A Christmas Boycott

A Christmas Boycott That Worked
By Susan Klopfer

AS 1961 CAME to a close, some white folks in the Mississippi Delta were dreaming of a “white” Christmas when they decided to keep their black customers away from the city of Clarksdale’s annual parade.

Their tune changed when Coahoma County’s NAACP chapter led by civil rights activist Aaron Henry sponsored a major boycott over the Christmas shopping season of 1961. Downtown stores were all heavily dependent on black trade giving the boycott both immediate and lasting effects.

Medgar Evers, head of the state NAACP, and Henry had met with President Kennedy over the summer during the NAACP convention in Philadelphia. National board members traveled from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C. on a “freedom train” where they talked with the president and others over the severity of their problems.

“President Kennedy listened to us intently, was very cordial, and gave us a tour of the White House,” Henry later wrote in his autobiography.

Several months later, Clarksdale’s mayor decided there would be no Negro participation in the local Christmas parade: his decision would result in the first major confrontation in Clarksdale since 1955.

Aaron Henry and others were stunned and affronted by the mayor’s edict. It was tradition for the black band to play at the end of the parade, followed by floats from their community. There seemed to be no reason for this decision, except that the mayor “apparently resented the progress we were making all over the state,” Henry said.

The announcement came in November and was supported by the Chamber of Commerce. Henry and Evers called for a boycott of downtown stores with the slogan: “If we can’t parade downtown, we won’t trade downtown.” Handbills were printed and a newsletter sent out asking for blacks to join in the boycott; merchants felt pressure from the start.

The white community leaders would not come to terms with the black community and the boycott dragged on. Aaron Henry voiced the black community’s view, when he said it could go on forever unless there were real changes in hiring practices. When the county’s attorney Thomas H. (Babe) Pearson asked Henry to come to his office and talk over the boycott,