Editing Leflore County, Mississippi (section)

===20th century to present===

In the first half of the 20th century, many blacks left rural counties such as Leflore, in the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]] to northern and midwestern industrial cities to escape racial violence, and in search of jobs and education: many people went north by train to [[Chicago]], taking their music with them and changing the big city forever. Many more people left Mississippi from 1940 to 1970, often migrating to the West Coast for defense industry jobs.

As with other parts of the majority-black Delta, Leflore County was a major site of activism and white violence during the [[Civil Rights Movement]]. In 1955, the events leading up to the [[lynching]] of 14-year-old [[Emmett Till]] unfolded in the unincorporated community of [[Money, Mississippi]]. Till, a teenage [[African-American]], was visiting from [[Chicago]] and staying with relatives in Money, where Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market was located. Here Till encountered Carolyn Bryant, who later said that he had behaved flirtatiously toward her. Bryant's husband, [[Roy Bryant]], and another white man, [[J.W. Milam]], abducted Till later that evening. They beat and tortured him at several locations in Leflore and neighboring counties before shooting him and dumping his body in the river in [[Tallahatchie County, Mississippi]]. Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an [[all-white jury]] of Till's murder at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, in [[Sumner, Mississippi]].

During a 2007 interview, not made public until 2017, Carolyn Bryant had disclosed that she had fabricated her testimony about Till's actions.<ref>{{cite news|title=Carolyn Bryant Admits To Lying On Emmett Till... 62 Years Later!!!|url=http://www.vanndigital.com/carolyn-bryant-admits-lying-emmett-till-62-years-later/|work=VannDigital|access-date=January 27, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|newspaper=The Guardian|title=Woman at center of Emmett Till case tells author she fabricated testimony |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/emmett-till-book-carolyn-bryant-confession|date=January 27, 2017|last=Carroll|first=Rory|access-date=January 28, 2017}}</ref>

In 1963, the county had more than 13,000 blacks of legal voting age, but fewer than 270 were registered because of discrimination and suppression by whites. Blacks had been essentially [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised]] since implementation of Mississippi's new constitution in 1890, establishing [[poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]], [[literacy tests]] and other voter registration barriers. Meanwhile, 95% of eligible white voters were registered.<ref name=hend>{{cite book | last = Hendrickson | first = Paul | author-link = Paul Hendrickson | title = Sons of Mississippi | publisher = [[Alfred A. Knopf]] | year = 2003 | place = New York | isbn = 0-375-40461-9 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/sonsofmississipp00paul }}</ref>

The [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] had moved its headquarters to Greenwood in early 1963, and by late March of that year, eight SNCC members were arrested while trying to register voters. The [[United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division]] filed suit against the city of Greenwood and Leflore County to obtain their release. The petition was denied by a local court, but the city of Greenwood entered into a voluntary agreement to release the students. In June 1963, 45 residents of [[Itta Bena, Mississippi|Itta Bena]] were arrested in Leflore County while protesting an attack on churches where voter registration drives were being held. The Civil Rights Division of DOJ filed suit against the county to obtain their release as well, but to no avail.<ref>{{cite journal | title = The Work of the Civil Rights Division in Enforcing Voting Rights Under the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 | author = John Doar | author-link = John Doar | journal = Florida State University Law Review | volume = 25 | issue = 1 | year = 1997}}  [http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/251/doar.pdf (available online)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316134849/http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/251/doar.pdf |date=March 16, 2012 }}</ref> Passage of national civil rights legislation by Congress in 1964 and 1965 began to change the ground rules, especially as it authorized federal oversight and enforcement in counties with a history of an under-representation of minority voters.

Organizers and marchers returned to the county in 1966 as part of the [[March Against Fear]], initiated by [[James Meredith]]. He was shot and wounded by a white man two days into the march. Major civil rights leaders and marchers from a variety of organizations vowed to continue his march of more than 220 miles from [[Memphis, Tennessee]] to [[Jackson, Mississippi]]. By the time they reached Greenwood, several hundred persons were in the group. They worked to organize and register voters, as most blacks in the county still lived in fear and had not registered. After previous registration drives, the white county board had cut off federal commodity subsidies to the black community, threatening the survival of numerous poor families. SNCC helped organize a national gathering of food for county residents to overcome the boycott.

In 1966, [[Stokley Carmichael]], a new leader of SNCC, spoke in Greenwood for "Black Power", saying that blacks had to build their own bases of political and economic power, as had communities of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants to the United States.