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-In the early 1960s, amidst the growing tide of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, a remarkable and often overlooked chapter occurred in Fayette County, Tennessee.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Steve Beverly.

On this edition of Tennessee is Talking, th.. a courageous and defiant stand on the part of African-American sharecroppers who were forced to live in tents when they were evicted from their homes.

Right now, let the conversation begin.

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-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

-Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

I'm Steve Beverly.

Tent city, two words that simply go back into history in West Tennessee.

To be candid with you, history that for many people of this generation is lost.

At the heart of Tent City was the fight for basic civil rights, including the right to vote, the right to fair and equal treatment, and the pursuit of justice in an era of deep segregation and inequality.

Here to tell us about that is Daphene McFerren.

She is the executive director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.

Daphene, let's get right to this.

Tell us, if you will, what was Tent City, how did it start, and what were really the kinds of things that led people to take this unprecedented step?

-Tent City refers to the civil rights movement in Fayette County, Tennessee.

Fayette County is approximately one hour east of Memphis.

The movement began in 1959 when African-Americans demanded the right to vote.

It came to the attention of the African-American community that so few African-Americans were registered to vote that there were basically none that could serve on jurors.

In 1959, a black man named Burton Dodson was charged with the murder of a white deputy in 1940.

In 1940, the group of white deputies went out to Dodson's home, according to the black community, to kill him.

There was a shootout, and during the shootout, one of the deputies was killed.

The African-American community claimed that based on the location of the body, the deputy was killed by friendly fire and not by Dodson.

He was extradited back to Fayette County in 1958 and stood trial in 1959.

My father, John McFerren, and his best friend, Hartman Jameson, attended the trial.

Dodson's attorney, who was also African-American, encouraged my father and Hartman Jameson to start a voter registration campai.. At that time, the jury pool was selected from the voter rolls.

They went out and started a voter registration campaign to get African-Americans registered to vote.

At the time, in 1959, Fayette County was 70% African-American, about 30% white.

Yet there were so few blacks registered to vote.

As a result of that voter registration campaign, there was retaliation by the white community.

Specifically, the retaliation consisted of evicting black sharecroppers who were farming on the land of white landowners.

-If you will, and that is a huge point that we want to move into, what happened to Burton Dodson after all of this occurred?

That's a key thing that I think many people who have looked into this may or may not know.

What happened to Burton Dodson since he was somewhat the central figure that led to Tent City starting?

-Burton Dodson was convicted of manslaughter.

He was charged with a higher offense, but the jury came back with a conviction of manslaughter.

He did serve time in jail.

I understand that he did not serve the full sentence.

Based on research done by another author, he moved in with his son in Detroit, Michigan, and he died in Detroit, Michigan.

This is what I'm told from another researcher.

That's what happened to Dodson.

Now, Dodson was not a civil rights activist, but his trial kicked off this momentous civil rights activity in Fayette County because it demonstrated to Fayette County activists and many others the fact that African Americans were not able to exercise their civil rights.

That included voting and also standing as peers in judgment of their oth.. -What were some of the conditions like at Tent City?

Because you're talking about more than half a century since all of this occurred.

It's probably very difficult for many people to really just get a grasp of what it was like in a situation that people had never seen before.

-First of all, let's talk about sharecropping.

Sharecropping is a vestige of slavery.

The courts held that even in the 1800s.

Basically, the sharecropping system is in Fayette County that formerly enslaved people began working on the farms of previously slave owners or landowners.

Some of these families have been on these farms for generations because after the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction and the 13th Amendment, African-Americans own no land in Fayette County.

They own no businesses.

They were unable to improve their condition and they continued farming.

When they began registering to vote, the retaliation took place in the form of evictions.

There was a blacklist created by the White Citizen Council listing those individuals who registered to vote and an A was placed by the name of the activist.

When these sharecroppers were evicted, they had no option in terms of other housing because if they went to another farm, they knew the white landowner that they had registered to vote.

Actually, that was the situation for Mary and Early B. Williams, who was the first family to be evicted.

Mr. Shepherd Toves, a black landowner, opened up his land for evicted farmers.

The first black family, Mary and Early B. Williams, moved onto his farm in an army surplus tent.

The tent was an army tent with no flooring.

In fact, they got carbon monoxide poisoning a few days after they moved into the tent because they didn't properly ventilate the wood heater.

That was fixed.

Mr. Williams also described the fact that in the dead of winter in December 1960, the tent froze solid.

There was solid ice along the walls of the tent inside the tent.

He also had a large family and young babies.

When it rained or when the ground thawed from the freezing, they essentially were sinking in the mud under the tent.

Other people in rapid succession ended up on Shepherd Toves' farm.

In fact, there are so many people on the farm that his well ran dry.

According to Ms. Williams, there were 100 children alone in Tent City on Mr. Shepherd's..

The evictions continued and a second Tent City had to be created.

That Tent City was on the farm of Gertrude Beasley, who was a black woman who also owned her land.

That farm was on Highway 57 near Moscow, Tennessee.

