The Birth of a Radical

By Clifton Reive Whitley Jr.

This book traces the development of the author from early childhood through a long chain of experiences ranging from a semi-handicapped child to a combat hero with triple bronze stars. It traces his, the author's, development from a hired sawmill hand to a functioning farming cooperative. The book follows the author from a disenfranchised war veteran to a vice-chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643500454

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The Birth of a Radical

Clifton Reive Whitley Jr.

Copyright © 2018 Clifton Reive Whitley Jr.

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64350-044-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64350-045-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Introduction

A little more than fifty years ago, I read a book and several articles by J. Robert Oppenheimer in which he raised the question What kind of a world would you like to live in? From the time of that reading well into the future, I asked myself that same question. That question is a live one for me even to this very day.

I grew up during the Great Depression. I grew up in a time of racism and lynching, a time of great economic hardship, and among other things, I had a handicapping touch of polio which I outgrew between my seventh and tenth birthdays. I was treated on several occasions by two different local doctors—R. E. Woodruff and R. T. Dabbs. I was eight years of age when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and I was around eleven or twelve when the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My family was among a very few families that had a radio in those days, and many people came to our house to listen to the radio to get the latest news. There were widespread fears that the war would come to our shores.

The thirties and early forties were a tough period of time. We did not fare quite as badly as did many others because we lived off the land. We had cows for milk, meat, and butter, and we had hogs and chickens for lard, meat, and eggs. My parents were great gardeners and farmers in general. We had cornmeal for bread and for the farm animals, and we had several kinds of potatoes, and we had several kinds of fruits and nuts.

For a long time, my family was the only family in the community that had a car. Things like gasoline, grease, and oil were hard to come by. Prewar tires and inner tubes were extremely hard to come by. Many goods like sugar, flour, and cornmeal, among many other commodities, were rationed. The fact that certain commodities were rationed were not all that bad for us because we could only afford to buy a limited quantity and kind of anything.

I was quite close to a cousin who was aboard a ship that went down in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I had may other close kinsfolk who were active duty men during the Second World War. Many of them had frightening stories to tell about their war experiences. These experiences are among many others that burned the question in my heart and soul: What kind of world would you like to live in, I have had many occasions over the years to ask myself that question, and I have tried many times and in various ways to mold an answer. The answer keeps slipping away. After asserting myself as a person, and after many attempts to register and vote, even after my activities during the sixties and seventies as an advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Despite all of my hopes and prayers for a better world, that better world keeps getting further and further away.

The willingness of the United States Congress to deny thousands of Americans healthcare through efforts to repeal Obamacare, and their unwillingness to try and repair Obamacare raises the level of my frustration. It seems as if more things exist to divide us than ever before, and we seem unable to find common ground for unity and cooperation.

Shooting of black persons by city police in Milwaukee, South Carolina, Florida, Chicago, and Texas, the killing and the crushing of persons in the Virginia protest to the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, to say nothing about the injustices related to the removal of illegal aliens in the United States, these events must be coupled with the anxiety arising out of the threat of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea as a reason to pose the question anew—What kind of a world would I like to live in? The answer continues to have the profile of a ghost.

My mother was from a family of teachers, musicians, and preachers. She had a twin brother, Isaac, who died before I was of age. Both she and my father were very level-headed persons, and it was difficult to get either one of them ruffled. She was the onsite administrator of the family as my father worked away from home quite often. My father also became a minister of the gospel and was ordained the year after I was born.

Rebecca, my mother, and her family grew up on what was known as the Watkins Plantation. However, they lived in several locations following the decline of that plantation system. In fact, her family came to own land that was once a part of the Watkins plantation. My father’s family once lived on the Jarmon Plantation, and my grandfather and several of his brothers bought portions of the Jarmon Plantation when that system began to break up. The Jarmon plantation began to break up following the death of Mr. Jarmon who owned it. He was killed by Indians during the civil war. I saw the home where he once lived which was located along what is now known as the Aberdeen Egypt Road. The specific location was where the Booker T. Williams’s farm is now. When I was a boy, the McNairys lived in that same house.

