Word: boycotts
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Last summer, in a small town in Mississippi, a white policeman shot and killed a 21-year-old black youth, rekindling for three months the fear, tension, confusion and racism of the 1960s South, and triggering an economic boycott that recalled the early civil rights days of the Freedom Riders...
...July 10, the United League of Marshall County, a black political and civil rights organization claiming 4000 members, began an organized boycott and picketing of the 19 white-owned stores in Byhalia. Alfred Robinson, president of the organization, told reporters that the United League formed the boycott because the Byhalia mayor "showed no interest in the killing. It took nearly two weeks to make an arrest in this case, and the county attorney refused to talk with us about...
...boycott almost immediately became surprisingly effective. The merchants reported that business fell off by as much as 95 percent as virtually no blacks and only a few whites ventured into the stores. Some stores were forced to close completely...
...blacks, however, viewed the situation not as an isolated incident of a police killing, but rather as an example of far-reaching social, political and economic discrimination. Soon after the boycott started, and when it became clearly effective, the United League vastly expanded the number and scope of their demands. Not only did they want Hanna and the other Byhalia policeman indicted for murder, they also demanded representation of blacks on the town board of aldermen, the county supervisor's board, and the local electric utility; an improved local sewage system; the addition of blacks to the police force; action...
...blacks maintained that the boycott of businessmen was justified because it was literally the only avenue of protest they had; without social or political power in the town, it was both logical and necessary for them to bring their strong economic power to bear. A number of the merchants, they said, were members of the board of aldermen, and if substantive changes were ever to come in Byhalia, the merchants had to be pressured. If the merchants could not make the changes themselves, then they at least had the social and political capability to pressure those that could...