While Memphis is urban South in Shelby County, Fayette County, which adjoins it, was decidedly more rural in the 1950s, and much like the rural counties of Mississippi which sit on its southern border. Agricultural labor was the main line of employment for Black residents, and most of these worked on the plantations which sent cotton to Memphis.

In the 1950s, Fayette County was one of the 138 counties in the U.S. where Black people outnumbered white people by two to one. In 1959, young Black residents formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League. This came partly in response to rampant disenfranchisement and partly in response to an off-hand comment by a local judge: "Why, we got nothing against niggers voting. All they gotta do is come to the courthouse and register." If it were so easy, one wonders why only seven-tenths of one percent of all Black people in the county had registered to vote.

White resistance-the all-white primary election and the activities of the White Citizens Council-strengthened the resolve of this largely spontaneous movement. Local white business leadership circulated a list of all Blacks who registered and sought to deny them loans, fire them from their jobs, and evict them from their homes. As a result of this intimidation, voter registration continued and Tent City-also called Freedom Village-was created. Tent City was built on land made available by a Black land owner to other Black people who had been evicted from their homes for their voter registration activities.

The League filed complaints with the Department of Justice in December 1960. In July 1962, the Department reached an agreement with white businessmen which blocked them from continuing the practices of economic intimidation.

An article in Ebony (September 1960) and in the New York Times (December 1960) made Tent City in Fayette County a widely known struggle. Organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), the Quaker's Operation Freedom, and the National Baptist Convention, under the leadership of Rev. J.H. Jackson, rallied national support to the cause. In 1964, the League was strong enough to try to elect two candidates to public office-a local white man as sheriff and a Black minister as tax assessor.

Ronald W. Bailey
Northeastern University

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