McComb Bombings

McComb Bombings. Mississippi Freedom Trail. During the summer of 1964, McComb was known as "the bombing capital of America." The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan joined the more militant United Klans of America in a bombing campaign targeting Black homes and businesses regardless of whether their owners were active members of the movement or not. From June through September of 1964, McComb's Black community endured over a dozen bombings and numerous acts of violence., Side B , McComb became one the first strongholds for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi. Many Black landowners like C.C. Bryant and E.W. Steptoe were established members of the local NAACP before SNCC arrived in 1961. Through their leadership, a system of grassroots organization was created that was facilitated SNCC's early success and challenged the White power structure of McComb, which was explicitly White supremacist. Local police chief George Guy headed a local branch of Americans of the Preservation of White Race. In 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) launched the Mississippi Summer Project and made McComb a central organizing site. That summer and fall, the United Klans of America used violence and explosives to intimidate the local Black community and thwart the freedom movement., As Freedom Summer organizing gained momentum in McComb, White resistance intensified as several Black homes and businesses were bombed, often regardless of whether or not their owners actively supported the movement. In the early hours of July 26, 1964, as a suspicious vehicle approached the home of C.C. Bryant's brother, Charles Bryant. Charles's wife Ora, a movement activist, fired her shotgun at the car as the perpetrator lobbed a bomb at their home. This led to supporters and families organizing community self-defense groups that took turns guarding each other's houses at night., Many within the Black community and COFO perceived the police to be in cahoots with the Klan's bombing campaign. When the home of activist Aylene Quin was bombed on September 20, local police falsely accused Quin of doing it herself. In the tumultuous aftermath of the bombing, police jailed numerous activists. Twenty-four people ultimately were charged with "criminal syndicalism" due to their involvement in the movement. , Quin, Matti Dillon, and Ora Bryant went to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Lyndon Johnson and members of Congress to call national attention to the bombings. After the New York Times editorialized about the violence in McComb, the editor of the McComb Enterprise-Journal, Oliver Emmerich, began to write about the harmful effects of the White violence and organized White community leaders to speak out against the Klan's campaign. In response, Klan members vandalized the newspaper's office and burned a cross in Emmerich's yard., When Governor Paul B. Johnson threatened to send in the Mississippi National Guard to restore order, eleven members of the Klan were finally apprehended for the bombings. On October 23, 1964, nine of the accused were brought to court. Though they admitted their guilt, Judge W.H. Watkins gave them suspended sentences and released them on probation claiming that they had been "unduly provoked" by civil rights activists.