THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511250176
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY FLORA BRYANT BROWN
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
SILVER RIGHTS
A True Story from the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Struggle
CONSTANCE CURRY
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. 290 pp. $21.95.
Silver Rights is an inspiring story about the courage of one African-American family. Constance Curry, a white civil rights activist who worked in Mississippi in the 1960s and '70s, traces the history of the Carter family after parents Mae Bertha and Matthew decide in 1965 to enroll seven of their 13 children in the all-white schools of Sunflower County, Miss. Silver Rights is Curry's firsthand account.
On one level, the Carters' story is a simple one: that of a family that wants a better life for its children. On another, it is monumental: Had it not been for families like the Carters there would have been no civil rights movement.
Matthew and Mae Bertha were sharecroppers who owned no land and were at the mercy of landowners and their arbitrary likes and dislikes. In 1965 the Carters were farming 25 acres on Pemble Plantation nine miles outside Drew, Miss.
Because of the long hours spent on bringing in the cotton crop, children of black sharecroppers had a split school schedule that amounted to about five months of education a year, sometimes less. The white schools in Drew, of course, were open nine months per year.
``What I hated the most was being in the cotton field and seeing the white school buses pass us by while we were picking,'' says Ruth Carter. ``. . . They'd always have new buses. . . . I never thought any of it was right. . . . I always thought Mississippi was a terrible place to live and a terrible way to live, and I always dreamed of the day that I would be able to leave.''
Matthew and Mae Bertha had not finished grade school themselves. They did not want to see their children consigned to their fate, having no financial status and no choice in when and to whom crops were sold. It was an enormous sacrifice for them, but they decided the only way to get their children off the cotton fields was to educate them in white schools.
Curry allows the Carters to speak for themselves in Silver Rights. They take seriously the freedom-of-choice papers sent to them by the school board. When they arrive at the previously all-white school, they encounter name-calling, spitballs, ostracism and harassment. They explain the fear, pain and anguish of their decision with simple elegance. It was particularly depressing to read of the younger children's decision not to eat lunch because of harassment from the white students.
As the Carter children tell it, none of the teachers intervened to assist them when they had problems. Support from law enforcement officials was brief at the beginning of the school year. When it was deemed that the children ``had settled into a `normal' routine,'' official protection was discontinued.
For the Carters there were numerous reprisals. Their animal pens were torn down, loosing all their pigs and cows. Their cotton was plowed under behind an automatic cotton-picker; they were not allowed to pick it by hand as they had in the past. They were threatened, shot at and evicted from their home on the plantation. It took a monumental effort on the part of American Friends Service Committee, for which Curry worked, to purchase a house for them, in someone else's name. AFSC also got them jobs in the federal Head Start program.
Both parents worked together to care for the children. Matthew Carter got the children ready for school and made some of the girls' clothes. The Carters provided emotional support to each other whenever anyone felt down or felt like quitting and going back to the segregated all-black school.
When the local chapter of the NAACP was organized, the Carters joined. In spite of ostracism from both the white and the African-American communities, they continued to participate in civil rights activities.
Curry, a lawyer who spent 15 years as director of human services for the city of Atlanta, does a limited job of placing the Carters' story in the context of the movement in Mississippi. She discusses the work of Medger Evers as a field secretary for the NAACP and his murder, the murder of Emmett Till in nearby LeFlore County, the freedom summer and the work of Fannie Lou Hamer. There is even less discussion about the wider movement in the South.
We see Mae Bertha Carter continue with other civil rights struggles after her children have graduated and after her husband dies. We learn that several Carters have graduated from the University of Mississippi and gone on to productive careers. Unfortunately, the problems with the Mississippi schools persist.
Though Mae Bertha is a strong, central figure, Curry does not say enough about Matthew Carter. This is unfortunate because the school-enrollment decision and the daily sacrifice were from both parents.
Curry also has a few loose ends, for example, leaving unresolved the Carters' case against the Drew school district. And the interviews with older children who had graduated by the time of the decision and did not attend the all-white schools seem to be tacked on at the end.
Despite these concerns, Silver Rights tells the significant story of ordinary people at the grass roots who decided to take a stand. MEMO: Flora Bryant Brown is an assistant professor of history at Elizabeth
City State University. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
In ``Silver Rights,'' Constance Curry, left, traces the struggle of
one family to integrate the all-white schools of Sunflower County,
Miss. She shows Mae Bertha Carter, right, to be a strong, central
figure in the battle.
by CNB