Eddie Carthan interview recording, 1995 August 09
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| Doris Dixon | Would you please state your full name and date of birth? | 0:00 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I'm Eddie Carthan. I was born October 18th, 1949 in Tchula, Mississippi. | 0:10 |
| Doris Dixon | And were you raised in Tchula? | 0:15 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Yes. | 0:15 |
| Doris Dixon | Mr. Carthan, could you please share some of your early memories of growing up in that community, in Tchula? | 0:16 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Yes. When I was young, I guess I can recall some of the activities that I grew up on. My grandfather was a farmer. I grew up on the farm and in those days running the farm was a family activity. Everybody in the family worked, shared in the chores on the farm. Back then we had mules. My grandfather was one of the recipients of the 40 acres and a mule when the slaves were freed during Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln, they had no particular skills other than farming to carry on their livelihoods. | 0:23 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | So the government instituted a program called the 40 acres and a mule, where they would give each Black family four acres and a mule where they could provide a living for their families, and that's how my grandfather acquired his land. And there were many in the community who owned their own land. And I remember we basically, my brothers and I worked on the farm and raised cotton, soybeans and corn and various garden vegetables. It wasn't very much to do, but enjoy the life that's on the farm. So we spent— | 2:01 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I remember it was hot on the farm, the work was very hard, working in the cotton fields in the hot sun. And I remember that there were places that we as Blacks could not go, and there were things that we couldn't do. And it was like a community divided, like here in town it was divided. You had the railroad track that ran through the city, Blacks was on one side and White lived on the other side, whatever certain time you couldn't cross the railroad track unless you were working in somebody house or working in the garden cutting the grass or what have you. | 3:29 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And there were businesses here downtown like a restaurant, I remember it being there, we couldn't go in that. I remember there was a theater here in Tchula. We used to come to Tchula on Saturday. There was a theater downtown where downstairs the Whites would go and they had a sign upstairs was for the Blacks. And that was pretty much all over the south like that, bathrooms. | 4:42 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | There weren't no such things as hotels [indistinct 00:05:31] unless there was a Black hotel, and the only one that I remember at that time was King Edwardson and Jackson. And there were one in Greenwood, I can't recall the name like this instance but there was a Black hotel there. The schools were segregated. I graduated from a all Black school during that year, the year after the desegregation plan was just being implemented in the south and the schools were becoming integrated at that point. | 5:28 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | But all of the institutions, the church, the schools, the families, the home life was totally segregated. You had to say, "Yes, sir." Coming down the streets, if you met a White person, you had to get off the sidewalk and let them go by. If you was driving a vehicle and he was on the road, you couldn't pass him, I don't care how slow he was driving, you had to stay behind him. When the movement came on, took place rather, that's when a lot of violence, a lot of horror and a lot of changes took place. Being very young, I was active in it. | 6:30 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | My grandfather used to take me to the meetings with him. The meeting was held at a church in the [indistinct 00:08:01] community and there were civil rights workers that came from various parts of the north, mostly universities, students who came to organize Blacks in the south to register to vote. And they met tremendous opposition. The only group of people that they could organize was the Black landowners, the Black farmers. There weren't very many factory workers, but those that were present could not participate in the movement because they was afraid of losing their job. | 7:52 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | The first method of defense, of offense that was used to fight against the opponents of the movement were to economic pressure. If you were caught going to a meeting, a court affiliated any kind of way with civil rights activity, you immediately lost your job, your name was put in the papers and you were subject to all kinds of threats by the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Council and groups of that kind. Again, the only group that they could organize, and I always considered them as being the forerunners of the movement were the Black farmers. | 9:04 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | The school teachers couldn't be organized. The Black college professors couldn't be organized. No group other than the Black farmers, the only ones that in the Black community that would organize around the civil rights movement and they serve as the group foundation, as bails bondsman. They provided housing for those who came down to work in the movement. If it had not been that group, we would be in trouble today because they were the only ones who were independent enough and who had the resources to provide facilities for the movement. | 10:34 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And there were some very brave men and women who met the challenges of