Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote

Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies

by Gordon A. Martin Jr.

Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when, in 1961, the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While thirty percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South, and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys. Gordon A. Martin, Jr., then a newly-minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial.

Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi and interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 27, 2010

About the author

Judge Gordon A. Martin, a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, is a noted expert on civil rights and juvenile justice, having worked for Robert Kennedy's Justice Department prior to practicing law in Boston and becoming a judge. He is now an adjunct member of the faculty at New England School of Law.

Reviews

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in history heaven while reading this book. This is a very well written and engagingly told true story. It focuses on a specific case: the United States v. Theron Lynd, the early 60s, Mississippi, but it tells so much about that time and place and the experiences of African-American vs. white citizens and their attempts to register as voters.

The author inserts just enough of himself to give the account a personal flavor and not one iota more. He was a young attorney involved in the case. He makes the brilliant move of using the interviews with the witnesses (black and white) for them to tell their own stories. I’m so glad all their stories were brought to light in this book. I admit I knew nothing about any of them before I read it. Their stories and the way they are presented make for an informative and emotionally moving reading experience.

It’s fascinating, amazing, and humbling to learn the number of people it took, their persistence, dedication, and bravery, to make changes happen, for them do all they could to become registered voters and to vote, and their efforts certainly eventually benefited us all. A huge number of people and much legislation contributed to the civil rights movement and the fruition of voting rights, and some of those people and what they went through are described in these pages; it brought home to me how true it is when people say we are beholden to many who have come before us.

The book covers many people in some depth, from before and during the case, and then the author went back to do interviews with them years after the original events. So the reader gets to know witnesses, lawyers, county officials, etc. people who were directly or tangentially involved, including many personal details of their backgrounds and families. It’s an effective way to approach a big topic: make it personable and relatable. There are so many memorable people involved with this case, heroes and villains both. While it’s primarily about the single case, it’s also about other cases, the civil rights and voting rights movements (and the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act), the entrenched behaviors and values of many in the populace at that time, the pervasive racism, and the systematic refusal to let certain African-American citizens exercise their right to vote. It read like a fiction book at times (I kept thinking of Atticus, with whom I’ve always been enamored, because in this book I also found lawyers, real lawyers!, I could admire and find honorable.) At times reading this was jarring; language no longer in vogue is used, including one word that’s hateful, but it worked here because it brought me right to that time and place, and while I was never there this account did an exceptional job of making me feel as though I was right in the middle of what went on.

Reading this book was fun for me because I was alive in the late 50s and the 1960s, but I was a child when the primary events described were happening. But I knew about Earl Warren, LBJ, JFK, and I definitely learned quite a few details about the formation and development of the KKK. (There are lots of dates in the book and my birthday came up more than once, so I’d think about how old I was (young!) and think about what my life was like then, and what was going on in the wider world at the same time, events about which I was then unaware.)

There are ample notes, a rather extensive bibliography, and an index in the back of the book. I appreciated the photos that are in the middle of the book; they gave faces to some of the names.

In addition to learning about this case and the people involved with it and some more information about injustices in Forrest County, Mississippi, I learned one more piece of information about FDR that isn’t so complimentary. My father idolized FDR because of what he did for job growth during the Great Depression. Years ago when I found out he didn’t step up to help European Jews during the Holocaust, I was disillusioned. Now, in this book, I got to find out that he also did not support a particular piece of anti-lynching legislation. So disappointing, yet I found it very interesting to learn this.

I’m hoping that there will (soon) be a large print edition of this book. I know a ninety-seven-year-old legally blind man who would love it! For now, I’ll just have to tell him about it, and alert him if I learn that the author (or any of those involved) will be on the radio, television, or will be speaking locally.

My mother did have to pass a difficult citizenship test when she became a naturalized citizen. When I turned 18 (a white, Jewish women in the North in the early 70s) it was an easy, painless process to register, and then vote either in person or by absentee ballot. No poll taxes, no interpreting parts of the constitution, nobody deliberately barring me from exercising my right to vote. I really admire everybody who worked to (hopefully) make the process like that for all who are eligible to vote.

