Title: Harry J. Bowie Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1964-1967

Creator:

• Bowie, Harry J., 1935-

Call Number: Mss 31; Micro 928

Quantity: 0.6 c.f. (2 archives boxes) and 1 reel of microfilm (35 mm)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Papers collected by New Jersey minister Harry J. Bowie while he worked in the McComb, Mississippi, area as a participant in the National Council of Churches Delta Ministry Project from 1964 to 1967. Included are correspondence, affidavits, personal records, notes, circulars, and flyers pertaining to arrests of volunteers, Freedom Schools, Head Start, voter registration, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Poor People's Corporation, and the Project's and Bowie's personal finances. On microfilm are a card file on personnel involved in the Delta Ministry Project, with names of local residents who also participated, and two scrapbooks of clippings regarding Mississippi and civil rights.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00031

Reverend Harry J. Bowie, Negro Episcopal minister, was pastor of the Chapel of the Annunciation, Lawnside, New Jersey, when he left to go to Mississippi in July 1964, to serve as a volunteer with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) in the drive to register Negro voters. After a short absence from Mississippi late that summer, he returned to the state to become minister-counselor representing the National Council of Churches Delta Ministry in McComb, Pike County, Mississippi.

The National Council of Churches became actively associated with the civil rights movement following the murder of Medgar Evers in the summer of 1963. The Delta Ministry was the coordinating agency of the National Council's activities in Mississippi, operating as an interdenominational commitment. The project was planned as a long-term effort to help end the low economic, health, and social conditions of Mississippi's poor. Programming concerns included health and welfare, literacy, citizenship education and voter registration, and the development of community centers.

McComb, with a population of 12,000, was forty-two per cent Negro and the center of an area in southwest Mississippi that was rocked by violence during the early days of the civil rights movement. This was the period when hundreds of young people went into the South to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the National Council of Churches, and other groups led by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). They lived in the Negro community, taught in the Freedom Schools, canvassed Negro neighborhoods to encourage voter registration, helped to establish community centers, and tried to find ways to help the poor economically. Only about 250 Negroes in Pike County, of which McComb is the county seat, were registered to vote. In November 1964, a group of white citizens, revolted by the bombings and burnings of September, petitioned for law and order, and some restaurants desegregated.

The collection documents Rev. Bowie's activities in the McComb area between the summer of 1964 and the summer of 1967, as well as the agencies with which the Delta Ministry cooperated, or those it helped to establish. A variety of material is filed under the various headings: limited correspondence, affidavits, personnel forms, notes, circulars, information sheets, etc.

When many arrests of Negroes and white volunteers were made in October 1964 and March 1965, Rev. Bowie provided the bail with funds received from the National Council of Churches, the American Conscience Fund (headed by Drew Pearson), and his own resources. Although most of the bail money was refunded when the cases were settled, the problems he encountered in dealing with these arrests are shown in Box 1, Folder 2.

An indication of the financial involvement of the National Council's Delta Ministry may be obtained from an examination of Folder 9 in Box 1 and of Rev. Bowie's personal records in Folder 3. Box 3 is a card file showing personnel who either became associated with or wanted to become associated with the movement in 1964, and listing the names and titles of local residents and officials with whom the McComb Ministers' Project had to have contact. Volumes 2 and 3 contain many newspaper stories concerning civil rights in Mississippi between June 24, 1964 and August 18, 1965.

The card file and Volumes 2 and 3 (scrapbooks of news clippings) have been microfilmed and the originals discarded.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has one of the richest collections of Civil Rights movement records in the nation, which includes more than 100 manuscript collections documenting the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts are available online as the Freedom Summer Digital Collection.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Harry J. Bowie, McComb, Mississippi, July 1967.

Processing Information

Processed by archives summer class students and Margaret Hafstad, December 18, 1968.

Mss 31 Box   1 Folder   1	Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services - Handbook, voter activities
Box   1 Folder   2	Arrests and bail, 1964 November 17-1966 March 7
Box   1 Folder   3	Bowie - Personal finances, 1964 December 7-1966
Box   1 Folder   4	Freedom Schools, 1964 January 14-December 2, undated Alternate Format: All or part has been digitized and is available online.
Box   1 Folder   5	Head Start Project, 1966
Box   1 Folder   6	Lawyers' Constitutional Defense Committee, Inc., 1965 April 4-1967 January 4
	McComb Ministers' Project
Box   1 Folder   7	Bowie's expense vouchers, 1964 December-1965 November
Box   1 Folder   8	Correspondence, 1964 July 27-1966
Box   1 Folder   9	Financial records, 1964-1966 (Volume 1)
Box   1 Folder   10	Report, play, source materials
Box   2 Folder   1	Telephone toll calls
	Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Box   2 Folder   2	1964 June 20-1966 November
Box   2 Folder   3	Undated Alternate Format: All or part has been digitized and is available online.
Box   2 Folder   4	National Council of Churches Delta Ministry - Fact sheets
Box   2 Folder   5	Poor People's Corporation, 1966
Box   2 Folder   6	School desegregation, 1965
Micro 928 Reel 1	Card file of personnel involved in the Delta Ministers' Project, McComb County, Mississippi, circa 1964-1967; and names and identifications of local residents involved
	Scrapbooks of clippings concerning Civil Rights, especially the struggle in Mississippi
Reel 1	, 1964 June 24-1965 February 9 (Volume 2)
Reel 1	, 1965 March 16-August 18 (Volume 3)