#Reverend Alfred Knox

[whitesinhistory]

On August 29, 1961, a white man named Billy Jack Caston, who was the first cousin of the Amite County sheriff, attacked Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader Bob Moses as he accompanied two Black residents—Curtis Dawson and the Reverend Alfred Knox—to register to vote. Two other white men stood by and witnessed the brutal beating.

In the early 1960s, approximately 70% of white adults in Mississippi were registered to vote, but only 6.7% of eligible Black Mississippians were registered. These rates lagged behind even other states in the Deep South, such as Alabama (23%) and Louisiana (32%), and were an intentional consequence of Mississippi’s efforts to disenfranchise Black people in the state over the prior decades.

During Reconstruction, Black Mississippians participated in state politics in large numbers and comprised a majority of the state’s electorate by 1870. However, white Mississippians quickly resorted to violence and discriminatory legislation to deprive Black citizens of their voting rights. As early as 1875, armed groups intercepted Black people as they attempted to register to vote. From 1876 through the 1960s, Mississippi enacted a series of targeted voter suppression measures that disenfranchised Black people. These measures included publishing the names of Black registrants in the local paper to incite violent reprisal, all-white primary elections, a poll tax, stringent residency requirements, and a voter registration test administered at the complete discretion of local white registrars. The test required that Black people prove literacy, knowledge of state law and government, and “good moral character.” These laws maintained the voting rights of white people by exempting those already registered (and their children) from burdensome registration requirements. Further, in 1960, Mississippi adopted legislation providing for the destruction of voter registration records to insulate its discriminatory practices from federal review.

In the 1960s, civil rights activists in Mississippi were working to get Black voters registered. At the time he was attacked, Mr. Moses was working as a vote tutor, training Black applicants to pass Mississippi’s discriminatory registration test.

As Mr. Moses, Mr. Dawson, and the Reverend Knox approached the Amite County Courthouse, Mr. Caston, the sheriff’s first cousin, demanded that Mr. Moses disclose the group’s intentions. Without waiting for a response, he slammed Mr. Moses onto the ground and kneeled over his body for several minutes, beating him with a blunt instrument. Several white men stood nearby watching but did nothing to intervene. Mr. Moses sustained lacerations to his head and required several stitches.

The day he was beaten, Mr. Moses attempted to seek redress from the local authorities for the violence committed against him. The county sheriff refused to help Mr. Moses and directed him to the local justice of the peace, who was “out of the office” that day.

Mr. Moses finally succeeded in filing a formal complaint. However, an all-white jury acquitted the white man who attacked him. Mr. Moses’s complaint marked the first time that a Black person prosecuted a white person for violence in Amite County, Mississippi.

To learn more about the ways that voter suppression preserved white supremacy and perpetuated racial inequality in the South, read EJI’s report, Segregation in America.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes, 1-50

[1] Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 1:263.

[2] Quotations from the Bible are taken from the Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

[3] H. Richard Niebuhr, as reported to me by Reverend Coleman Brown.

[4] William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 159.

[5] Richard K. Fenn, Dreams of Glory: The Sources of Apocalyptic Terror (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 60.

[6] William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), 44.

[7] Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., stanza 96, in The Poetic and Dramatic Work of Alfred Lord Tennyson (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), 246.

[8] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 37.

[9] Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 218.

[10] Ibid., 219.

[11] Davidson Loehr, America, Fascism and God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2005), 88.

[12] Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Dallas, TX: Craig, 1973), 585–590.

[13] In September 2002, Tommy Thompson, then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced the award of 21 grants from the White House’s new faith-based initiative. More than 500 institutions had applied. Operation Blessing was one of the winners, receiving more than $500,000. See remarks by Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, in a Pew forum titled “The Faith-Based Initiative Two Years Later: Examining Its Potential, Progress and Problems,” March 5, 2003, Washington, DC, pewforum.org. More than 7 percent of the $2,154,246,246 going to faith-based grants was awarded to abstinence-only education programs. See “Federal Funds for Organizations That Help Those in Need,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.whitehouse.gov.

[14] Katherine Yurica, “What Did Mr. Bush’s 2nd Inaugural Address Really Mean? Biblical Code Unraveled,” The Yurica Report, February 24, 2005, www.yuricareport.com Bush2ndInauguralMeans.html.

[15] Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, 581; 583–584.

[16] Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 1991), 26.

[17] “The Vision of GRN,” Global Recordings Network, http://global recordings.net/topic/vision.

[18] “True Liberty,” Global Recordings Network, http://globalrecord ings.net/script/ENG/171.

[19] Joseph Goebbels, Signale der neuen Zeit (Munich: Eher, 1934), 34; Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1969), 464.

[20] Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. 2003), 73.

[21] Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism, 202.