the day and of their time. And they were very noble men and women. And I remember a lot of things that took place that was, to me, it was the turning point of my life. I was never aware that I had rights until the movement started. I didn't know of any rights. I felt that I had a place and to be in my place was the Black community and the Black family and the Colored section and the Colored this and the Colored that. | 11:56 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And didn't know that that was our tax dollars that was being spent to support their schools and their education and their fine way of living and that kind of a thing. And I remember my uncles and my older brothers had to, once you finished school here in the south, you had to leave Mississippi. And every end of every school year there were lines, I mean long lines of people at bus station and train station. There would be standing up [indistinct 00:13:52] at the bus and train station, people leaving going to the north, leaving the south, going to the north to find jobs and to a better way of life. I mean it was something to see. | 13:00 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | But if they wanted to make some money and wanted to do anything, that's what they had to do. And even during that time, if you wanted to go to school during my lifetime, you could get a college degree. During my early life, particularly my older brothers and my uncles, they couldn't get a master degree in Mississippi if you were Black, you had to leave the state. You could go to—There were Jackson State, Valley State and Alcorn, and those who were fortunate enough to go there. And if they weren't higher education, it was not to be found in Mississippi for them. So those who funded their education, they had to go to schools outside of the state. | 14:14 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I learned more about who I was as a human being as a citizen in the movement then, and I guess that changed the whole course of my life, had a whole perspective on life that all these years, and not just my little life, but life before me, my daddy and my granddaddy and grandmother and all others who never had the opportunity to get education or to go to school or to buy a home, to take a vacation, to live in a hotel or to eat at a restaurant of their choice, that's really something to think about. So it was quite an experience. And I remember when my uncles used to come back home from the north visiting and they would drive all night with the families and was no stopping place for them, no hotel. | 15:26 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | If they slept they had to sleep in the car and sometimes the policeman would stop them and make them get out their cars and roll over on the ground, it was quite an experience. But I think about that and look at young people today who know nothing about that and who has very little appreciation for what the parents went through and very little appreciation for the life and opportunity that they now have before them, it's surprising, but especially to see the way and the kind of response that they are given to themselves and the challenges that they have before them. | 17:07 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Sometimes it seems like it's wasted, but I know it isn't. There wasn't any such thing back in those days if a Black wanted to go to the bank to get a loan to go into business, he couldn't do that. There was a law against him serving on a jury and going to the post to vote or going to the school of his choice. Even going to a church of his choice, it was against the law. I don't care. All of my uncles, they fought in the war. I had had one uncle to come home totally destroyed. His name was Willie Q. Randall. He came home from the army in a wheelchair. I can't prove this, but I think he was one of those who the army experimented on with this new medicine. They had gonorrhea, they used Black soldiers in the army to test this medicine. | 18:56 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And from what my understanding is that it destroyed and killed and maimed all of those that they tested this particular medicine on. And it was done along the time when my uncle was in the military. And so I'm thinking that that is what happened to him. He was one of those who was tested and it—He was just shaking, it destroyed his whole nervous system, and eventually he died at home. I remember a little boy who would run and fetch things for him, get him water and this kind of thing. But those were some of the experiences other than the movement that I had. | 20:55 |
| Doris Dixon | Let's start off by talking about the farm. You grew up on the farm, spent your entire adolescence childhood on the farm? | 22:04 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Yeah. | 22:12 |
| Doris Dixon | How old were you when you started working? | 22:12 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Oh God, six. | 22:14 |
| Doris Dixon | What were your chores? What would you do? | 22:19 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Picking cotton, pulling corn, picking potatoes, peanuts, feeding chickens, feeding cows, feeding the hog. You can call anything and everything that I was big enough to do, they had me to do it. So that's basically what I and my brother did on the farm. | 22:23 |
| Doris Dixon | Was it just the two of you? | 23:11 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | No, I had a first cousin. Our parents, except my father, they moved to the north and my brother and another first cousin, we called him Tutter, and my brother David and I stayed with our grandparents. So David was a couple years older than I. He would plow mules and stuff like that. And after we got older, my grandfather bought a tractor, but he never did get rid of his mules. He thought more of those mules than he did anything else on the farm. You can come there and offer him two Cadillacs for the mule, he would look at you like you was crazy. | 23:11 |