-Your parents were a part of all of this.

Of course, when you think about this has become now a story that is multigenerational.

Tell me what it is and what it means to you to know that your parents took the step that they did, knowing that it was just absolutely you didn't know what it was going to be like from one day to the next.

What was it like and what does it mean to you that your parents were so actively involved with this?

-The Fayette County Movement began before I was born, about a couple of years before I was born.

That was the only life that I knew.

As a child, I really didn't understand the risk that they faced.

I did see and observe firsthand movement activities.

As children, we participated in the demonstration marches.

There were people who were injured, civil rights activists, and my father owned a business in Fayette County.

I remember one civil rights activist was shot in the head by one of the deputies in Fayette County and they brought him to my father's store.

I went to the car where he was in the back seat and they opened the back seat and he just rolled out of the car covere.. My father never showed fear.

The stress of the movement was in other ways, but I never saw him with any fear.

My mother said that she never felt fear because my father, John McFerren, was so strong in his belief and his efforts to improve the condition of black people that she didn't fear her activities.

Now, initially she stated, and this is in the book, Our Portion of Hell, that it scared her that he was challenging these societal norms in Jim Crow.

She said she prayed about it until finally she felt no fear.

I recognize at the time the tremendous sacrifices they made.

When Tent City started, both my mother and father were afraid that the families would starve to death that winter because they were off the farms.

They had no food.

They had inappropriate clothing to be living basically outside.

My father and mother traveled throughout the United States speaking to people about the conditions in Tent City.

There were photographs taken by the Memphis Press Seminar and Ernest Withers of the conditions in Tent City.

People washing in tin tubs with fires underneath, children playing outside without adequate clothing, people living in tents when, in fact, these were conditions that Americans and even people internationally were appalled at, that these kinds of conditions were created simply because African-Americans demanded the right to vote and participate in the civic process.

-Let's think about this aspect of it all, because this has such a wide-reaching range in the numbers of people and, if you will, the generations that were affected in years later because of this.

Let's look back at what kind of support did the people of Tent City have from organizations like the NAACP or from other outside agencies that, say, with clothing, with food, with things to try to help them get through the basic necessities of life?

-Starting in the early 60s, as I said before, my mother and father traveled to different cities throughout the US to raise funds to have food shipped in and clothing.

In addition, in some cities, there were clothing and food drives done by children and their parents, like you see today for certain nonprofits.

That's what you saw back then.

There was a man who had a tractor-trailer truck, who was originally from Fayette County, but lived in the North, and he filled that tractor-trailer truck up with clothing and drove that clothing down to Fayette County to be distributed to those who were living in Tent City.

In January 1960, President Kennedy addressed the question in his first press conference, what was he going to do about the situation in Fayette County where black people were being denied the right to vote?

He said, in response, that was a basic civil right and he would use the power of the government to help ensure their right to vote.

In addition to that, he had food sent to Fayette County, not only for the residents of Tent City, but for those who were poor.

Fayette County, actually in the 50s, had denied that there was a food insufficiency in Fayette County, but President Kennedy addressed that by sending food to Fayette County.

In addition, Northern College students came to Fayette County to assist with the movement.

They provided financial literacy courses for those who were unable to read and write well, to aid in voter registration efforts.

They helped the organization that activists created, the original Fayette County Civic and Welfare League, built a center called the Community Center where the activities could take place.

They also taught activists how to issue press releases, how to organize and engage in other activities to bring attention to the movement.

The AFL-CIO was involved in the movement as well.

They saw it not only as a civil rights issue, but a labor issue, the ability of tenant farmers to control the wages that they earned and to get their wages for their work.

The number of people and organizations involved spanned the gamut.

There were non-profits, there were civil rights organizations.

Operation Freedom out of Cincinnati, Ohio, which was run by Reverend Maurice McCracken, spent a lot of time in Fayette County.

A lot of people who were engaged in civil rights at the national level were also involved in helping bring relief to those in Fayette County who were suffering because they had registered to vote, and later started engaging in demonstration protests and other civil rights activities.

-Daphene, how long did Tent City last, and what ultimately led to it to end?

-Tent City started in December, 1960 and ended approximately in April, 1963.

That's approximately four years.

For those listening, four years in a tent is a long time to be without permanent shelter.

As I've spoken to people who were in Tent City, some of them said, and this is Mary and Early B. Williams, I keep talking about the first family who moved in Tent City.

She's told me, she just told her husband to start walking and looking for a place for them to live.

He did, he just started walking.

Ultimately, they ended up in Hayward County where they found housing.

There are many other residents who ended up in Memphis or found housing in Fayette County because of the civil rights activities that were taking place in the county.

FHA loans were starting to become available for black families when they were previously been denied on the basis of race.

Because of federal oversight, some of the practices of racial profiling, which led to loans being denied for housing, et cetera, were loosened up during the 1960s and some black people found housing in new housing.

I have to say, a lot of people left Fayette County eventually.

