The year 1965 was tough for Natchez and the nation.

The Watts riots had occurred in Los Angeles in August and the Voting Rights Act had been signed into law in August as well.

Jim Crow laws were effectively outlawed and racial tensions were high as the last holdouts of the Ku Klux Klan and institutional racism in the South were pushing against the societal change.

Young civil rights activists were inspired to take to the streets in protest of the last holdouts and were met with resistance, perhaps most famously in the Selma to Montgomery march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that ended in a melee on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma. The City of Natchez at the time passed an ordinance requiring any such marchers to have a permit from the city, as if such a permit would be granted to a group protesting against racial discrimination.

On Oct. 4, 1965, some 800 young mostly black people gathered for a march in Natchez despite not having a permit and the city police chief decided to arrest them all.

He filled up the city jail, and available space in just about every available city facility, ultimately taking many of the protesters to the Natchez City Auditorium at Jefferson and Canal streets.

They were detained in the auditorium before being bused to the state penitentiary at Parchman where they were illegally imprisoned without due process of trial and abused for several days before finally being released in what has come to be known at the Parchman Ordeal.

Now, 54 years after the regrettable incident, a monument honoring the victims of that abuse of power is being constructed on the corner of the grounds of the very city auditorium that served as the protesters’ make-shift holding cell.

Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell said he believes the incident is worthy of commemorating and marking with a memorial for those who were “Proud to Take a Stand” for civil rights.

Grennell has championed the project since taking office and is responsible for organizing the committee that conceived and designed the black granite memorial that will bear the names of all the people who were wrongfully imprisoned.

Grennell also spearheaded a fundraising drive and pushed for state funding to help build the monument.

Grennell, whose father, Jonathan Grennell was one of the imprisoned, said he felt motivated to complete the project as soon as possible so some of the older people who were victims of the ordeal will be able to see the project through to completion.

Grennell specifically mentioned survivor Willie Mae Robinson, 93, who wants to see the project complete.

When I wrote about the plan for the monument last September, I was fortunate to meet Alma Russell, whose husband, the Rev. Henry Russell, was imprisoned in the ordeal.

She recalled the day it happened and said she was at home when she got a call that her husband had been arrested.

“When I got here (to the auditorium), the buses were loading, and he was on the bus,” Alma Russell said. “He and (Grennel’s) father sat together … when I got on the bus, they asked me would I come and get them. I said, ‘Yes. I’ll come get you whenever they decide to come and get you all I will be there.’”

Alma was true to her word and had someone drive her to Parchman to pick her husband up seven days later.

I can’t imagine what those days of her husband being locked in Parchman must have been like not only for Alma but also for her husband.

The Parchman Ordeal is incomprehensible in today’s world because of the change brought on by the stand people like the Russells took.

Unfortunately Alma Russell died in March and will not be able to see her husband’s name on the Proud to Take a Stand monument.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said
George Santayana, the Spanish poet and philosopher.

By memorializing those who were Proud to Take a Stand, many future generations will be reminded of the incident and hopefully it will never be repeated.

Scott Hawkins is editor of The Natchez Democrat. Reach him at 601-445-3540 or scott.hawkins@natchezdemocrat.com.