- Well, when they were told, after they harvested their crops that we don't need you any more.

- Didn't want Blackpeople voting.

- He would tell you to move, you're supposed to move by 15th of January.

- Well, nobody around that knew me would sell me anything.

- This blacklist consisted of names.

- Supposed to give us power in the ballot box.

We could get what we want by putting folks, deliver folks in office.

[dramatic music] - Before we talk about how Tent City came to be, we need to go back and get a little Civil War history lesson.

The South had lost the war.

[projector clicking] Along with losing the war, citizens of the South lost their way of life.

Some even lost their properties and livelihood.

President Abraham Lincoln freed all enslaved people in states and territories that were part of the Confederacy, who up until that time were the free labor workforce for plantations and landowners, giving birth to the reconstruction period.

- In January, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which resulted in freeing enslaved people in Southern states.

However, that Emancipation Proclamation only applied to those states in rebellion against the Union.

The 13th Amendment was passed in 1865 in December, and it freed all enslaved African Americans wherever they may be in the country.

Then the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, so essentially what it did was saying formerly enslaved people are citizens of the United States.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave African American men the right to vote.

In any event, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment are commonly referred to as the reconstruction amendments.

[dramatic music] [crowd clamoring] - We're closing, try again on Monday.

- Clock say 4:50.

I've got 10 minutes before you close.

- I take it you wanna register?

- Yes, ma'am, I do.

[ambient dramatic music] - ID?

[ambient dramatic music] - Burton Dodson lived as a sharecropper.

He was involved with a Black lady.

A male white man was also involved with her.

A group of people, a posse of people, went out to his home riding horses, and some even climbed into trees and started firing on his little shack of a house, and Burton Dodson and his two sons, in an attempt to protect themselves, attempted to fire back.

Shortly after, the posse of people disbursed, and Mr. Dodson felt that something must have occurred that they were leaving so hurriedly.

It was found, one of their fellas was found shot down the hill below Burton Dodson's home.

He left out of his home and decided to just escape, and he was discovered in East St. Louis, Missouri about 20 years later, was brought back to Fayette County to stand trial because of the death of that man.

- On April 14th, 1959, the Burton Dodson trial begins in Fayette County, Tennessee.

Black citizens learn a very valuable lesson.

- Burton Dodson had escaped in 1940, was back in 1959.

Their African American community was very proud of the fact that Dodson fought back that night for people who really came to kill him.

- Estes was a Black Afro-American lawyer from Memphis, Tennessee that Burton Dodson's family employed to represent Burton Dodson.

- Estes asked me to raise money for him, 'cause the Dodson family couldn't pay for expenses and the court reporter for him, and he asked us to raise some finance for him.

Me and my mother, and William Bonner, and several others secretly went around and asked folks to give us donations to help Estes with the expense.

- Black people were so excited that the idea of a Black lawyer prosecuting a case in Fayette County that they turned out in large numbers.

Harpman Jameson, John McFerren went about the countryside informing people of this trial and asking them to come up to sit in.

- Well, me and John McFerren was the main two people there, and also Shepherd Towles was there, and they didn't have enough money to pay the recorder.

And at 12:00 we got around at lunchtime, we got around there and raised enough money to hire the recorder for that evening to record Dodson's trial.

- And this disturbed John McFerren and Harpman Jameson that there were no Black people registered to vote, and as a result, this Afro-American was tried and charged with the murder of this person.

And many other people who attended the trial said that there was not sufficient evidence presented to convict Burton Dodson.

- Well, when I was in service, the men from different city, they know that we didn't register to vote here in Tennessee, in Pitt County anyway, and they would joke us about what was we doing over there if we couldn't register and vote.

And we said, "Fighting for our country."

And he said, "You ain't got," they said, "You ain't got no country if you don't register."

- We have to remember that the struggle for the right to vote in 1959 didn't happen in isolation.

They were very much aware of what was happening nationally, specifically with Dr. King's efforts to integrate the buses.

- You were hearing it over the radio and TV of different things happening.

Like Little Rock, it was school integration.

Clinton, Tennessee, something happened up there.

I don't know if that was school or the lunch counters, but it just grew from one thing to another one.

In Fayette County, it was registering to vote.

- He immediately, along with Harpman Jameson, went into the community encouraging people to get registered.

There were many that did go ahead and register, including John and Harpman, and finally people became excited about Black people registering to vote.

- I used to mention this when we could get help from the northern people who come in and thought it was awful that we couldn't register to vote or couldn't vote.

The problem was, of course, if they would allow it, it was a total takeover of power 'cause we were a majority.

- Afro-Americans would continue to try to find the registration officer in the courthouse.

I recall on one occasion, Reverend June Dowdy, an Afro-American minister who was a part of the original Fayette County Civic and Welfare League, went up to register, and he couldn't find the registration office, and he asked a white man that he saw in the courthouse, "Where were people getting registered?

