Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 7 October 2004 — Page 3

The Muncie Times • October 7, 2004 • Page 3

Those who died for the right to Vote

Herbert Lee 1912-1961 Herbert Lee at age 50 was a small, graying man who had worked hard to build his cotton farm and dairy into a business that would support his wife and their nine children. He had little formal education and could barely read. His wife taught him how to sign his name after they were married. Lee was a quiet man. Even those who knew him well do not recall hearing him talk about civil rights. But his actions spoke: he attended NAACP meetings at a neighboring farm without fail, even when threats and harassment kept many others away. Lee's perseverance was one thing that made him valuable to the civil rights movement Another was his automobile he was one of the few local blacks with a car of his own. When Bob Moses of the Student of Nonviolent coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to Mississippi in 1961 to register black voters, Herbert Lee was his constant companion. Lee spent hours driving Moses and E.W. Steptoe, the local NAACP president, from farm to farm so they could talk to blacks about voting. In all of Amite County, there was only one black registered to vote, and that person had never actually voted. Most of the people Moses talked to were not enthusiastic about trying to register, and he quickly learned why. The first time Moses accompanied three blacks to the courthouse to fill out registration forms, he was arrested and spent several days in jail. On his next trip to the courthouse, Moses was beaten by a

cousin of the Amite County sheriff. Then another SNCC worker was pistol whipped and arrested for bringing blacks to a neighboring county courthouse. After the beatings, no black person was willing to go the courthouse to register. Most of them also stopped coming to NAACP meetings. Still, Herbert Lee and Bob Moses kept traveling and encouraging blacks to vote. Prince Estella Lee told her husband over and over again to be careful. She recalled later, he never said anything, he kept on going. A lot dropped out but he kept on going Moses sent detailed reports on the attacks to John Doar, an attorney with the U.S Department of Justice in Washington. Doar was so disturbed by the accounts that he came to Amite County in September 1961 to investigate for himself. Moses took Doar to E.W. Steptoe’s farm and Doar asked Steptoe for the names of people whose lives were in danger because of their voting rights activities. Herbert Lee was first on the list Steptoe gave him. Doar looked for Lee, but Lee was away from his farm on business. Doar flew back to Washington. The next morning, Herbert Lee pulled up to a cotton gin outside Liberty with a truckload of cotton. Several people watched as Mississippi State Representative E.H. Hurst approached Lee and began to shout. Lee got out of the truck and Hurst ran around in front of the vehicle. Hurst then took a gun out of his shirt and shot Lee in the head.

Benjamin Brown 1945-1967 Ben Brown was a child when the Montgomery bus boycott brought the civil rights movement into national focus. He grew up with the spirit of the movement, questioning his parents about the way blacks were treated and eager to learn about the heritage of his race. By age 16, Ben Brown was an activist. He marched to protest the attacks on the Freedom Riders in 1961. In 1963 he was among thousands who took part in a silent memorial march for the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. In high school, he helped organize boycotts against discriminatory businesses. After he graduated, he went to work full time in voter registration. During the next four years. Brown was harassed, shot at, arrested and jailed for his civil rights activities. His mother, Ollie Mae Brown, urged him to take his talents north where he would be safer, but he refused. In 1965, brown was among a thousand protesters who were arrested for picketing Mississippi’s all white state legislature. The protesters were imprisoned at a fairgrounds because the prison could not hold them. During his incarceration. Brown was walking though a food line when he accidentally dropped his plate into a tank of boiling water. A guard forced him to reach in to retrieve the plate, and Brown’s hand was badly burned. Threats and abuses did not dampen Brown’s spirit for a long. He began working for the Delta

Ministry, a coalition of Mississippi, church groups which worked to combat poverty and discrimination. Brown traveled throughout the poor Delta countries, living on s stipend of $10 a week. He especially enjoyed working with children he told them stories of famous black figure, taught them games and took them on field trips to the zoo. By 1966, the intense civil rights activity that characterized Mississippi Freedom Summer had died down, and national civil rights groups were focusing their attention elsewhere. The Delta Ministry, one of the few homegrown civil rights groups in Mississippi, was quickly running out of funds and could no longer pay its workers. Brown saw that it was time to move on in his life. On the day Christmas, 1966, Brown married a fellow civil rights worker, Margaret Willis, and by spring they were expecting their first child. Brown worked full time as a truck driver and no longer went civil rights meetings and demonstrations. To his mother’s great relief, he was settling down. LYNCH STREET On May 10, 1967, violence erupted on Lynch Street, a short walk from Ben and Margaret’s apartment. The trouble began with a student protest against city police actions on Jackson State College campus. The protest grew louder, and non-students from the downtown area joined in. Police sealed off the street with barricades, and some protests reacted by burning the barricades.

The next evening, May 11, city police were joined by state highway patrol and National Guard troops who confronted the protesters with rifles and bayonets. Toward the end of the second day of protest, Ben Brown walked with a friend into a Lynch Street cafe to pick-up a sandwich to take home to Margaret. The cafe was full, so they started down the sidewalk toward another restaurant. Ben had never believed in violent protest and he had not taken part in this one. As he started down Lynch Street, protesters ahead of him began throwing bricks and bottles at the line of police behind him. One offices was struck with a piece of glass and fired his shotgun into the air. The protesters opened fire. Ben and his friend ran when they heard the first gunshot, but Ben was struck by the second round of blasts. He fell to the ground with shotgun wounds in the back of the head and his lower back. A minister who saw the shooting started to help him, but police refused to let anyone near Brown. He lay bleeding on the her case depended on information contained in the department’s own investigative records, which the police refused to release. After nearly 20 years of trying to win justice in the case, she was left with only unanswered questions. “Nobody ever came to me and explained why,” she said, “Nobody, no public official or anything ever came down and said they were sorry my son was killed”.

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