Word: byhalia
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...early morning hours of last June 29, Butler Young Jr., a 21-year-old black laborer, was arrested by two white police officers from the town of Byhalia, Miss. (pop. 750), for hit-and-run driving. With the Byhalia police was a black deputy sheriff from adjacent DeSoto County, where the alleged hit-and-run incident had taken place. The sheriff climbed into the back of the Byhalia officers' car along with Young, and the three policemen set off to take their prisoner to jail. Young never made...
...incident has grown one of the longest civil rights boycotts in Mississippi history. Organized by the United League of Marshall County, a local civil rights group that claims to have 4,000 members, the boycott has been nearly 100% effective for eight months. It has cut business in some Byhalia stores by as much as 75%. Six white merchants have already declared bankruptcy, and others may soon follow...
Three weeks after Young's death, an all-white county grand jury refused to return indictments against the police officers involved. Until indictments are forthcoming, the town's blacks insist they will continue to shop in other towns, including Memphis, Tenn., only 30 minutes from Byhalia...
...eventually lost in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Outside the courts, the league's leaders have been threatened and even shot at. The boycott's supporters think that Mississippi Senator James Eastland, powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has intervened in the Byhalia situation. They insist that Eastland has pressured the Justice Department to try to break up the boycott...
...still unresolved story of dusty, hot little Byhalia should belong to a traumatic and unhappy part of southern history. But the death of Butler Young, Jr., the tragedy of Hubert Mills, the threats to Alfred Robinson, the bewilderment of Dudley Moore indicate otherwise...