Biloxi Beach Wade-In

Biloxi Beach Wade-In. . , Front , On April 24, 1960, Gilbert R. Mason, Sr., M.D., led about 125 volunteers in a peaceful wade-in on segregated Biloxi Beach. Trained in non-violent passive resistance, they expected to be arrested. Instead they were attacked by a white mob armed with pipes, chains, and lumber, while city police stood by without intervening. In May the U.S. Justice Department sued the city for denying blacks the use of the beach. Eight years later it won its case, and the beaches were legally opened to all races., , Reverse , Biloxi Beach When Gilbert R. Mason, Sr., returned to his home state in 1955 to practice medicine in Biloxi, he had no intention of living under the constrictions of Jim Crow laws. Specifically, he wanted African Americans to be able to enjoy Harrison County's twenty-six-mile beach, the creation and maintenance of which was funded by taxpayers. , In May of 1959 he led nine people onto the public beach just south of the old Biloxi cemetery. The Biloxi police promptly ordered them off and threatened them with arrest. That wade-in was the beginning of Mississippi's first non-violent civil disobedience campaign. In June Dr. Mason and Dr. Felix Dunn organized a group to spearhead this and other concerns: the Harrison County Civic Action Committee, with Dunn president and Mason the whip. They also resurrected a black organization, the Biloxi Civic League, with Mason president. , Mason and other members of the Committee took a petition regarding beach access to the Harrison County Board of Supervisors in October 1959, and were met with hostility and open threats of bloodshed if the group enacted further demonstrations. Still, on April 17, 1960, Mason appealed to others to join him in another wade-in, but no one appeared, and Mason went to the beach alone, where he was promptly arrested. , The next Wednesday Dunn chaired a meeting of the Civic Action Committee, where plans were made for a new Biloxi wade-in on April 24. Volunteers were coached on nonviolent tactics. Dunn notified the sheriff, expecting protection but also expecting arrests by the police. On Sunday, April 24, when Mason and 125 others began the wade-in, they were immediately attacked by a large mob of white people carrying bricks, pipes, baseball bats, and chains. Dozens of sheriff's deputies on the scene-even the sheriff himself-did nothing to stop the white mob. When one deputy tried to arrest Mason, Mason retorted that he had no time to be arrested. He promised to turn himself in after he had tended the wounded. Surprisingly the deputy accepted his promise. The event was labeled "the bloody wade-in" by the press, and the news spread nationally. Riots resulted locally, and two young black men were murdered. , The violence of that day led to targeted boycotts, voter registration drives, and a new Biloxi branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with Gilbert Mason as president. The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against Harrison County, the board of supervisors, the sheriff, the City of Biloxi, the mayor, and police chief for denying Negroes use of the beach. The suit, the first federal challenge of Mississippi's Jim Crow laws, was in litigation for more than eight years, On August 16, 1968, Judge J. P. Coleman wrote the opinion that opened the beaches. . This historical marker was erected in 2018 by the Mississippi Development Authority Tourism Division.. It is in Biloxi in Harrison County Mississippi