| Doris Dixon | People tried to buy them from him? | 24:47 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I never realized how important those mules were and why he valued those mules. Those mules were the butter and bread to the family that plowed the ground to grow the corn, to do everything there, the mules at that time, that's why they were so important to him. He took care of those mules. Yep, yep. They would bring home the bacon because there was no other way. And then during that time, my grandfather came off of plantations where they had teams of mules, hundreds teams of mules and this was our opportunity for him to do his thing and he got a pair of mules and he had some ground to do it with and all of his life he had to work for on the plantation doing what the other folk had to do. Now he had a choice to do for himself and he worked us. Yeah. (car horn) | 24:59 |
| Doris Dixon | I've been told these were generally pretty tough times economically. Is that true for your family? | 26:27 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | We didn't have a lot, (car horn) but yet still we had everything. We was poor. (car horn) And—Shirley? | 26:27 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | We come a long ways and we had to do a lot of things and there are a lot of things we did without. But in addressing the economic problem, we raised everything we ate except salt and pepper. The only thing my granddaddy had to buy was probably some flour, salt and pepper, everything else we raised, all the vegetables, all the corn, even for cornbread, we had a grinder to make a meal. We had cows, we had hogs, we raised and killed and stored meats on the farm, milk. Oh yeah, they bought sugar. In some cases they didn't have to buy that because we had sugar cane and we even made molasses and we could make wine and everything that we needed on the farm we raised. | 27:13 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | So we never were without food. We were fortunate to be able to raise it up, raise our own one. We didn't have a lot of clothing. At the end of the year, they would buy us a couple pair of jeans and a shirt. My grandmother would make a shirt to wear at school. There wasn't a lot of money made, but things weren't as expensive then as they are now. But we had the basic, and that was about it. We didn't have enough, we couldn't do anything else. It wasn't no such thing as making money to travel or to do anything of that kind, but it was just life on the farm. | 28:37 |
| Doris Dixon | What was your first job out of the farm or in public work, doing work outside the farm? | 30:09 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | During my younger years I worked. After we got through with our farm and after our neighbors got through with their farm, then we were allowed to go out and chop cotton, pick cotton for someone else for some of the plantations and earning some money. After I graduated from high school, I went to college and I would go to Chicago where my uncles live [indistinct 00:31:19] and get a summer job, make enough money to go to school, pay my tuition at Valley State. And I did that every summer, I would work two jobs, sometimes overtime on both of them to earn enough money to pay my tuition to go to Valley State. | 30:29 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And after I graduated to Valley State, I enrolled at Ole Miss Law School. I wanted to be a lawyer, but at that time I guess it was about 30 Blacks in the whole school. It wasn't popular. But anyway, I got drafted in the middle of a semester, that was during the Vietnam War and I had to quit school and I fought the draft and got out of it in the middle of a school term. So I end up getting the job at Saints Junior College. I taught school there a couple of years and I worked for the government as a business developer, a minority business developer for about four years, that was during the early seventies. And I went in for business for myself and I've been in self-employed ever since then. | 31:41 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I got involved with politics. I was elected, first elected to the school board, and then I was elected mayor of Tchula. So that has been the extent of my jobs. I hope to, matter of fact, I'd like to spend at least four or five years doing some teaching at one of the local schools or universities if they would hire me, something in government and history to share with them the real history, some of the experiences that we shared, not just in Mississippi but in the government, the way it really works. I think that that would be of tremendous service and value for me do as a service work and hopefully that I can do it as an instructor. | 33:07 |
| Doris Dixon | You said your grandfather took you to some meetings and there was a church in Milestone. How did your grandfather—Do you know how your grandfather get involved, how he heard [indistinct 00:35:28]? | 35:09 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Well, he got involved, there were the civil workers who came in and they started campaigning in the community and my grandfather was called and told to come to a meeting and he went and they had meetings every Wednesday night at this church in Milestone, and my grandfather would go. At these meetings they would make arrangements and have discussions and form strategies around getting Blacks to vote. That was the gist of the whole meeting. And there were 13 who was the first in the state of Mississippi to go to the courthouse to register to vote. And when they went, their names were published and a couple of them houses was bombed. | 35:27 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And there was one particular guy by the name of Hartman Turnbow, he shot four or five