As far as race relations go, if the 1960’s had a face it would be of someone doing something in the greens. From 1960 to 1971 there were over 750 black protest across the country from Harlem to Watts. More cities were on fire than folks wearing Jheri Curls at a Rick James concert smoking refer and drinking bumpers. Speaking of Jheri Curls, I’ll bet some of you didn’t know the style did not originate in the black community. Nope that hot oily mess came from a white guy named Jheri Redding. Man I hated that style, folks walking around with buckets full of grease in their hair and getting grease and oil all over everythang. Now on the women it was kinda cute, but on them long necked, razor burned, kaleidoscope dressing hard rock brothers, it was an absolute mess! I mean some of them folks had enough grease in their hair to ring that shat out and give yo car an oil change. Anywho, so yeah, the sixties were lit… figuratively and literally. During this time of social upheaval many unknown hero’s were sacrificed at the altar of racial equality. This article is about one of them… Louis Allen.
Stick A Chopstick In It
Allen was born in 1919 in Liberty, Mississippi. I am taking license and saying he was born in Liberty, but history records him as being born in Amite County, Mississippi, of which Liberty is the county seat. Now that’s probably more accurate because we know good and darn well that ain’t no black baby gonna be born in no hospital in Liberty, Mississippi in 1919… not on this earth. If you was born down South before the 60’s, your birth certificate probably doesn’t even have a city name on it.. you was born in the country somewhere… and it better be during the daytime because they ain’t want to hear that you made a mistake and thought you was outside the city limits… anywho, so yeah he was born down there in a time when Confederate soldiers were still walking around singing Dixie and reminiscing about the time they almost got one…
CS #1: “Arnold why did you shoot at that black fella?”
Arnold: “Cause he was looking at dat white woman!!”
CS #1: “Arnold that ain’t no white woman! That’s Miss Lily’s dress… she hung it out to dry!!
At the age of 23, Allen enlisted in the Army and served at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. That was in 1943 during WWII. Camp Shelby was where they kept prisoners of war. They kept Japanese and German prisoners at the camp. Of course we know the stories about black soldiers being treated as second class citizens when it came to German prisoners. German soldiers were allow to go into businesses blacks were not allowed in… yes they took German POWs into the town on occasion.
Waiter: Hey Sarge, ain’t that the kraut that shot you in yo back and wrote “Heil Hitler Mofo” on yo cheeks in indelible ink..?
Sarge: Yeah that’s him.. had to bring these guys to eat here.. they burned down the mess..
Waiter: Well you know dem black boys can’t come in here.. we don’t serve they kind..
Sarge: Pvt Chitlin.. take the squad down to Mammy’s and git yall selves a big slice of watermelon… on me!!
So yeah…. and as for the Japanese, well lets just say… stick a chopstick in it cause they was done. They down there in Faqdat, Mississippi, surrounded by a bunch of big muscular turnip eating, alligator fighting, red clay dirt racist of the 4th degree, accused of cutting off white men’s heads with Samurai swords all over the Pacific, in a war preceded by a godless sneak attack on grandma’s holy Sunday? Well yeah… that was pretty much they azz. I mean black folks was a couple rungs above them… and lets not forget where Camp Shelby was located, near Hattiesburg, Mississippi where there’s a confederate statue on every corner and near Money, Mississippi where a young boy was lynched and killed by the name of Emmett Till. So Allen was down there serving his time with these types of folks and when he got out he opened a logging business. He did quite well and was able to buy some land and cattle. He married and had four children.
