Biloxi Civil Rights Movement

The construction of Keesler Air Force Base in 1941 had a significant impact on the civil rights movement in Biloxi. The base brought a federal presence and thousands of Black airmen to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Returning from World War II, Black soldiers were committed to the “Double V” campaign: victory for Black freedom at home, as well as abroad. In the mid-1940s, Biloxi’s Harrison County developed from having no Black voters to having the third-highest Black votership in the state. Yet, increasing power at the polls had not granted Black Biloxians equitable or even legal treatment.

Dr. Gilbert Rutledge Mason, a member of the Gulfport NAACP, knew the traditionally segregated Biloxi beach was public property. It had been restored using federal funds, was maintained by county equipment, and was paid for by a gasoline tax. On 14 May 1959, accompanied by neighbors and his young son, Dr. Mason went swimming in the Gulf Coast waters. When police arrived and instructed the party to leave, Dr. Mason complied. Afterward, having received veiled threats from Herbet McDonnell, Biloxi’s chief of police, and Laz Quave, Biloxi’s mayor, Mason, along with Dr. Felix Dunn of Gulfport, Joseph Austin of Handsboro, and Eulice White of Turkey Creek, crafted a petition to the Harrison County board of supervisors requesting formal desegregation of the beach. Instead, the board’s attorney collaborated with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission to intimidate the petitioners. All received threats. After White was fired and Austin was suspended from work, they withdrew their names from the petition.

Mason began to organize a direct-action protest, urging local church members to join him. On 17 April 1960, Mason returned to the beach alone. This time he was arrested. The judge delayed sentencing, knowing a ruling on the case would give a foundation for further legal action. The arrest nevertheless inspired the Black community. This time, when Mason called for a demonstration, he was not alone. On 24 April 1960, more than one hundred Black citizens traveled from Biloxi’s red-lined district, the so-called “Back-of-Town,” to the beach. Many of the protestors were youth, women, and older Black businessowners who would be more difficult to intimidate economically than family men who were dependent on white employers. The press snapped photos, and the police watched as a white mob attacked the protestors, beating them with sticks and chains, vandalizing their belongings. The police arrested Mason for fighting off a group of men who had jumped two young protestors, Joe Lonberger and Gilmore Fielder. At least thirteen Black Biloxians were injured. Mason, Lonberger, and Gilmore, who were also arrested, received the maximum fine for “disturbing the peace and obstructing traffic.” Other Black citizens were fined lesser amounts. The police charged no one from the white mob.

That week, Biloxi beaches were deserted and businesses closed. Black and white ministers issued joint statements calling for peace. Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, met with Mason and Dunn, collecting affidavits and photographs to file with the US Justice Department. The NAACP dubbed the Biloxi protestors “Freedom Waders” and used the event as a model for protests on segregated beaches in eleven other states. The NAACP chartered a Biloxi chapter in April 1960 with Mason as president. High schoolers Ethel Rainey and James Black, both of whom had participated in the wade-in, became the first president and vice president of the youth branch. Members led a boycott of white businesses whose owners had sold goods used as weapons at the wade-in or who had fired Black employees afterward.

In May 1960 the Justice Department sued the city of Biloxi—the first lawsuit of its kind in the nation—charging county officials and police for complicity in forcing people off the public beach. The lawsuit, US v. Harrison County, would be tied up in legal proceedings for the next eight years. In the meantime, Black Biloxians continued to challenge segregation through other avenues.

The recent suit by the Department of Justice to desegregate schools around southern military bases as part of the plan to hasten “all deliberate speed” had failed. Medgar Evers coordinated a petition to desegregate schools in Jackson, Biloxi, and Leake County. Twenty-three Black Biloxi parents who were relatively safe from economic reprisals—many of whom were veterans or employees of Keesler Air Force Base—petitioned the Harrison County school board in March 1963. Receiving no response, on 4 June 1963, thirteen local families filed for an injunction to stop Biloxi schools from reopening on a segregated basis. Mason’s young son, Gilbert Mason Jr., was named as lead plaintiff. Judge Sidney Mize immediately dismissed the plea. Gilbert R. Mason Jr., et al., v. the Biloxi Municipal Separate School District moved in appeal to the higher court.

Meanwhile, Mason was organizing another demonstration at the beach to protest the delay of justice. Medgar Evers had planned to participate, but only days before, on June 12, he was assassinated in Jackson. On June 23, women planted a double row of hand-stitched black flags along the Biloxi beach, creating a path of mourning. Seventy-one Black protestors arrived and were joined by four white members of Back Bay United Mission Church. The FBI and press were watching. The police cordoned off the area to stop any potential violence but arrested all the protesters for trespassing.

Local white support for civil rights was becoming more visible. Four Methodist ministers from Biloxi and two from Gulfport joined twenty-two others throughout the state, signing the “Born of Conviction” statement, which opposed all discrimination based on race. This included Reverend Roger Gallagher, who had joined the recent wade-in. When Gallagher hosted the ministerial banquet of the state’s NAACP at Back Bay Mission in October 1963, a mob broke up the meeting, and at least one attendee was injured.

In February 1964, Mason v. the Biloxi Municipal Separate School District was remanded by the higher court. In March 1964, Judge Sidney Mize reluctantly issued the injunction, stating that the federal government had made it “compulsory that I proceed.” Mize ordered that at least one grade per year must be desegregated.

After the Civil Rights Act was signed on 2 July 1964, Black Biloxians, including the members of the NAACP Youth branch and Freedom School (opened July 8), formed the Food and Restaurant, Entertainment, and Public Accommodations Committees to test local compliance with the desegregation of public places. Owners generally conformed, although white patrons were sometimes a source of harassment. Mason’s yellow 1964 Mustang was keyed outside the Sun-n-Sand restaurant, food was thrown at Black moviegoers at Saenger Theatre, and students were threatened with loss of their jobs when ordering food at Edgewater Plaza.

The Biloxi Freedom School published its own newspaper, The Biloxi Free Herald, wherein students wrote on topics such as the ongoing segregation of the beach and the murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County that August. Members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality trained Biloxi’s NAACP Youth branch to aid in voter registration drives. The Council of Federated Organizations also piloted a “White Community Project,” in Biloxi with the goal of convincing poor white fishermen that they had more in common and more to gain from an alliance with their Black peers than with wealthy whites.

On 14 August 1964, Lopez Elementary School in Biloxi was the first public school in Mississippi to open desegregated registration, followed by Gorenflo Elementary, DuKate Elementary, and Jeff Davis Elementary in Biloxi. In total, sixteen elementary school students, twelve girls and four boys, broke the color barrier. Seven students desegregated Biloxi’s high schools in 1965. Black students and parents experienced harassment, but not the explicit violence experienced elsewhere in the South.

In 1967, Judge William Cox ruled in favor of Harrison County in US v. Harrison County. On appeal, in August 1968, Judge James Coleman—former Mississippi governor and cofounder of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission—ruled the Biloxi beach was held in “perpetual public ownership.” It would take until 1970 to reverse the trespassing charges against Mason and his peers.

The history of the Biloxi wade-ins was largely neglected until the publication of Mason’s autobiography and anniversary celebrations in the early 2000s. Now, historic markers along the beaches, exhibits in the Biloxi Public Library and in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and a mural by local artist Demetrius Gayden on the exterior of the Inez Cafe, bear testament to the bravery and perseverance of Biloxi’s civil rights activists, many whose names and actions were never recorded.