The Tougaloo Nine
The Tougaloo Nine
The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights
During a dramatic three-day period in March 1961, nine students from historically Black Tougaloo College staged sit-ins at the all-white Main Library in Jackson, Mississippi. The students conducted their protest, were arrested, held in jail overnight, and convicted of “breach of peace”—the first time that charge had ever been brought in a Mississippi courtroom. Meanwhile, students at Jackson State College held sympathy protests, and the police responded harshly on both day one and day two. On day three, police attacked a peaceful crowd of observers awaiting the trial’s outcome, using attack dogs, billy clubs, and tear gas to disperse the crowd, the first known use of police dogs on a peaceful gathering during the civil rights era.
The protests occurred while Mississippi was preparing to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the state’s secession from the Union and the commencement of the Civil War. The library sit-in preempted the state’s Confederate extravaganza which brought more than thirty thousand mostly white observers into the streets of Jackson while the students sat in jail, further inflaming passions on both sides.
In The Tougaloo Nine, M. J. O’Brien delves into Tougaloo College’s culture of resistance, Mississippi’s determination to preserve segregation, and the early stirrings of the student movement in Jackson. Through numerous interviews and years of detailed research, O’Brien tells the stories of these courageous African American students. He also explores the personalities leading the charge on both sides, including Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, Tougaloo professors and administrators Ernst Borinski, Reverend John Mangram, and Adam Beittel; as well as Governor Ross Barnett, Citizens’ Council leader William Simmons, and Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson. Altogether, The Tougaloo Nine presents the stunning picture of those who risked their lives and future livelihoods to fight for full social and political equality.
I wasn’t sure that there was anything left to know about civil rights in Mississippi, but The Tougaloo Nine proved me wrong. M. J. O’Brien’s book is not just captivating; it adds texture and context to well-known stories and brings to light never heard or under-heralded stories, giving important nuance to narratives of the freedom struggle.
While history often acknowledges the significance of the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins and the subsequent founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, The Tougaloo Nine places a small, private Black college in the heart of Jim Crow Mississippi at the center of the era’s radicalism and social change. No scholar has previously provided such detailed analysis of what is arguably one of the most pivotal moments in Mississippi’s civil rights history.
M. J. O’Brien is a writer and researcher who served for twenty-five years as the chief communications and public relations officer for a national not-for-profit cooperative. He is author of the award-winning We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired, published by University Press of Mississippi.
