On March 27, 1961, nine students from Tougaloo College staged a sit-in at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, an action long cited as a catalyst for the civil rights movement in Mississippi, Mississippi Today reported. Joseph Jackson Jr., one of the participants, told Mississippi Today he feared for his life while jailed after the protest.
The group — Joseph Jackson Jr.; Meredith Anding Jr.; James “Sammy” Bradford; Alfred Lee Cook; Geraldine Edwards-Hollis; Janice Jackson Vails; Albert Lassiter; Ameenah E. P. Omar (born Evelyn Pierce); and Ethel Sawyer Adolphe — were members of Tougaloo Southern Christian College’s North Jackson Youth Council of the NAACP, Mississippi Today reported. Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, helped organize the sit-in and arranged bail money and legal counsel, the outlet said.
The students first visited the George Washington Carver Library for Black patrons, then entered the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library and began reading and using the card catalog. When librarians called police after the students refused to leave, officers arrested them on charges of breaching the peace, Mississippi Today reported. Jackson, 88, told the outlet, “The silence got to me, because here I am in Mississippi, where Negroes could just disappear.”…