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Pictured are honorees and officials at the Black History Month Program Sunday at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture From left is Ruthie Washington, Mary Turner Brown, Deloris Basset, Rosetta Fleming, Patricia Carrol, former Natchez Mayor Darryl Grennell, Wilford Perkins, Liz Howard, Mary White, Ronald Coleman and Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Around 30 people gathered in a circle to talk about the Parchman Ordeal Sunday at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Seated from left are Liz Howard and Robert Pernell, who chaired the Proud to Take a Stand Monument committee, and Wilford Perkins, Deloris Bassett, and Rosetta Fleming, who are survivors of the Parchman Ordeal. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Moderating Sunday’s event is former mayor Darryl Grennell, whose father Jonathan Grennell had been one of the hundreds of people who were unjustly imprisoned for exercising their constitutional right to march during the Civil Rights movement. Grennell also led the charge to erect the Proud to Take a Stand monument outside the Natchez City Auditorium in memory of the Parchman Ordeal. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Deloris Bassett remembers being taken to Parchman during the fall of 1965 for exercising her constitutional right to march during the Civil Rights movement. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

NATCHEZ — In honor of Black History Month, a diverse group of around 30 people gathered in a circle at the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture on Sunday to hear from those who’ve lived through the Parchman Ordeal.

Moderating Sunday’s event was former mayor Darryl Grennell, whose father had been one of the hundreds of people who were unjustly imprisoned for exercising their constitutional right to march during the Civil Rights movement.

Grennell also led the charge to erect the Proud to Take a Stand monument outside the Natchez City Auditorium in memory of the Parchman Ordeal.

Grennell, who now lives and teaches in New Orleans, said he brought visitors with him who were seeing Natchez for the first time. He took them to the monument and told them what it represents, he said.
“There wasn’t a dry eye at my house this morning when I told them about the Parchman Ordeal,” Grennell said. “History is important and it is important to pass history along because when you know your history you can prevent the ugly parts from repeating itself.”

Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson and Grennell presented certificates Sunday honoring survivors and those who had taken part of in the committee that erected the Proud to Take a Stand monument.

Deloris Basset smiled as she described that day in October 1965, a day she will never forget. The day for Basset started out singing songs at Beulah Baptist Church. She had continued to sing and “have a good time” up to the point where she had been put on a bus headed to jail. She was 17 years old, she said.

Her arrest was for marching with a peaceful organization that was taking a stand for basic civil and voting rights.

Patricia Carrol said she grew up poor, the daughter of a single mother who worked for a prominent white family. She found out as a teenager that her mother only made $12 a week. When Carrol went to Beulah Baptist, her mother knew where she was. She hadn’t broken any rules, Carrol recalled.

But when they exited the church intending to walk from there to the courthouse, they were met by officers who put them on buses and took them to the Natchez City Auditorium.

The city auditorium in Natchez was where they were kept most of the day while officers figured out where they would put them. Some were housed in the Adams County Jail — where the Adams County Board of Supervisors meets today — and some in the Natchez City Jail that was located in the basement of today’s Natchez City Hall.

When those jails were full, around 150 marchers were taken to the Parchman Penitentiary where they stayed one to seven days and underwent horrible treatment.

At Parchman, Wilford Perkins said he had been told to strip naked, though it was cold, and then was forced to drink a laxative not knowing what it was. He and about 15 people had to split a single roll of toilet paper and spent days together in a cell with metal bunk beds — no blankets or sheets.

When the cell block got too loud, they sprayed them with water to get them to be quiet, he said. Basset recalled the same treatment. She recalled removing the slip she was wearing and wrapping it around her arms to keep warm. The food they served was so bad she couldn’t eat it, she said.

While she only spent one night in the county jail, Rosetta Dixon Fleming said the way she was treated there wasn’t much better. Officers at the city auditorium had separated people into groups by their age, she said. She was 12 and her older sister Lucille was 13.

“When they came around, (her sister) was so mad because they arrested us that she lied about her age. She told them she was about 21,” but gave the officers her correct birthday, Fleming said.

Not bothering to verify her age, they separated Fleming from her sister and took Lucille Dixon to the state penitentiary and Fleming to the county jail. She’d spent the night there crying until her mother could get her the next day.

“It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same,” Carrol said. “And so we’re in another fight. But we are survivors and we will survive. The Parchman Ordeal I think was one of the worst things to happen, but we learned from it. So we know now  as a people collectively what we have to do, because we will not go back.”

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