Fayette County is now 30% African-American approximately and 70% white, when in fact it was flipped in the 50s and 60s.

It was 70% African-American when the movement started and 30% white.

The fact that the African-American population has decreased, I believe is in part due to the lack of ability to make a living in that county or to remain in the county in the absence of owning either a business or land or some other way to sustain themselves there.

-This is an element that I'm personally curious about.

How did faith play a role in getting through these kinds of conditions in this situation?

Because obviously you always have people of faith who are trying to maintain worship and that bond that just transcends all of the issues that they're facing.

How did faith enter into this with the people who were at Tent City?

-The African-American community in Fayette County was always faith-based, even today.

In fact, the first church there, Mount Olive MB Church, allowed activists to meet there.

That was the first place they could meet because they were cautious about meeting at other places in the community.

They said if the church was burned down by arsonists, the activists committed themselves to rebuilding the church.

Luckily that didn't happen.

As a child, I attended many of the planning meetings of the civil rights activists.

They always started with the song, a faith-based song, We Shall Overcome ended the mass meeting.

There was prayer.

Let me tell you something, those meetings as a child went on forever.

One of the reasons I felt and now realize it went on forever is that they wanted total consensus from those in attendance on how to proceed with a protest, a march, or an action.

They were sustained by the fact that they believed what they were doing was right, was consistent with their biblical principles.

You have to realize too, they didn't have the resources.

They were able to engage in mass protests.

They were able to stand up against police brutality.

My mother and uncle and other people were arrested and sent to jail merely because they stepped on the lawn of the courthouse in Fayette County, stepped on the grass, and they were arrested for stepping on the grass.

I have learned when you engage in that kind of struggle, people I have observed know that there is something greater than themselves, and they are able to access that power, spirit, and support in the spiritual realm.

I believe that absent accessing that, it would not have been possible for them to see the moral righteousness of what they were doing and to sustain it for over a decade.

-You have been so heavily involved in research, both in the written word and with documentaries, to preserve the history of Tent City and to pass it on to other generations.

Give us a thumbnail of what you have done and what material is available for people to be able to see.

-In 1995, I received a grant from National Endowment for the Humanities to collect what we call the primary source materials on the movement.

I literally drove, I was at the time living in Washington, DC, from Washington, DC to North Carolina, all through Tennessee and Mississippi, meeting with activists, many of whom now were elderly.

I collected from them photographs, letters, newspapers, letters from the government that were created at the time of the movement.

In addition, I went to National Archives in Washington, DC and retrieved all the government files on the Fayette County Movement.

I used to work as an attorney with the Department of Justice, and I was surprised to see that the federal government had preserved the FBI 302s, that's when the FBI interviews people.

It also had preserved all of the notes that the FBI agents and attorneys had taken on the Fayette County Movement and their observations.

The legal documents were in the files.

I had all of that copied and sent to the University of Memphis in UT Martin with a library and I was working with there.

Here at the University of Memphis, we have all the government documents I was able to find in the voices of activists, in their affidavits.

I also have tons, the University of Memphis has special collections, there are tons of photographs on the Fayette County Movement from different photographers, including Associated Press.

Art Shay, Art Shay was a, he's now deceased, but he was a famous photographer who photographed the Fayette County Movement on behalf of Life..

He also photographed the rich and the famous, which included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, the Kennedys, Richard Baldwin.

In 1965, he was sent to Fayette County to capture two days of the movement during a demonstration march.

-Quickly, how can people access this material?

-First of all, people have a number of sources online that they can go to.

The story of Tent City can be found along with photographs and excerpts of interviews on the Hooks Institute website, and that's at memphis.edu/tentcity.

Again, memphis.edu/tentcity.

I really encourage people to visit that site, to learn in more detail about the history of the movement and to see photographs of the activists, to see the charging document for Burton Dodson and to understand better the story.

The Hooks Institute also has a YouTube channel called Ben L. Hooks Institute.

One of our documentaries on the Fayette County Movement is on that YouTube channel and it's called Resistance to Injustice.

People can also contact me at the Hooks Institute at bhi.memphis.edu if they are unable to locate these resource materials.

Additionally, here in Memphis, WKNO is broadcasting in January and they broadcasted in December the documentary, and I'm hoping Jackson Television Station, the PBS affiliate will also broadcast it.

People can also contact Special Collections here at the University of Memphis, and if they want to review the primary source materials and speak with the librarians there and arrange a time to come look at the materials.

The materials are available to the public.

There is a ton of information that people can access on the movement.

-Daphene, I wish we had two hours to go on about this because it is so fascinating and interesting and I feel like I've had an education just visiting with you in this half hour.

Thank you ever so much for being with us on Tennessee is Talking and I hope you'll come again.

-Thank you so much for having me.

-If you'd like to watch this program again or share it with a friend, all you have to do is go to the PBS app and you can stream it right there or you can watch it at westtnpbs.org.

Keep the conversation going by following West Tennessee PBS on social media.

Until next time, I'm Steve Beverly saying, keep on talking, Tennessee.

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