United States Of Mississippi
Back during this time, there were two Constitutions.. the United States Constitution and the State of Mississippi Constitution. The preamble of the Mississippi Constitution started off with the words.. “If we the people see you coming out of a voting booth, than bullets gonna fly!!” Okay it didn’t say those words exactly, but it was implicit in its meaning. It included things in it to prevent African Americans from voting such as poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy test. I wrote a little something about these mechanisms here. So in the early sixties the NAACP and SNCC opened local chapters down there with the aim of registering black voters. They were headed by Bob Moses and EW Steptoe respectively. Of course when they did that.. as the racist Tippett said in “12 Years A Slave”… “now you done went and did something!” A white mob attacked Moses led by the Sheriff’s cousin, Billy Jack Caston. Canton was also the son in-law of EH Hurst, a bonafide triple star racist with high hanging noose and burning church platinum honors from the local White Citizens Council of which he wa a member. Hurst will be playing a prominent role in this story. Well after the mob attack, Moses filed charges against Canton for assault. It was the first time that a black man had taken a white man to court in Amite County, Mississippi and lived to actually go into the courtroom and testify… true story. The all white jury acquitted Canton and immediately afterwards the police escorted Moses to the county line… the official report is that they did it for his own safety. Personally they wouldn’t have to tell me to leave town.. I would of had my stuff in a suitcase when I went in there because win or lose.. they was gonna insist I leave town anyway. Sheriff: ” Good you have your bags with you.. cause you know you gonna have to leave town.. right boy?” Moses left but Steptoe of SNCC stayed and put the mouth on Hurst and the other racist to the Justice Department about the intimidation tactics they were using against black people trying to register to vote in Liberty. Meanwhile NAACP member Herbert Lee had taken up where Moses had left off. He continued to register voters. He was under constant pressure and threats from the white community because of his activities. Racist: “Boy you know I bought three ropes at the General Store this week.. and I only got one left…” Anywho, he kept right on registering folks until…
Since 1890…
On the morning of September 25, 1961, Lee was transporting cotton to a cotton gin, when he was confronted by Hurst and several others. Hurst was brandishing a pistol. Now although Lee might have told him to pucker up and just do it during the confrontation, it cost him his life. Hurst killed him in cold blood with a single shot to the head. Among the bystanders who witness the murder was one Louis Allen. When a coroners inquest was conducted just a few hours later, in a courtroom filled with armed white men, Allen and several of the witnesses were pressured into supporting Hurst’s claim that he killed Lee in self defense. Racist Sheriff Dropping Bullets On The Floor One At A Time: “Tell the court what you saw boy…” Hurst was acquitted. After the inquest Allen later told his story to Julian Bond.. yep that Julian Bond, co-found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond told Allen to tell his story to the FBI. You see Hurst got off without a trial because Allen told the inquest that Lee had attacked him with a tire iron and that the gun went off accidentally during the skirmish. The fact of the matter was that Hurst went up to Lee and after a short exchange of words, shot him in the head. Anywho, Bond must have went to the Justice Department with the information and word on the street was that a federal jury was considering charges against Hurst. Allen then went to the FBI and the US Commision On Civil Rights asking for protection if he testified. The Justice Department refused, telling him they could not offer him protection if he testified. Allen stuck to the original version of the story exonerating Hurst. Now for those of you who live in a little town and who know how quickly word of mouth gets around… well that’s exactly what happened to Allen. Word got around that he went to Jackson, Mississippi and Jackson, Mississippi was where the Justice Department was located. So one more thing before we go on because it has some bearing on the story and how people knew that Allen had spoken to the FBI. Hurst was a congressman in the Mississippi House Of Representatives and of course people in that body had ties to the FBI and Justice Department. Anywho, although Allen did not cooperate with the FBI, just the fact that a “boy” would go over their heads and mouth off about Liberty town business to outsiders was a violation of the Mississippi Massa Act of 1961. Sec1. “Nigras that run and tell it to the Great White Massa in Jackson is punishable by death or imprisonment, most likely both.” So yeah, when Allen got back he was shunned by the white community. They stop speaking to him and threatened anybody who bought lumber from him. In August 1962, Allen and two other black men who tried to register to vote at Amite County Courthouse were shot at by an unknown assailant. No black person had been allowed to vote in Amite County since 1890. Now they were already mad at Allen, but him trying to vote was the last straw. Allen was again threatened, this time by a white business man. “Louis, the best thing you can do is leave. Your little family—they’re innocent people—and your house could get burned down. All of you could get killed.” Our grandparents and our great grandparents were some strong people. They endured and put up with that crap all their lives.. because knowing me, I would have pack my shat and left after Hurst shot Lee in the head.. on mama… Anywho, Allen didn’t leave.
