This is a story about an act of courage that I witnessed by Congressman James H. (Jimmy) Morrison in 1966. He represented a conservative area of Louisiana around Hammond, Louisiana from 1942-1966. He was your typical white, southern politician. He had gotten his start in politics in the Huey & Earl Long political machine. The area he represented is north of New Orleans on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain. I grew up in a small, rural town in the northern part of the state near Arkansas and had been very interested in politics from my days in high school. I participated in numerous Young Democrats events throughout Louisiana and led a committee at LSU which was able to get the Louisiana state legislature to amend the absentee voting law to permit students to vote absentee at college. In the summer of 1966 I was hired by the Morrison campaign to work in his reelection campaign. His opponent was John Rarick who had been a District Judge in Louisiana. I quickly learned that this was going to be a campaign with considerable conflict. One day I was driving a campaign vehicle in a rural part of the district. All of a sudden I found my vehicle was surrounded by three trucks. One was in front of me, another was beside me and a third was behind my vehicle. They quickly pushed my vehicle off the road and several of the men came back to my vehicle. As I watched them approach, I noticed there were several rifles and shotguns in the gun racks of each of the vehicles. We then began a very brief discussion as to whether or not it was appropriate for me to be in that part of the district. While I am not the brightest individual, I quickly agreed with their suggestions that I should avoid this area in the future. As soon as they moved out of the way, I made a U-turn and moved at a very rapid pace in the opposite direction. When I told the campaign staff about the encounter, they just laughed and said welcome to Louisiana politics. As the campaign continued, the Ku Klux Klan became very visible and burned crosses in the Congressman’s front yard and in other areas in the district. John Rarick was thought to be closely aligned with the White Citizen’s Council and the KKK. Gradually, most of the staff in the campaign was carrying a weapon of some type. There were many pistols as well as rifles and shotguns. My strongest memory of the campaign and the primary reason I am writing this post is about a Sunday afternoon late in the campaign. There were a number of bars out in a rural area of the district that attracted large crowds on Sunday afternoons. Our plan was that Jimmy would visit each of these bars and we make a campaign stop out in the parking lot hoping to encourage people to come outside to hear the campaign speech. So that we could maximize the number of events, we had two setup groups. While Jimmy was talking to the first group, the second setup group would go to the second stop. This way the second stop would be read for Jimmy to speak as soon as he arrived. While he was speaking at the second stop, the first setup group would go to the third stop. All of this worked smoothly and we attracted a nice size crowd as we moved from stop to stop. We also noticed that the same group of men seemed to be going with us from stop to stop. It didn’t take very long to realize that these men were not supporters of Jimmy. We didn’t know if they were members of the KKK, the White Citizens’ Council or just angry voters. In actuality, it did not matter. As their crowd grew from stop to stop, my anxiety grew as well. The primary reason that these individual and others in the district were upset with Jimmy is that he had voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the talks he made that day to totally white groups, he faced the issue straight on. He said at each stop that he voted for the bill because he believes that it is very important that every citizen be permitted to vote and he was going to support any bill that removes any barrier to a citizens being able to vote. There were no TV cameras or any other type of reporter waiting to record Jimmy’s remarks. He could have easily made up some type of excuse why he voted for the bill, but that didn’t happen. How many of our current politicians would have the courage to stand before a group of voters to defend a vote that most in the audience opposed? By the time we got to the last stop, the group of opponents had grown to be very large. I was expecting violence to start at any moment. I noticed that two of our prominent supporters were walking through the opponents. They were Justin Wilson and Ed Grady Partin. Justin Wilson was a famous Cajun humorist and chef. He was famous for the line “I gar-on-tee” and had a cooking show on PBS. He was trying to use humor to calm the crowd. Ed Grady Partin was the Business Agent for the Teamsters in Baton Rouge. Ed was a relative short man who looked very tough. He had his on set of troubles but he had guts. He had been a key witness against Jimmy Hoffa at his Nashville trial. Ed dealt with the crowd by going up to many of the participants and getting in their face saying things like “If you want to start something, you are going to have to start with me.” Most of the men he faced were taller than him and I will always remember watching him go right up a man and then tilting his head up to look the man squarely in the face. Happily, the day ended without violence and Jimmy did his best to help people understand his actions. Unfortunately, Jimmy was defeated and Rarick was elected where he remained in Congress for the next eight years. If you admire the courage shown by Jimmy Morrison, I encourage you to share this posting with others. Now that the Supreme Court is saying that this law is no longer needed, people need to know that there were politicians who sacrificed their political career to enact this legislation to help make sure that everyone will be able to vote.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:10:56 +0000
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