of them. He returned the fire and discovered that it was the sheriff and his deputy who did the looting, who came down to bomb his house and those that was with him that was wounded, two of them was killed. They took him out of town to the hospital, hospitalized and staying [indistinct 00:37:46], but Turnbow shot him. Next day they came and arrested Hartman Turnbow for bombing and shooting into his own house and he was convicted, ended up going to federal court and they end up got it thrown out. | 37:07 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | But Hartman Turnbow and Fannie Lou Hamer were very famous people. He lived right down the street from us and they were very active in the movement and they went across the country making speeches and talking about the movement. They took a risk and a lot more of them risked their lives for what they believe in, so it paid off in the long run. There were a lot of marches, a lot of activities that we went to jails on several occasions. I remember when Martin Luther King first came to Mississippi and we went down to Jackson for some kind of protest. I was real young, I didn't know exactly, but anyway, they end up putting us all in jail, a bunch of kids. So we were in jail three days until our parents and the farmers came and got us out. | 38:19 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And then we used to go by carloadsand did what we call canvasing. And that was to go into the communities, the plantations, and encourage and teach Blacks how to register and how to vote. They had this particular form and a test that they had to take in order to become a registered voter. And we had been trained how to teach them to pass the test and to register to vote. A lot of times when we go into new communities, we would be recognized and the Whites would get in their cars and get behind us or get the guns and run us out. So we would go back and change our strategy, go ahead at night or whatever, but we would get the job done and we were able to get a lot of people registered eventually, many of them were just was afraid they weren't going register under no circumstances. It was too risky, too scary. They didn't want to lose their jobs. It wasn't a safe thing to do. | 40:14 |
| Doris Dixon | You remember Rudy Daniels? | 42:27 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Who? | 42:38 |
| Doris Dixon | Rudy Daniels who just tried to organize [indistinct 00:42:42]. | 42:38 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | 42:38 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:42:45]? | 42:38 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | No, it was Rudy Shields. | 42:44 |
| Doris Dixon | Shields, yeah. | 42:45 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Yeah, I used to work with Rudy. Rudy Shields, quite a character. | 42:48 |
| Doris Dixon | Why do you say that? | 43:00 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Well, he was very brave. He was very determined. He was a great organizer. He went to jail so many times. He led a lot of marches, a lot of demonstrations for Black rights. I've always admired him, a very brave man who devoted his life to that kind of work. Yep. I knew him very well. | 43:00 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:43:30] understand the context in which the movement [indistinct 00:43:44] or just in general, can you define what you consider to be your neighborhood [indistinct 00:43:47]? | 43:29 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | In what respect? | 43:47 |
| Doris Dixon | This was your grandfather's farm, I guess I'm wondering what you considered to be neighborhood, who you considered to be your neighbor. | 43:56 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Oh, well, we were out in the country, there were, today I guess you would use your word, subdivisions. There were communities. I live in a Choctaw community. And the Choctaw community there were, I guess it was an all Black community, and then there was the Marcella community, which joins the Choctaw community. All these communities was all Black and they were all landowners, the majority of them, Black landowners, and our neighbors, they were farmers also. And we grew up with them and we all went the same church, same school. We all were farmers. We all knew each other and we all helped each other. | 44:08 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | If they were killing hogs down at the Davis's on a certain day, we would join in and help them. If the Randos had to finish picking their cotton in there and the Wilson had not, we were go and help them in their field picking their cotton. If anybody got sick, whatever happened, everybody would go to that person's house in that community. It was a very close community and everybody respected each other and everybody raised children then, other words, if I went down to my neighbors— | 45:21 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | My parents, if I did something that was wrong, they would whoop me there. Then I would get back home, and when they find out that I did something down there wrong, they would whoop me again. | 0:01 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | So that's why I say everybody raised everybody else's kids. Whenever a grown person saw a kid going wrong, they got on that kid right then and right there. They would admonish him, they would punish him, whatever the situation calls for. We were our brother's keeper. So it was a—And then on the weekends, the boys would get together, we would go down probably ride horses or ride cows, chase chickens, or do whatever, played ball or whatever we thought was—jump in the lake and go swimming. I'd go hunting, I'd go out in the woods and look for wild berries and different things. It was really interesting and a good life in terms of being raised in the country. | 0:17 |