Sooner Or Later
What Allen did do was report the incident and other death threats to the FBI. Why I don’t know… seeing that they had already turned down protecting him if he testified in the killing of another black man. What the FBI did next was put a nail in his coffin. They referred the case to the local Sheriff Office in Liberty. What the FBI didn’t tell him was that they had information on a plot to kill him and that the local sheriff was involved in it! After the referral, Allen became the main focus of Sheriff Jones. In later reports by Allen’s son, Hank Allen, he recounted how Jones would arrest his father on trumped up charges and had once beat him outside their home. In August of 1962, Jones broke Allen’s jaw with a flashlight. Now Moses who had left liberty a long time ago, was also writing the Justice Department. In one of his letters he told them that Sheriff Jones father was a high-ranking Exalted Cyclops in Liberty’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and that Jones himself was a Klan member and that there was a plot to kill Allen. He had sent those letters to the Justice Department in 1961. That’s how they knew about the plot to kill Allen after he complained to them the second time around. Anywho, like I said, Jones broke Allen’s jaw with a flashlight in August of 1962 and Allen was arrested for disorderly conduct or something. After he got out he filed a complaint with the FBI again. He went before an all white jury who summarily threw out the charges. That’s one of the privileges you get for voting, having representatives of your community on the jury. If you are not on the voter rolls, you can’t be on the jury rolls. It was just a matter of formality to go before a court after being charged for a crime by a black accuser. Members of their community were going to let them get off. So anyway, Allen had to stay in LIberty because he was responsible for the care of his elderly parents and moving would have presented them with a undue hardship. In the meantime Allen was starting to become a man of stature in the black community, enduring the abuses and death threats of the racist… and they didn’t like it. One of his associates, Leo McKnight who worked with him and had tried to register twice with him to vote was killed in a suspicious fire.. along with his family. Local blacks believed it was a murder. That case was never investigated. In November of 1963 Sheriff Jones arrested Allen again, this time saying that he was bouncing checks all over the place and was carrying a concealed weapon. They threatened to put him in a small Mississippi jail cell with huge muscular white racist’s that benched pressed 500 pounds and ate barbed wire fences for breakfast… they was gonna tell them he was talking about they mama… and then cut off the lights… Okay they ain’t do that, but they did say he was going to do 3-5 years. Of course the charges were a lie and the NAACP put up his bail. He was subsequently released. A couple of months later his mother died and Allen decided to move from Liberty because the racist were determined to see him swinging from up “there”. On the night before his departure, January 31, 1964, Allen was ambushed at the border of his property. Killed by two shotgun blast to the head, he was later discovered by his son. In 2011 Allen’s son in an interview said Sheriff Jones told his mother: “If Louis had just shut his mouth, that he wouldn’t be layin’ there on the ground. He wouldn’t be dead.”
Gone But Not Forgotten
It wasn’t until 1994 that a thorough investigation in the death of Louis Allen was conducted. It was not conducted by Justice Department, but rather by a history professor at Tulane University. In the years following his research, it pointed to Jones as the likely suspect in the killing. The professor conducted a taped recorded interview with Rev. Alfred Knox Sr. in 1998 in which the pastor explained that Jones had recruited his son-in-law, Archie Lee Weatherspoon to kill Louis Allen. When Weatherspoon refused Jones killed Allen himself. Both Weatherspoon and Knox have since died. In 2007 the FBI reopened the case when they started investigating civil rights era cold cases. Its staff identified Jones as the likely culprit but was unable to gather enough evidence to prosecute. In April of 2011, 60 Minutes, a news show, sent reporters to Liberty to interview Jones. Jones denied killing Allen and when asked about his membership in the KKK… he took the Fifth. Jones died July 26, 2013. Hurst died April 20, 1990. The murder of Louis Allen has gone into the history books as unsolved.
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