[22] Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 15. The Gallup data are found in George Gallup and Jim Castelli, The People’s Religion: American Faith in the 90s (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 56, 58, 61, 63 and 75. Data on the Rapture are found in Marlene Tufts, “Snatched Away Before the Bomb: Rapture Believers in the 1980s” (PhD dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1986), vi.

[23] Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 9.

[24] Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Random House, 1965), 154–155.

[25] Ibid., 157–158.

[26] Ibid. 164.

[27] I heard Kennedy say this at my seminar with him at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

[28] Curtis White, “The Spirit of Disobedience,” Harper’s, April 2006.

[29] The Christian Coalition of America lists 15 issues as key to its “Legislative Agenda.” Its 2004 “Congressional Scorecard” rated (on a 100-point scale) members of the House of Representatives on 13 of these issues; 163 members of the House received an overall rating of 90 or higher on all 13. Members of the Senate were rated on six issues; 42 members of the Senate received an overall rating of 100 on all six. See “Congressional Scorecard,” Christian Coalition of America, www.cc.org scorecard.pdf. Also Glenn Scherer, “The Godly Must Be Crazy,” Grist, October 27, 2004.

[30] “American Values: The Triumph of the Religious Right,” Economist, November 11, 2004, www.economist.com displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=375543; Transcript of interview with Jim DeMint, NBC News’ Meet the Press, October 17, 2004, www.msnbc.com; Hanna Rosin, “Doctor’s Order: Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn Is Back on Capitol Hill, Budgetary Scalpel at the Ready,” Washington Post, December 12, 2004, D1, www.washingtonpost.com.

[31] MSNBC.com, “Exit Polls—President,” www.msnbc.msn.com/ id/5297138.

[32] President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by executive order on January 29, 2001, just nine days after his inauguration. Congress has not passed legislation allowing for faith-based initiatives, so President Bush has repeatedly used executive orders to push the policy through. See “Executive Orders,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.white house.gov/government/fbci/executive-orders.html. In February 2006, President Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, reauthorizing welfare reform for another five years and extending the “charitable choice” policy, which allows faith-based groups to continue receiving funding “without altering their religious identities or changing their hiring practices.” See “Fact Sheet: Compassion in Action: Producing Real Results for Americans Most in Need,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.white house.gov/news/releases/2006/03/print/20060309-3.html.

[33] In fiscal year 2003, $1.17 billion out of a $14.5 billion budget in competitive social-service grants were awarded to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2003,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.whitehouse.gov/ government/fbci/final_report_2003.pdf.

[34] President George W. Bush, “President Highlights Faith-Based Results at National Conference,” www.whitehouse.gov releases/2006/03/20060309-5.html.

[35] Out of $19,456,713,768 in grants, $2,004,491,549 went to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2004,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.whitehouse.gov/ government/fbci/final_report_2004.pdf.

[36] Out of $19,715,661,808 in grants, $2,154,246,246 went to FBOs. See “Grants to Faith-Based Organizations FY 2005,” Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, www.whitehouse.gov/ government/fbci/final_report_2005.pdf.

[37] David M. Fine, “Ohio Counties to Adopt Diebold Voting Machines,” The Mill, January 18, 2004, www.gristforthemill.org/ 010418diebold.html.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Mark Crispin Miller, “None Dare Call It Stolen,” Harper’s, September 7, 2005, www.harpers.org; Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, “Hearings on Ohio Voting Put 2004 Election in Doubt,” Columbus Free Press, November 18, 2004, www.commondreams.org 1118–30.htm.

[40] Ray Beckerman, “Basic Report from Columbus,” November 4, 2004, www.freepress.org.

[41] Mark Crispin Miller, “None Dare Call It Stolen.”

[42] The National Center for Education Statistics in the U.S. Department of Education estimated that 1.1 million students were home-schooled in 2003, a 29 percent increase from 1999. The National Home Education Research Institute says that 1.7 million to 2.1 million children were home-schooled during the 2002–2003 academic year. From Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 2.

[43] Barbara Parker and Christy Macy, “Secular Humanism, the Hatch Amendment, and Public Education,” People for the American Way, Washington, DC, 1985, 8.

[44] Quoted in Bill Moyers, “9/11 and the Spirit of God,” address a. Union Theological Seminary, September 7, 2005, www.uts.columbia.edu.

[45] Sunsara Taylor, “Battle Cry for Theocracy,” Truthdig.com, May 11, 2006, www.truthdig.com _theocracy.

[46] Augustine, quoted in William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left, 6.

[47] Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), xii.

[48] Beth Shulman, “Working and Poor in the USA,” Nation, February 9, 2004.

[49] Robert Morley, “The Death of American Manufacturing,” Trumpet, February 2006, www.thetrumpet.com cle&id=1955.

[50] Martin Crutsinger, “United States Cites China and Other Nations in Report on Unfair Trade Practices,” Associated Press, March 31, 2006.