This is an occasion for a statement about the plantation system as it existed in the Southern Mississippi Delta, as opposed to that system in the hills of East Mississippi. The plantation system in the hill country of East Mississippi began a serious breakup in the early part to the nineteen-hundreds, and was all but gone by the nineteen-fifties. Things developed differently in the southern delta. Here, the system continued to exist very much intact through the nineteen-sixties. Another difference between the two systems is that many of the plantation owners or heirs sold land to former tenants or ex-slaves. My grandfather and some of his brothers are examples. My grandfather bought what was known as the Houghton Farm located in the southwest part of the Jarmon Plantation. Uncle Pompey bought a portion of land that joined the Houghton place, north west of the main land of the plantation. Uncle Pompey’s land and that of my grandfather’s joined. Many other examples can be cited. This kind of development never occurred in the southern Mississippi delta.

My parents were ideal parents. I never had reason to suspect any tension between them, and they could not be played against each other. Quite often, if one of us wanted something and went to my mother for it, she would say Go ask your father. And it was the other way around if one went to my father for something. They were not abusive or harsh in any way, yet they provided the necessary structure for our development. We were taught to be creative. We often made many of our toys. We made guitars and many other things that we wanted. We made flutes from bamboo. We made cap guns, slingshots, and many other things. We were good at making toys out of clay. All of us were taught to cook and clean house. We were taught to make our own beds and keep them neat. So I had a head start when I entered the military. All of us had to take music lessons. We were taught by a cousin, Verma Olive whom we called Tiny, and we became quite good at music. The most accomplished one of us in music was my brother, Bernard Whitfield. I was quite good at guitar and piano. I think my brother William Earl was the next most gifted in music. My older sister Narvell and I were good at playing four hand pieces. My sister Zaida Zelend was quite good as a pianist and soloist. My sister Estella Melissa was a registered nurse who also taught nursing in Milwaukee. All of us had something that we could do well, and we all had some mechanical ability. I did a lot of cutting and welding. I was amazed at what heat and fire could do. For a while, I had one of those old things that was fired by coal with a blower that had to be cranked. It was good for forging metal.

When I was around twelve or thirteen years of age, I worked off and on at a sawmill when we were caught up with our work at home. Nearly all signs of the polio had disappeared by this time. I remember that when the mill owner came to ask my father if I and my brother Arzell could work for him, my father told him that he did not mind us working for him if we wanted to, but he did not want me doing certain things. The mill owner, a Mr. Allen, told my father that I would have a nice job riding the carriage. The carriage was a platform that moved back and forth at the operator’s discretion carrying the log that would be run through a rip saw. The person who operated the carriage was called a block setter. The block setter was responsible for securing the log on the carriage with hooks and adjusting the log so as to square it by running it through the rip saw. We would make cross ties and bridge planks, and we would cut other lumber if there was an order for it. The man had a regular block setter, but he always shifted me to that position when I came to work. I was quite good at cutting cross ties or bridge planks and, after a while, I could cut either one to within the tolerance limit without a ruler. The tolerance limit was different for the several types of lumber or ties that we cut.

All of my brothers and sisters, including myself, could read, write, multiply, add, subtract, and divide before we started school. Some of us could count to one hundred in Roman numerals.

My parents were quite fond of books, and they had quite a collection. Many books were acquired as a result of our wrecking old houses to make way for new developments in Aberdeen. We had some of many types of literature—religious, medical, historical, and the list went on and on. I read the Bible through from cover to cover before I finished grade school, and I read it through again when I was in high school. I often worked with my grandfather. He would often get jobs tearing houses down. We were wrecking an old house, employed by a man name Billy Wamble, in an area of Aberdeen where Bender is now located. In tearing this house down, I found a book titled The Jewish Talmud. For me, this was a fascinating book. I was drawn to it because it sounded like the Bible. I read it through while I was in high school, and again when I was in graduate school.

