Title: Congress of Racial Equality. Monroe Chapter (La.): Records
Inclusive Dates: 1961-1966

Creator:

• Congress of Racial Equality. Monroe Chapter (La.)

Call Number: Mss 119

Quantity: 2.2 c.f. (6 archives boxes)

Repository:

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

Archival Locations:

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

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Records of the Monroe, Louisiana, chapter of CORE. The collection documents every facet of the chapter's activity and provides information on its interrelationship with the Southern Regional and national CORE offices and with other civil rights groups. It also includes statistical data on the status and attitudes of Southern blacks during the 1960s. Presented are general correspondence, questionnaires, voter registration canvass and survey sheets, statements and affidavits recording intimidation and harassment experienced during sit-ins, reports, lists, near-print material, and clippings. Over half the collection consists of subject files on programs and projects, the most complete of which are the files on the chapter's voter registration efforts. Less complete files contain information on involvement with the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00119

In April, 1963, John Reddix, D.D.S., president of the local NAACP chapter, and leading defender of civil rights in Monroe, Louisiana, made a request of CORE's Southern Regional Office that a CORE voter registration drive be initiated in Ouachita Parish. The NAACP seven year program in this aspect of civil rights was lagging and the local NAACP chapter was all but defunct. To promote a CORE program in the area, CORE workers, Brendon Sexton, Tom Valentine, and Mike Lesser, took over the old NAACP offices in Monroe on December 9, 1963. This fledgling CORE chapter was under the nominal direction of Ronnie Moore, Field Secretary for Louisiana and head of the Baton Rouge office of Southern Regional CORE. Advocating militant, though non-violent “direct action and other pressures,” its position diverged from both the more traditional NAACP and the diffidence of the “White power structure.”

The impetus of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 re-enforced Monroe CORE's active voter education project of canvassing, freedom registration, voters' clinics, transportation for potential registrants, and follow up activities; and resulted in the relative success of the chapter in the registration of Negro voters. Support from the Negro community was thus established, and though neither constant nor universal, was drawn upon to augment programs instituted by CORE on the local, regional, and national level. The CORE task force in Monroe found the most enthusiasm among the high school age group, and utilized this nucleus for sit-ins to test discrimination and segregation policies of libraries and public accommodations. CORE's efforts to interest the Negro farmer in his plight, and to arouse him to strive for the opportunities pursuant to election to the County Committee of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service proved disappointing. Equally futile were efforts of CORE and a small but active “Unity Committee” of workers to point up practices of employment discrimination at the segregated paper mill and four container plants of Olin Mathieson in West Monroe.

The concerns of the Monroe chapter of CORE encompassed the gamut of social action from the affront of the city dump and garbage burning in the center of the Negro community through the inadequate housing occupied by many Negro families, food and clothing distribution, segregation and discriminatory treatment in hospitals, Freedom Schools, fund raising, a Voters' League, Head Start, and a poverty program. Results varied, and responses among the Negro population were often apathetic or guarded. And, although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began to be implemented, and the end of segregation in public accommodation in Monroe became a reality by November 11, 1964, “testing” for discrimination and segregation practices continued.

But, following the 1965 Summer Project to promote voter registration of Negroes, and the advent of the federal registrar in Ouachita Parish, the Southern Regional Office of CORE closed and presumably the Monroe chapter was phased out with it in the fall of 1966.

The office files of the Monroe, Louisiana chapter of CORE are relatively complete, and include general correspondence; questionnaires and canvass and survey sheets concerned with the condition and voting status of the Negro; statements and affidavits recording incidents of intimidation and harassment experienced in “sit-in” or “testing” situations; reports; memoranda; lists of personnel, contacts, churches and businesses, et cetera; near-print materials; and newspaper clippings. The files are arranged in three main categories, Correspondence, Operational, and Programs and Projects; and four minor ones, CORE Publication, General Reports, Newspaper Clippings, and Miscellaneous.

The main body of the Correspondence is general in nature and touches on every facet of CORE's operation in Monroe and its interrelation with the Southern Regional and national offices and other civil rights groups. It has been arranged chronologically in two folders in the first box of the Collection. However, some correspondence is found throughout under specific subject headings.

