Memorandum, August 13, 1966. To Hosea Williams [Atlanta Field Office, Southern Christian Leadership Council / SCLC]

[Grenada, MS: 1966]. Original typescript (carbon). Single sheet of onionskin, printed recto-only. Faint creasing and wear; Near Fine. A remarkable internal memorandum written by an SCLC field operative in Grenada, Mississippi to field director Hosea Williams in Atlanta. Copied are Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, and Leon Hall. Bibler, one of many young white volunteers who parrticipated in the sustained Grenada campaign of 1966, writes to explain his refusal to carry out orders from Mr. Williams, received the previous day. Bibler states that he had been ordered to "lead a group of six [protesters] ... onto the grass of the Courthouse Square in Grenada...and get all of us arrested." He enumerates four reasons for his refusal to comply, stressing that the proposed action would put volunteers in grave danger, and concludes: "...there are many times in the course of such a revolution that we are attempting to carry out that our goals can be advanced by violence inflicted upon us...however, I feel that we should carry out our program risking violence, rather than structuring our program to induce violence" (emphasis ours).

Indeed, one contemporary account of the events of August 12th seemed to bear out Mr. Bibler's misgivings. By the day of the march, volunteers were apparently found to carry out Williams' orders, with the following result as documented by a first-hand participant: "...18 volunteers try to get on the green. They are repeatedly shoved off by the cops and eventually seven are arrested. As the rest of the march begins to leave the square, the line of troopers charge us, hitting people with their rifle butts. Half a dozen marchers are injured, including Emerald Cunningham, a 14 year old girl who had polio and is unable to run or dodge. The troopers beat her in the back with their rifles" (Bruce Hartford, "Grenada Mississippi - Chronology of a Movement." On-line resource: https://www.crmvet.org/info/grenada.htm).

A tremendously revealing document concerning the non-violent tactics of SCLC, the extreme danger with which volunteers were confronted on a daily basis, and the occasional lack of cohesion between SCLC leadership and activists in the field.

Not separately catalogued in any of the civil rights archives to whose catalogs we have access, and not referenced, to our knowledge, in any histories of the period. PROVENANCE: Private collection of a one-time staff-member of the Washington, D.C. field office of SCLC.