| Doris Dixon | Mm-hmm. When you look back on it, were there any things that—you said it was a good life. Were there things that you [indistinct 00:02:14]? | 2:04 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Oh, naturally. I regret having worked so hard to be so young and having to do without a lot of things and I didn't have the opportunity. But even all of that helped me a lot. Once we left the Choctaw and came to town, that when we would meet the kind of racist stuff. Out there ain't nothing but Black folks no way. So I didn't see racism until I came to Tchula, Lexington, Greenwood, wherever White folks were. | 2:17 |
| Doris Dixon | What would happen when you came to town? | 3:16 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Well, you would go in their stores and have to deal with them. And as long as you stayed in your place, there were no incidents and so you weren't totally comfortable in that atmosphere until you got back home. It's just like, then you're in a community where you feel a lot protected and a lot more freer and that kind of thing. And you're always were conscious of not only doing something wrong, but of being accused of doing something wrong. So you want to get what you wanting and get back out in the country. There wasn't a lot to do, if you had enough money to go to a movie, that was exciting. | 3:32 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | So that's about the experiences in terms of what things were like. But what they were lack during the movement is a whole different ballgame. Once you were known to associate with the movement, you were considered a troublemaker and they would treat you as such. You would be stopped, harassed by the state troopers, the policeman, the sheriff department. You couldn't do business as normal people, you were blocked everywhere. Seemed to be a block where you went because they would try to sabotage whatever activities you were engaged in, you would meet this opposition. | 4:58 |
| Doris Dixon | Conclude, could you share me some of your experiences with [indistinct 00:06:37] politics? How did that evolve and then how [indistinct 00:06:41] . | 6:31 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Okay, that's a long story, but I'll make it as— | 6:45 |
| Doris Dixon | No, you don't have to. Don't feel that you have to rush for me. | 6:49 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | I was elected mayor of Tchula. And in 1977, the first in Delta and perhaps the youngest, I would guess I shouldn't have been more about 27. That was a challenge. A lot was accomplished, we were able to do a lot of things here in the town, but by being the first Black, I had to go through this ice breaking ceremony and there were challenges on every hand. As if though I was a threat to the White community. We didn't have doctors, we brought in a clinic, there were housing programs. We paved the streets, we fixed houses in the Black community. Most of the work that needed to be done was in the Black community. And we wrote grants and got proposals, got grants to do various things in the community. And at that point we were progressing. | 6:57 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | We got off to a fast start, we were doing quite well and we were hiring Black policemen and Black [indistinct 00:08:57] workers and Black people in the sanitation department and we were letting bids out to Black contractors and all of this was a threat. And so there had been such a challenge that I spent most of my time in court having the right as mayor to do certain things, being challenged to do certain things. Eventually there was an issue came about the chief of police, I had hired a Black chief of police. There were one White guy on the Board of Aldermans who had the support of two of the Black folks on the board and the White community. They wanted the White chief of police, so they didn't get a chance to hire him. So they had a meeting outside at a local store, really wasn't a meeting, they just told the guy who was the former police chief before I took office, told him to resume his job. So he went down to city hall and told the policemen that was there that he was back in charge. | 8:44 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | They called me that night and said that they had been run out of the police department. And I knew that this meant trouble. And so I went down along with some deputies to meet him and his folks and I asked him to leave, that he was not the chief of police and that nobody had hired him and he refused to do that. So we got into a scuffle and he got hurt and I carried him to the hospital and they served him and I brought him back, carried him to his house. The next day they arrested me for simple assault on a police officer. And I went to court and I was given three years in the state penitentiary for simple assault on a police officer. And that's how I was taken out of office. | 11:01 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | There were so many things that had taken place, so many challenges. One night the governor declared the town under martial law. And that's when the whole community got involved, highway patrolmen had lined up and I called Highway Commissioner, told them that they did not have the authority to declare the town under the martial law only I or the sheriff could do that. I told them that they had 15 minutes to get out of town, if not, there would be trouble. Oh, I didn't say it that way. I said I was not responsible for what would happen, but I would hold them responsibly for what would happen. We had a standoff, but after 15 minutes, all of them, there's about 15 cars, four people in each car, all of them got out of town. And city hall was locked several weeks, they wouldn't let me in, the town shut down. We ended up going to court over veto and we won that issue. | 12:41 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | There were several charges