Background
Aaron Henry was born on July 2, 1922 in Dublin, Mississippi. He was the son of Ed and Mattie Henry, who worked as sharecroppers.
( Although Aaron Henry (1922-1997) was one of the nation'...)
Although Aaron Henry (1922-1997) was one of the nation's major grassroots fighters in the freedom movement on local, state, and national levels, his name has not yet been accorded its full recognition. This book reveals why Aaron Henry should be acknowledged, in the ranks of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers, as a truly influential crusader. Long before many of his contemporaries, he was a civil rights activist, but he preferred to stay out of the limelight. A certified pharmacist and owner of Fourth Street Drug Store in Clarksdale, he considered himself a down-home businessman who must not leave Mississippi. Although he was a key figure in bringing Head Start, housing, employment, and health service to his state, his tact and his quiet diplomacy garnered him less attention than more radical protesters received. Born in the age of segregation in the Mississippi Delta, the son of a sharecropper, he became state president of the NAACP in 1959. He was able, more than any previous leader, to unite Mississippi blacks, despite diversities of age, ideology, and class, in confronting white supremacy. He spearheaded the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). Some activists criticized him for urging protesters to take the middle ground between the NAACP's conservative position and SNCC's militant activism. Facing recurring death threats, thirty-three jailings, and Klan bombings of his home and drugstore, Henry remained stalwart and courageous. John Dittmer describes him as a "conservative militant," willing not only to risk his life but also to compromise on issues of strategy even when doing so led to alienation from outspoken activists. Constance Curry has shaped this personal narrative of a brave and underacknowledged man who helped to change his state forever. To his candid story, transcribed from interviews he gave two young historians in 1965, Curry adds new material from her own interviews with his family, friends, and political associates. Henry's prophetic voice documents a momentous period in African American history that extends from the Great Depression through the civil rights movement in the pivotal 1960s.
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Aaron Henry was born on July 2, 1922 in Dublin, Mississippi. He was the son of Ed and Mattie Henry, who worked as sharecroppers.
Henry’s parents believed education to be essential for the future of Henry and his family; therefore, he was able to attend the all-black Coahoma County Agricultural High School. After graduating from high school, Henry worked as a night clerk at a motel to earn money for college, but ended up enlisting in the Army.
After the war he attended pharmacy school. He graduated in 1950 with a pharmaceutical degree.
Later he earned a degree in political science at Xavier University in New Orleans.
During World War II, he served as a staff sergeant with the U. S. Army in the Pacific.
After the war, the African American veteran returned to Clarksdale to open a drug store.
As a leader of the NAACP, Henry participated in virtually every aspect of the struggle for equality in Mississippi, while serving as a voice of moderation and an advocate of racial conciliation.
In 1961, he joined the Freedom Rides to protest segregation in interstate bus facilities and was arrested when the group reached Jackson, Mississippi.
Two years later, Henry ran for governor-and won handily-in the Freedom Vote, a mock election held to demonstrate African American interest in politics and to mobilize the African American community for further political action.
During the Freedom Summer of 1964, Henry served as chairperson of the Council of Federated Organizations, an umbrella agency which attempted to coordinate the activities of the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Congress of Racial Equality. Under his leadership, the various civil rights organizations launched a large-scale voter registration drive and conducted "Freedom Schools, " which combined adult education with training in community activism.
When African American activists and white liberals organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, they elected Henry chairperson of the biracial coalition, and he led the MFDP's challenge to the seating of the regular Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The leadership of the national party proposed a compromise under which the regulars would be seated along with Henry and Ed King, the white chaplain at Tougaloo College and a member of the MFDP. In addition, the compromise would have prohibited the exclusion of blacks or other minorities from future delegations.
Henry and other moderate NAACP members within his delegation supported the compromise, but they were outvoted by more militant activists whose primary loyalty was to the MFDP itself. Nevertheless, Henry believed that the highly publicized attack on the exclusion of blacks from the Mississippi Democratic Party represented a significant moral victory for the forces of change.
The MFDP challenge in 1965, the NAACP withdrew support for COFO, and formed a new coalition with white liberals and organized labor.
Known as the Loyalist Democrats, to distinguish themselves from Mississippi's conservative white Democrats who often bolted the national party to support Republican and third-party candidates, the new coalition won the right to represent Mississippi at the Democratic convention in 1968.
In 1976 the Loyalists had gained a dominant role within the state party organization.
Henry Elected to NAACP National Board in 1964, Henry attempted to run for Congress as an independent, but white election officials ruled that the NAACP leader, along with other African American candidates, failed to obtain the required number of signatures on the petitions to put their names on the ballot.
In another "Freedom Vote" in 1965, however, Henry overwhelmingly defeated incumbent John C. Stennis in a mock election for the U. S. Senate.
In the same year, Henry was also elected to the national board of directors of the NAACP. A subject of frequent abuse for his civil rights views, Henry was convicted in March 1962 for sexually harassing a young white hitchhiker. An appellate court reversed the conviction.
When Henry claimed he had been the victim of a racial vendetta by the local prosecutor and police chief, the white officials sued him and won an $80, 000 award. The jury verdict, however, was also reversed on appeal.
Henry fended off the legal threats, but white supremacists bombed his home and his drugstore, and his wife was fired from her job as a public school teacher.
Henry was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1982, holding the seat until 1996.
He died in 1997 of congestive heart failure at a hospital near his home in Clarksdale, following a stroke.
( Although Aaron Henry (1922-1997) was one of the nation'...)
Aaron Henry remained faithful in his loyalty to the national Democratic Party, and worked actively at following national party conventions.
Quotations: Henry once said that his grandmother had inspired him to become involved in the struggle for civil rights. She told him he was just as worthy of justice as any white man and that “they put on their pants the same way you do, one leg at a time. ”
In 1951, Henry was a founding member of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL).
Quotes from others about the person
President Jimmy Carter, in recognizing Henry’s devotion to the party said, “Aaron Henry was a civil rights hero whom I knew best for his tenacity in breaking through racial discrimination and making sure that African-American Democrats had a voice in party politics in Mississippi and in the nation. ”
In 1950 he married Noelle Michael.