And, my treasured copy of this book has an autographed by the author bookplate. He has a wonderfully wry and wicked sense of humor!

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Count Them One by One tells a story that is familiar--the unfair treatment of black Americans in Mississippi, and their courageous resistance--but revealed much that was new to me through the carefully documented intimate details of the fiercely brave witnesses and the legal team who argued the case United States v. Theron Lynd.

I recalled the line from Harrison Salisbury, "There is, in the end, no substitute for the right man in the right place at the right moment," (which I had read in the book Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman) as I read this book. Gordon Martin was there at the right moment to work on the case against Lynd, which made him the right man to write this book, almost fifty years later, documenting a critical moment in history.

I was especially impressed by Martin's ability to make the story personal and emotional, without ever making it about himself. His occasional inclusion of personal details about himself were always appropriate and served only to illuminate the story he was telling.

I learned so much about the lives of black Mississippians, particularly about higher education and the access or lack thereof that they had to different institutions. I hadn't known, for example, about the people who went north to get advanced degrees and then returned to Mississippi to work as educators.

Count Them One by One is an intricate, detailed, footnoted legal history; its emphasis on the real people affected by the laws makes it a page-turner.

[Susann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This thoughtful chronicle of United States v. Theron Lynd introduced me to some lesser-known heroes of the Civil Rights movement. As I got to know the brave teachers, factory workers, and clergymen who risked so much to gain - the most fundamental democratic right - the right to vote, I realized that Judge Martin was also introducing me to Forrest County, Mississippi. There's a real sense of place here, as well as an appreciation for how the area has changed.
Highly recommended.

[CLM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is the Good Morning America interview from Dec. 28, 2010

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/video...

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Count Them One by One:
Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote
University Press of Mississippi, 2010
By Gordon A. Martin, Jr.

Article by Rosemary Eng

Of the 16 black witnesses who testified on denial of voter registration in racially-hostile Mississippi in 1961, only David Roberson remains. The passing of those courageous witnesses -- one by one -- does not mean their fight for voters’ rights is forgotten. As shown by the attention garnered by Gordon A. Martin Jr.’s book, Count Them One By One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote, Americans want to know about the individuals who stepped forward to challenge the racial discrimination which barred thousands of Mississippians and African Americans throughout the South from voting.

Retired Judge Martin was one of the “brash young (civil rights division) lawyers from Washington committed to the still-radical idea that no American be excluded from voting,” as stated in the book. These lawyers sought out and prepared African-American witnesses for United States v. Lynd, a case against Mississippi voting registrar Theron Lynd. Lynd regularly and arbitrarily dismissed black applicants who wanted to vote.

Nearly 30 years after the United States v. Lynd trial, Martin sought out those largely forgotten African Americans who testified in the case that eventually set the tone for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Those witnesses are overlooked no longer. ABC TV’s "Good Morning America" host Robin Roberts interviewed Martin about the witnesses profiled in his book. Martin has been on a speaking circuit from Boston to Mississippi and spoke via videoconference through the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to audiences assembled at U.S. diplomatic posts across Canada about his book.

Most recently the Yale Law School library had an audio/visual exhibit on the Lynd trial and Martin’s interviews with witnesses. A visual/audio exhibit of Martin’s interviews for the Lynd trial are being prepared to go online.

The early 1960s were a dangerous time for African Americans trying to assert voters’ rights. Vernon Dahmer, one of the witnesses interviewed by Martin, tried many times to register to vote in Hattiesburg, Miss., where he was a leader in the NAACP. Because he advocated unrelentingly that the black community register to vote, Dahmer’s house was firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1966. Before he died of smoke inhalation and burns in his respiratory tract, Dahmer told a local reporter “I’ve been active in trying to get people to vote. People who don’t vote are deadbeats of the state.”