Where is the office for registering?"

And he was told, "We'll register you and Hatchie Bottom."

And Hatchie Bottom is a well-known place where Black people were carried and lynched.

That's when the pressure begun in regards to the economic boycott that was placed against Black people.

- What I do now, just wait until the election?

- Uh-huh, head on home while you can.

Frank, I've got more names.

Ruth Walters, Jeffrey Lane, Russell Towns less than yesterday, maybe that's a good sign.

[dramatic music] - There was a blacklist circulated around in the business places in Fayette County and in adjacent counties to Fayette, and this blacklist consisted of names of Black people who had registered to vote.

And the leadership of this voters registration campaign, their name was marked with an A, which we were told indicated they were troublemakers.

- Well, it was a disappointing feeling going into the place I have traded all of my days and he tell me, I went to the bank first, and the bank secretary told me that the banker couldn't help me, couldn't loan me no money.

So then I had to try to find where I could borrow some money to make a crop to try to feed my family.

And I had to mortgage my little farm to borrow $600, mortgage the whole farm for $600.

[soulful music] - Francis, what are you doing?

- I wanted to get to y'all before Thompson does.

Told me this morning he won't renew my contract, that I had to get my things and be out by tonight.

- Maybe he'll come around.

He needs the workers, and in the meantime, you'll stay right here with us.

- He wouldn't look too kindly on y'all harboring a registered voter.

Shepherd Towles is letting folks stay on his land.

I'll be fine.

I just wanted to tell y'all so you know, you'd have time to prepare.

- He can't get rid of us all.

- Well, he wouldn't be getting rid of anybody if it wasn't for McFarren and his little voter registration drive.

Now look what he done done, got all of Fayette County up in arms.

- How can we help you, Mr. Thompson?

[birds chirping] - Same thing all my other sharecroppers are doing.

Well, you can start by getting off my land.

I ain't renewing with y'all.

- Mr. Thompson, we're good tenants, great tenants.

We ain't done nothing to- - After the 13th Amendment, which frees formerly enslaved people, they had nowhere to go and they had no resources, so one of the ways that they coped with it was to become sharecroppers.

And even the courts in the 1800s recognized that sharecropping was a vestige of slavery, that in fact the conditions of sharecropping were unfair to the sharecropper.

- Okay, sharecropping, yeah, the white man owned the land, and he furnished maybe the seeds to plant it with and the mule or tractor, whatever you plowed with, and you furnished the labor, and he gets half of it, then you got to pay whatever it costs you to feed your family that year.

You got to pay for it outta your half.

Then you gotta pay him interest on the money that you borrowed to feed your family through the year.

That's what sharecropping is all about, the white man gets half of the crop after it's made.

- We had six in family, and we lived off of $25 a month for five months out of the year, which made a total of $125 for that year we had to live off of.

But if we could get a bail of corn out, and that would give us a half of a seed check.

A seed check brought like $15, and we would get like, I would say, nine or 10 at the most for our part.

Maybe it was 15 to $20, what the whole check would be, but we would get half of that.

If we could get two bails of cotton that week, we would get, twice would make it like $20 up.

Was good money, I mean, it was hard time, but we managed to make it.

- In 1959, I registered to vote, and they took the land from me and told me I had to move in December.

So the lease renewal was in August.

When you go to December, it was past the deadline.

Every lease was from August to August.

You know you had to move in August, but I had to move in December, around middle of December.

- Well, the most I know was sharecropping.

Some of 'em have been their lifetime, and they was told they had a lifetime home there.

And when they registered to vote, when their lifetime home's over, they had to move.

- Oh, when they were told after they harvested their crops that we don't need you anymore, you've got to move, many of them didn't have anywhere to go, but they had to get off their land.

And that's when many of them came to the Civic League and said, "They put me off the land.

They say I did something I shouldn't have done.

I registered to vote.

I don't have anywhere to go."

- This caused the Attorney Estes came in asking questions to see if these people will follow the law of the land about registering and voting, and from that, the formation of the league started.

- In February 1961, leaders of the movement established the original Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to coordinate their civil rights strategies and actions.

- But after they went to the polls to vote and they were not able to vote, nine of 10 men filed a suit against the election commission.

The suit was filed in November.

They started putting people off the farm shortly after that.

- When they kicked them off the land, they had to go to the tents.

- Many sharecroppers were forced to move from the land they lived on, which was occupied or which was owned by white people.

Many Black people lost their jobs, were turned away when they would go into business places to make loans, for example, purchase groceries and other essentials for daily living.

They were just told, "We don't want your business.

We're not gonna sell you anything."

- After that, the people started jumping off the farm by the, I don't know, dozen or two a day.

They put him off the farm, but didn't have anywhere to go, they was outdoors.

