that gas chamber
stood. Just some flat Mississippi delta dirt and grass.
As I was walking out, I found myself alone walking back along the
hall by the cells next to Hank Thomas. I asked him if he recalled
which one he was in. He said no. I mumbled something like, I'll let
you be, and I kept walking on. I turned around and the hallway was
empty. He had stepped into one of the cells for a minute. I later
learned those may still be used as a holding cell for a prisoner just
before he is executed. We milled about outside a short while longer,
some more pictures were taken. We were given a fried chicken bag
lunch and a slice of pound cake wrapped in tinfoil. We got back on
the bus quietly and then the bus went back through the gate, the
barbed wire slowly scraping on the windows right at my eye level.
When I was a city judge several years ago, I had to do arraignments
at the county jail with scores of prisoners once or twice a week for
several years. I always felt the tension going in, the bitterness of
the prisoners inside, and the relief when I got in my car and drove
off home. But it was nothing compared to this -- "destination doom,"
as it is referred to in the Faulkner book "The Mansion."
On our way back home several people shared their thoughts, including
Hank. I don't want to write about all that right now. I am still
amazed at his doing what he did at 20 and coming back at 70 to face
the welcome the superintendent gave him: the access and the very
evident but never explicitly-stated recognition of his status as an
American hero mistreated by our state's system.
--
Reilly Morse is a senior attorney and a founding staff member in the
Biloxi office of the Mississippi Center for Justice; for more
information on the Center, please click here and sign up for the
newsletter. For more on Parchman's history, go here for photos from
the Mississippi Department of Archives and History Collection and
here for an essay by David Oshinsky that dips into Parchman's pardon files.
(Top photo of Hank Thomas standing in front of Parchman's gates by
Reilly Morse. Thomas' mugshot from "Breach of Peace: Portraits of the
1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders.")
--------
Journey Back to Parchman
http://www.mississippifreedom50th.com/blog/?p=58
October 18, 2010
by Hank Thomas
Like most of the Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, in
1961, Hank Thomas did the bulk of his time behind bars in Parchman,
the prison farm in the Delta. The Riders males and females, blacks
and whites were housed in Unit 17, then the facility's maximum
security unit. Unit 17 was also the site of death row and the gas
chamber. Today it sits empty of prisoners but is still used for
executions, now performed by lethal injection.
Thomas recently visited Parchman and Unit 17 for the first time since
1961, part of trip sponsored by the Mississippi Center for Justice, a
public-interest law firm "committed to advancing racial and economic
justice." Below is Thomas' account of his trip back to Parchman. The
photographs are all courtesy of Frances Trice at Parchman.
--
On Sunday, October 10, I took a bus trip to Parchman Prison in the
Mississippi Delta. The Mississippi Center for Justice had arranged
this trip and invited me to revisit the place I was locked up in the
summer of 1961, charged with disturbing the peace of Mississippi. I
was a Freedom Rider, you see.
My visit to Parchman was part of a larger two-day tour of the Delta,
which included stops in Ruleville, the home of Fannie Lou Hamer, and
Money, the place where in 1955 Emmett Till had his fateful encounter
with a white woman, which led to his lynching.
Shortly after our tour began on Saturday, some folks on the bus asked
me my feelings about going back to Parchman after 49 years. I had
been expecting this. I could easily recall ealier times when I had
been asked the same question.
In 1993 I was one of three GI's going back to Vietnam to meet North
Vietnamese veterans, a reconciliation meeting of former enemy
combatants. As our plane descended toward the Hanoi airport, my wife
asked me how I felt about coming face to face with comrades of the
men who'd shot me.
In addition to Vietnam, I had also been back to Anniston, Alabama, a
place where as a Freedom Rider I had come face to face with the
second lynch mob I'd ever encountered.
So as far as I was concerned, I was used to "going back." I had done
it before. I thought I would be hard and emotionally detached.
I was wrong.