After testifying at the Lynd trial, witness Roberson left for graduate school at Cornell University and became the only one of the witnesses to leave Mississippi. He went on to teach at Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School in Chicago.

Unlike the case of Vernon Dahmer, whose death triggered the high-profile trial of Sam Holloway Bowers Jr. who was first imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi and the man who wanted Dahmer dead, very little in Internet search engines come up with information on Roberson.

That is the point of Martin’s book, to give a voice, a setting, to the witnesses in the United States v. Lynd case, to augment what is known in Mississippi’s civil rights history and to give the descendents of all these witnesses an idea of the bravery of the people who they only know as their grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Yale Law Library hosted an exhibit on Count Them One By One to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of U.S. Voting Rights Prosecutions from 1961 to 2010. To watch an account of Gordon Martin’s interviews for this book, as put together by Yale Law School librarians, go to http://vimeo.com/21753432, or watch embedded video below.

Judge Martin was an associate justice on the Massachusetts Trial Court for 20 years.

[Susanna Sturgis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other reviewers have eloquently described what this book does, and how well. I add my voice to theirs. Judge Martin sketches the history of Mississippi from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the long decades of oppression that followed. Being a lawyer, he pays particular attention to how the laws and the legal system were co-opted by judges, juries, and the white citizenry into blowing off the 14th and 15th amendments, which "guaranteed," respectively, equal protection under the law and the right to vote.

The KKK and the White Citizens' Councils played a major role. "State-sponsored terrorism" isn't too strong a term for what went on in Mississippi from the end of Reconstruction till well into the 1960s. Count Them One by One introduced me to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, formed in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision to enforce white supremacy in the state. Among other things, the commission devoted itself to identifying members of the NAACP and making sure they didn't get teaching jobs.

Against this backdrop, it's clear how incredibly brave the black citizens were who dared try to register to vote. They risked everything. One, Vernon Dahmer, was killed in a KKK firebombing of his house in 1966.

It's also clear how incredibly brazen were the tactics used to deny black citizens the vote. Count Them One by One focuses on United States v. Theron Lynd, on which the author worked as a young attorney for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. Theron Lynd was the circuit clerk of Forrest County, Mississippi (county seat: Hattiesburg), the fellow in charge of registering voters. Like his predecessor, he stonewalled black citizens by all available means. One after another, black people -- some with advanced degrees -- were deemed unqualified to vote.

In this book, the teachers, preachers, and factory workers who testified in U.S. v. Lynd get to tell their stories. The result is a vivid composite picture of black Mississippi in the mid–20th century -- and of the entrenched racism they were up against. It's also a vivid depiction of the unflagging effort it took on the part of many, many people to undermine and eventually break the back of segregation in Mississippi.

Read this book not just for the history it contains but for the inspiration it offers for our own struggles. These days it's easy to be ho-hum about voting. Voting doesn't change much of anything; why bother? Point taken, at least on the national level, but on the local level it can make a big difference. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black citizens had virtually no say in choosing the local officials who controlled their lives, including their access to the ballot box.

It's also worth noting how crucial the judicial system was, first in maintaining segregation and then in dismantling it. Especially the federal bench: the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1989 and thereafter, Gordon Martin Jr. returned to Forrest County to conduct follow-up interviews with the witnesses and, in some cases, their survivors. In 2000 he was a visiting law professor at "Ole Miss," the University of Mississippi, a major battleground in the fight against segregation and the southern caste system. So much has changed that it can be hard to imagine the conditions that existed for decades, and the courage and persistence that were required to change them -- but here they are, vividly described and hard to forget. May we learn from their example.

[Russ · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary and detailed account of the suppression of African Americans right to vote and the lengths that were necessary to stir the winds of change.

[Marilyn Pronovost · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a sold story about this litigation. The participants were well defined; however the story was too clinical. The drama of working on such a significant case is missing, and it fails to make this a great story. Actually the epilogue was the most interesting part of the book.