brought against me giving false information, to a bank and one of the aldermans who was in opposition of me got killed at a convenience store, I was charged with his murder. Someone robbed the convenience store and shot him in the process. He worked at a convenience store right downtown. And because he was in opposition with me, that was another charge. So I went to court on that and won. And that's when the national media and the national tension focused on Tchula because all of these charges and me being the first Black mayor and, excuse me, it's gotten to the point where we had become extremely poor because everything we had was going into legal fees to fight battles in court. | 14:46 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | But eventually I ended up serving 18 months in jail and was taken out of office after serving three years and 11 months in office of a four year term. So I got out of jail and—Ramsey Clark, who was President Kennedy, Attorney General, took on the case and got me out of jail. So that pretty much ended my political career. | 16:10 |
| Doris Dixon | How would define your basis for a political career? | 17:02 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | It was extremely good. That was the only means of—The only bases I had to thank. However, there were some Black in the area situation, there are Blacks who did not support me, but the majority Blacks did. Many of them was afraid. See, I would really challenge them. I would take it to them. I was making certain and sure that I was within the law and I was on the right side and having been advised by my attorney. They had to deal with me, it wasn't no boy, I was the mayor, I act like it. And they couldn't deal with that. | 17:06 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And those that were afraid to identify with me was—Again, they used the economic pressure. You would lose your job if you're associated with Eddie. I used to have to wear a gun in the courtroom and on the streets. I was threatened because of my not allowing them to—they wanted me to do things like they were done and I didn't go along with that. And after they couldn't bribe me to do what they wanted done, be their little boy then they resolved to the charges, that kind of tactic. And they brought them until they got me out of office. You can only defend yourself so far and they have a way with the system where they could manipulate the system to get whatever out of it that they want. And so they did that and the only aim and objective that they had was to get me out of office by whatever means they could. | 18:20 |
| Doris Dixon | You mentioned the town being shut down, was there a [indistinct 00:20:05]? | 19:55 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Well, the alderman, there was a split between my board. Half of the board was supportive of me and the other half was supportive of this White regime and they refused to pay the bills of the city and they refused to.—We have a meeting where we present, I as the administrator and mayor, present all of the bills and all of the months work to the board for approval. And they would either not meet except on the days that they had to meet and when they had to meet, they wouldn't vote for anything. They even locked the city hall to refuse me access to the city hall. And the state locked for, oh, about a month. | 20:07 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Again, I have never been on a plantation, I was raised on my grandfather's farm and I guess that had a lot to do with my independent thinking. And being raised on the farm, being taught how to run a business, take care of yourself and be self-supportive and self-sustaining. And along with the movement I learned my rights as individual, I went through the whole process of the movement, the educational, the legal, as well as the civil rights movement itself in terms of what it taught. That gave me a tremendous foundation basis in terms of my history, my knowledge, my understanding and outlook and my perspective on where the Black community should go. And I was pretty much aware of my rights and aware of where I wanted to go. | 21:53 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | And with all of the training I had in organizing and planning and proposal writing and that kind of thing, I took all these qualities, I viewed them as qualities, into that office with me. And to be challenged by the White forces was nothing new to me, I knew that would come. So my thing was to be prepared to meet the challenge and certainly my independence did not prevent me from being reasonable and it only wanted me to do the right thing as I saw it for the entire community. This community has never had a Black leader, there has never been a Black elected to anything in the Delta. I was the first and naturally I would be challenged. | 23:22 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | But I wouldn't take on a role as being a figurehead. I only wanted the respect that they would give any other mayor they had. But by me being able to get the kind of support and getting the various programs implemented in the town, they saw all that as a challenge to the White power structure. And so it had to be—So they did what they had to do and I did what I had to do. I wasn't about, then and never to give in to—I even compromised those kinds of principles to give in to a power structure, to give in to any of its racist, segregationist ideals or anything of the kind. We were a predominantly Black community and I felt that the participation should reflect the community. And it had been the opposite for as long as the city been in existence. And now all of a sudden they didn't want to accept the change. And so we fought for what we thought was right. | 24:48 |
| Doris Dixon | [indistinct 00:27:24]. | 27:13 |
| Eddie J. Carthan | Okay. | 27:24 |
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