Once we got to Money, things started to happen within me. We'd
stopped at the general store, now abandoned, where Till had whistled,
or not, at a white woman. As our tour guide retold the now familiar
story of the 14-year-old's lynching, a childhood memory started to
run through my mind. A few people noticed a visible change in me.
When we re-boarded the bus, they asked me to talk about it.
I took the bus mike and began: "I am Emmett Till."
"He and I were the same age. In 1955, I lived in rural Georgia and
that could have been me. At the age of 8 I accidentally brushed up
against a white woman in the narrow aisles of our local grocery.
Regardless of age, you see, black boys were never to touch a white
woman. When my mother learned what I had done, she immediately fell
on her knees and began praying for me and asking forgiveness."
About an hour later, as we neared Parchman, Money was still on my
mind. I could sense that once again all eyes in the bus were on me,
trying to detect some visceral sign of emotion.
When we arrived at the prison entrance, the superintendent, a white
man who appeared to be in his late 40s, boarded the bus and said,
"Welcome to Parchman."
This greeting was very unlike my first visit, the words form which
still vibrate against my skull: "Y'all think y'all important. We
goin' ta straight'n y'all out."
Today the superintendent shook my hand and asked me if I'd consent to
being photographed with him and autograph his copy of Eric
Etheridge's book Breach of Peace.
We were shown the maximum-security building where I had served my
sentence in 1961. Unit 17 also housed the gas chamber. As we walked
the cellblock, I discovered that my cell was only 50 feet from the
execution chamber.
I am writing this essay only 24 hours after my visit to Parchman.
Seeing the proximity of my cell to the gas chamber has had more
psychological effect on me than the 1966 ambush in Vietnam when I was
shot. I had to step away from the group to collect myself.
At the end of our visit, the superintendent thanked me for coming and
invited me to bring my family with me the next time I come back. My
life has had a few ironies, but none more memorable than this. Being
welcomed back to Parchman by the superintendent and treated as
something of a celebrity was a surreal experience.
The mood was solemn as we left Parchman. I could imagine how Nelson
Mandela felt going back to Robben Island or how a Jew felt returning
to Germany in 2005.
As we drove away, I had lots of time for reflection. The Mississippi
Delta is a flat, almost featureless landscape. My early childhood in
rural Georgia was spent chopping and picking cotton. School for black
children did not start until October after the crops had been
brought in. I remember the harshness of life in Jefferson County. I
remember the daily humiliation black adults suffered. I remember the KKK.
I also thought about Rock Hill, South Carolina. There in 1961 I
encountered my first lynch mob. My fellow Rider, now Congressman,
John Lewis and I had been arrested as we tried to integrate the bus
station there. Much later that night, two policemen took me from my
cell and carried me back to the station, now closed, where a Klan mob
was waiting. I narrowly escaped when a local minister, a very brave
African-American World War II veteran, pulled up beside me in his car.
"Son, jump in and get down on the floor," he shouted. "Do not raise
your head." I remained on the floorboard of his car all the way to Columbia.
The present day police chief in Rock Hill is John Gregory III, an
African-American. I am looking forward to going back to Rock Hill next year.
These and many other thoughts flooded my mind as the flat lands of
the Delta flashed by the bus window.
My wife and I have been successful. We've obtained that elusive
American dream. We live a comfortable life. Looking back over all
that I've endured and my people have endured, I am saddened and
conflicted. Yes, I was arrested 22 times for demanding my human
rights. I narrowly escaped two lynch mobs. I was beaten five times by
the police for not addressing them as "sir." I was drafted and
shipped to Vietnam to fight for . . . rights that I did not enjoy in
my own country. Is there any wonder that sometimes I just wanna holler?
And then I think about the gains from our struggle: the Civil Rights
Act, the Voting Rights Act, laws mandating fair housing and equal
employment. And President Barack Obama in the White House
I wouldn't take nutin' for the journey.
Hank Thomas, Freedom Rider
.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
