By Megan Ashley Fink

NATCHEZ — Many people gathered Friday morning at Natchez Coffee Company had more on their minds than just a routine cup of coffee.

They were on a journey through Natchez’s civil rights era history, led by Natchez National Historical Park Superintendent Kathleen Bond.

For some of those in attendance, the journey was through their personal histories.

The lecture was part of the weekly Friday Forum event series organized by the Natchez-Adams County Chamber of Commerce and Alcorn State University.

Bond guided attendees through the years of past strife and victories of civil rights in Natchez in the context of national events of the era.

The presentation began with the end of chattel slavery after the Civil War.

In the five years after the death of Lincoln, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution made national steps toward progress, but in the South, terrorist tactics by the Ku Klux Klan slowed progress down.

Bond said the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 used law, rather than terrorism, to disenfranchise black men and ensure white supremacy. The 1890 constitution enacted literacy tests and poll taxes to prevent blacks from accessing the polls, despite the federal law that gave blacks the right vote.

Bond said the women’s suffrage and empowerment movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s brought Natchez back into national social importance.

The women of the local garden clubs began hosting Spring Pilgrimage tours and advertising them nationwide in the 1930s, sparking the Natchez tourism industry.

Bond said in these tourism advertisements, the slavery era of Natchez was romanticized.

“It had an air of authenticity, because many of these ladies were inviting people into their family homes,” Bond said. “But it also became theater.”

Bond gave one example of an actual former slave who played the part of a “mammy” character in one of the early tours.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Natchez saw a level of industry and manufacturing that was unusual for the state. Bond said factories such as International Paper Company, Johns Manville, Armstrong Tire & Rubber provided good-paying jobs to both blacks and whites.

Segregation inside the facilities, however, kept supremacist economics and politics in place.

“A system where some jobs were white and some jobs were black quickly developed,” Bond said.

She said schools, restrooms, offices and factory work areas were still racially segregated until the United States Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954.

When the decision was made law, a petition of 86 signatures was submitted to the Natchez-Adams School Board, requesting that the district’s public schools be integrated.

School Superintendent D. Gilmer McLaurin turned in the names of the 86 petitioners to the local White Citizens Council, the state attorney general’s office and to two local newspapers, which published the list.

Three-fifths of the signers subsequently withdrew their names from the petition.

Bond said the next decade was filled with murders, bombs and other hate crimes.

Black Natchezians as well as whites who were considered civil rights sympathizers faced systemic violence and threats.

Many such crimes were committed in 1964 and 1965. Some were never solved. The FBI opened an official office in Natchez in 1964 in response to increasing violence.

Resident Mary Jane Gaudet, who attended the forum, said she witnessed some of that violence. Gaudet told the story of her wedding day in 1965, when a civil rights march in Duncan Park ended with violence and arrests.

“My children were born into that world,” Gaudet said.

Resident Chesney Blankenstein Doyle also remembers one event of that time. She lived next to Natchez Mayor John Nosser in 1964, when a bomb exploded outside his home.

Doyle said her bedroom window exploded in the blast, covering her with shards of glass.

Bond said black high school students in Natchez were on the front lines of the civil rights movement in Natchez. They successfully desegregated the lunch counter at the S.S. Kress department store.

“They also attempted to desegregate the Fisk Public Library, the coffee shop at the Eola Hotel, the local YMCA, the Clarke Movie Theater and Duncan Park,” Bond said.

After the bombing of George Metcalf’s car at the Armstrong Tire Plant in August 1965, the NAACP presented a list of demands to the city. When the demands were not met, the NAACP called for a boycott of downtown businesses. The city responded by passing a city ordinance against marches in the city limits.

The Natchez Democrat reported at the time that in the next three days, 493 people were arrested for violating the ordinance. Of those arrested, 264 were sent directly to jail without a court appearance. Many were shipped to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Some were abused there while waiting for their families to post bond.

The boycott finally ended when the board of aldermen signed an agreement desegregating some public spaces and asked city employees to refrain from using racial slurs and demeaning terms.

Doyle, a documentary producer who focuses on museums, said her childhood in Natchez was sheltered. She learned about civil rights history as an adult and went on to study it in college and in law school.

“We were so protected,” Doyle said, “My parents were so worried about the violence,”

Executive Director of the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture Darrell White said the sheltering and protectiveness of Natchez is still prevalent.

“Maybe a little exposure can help,” White said. “We are still affected by these historic events. If you think that’s not the case, you’re like an ostrich with your head in the sand.”

Debbie Hudson of the Natchez Adams Chamber of Commerce said that the event series takes place every Friday at 8 a.m. at the Natchez Coffee Co.

“It’s a way to broaden our interest in the community and target different (topics),” Hudson said.

The topic of the Dec. 11 forum will be workplace management and employment. Dec. 18 will be the last forum of the month, and will include performances of Christmas music.