1

Family and Background

I was born to Clifton Whitley and to Rebecca, whose maiden name was Whitfield, near the middle of the Great Depression. I was one of ten children—Narvell, Arzell, Roger Golden, Rebecca, Bernard Whitley, Estella Melissa, William Earl, Zaida Zelend, and Vivian. Vivian was the first one of us to pass away. She was born in 1948 and died in 1949 of pneumonia. Roger Golden passed away in 1994, Arzell in 2003, and Zaida Zelend in 2005. My father was a mild-mannered man with a strong interest in music. He was a blues guitarist, and he also played the harmonica and piano. He was the principal musician at family dances that occurred quite frequently. His father, William Wartime Whitley, was a man of many talents. He was a master carpenter and brickmason, and he was a great dancer. It is said that he could steal the show at family dances with his elaborate and varied dance style. Some of his artistry can still be seen in some of the old houses and the old post office in Aberdeen. My father also had mechanical ability. He loved fishing and he often made his own fishing reels out of tin cans. They actually worked. Clifton Whitley, my father, was born in 1898, and was one of several children born to William Wartime and to Charity, whose maiden name was Jarmon. Charity was of mixed descent. She passed away in 1925. In addition to my father, there were several other children—Tom, Simon, Gold, Earnest, Wade, and John. There were a number of girls—Elizabeth, Selma, Dolly Mae, Rosie, and there were also a number of children who grandfather adopted. When I came on the scene eight years or so later, there was still a great amount of talk about Charity’s legacy, and also about her sister Mary Liza who married into the Binum family. Charity’s first children—Pompey, Hattie, and Henry—were born of a white man. Later, she bore several other children—William Wartime, Sonny, Ernaline, Lugenia, Heavy, a Burnette who moved away to Arkansas, and a James who lived in the White Rock Community. I think his name was Presley. He was called Press James.

William Wartime was a very resourceful man. He and his seven sons built and operated a functioning cotton gin. It was located in the intersection of the old Houston Road and what is now the Aberdeen Egypt Road. This is where I was born, and I lived here until I was three or four years of age. We were forced to move away because of threats from the white community. My grandfather had been accused of stealing and ginning stolen cotton. This was not true. The fact is that the Whitley Gin was a viable competitor with another gin which was about seven or eight miles away. The gin was finally wet on fire, and my grandfather was told not to rebuild it. Despite this threat, my grandfather and his sons began to rebuild the gin. Grandfather lived in the house with us, so our house became a target for reprisals. Our house was shot into several times, our fences were cut, and our livestock driven away. It got so bad that my father and his father decided to move away to a place west on the Whitley Farm near where Pompey lived. We were forced to move away in the heart of one winter which was the hardest I have ever seen.

My mother was from a family of teachers, musicians, and preachers. She had a twin brother, Isaac, who died before I was of age. Both she and my father were very level-headed persons, and it was difficult to get either one of them ruffled. She was the onsite administrator of the family, as my father worked away from home quite often. My father also became a minister of the Gospel and was ordained the year after I was born. Rebecca, my mother, and her family grew up on what was known as the Watkins Plantation. However, they lived in several locations following the decline of that plantation system. In fact, her family came to own land that was once a part of the Watkins Plantation. My father’s family once lived on the Jarmon Plantation, and my grandfather and several of his brothers bought portions of the Jarmon Plantation when that system began a to break up. The Jarmon Plantation begin to break up following the death of Mr. Jarmon who owned it. He was killed by Indians during the Civil War. I saw the home where he once lived which was located along what is now known as the Aberdeen Egypt Road. The specific location was where the Booker T William Farm is now. When I was a boy the McNairys lived in that same house.

This is an occasion for a statement about the plantation system as it existed in the southern Mississippi delta, as opposed to that system in the hill of East Mississippi. The plantation system in the hill country of East Mississippi began a serious breakup in the early part of the nineteen-hundreds, and was all but gone by the nineteen-fifties. Things developed differently in the southern delta. Here, the system continued to exist very much intact through the nineteen-sixties. Another difference between the two systems is that many of the plantation owners or heirs sold land to former tenants or ex-slaves. My grandfather and some of his brothers are examples. My grandfather bought what was known as the Houghton Farm located in the southwest part of the Jarmon Plantation. Uncle Pompey bought a portion of land that joined the Houghton place, north west of the main land of the plantation. Uncle Pompey’s land and that of my grandfather’s joined. Many other examples can be cited. This kind of development never occurred in the southern Mississippi delta.

My parents were ideal