The Operational File and the Programs and Projects File contain the bulk of the Collection. The Operational File is sub-divided into “Administrative,” covering the administrative functions of operation, and “Consultatory,” including informational materials pertinent to the work of the organization.

Under the “General” division of Programs and Projects, folders five through fourteen in box three are an alphabetical subject file of programs or projects with which Monroe CORE was involved. “Voter Registration,” the second sub-file created under Programs and Projects, has been handled separately, and is filed together in boxes five and six. However, the researcher will find the “Voter Education Project Field Reports” in box three, folder two filed with “Field Reports.” Because voter registration was a key project of CORE in Monroe, scattered references to it will be found in such general categories as “Correspondence” and “Memoranda.”

The files of Monroe CORE are representative of the activities and outlook of CORE chapters generally in the southern states in the 1960s, and indicate how the imported social activist approached the problems of the Negro and how he saw them. The Collection is a source for material and statistics on the status of the southern Negro and the Negro's ambivalent attitude toward his circumstances and environs. More specifically, the “Completed Survey Forms” record a general informational survey of the Negro family. An analysis of this data could suggest further insight into the education, employment, voting status, housing, attitudes and standards of this specific segment of Louisiana. These forms are not uniformly complete, but within this limitation they are useful. Also of special interest are the field reports of the staff, the housing survey questionnaires, statements and affidavits of harassment and “testing” experiences, and the two-way radio or “WATS Line Reports.”

The “Voter Registration” project materials are quite complete. These include “canvass sheets” of the individual's decision on whether he will try to register, whether he has attended registration clinics, and/or whether he needs transportation to do so; and voter registration survey “Results at the Registrar's Office” in 1962 and 1964. The latter records indicate whether the potential registrant passed or failed, why, and how many attempts to register he had made to date. Xeroxed copies of lists of “Persons Registered by the Federal Registrar” in Ouachita Parish under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 include the individual's name and address, age, ward and precinct, political party, and the number and date of his certification.

For further information about CORE and its Monroe, Louisiana chapter, see the collections of the Congress of Racial Equality (Mss 14); Congress of Racial Equality - Southern Regional Office (Mss 85); Congress of Racial Equality, Homer, Louisiana Chapter (Mss 84); and other local or regional offices of the Congress of Racial Equality holdings in the custody of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Jimmie Donald Dick Andrews, Monroe, Louisiana, August 11, 1966. Accession Number: M66-301

Processing Information

Processed by Joanne Hohler, February 17, 1971.