- And I talked to my husband and I said, he said, "We got to move," said, "We got to move.

We better get out and try to find someplace to go, because it's gonna be winter here in a little bit."

And so when we go out to look for a place to try to live and to find to move to, then we find out that every place you went to, they turned you down because of the same thing, you know, and then there wasn't any place to go.

- Me and her and the four kids, we lived in that tent, we cooked in that tent.

We slept in that tent, 16 foot, little bitty.

But in the wintertime, that tent would get like a deep freeze, ice, solid, solid all over, sides and wall and top, solid with ice, and it would, we never did get cold.

- This idea came about through John.

He suggested tents.

I think John had some memory of some of the uses of tents from the military.

And we didn't have money in the Civic League to purchase the tents, so we appealed to the nation for help and people sent money in to help us, and some people bought tents and shipped them in.

[compelling music] - As early as 1959, evicted sharecroppers began moving into Tent City, a space donated by Shepherd Towles, a Black farmer.

Civil rights obstructionists and landowners continued to attack the core of individual and family life.

A second Tent City was erected at the Gertrude Beasley Farm in Moscow, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, some Blacks stood in line for hours, only to be harassed by white residents and county employees who threw hot coffee or spit on them from the upper floors of the courthouse.

[compelling music] By this point, only 1,000 of the 9,000 voting age adults had registered to vote, but the intimidation didn't stop there.

Three days after Christmas 1960, shots rang out inside Tent City.

- They came back, they shot that night, and how long it was before, two weeks again?

- Two weeks later.

- Two weeks later, they came back shooting again, and they shot.

We had set out, the guy had set out some, I wasn't able, they had set out some watchmen for us.

They shot back, they started shooting back.

They hunted the young men down, they found 'em.

There were three of 'em, three of the big people in Summerville, sons.

They said they were shooting blanks.

Wasn't nothing they could do when they were shooting blanks.

Well, really didn't know it didn't, I didn't never feel angry about who shot me.

I never felt angry about who shot me, and there's really no way to tell how you really felt.

- In February 1961, John and Viola McFerren, Harpman and Minnie Jameson, Shepherd Towles, and other men and women activists founded the original Fayette County Civil and Welfare League, a brilliant and scrappy group of brave residents who expanded the fight beyond Tennessee and into the nation.

- Fayette County Civic and Welfare League did originate from the Burton Dodson case, because after finding out how important it was for Black people to register and vote, John and Harpman talked with Attorney Estes about working with them to help them organize our organization to work through.

We met in the rear of McFerren's Grocery.

We made contact with Mt.

Olive Baptist Church, and we started meeting there.

We could accommodate more people there.

- Within months, word spread about the travesty, and help came from all over the country.

- Well, young people would seem to take a chance that the old people wouldn't.

- When I came to Fayette County with the Chicago work campus, it was my first exposure to the South.

And I can remember we all assembled in Chicago, and I was in the first car that came down, and we drove all night from Chicago, and we arrived in Fayette County in the morning.

- I don't remember precisely, but I'm pretty sure it was the Ted Postum articles that got national publicity that made me first aware of what was happening here in Fayette County.

It was the pictures of the tents of those sharecroppers who, after attempting to register to vote, were tossed off of the land, and were actually living in tents.

And so of course that that was a good photo opportunity, and so the nation learned about it, and I did too.

- Operation Freedom, the United States Justice Department, the NAACP Corps, and countless number of students and organizations from all across the nation provided help.

- We didn't know the students, but they all seemed kind.

It was a treat to us for them to come into our situation and spend the night.

I don't see how I could have done it if I had been living differently.

[chuckling] - Most of the time we spent in Fayette County was spent with the Black families we lived with, and at the community center, helping put things up.

- By 1962, the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League took further action and broke ground on a community center to serve the needs of African Americans living in Tent City and other residents of Fayette County.

- So I suggested to our group, I said, "Now, we don't have but the one place that we might could meet."

Said, "Why don't we build us a building?"

We had nothing to build a building with.

It's like my one month in high school.

We got started with $20.

- By 1963, the last tenants of Tent City moved from the Towles farm, and the site was disbanded.

[lively music] The league entered the 1960s with a pressing civil rights agenda, focused on increasing voter registration, electing accountable officials.

The league helped to integrate the Fayette County school system, improving the welfare of Black citizens through education and job training, and dismantling barriers to credit and employment opportunities for Black people.

- But you don't, you really don't know history is history at the time it's being made, or I didn't.

I wished I knew.

- Eventually, that fear left, and I don't know when it left.

I had prayed and asked the Lord to please remove it because I couldn't function in that state of mind, and it left, and when it left, I had gained more strength and determination.

So I didn't fear anymore, although we had many more obstacles, but I didn't have any fear.

[bright music] [lively music] [lively music continues] [lively music continues]