[L-I] Veteran Freedom Fighter Seriously Ill in Mississippi

It is not easy to see the leaves fall -- whether they are dipped in blood or
yellowed by the many honorable years of great struggle.

Mrs Doris Allison, long-time Mississippi civil rights activist for virtually
all of her almost 90 years is profoundly ill at Jackson.  Her husband, Ben,
also a life-long fighter for fine causes, is even a bit older than she.

I have just spoken at length with them.

We all worked closely together in some hideous and glorious crucibles.  On
May 12, 1963, following extensive consultation in the Black community, we
prepared and sent this letter to all key components of the Magnolia economic
and political power structure.  See the letter at this Link on Lair of
Hunterbear http://www.hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
Here, again from the same page on our website, is the situation in whose
increasingly bloody context we wrote:

"Throwing down the gauntlet to the Mississippi power structure:  May 12,
1963.  I made the motion before a special meeting of the Mississippi  State
Board of NAACP Branches  -- of which I was the only non-Black member --
which sought the broadening of the Jackson Boycott into a  massive
non-violent  protest movement.  My motion was approved unanimously.
Following this,  Medgar Evers and I went to my house at Tougaloo College and
I then typed this individual letter many times: to Governor Ross R. Barnett,
Mayor Allen   C. Thompson, City Commission, Bankers Association, Chamber of
Commerce, Downtown Jackson Association, Junior Chamber of Commerce, and the
Mississippi Economic Council. Medgar and I signed each letter at that point
and he left for Jackson to get Mrs. Doris Allison's signature.  The power
structure, dominated by the powerful White Citizens Council,  stonewalled.
It brought in thousands of (white) " law enforcement officers " -- the many
hundreds of Jackson city police, the thousand member Jackson police
auxiliary,  sheriffs and deputies and constables from every one of
Mississippi's 82 counties, the entire Mississippi Highway Patrol, and
finally the National Guard.  Turning the State Fairgrounds into a gigantic
concentration camp, it arrested thousands of our people.  Klan types poured
into Jackson from the entire region. Medgar was murdered, I was almost
killed, and now -- decades later -- Mrs. Doris Allison and I talk by phone
at least once a week.  My collected papers are held by the Mississippi State
Department of Archives and History (as well as at State Historical Society
of Wisconsin) and I am a Life Member of the august Mississippi State
Historical Society."

Medgar signed the letter as Mississippi State NAACP Field Secretary, Mrs
Allison as President of the Jackson Branch of NAACP, and I signed as the
Advisor to the Jackson NAACP Youth Council.  One month later, Medgar was
shot and killed from ambush.  A week later, I [Chair of the Strategy
Committee of the Jackson Movement] was seriously wounded and nearly killed
in a rigged auto wreck which also badly wounded and almost killed my
passenger colleague, the Reverend Ed King.  My car was destroyed.

Doris and Ben Allison, like our family, are Catholic.  They are Godparents
of my grandson/son, Thomas.

We do not want these leaves to fall.  The Allisons need all our prayers and
good wishes.

Fraternally and In Solidarity -

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR]   Micmac /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]











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