	Correspondence
Box   1 Folder   1	1961-1964
Box   1 Folder   2	1965-1966; undated
	Operational File
	Administrative
Box   1 Folder   3	Memoranda and Staff Meetings, 1964-1966
	Financial
Box   1 Folder   4	General, 1962-1966
Box   1 Folder   5	Project and Program Records and Reports, 1965-1966
	Legal
Box   1 Folder   6	“Bail Bond Lists”, 1964-1965
Box   1 Folder   7	Retainer Agreements, 1964, July - Aug
Box   1 Folder   8	“Status of Active Louisiana Cases as of. September 10, 1964”
Box   1 Folder   9	WATS Line and Record of Long Distance Telephone Calls, 1964-1965
Box   1 Folder   10	Applications and Signed Parental Consent for Minors' Participation in CORE, 1964-1965
Box   1 Folder   11	Blank Forms - Miscellaneous
	Consultatory
	“Completed Survey Forms”
Box   2 Folder   1	A-K, 1964-1965
Box   2 Folder   2	L-W, 1964-1965
	General Information, 1960-1965
Box   2 Folder   3	Addresses and Miscellaneous Lists of Personnel and Contacts
Box   2 Folder   3	Re: Monroe, West Monroe, and Ouachita and Madison Parishes
Box   2 Folder   3	Suspicious Car Sheets
Box   2 Folder   3	Miscellaneous
Box   2 Folder   4	“Economic Information”, circa 1959-1964
Box   2 Folder   5	Lists of Businesses, Organizations, and Churches in Ouachita Parish, 1963-1966
Box   2 Folder   6	Lists of Negro Teachers, High School Seniors and Graduates - Ouachita Parish
	National CORE
Box   2 Folder   7	News Releases, 1963-1965
Box   2 Folder   8	Miscellaneous, circa 1964-1965
Box   2 Folder   9	CORE - Southern Regional Office, 1964-1966
	Mississippi
Box   2 Folder   10	COFO and Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964-1966
Box   2 Folder   11	Miscellaneous, 1964; undated
Box   2 Folder   12	Information re Civil Rights Act of 1964, 1963-1965
Box   2 Folder   13	“Civil Rights Bibliography,” 1964, March 23
	Programs and Projects File
	General
Box   3 Folder   1	General Information, circa 1963-1966
Box   3 Folder   2	Field Reports and Voter Education Project Field Reports, 1963-1966; undated
	Statements and Affidavits
Box   3 Folder   3	1962-1964
Box   3 Folder   4	1964-1966; undated
	Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation (ASC)
Box   3 Folder   5	ASC County Committee System - General Information, 1964-1965
Box   3 Folder   6	Caldwell Parish Election, ( 1962)-1965-1966
Box   3 Folder   7	Ouachita Parish Election, 1965
Box   3 Folder   8	City Dump, 1965, Aug. - Nov.
Box   3 Folder   9	Food and Clothing Distribution, circa 1964-1965
Box   3 Folder   10	Freedom Schools, circa 1964
Box   3 Folder   11	Hospital Discrimination, 1965
Box   3 Folder   12	Housing, 1965
Box   3 Folder   13	Labor and Employment Practices, circa 1966
Box   3 Folder   14	Ouachita Trade School Desegregation, circa 1965
Box   3 Folder   15	Public Library - Testing for Segregation and Resultant Arrests, 1964, July - Nov.
Box   3 Folder   16	“Summer Project 1964”, 1964; undated
Box   3 Folder   17	Welfare, 1964-1965; undated
Box   4 Folder   1	Miscellaneous Projects and Organizations with which Monroe CORE was connected, 1964-1965
Box   4 Folder   2	Federal Programs under the Economic Opportunity Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, , circa 1964-1965
	Voter Registration - Voter Education Project
Box   5 Folder   1	Lists and Statistics of Voters and Notes on Registration Procedure, 1960-1966
Box   5 Folder   2	“Contact Lists - Ouachita Parish”, circa 1964-1965
Box   5 Folder   3	Canvass Sheets - Freedom Registration, 1964, July
Box   5 Folder   4	Records of Voter Education Project Clinic Attendance, Instruction and Registration, 1963-1964
Box   5 Folder   5	Voter Registration Survey - Canvass Sheets - Decisions re Registration, 1964
Box   5 Folder   6	Canvass Sheets - “Actual Registration, West Monroe, Louisiana” - Decisions re Registration, 1964, Feb. - June
Box   5 Folder   7	Canvass Sheets - “Actual Registration” - Decisions re Registration; Transportation Arrangements, 1965-1966
Box   5 Folder   8	Transportation, circa 1965, Aug.
Box   5 Folder   9	Complaints Against District Registrar, 1964, June - Sept.
Box   5 Folder   10	“Registration Roll Purges”, 1956-1965
Box   5 Folder   11	“Community Meeting”, circa 1966
Box   5 Folder   12	Miscellaneous, 1964-1965
	Voter Registration Survey - Results at Registrar's Office
Box   6 Folder   1	1962, Sept.
Box   6 Folder   2	1964
Box   6 Folder   3	Voter Education Project Reports, 1962-1965
	“Persons Registered by Federal Registrars”
Box   6 Folder   4	Ouachita I and II, and separated, unlabeled pages, 1965, Aug. - Sept.
Box   6 Folder   5	Supplements to Ouachita II, 1965, Sept.
	Voter Registration Applicants
Box   6 Package   1-2	Passed, 1965, June - July
Box   6 Package   3	Failed, 1965
Box   6 Package   4	Voters Record - Registration Results - “Undecided,” 1964, 1965
Box   4 Folder   3	Publications (CORE)
Box   4 Folder   4	Reports - General
Box   4 Folder   5	Newspaper Clippings
	Miscellaneous
Box   4 Folder   6	Birth Control
Box   4 Folder   6	Citizen's Crusade Against Poverty
Box   4 Folder   6	Leaflets
Box   4 Folder   6	Notes
Box   4 Folder   6	Photographs
Box   4 Folder   6	Writings