Movement
Mound Bayou and the Regional Council of Negro Leadership
How the all-Black town of Mound Bayou and the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, founded in 1951, prepared the Delta for the movement Fannie Lou Hamer joined.
In short
The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) was organized in 1951 in Mound Bayou, an all-Black town in Bolivar County, by Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a physician and businessman. It led a 1952 boycott of gas stations that barred Black customers from their restrooms and held mass rallies that drew thousands, with speakers such as Congressman William Dawson and Thurgood Marshall. Amzie Moore and Medgar Evers were among its organizers, and Fannie Lou Hamer attended its rallies in the 1950s. She died in Mound Bayou in 1977.
- Founded
- 1951, Mound Bayou, Mississippi
- Founder
- Dr. T. R. M. Howard
- First convention
- 1952, several thousand attended
- Speakers
- Rep. William Dawson, Mahalia Jackson (1952); Thurgood Marshall (1954)
- Organizers
- Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers and others
- Mound Bayou
- Founded 1887 by formerly enslaved people
.jpg){kind=link}
What was Mound Bayou?
Mound Bayou is a town in Bolivar County founded in 1887 by formerly enslaved people led by Isaiah T. Montgomery, and for decades it was a symbol of Black self-government in the Delta. It had Black-owned businesses, banks and, from the 1940s, the Taborian Hospital, run by a Black fraternal order, where many Black Delta residents went for care they could not get elsewhere. Fannie Lou Hamer died there on March 14, 1977. Visit Cleveland MS lists the Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History and the Isaiah Thornton Montgomery House among sites to see.
What was the Regional Council of Negro Leadership?
It was a civil rights and self-help organization founded in 1951 by Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a surgeon at the Mound Bayou hospital and a successful businessman. The Mississippi Encyclopedia says its first protest, in 1952, was a boycott of gas stations that would not let Black customers use their restrooms. Its annual conventions in Mound Bayou drew thousands: the 1952 meeting featured Congressman William Dawson of Chicago and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and in 1954 Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP spoke.
Who were its organizers?
Amzie Moore of Cleveland helped found it, and Medgar Evers took part in its boycott before becoming the NAACP's Mississippi field secretary. The council's rallies gave Delta residents a place to hear open talk about voting and segregation at a time when such talk was dangerous. After 1955, pressure from white officials and Howard's move to Chicago in 1956 weakened it, and the NAACP, CORE and SNCC took its place.
How does it connect to Fannie Lou Hamer?
Hamer attended RCNL rallies in Mound Bayou in the 1950s, according to accounts of her life, and so heard the case for voting rights years before she acted on it in 1962. The organizing networks the council built, especially Amzie Moore's, later brought SNCC to Ruleville. See Amzie Moore and Amzie Moore and SNCC.
Questions readers ask
Did Fannie Lou Hamer attend RCNL meetings?
Accounts of her life say she attended Regional Council rallies in Mound Bayou in the 1950s and heard leaders speak about voting and civil rights there, years before SNCC came to Ruleville.
Why is this page called hjohnson.html?
The address was used by an earlier site on this domain for a page about a person we could not identify from public sources, so we do not profile anyone here. We used it for Mound Bayou and the RCNL.
Sources
- Regional Council of Negro LeadershipMississippi Encyclopedia
- Amzie MooreSNCC Digital Gateway
- Fannie Lou HamerWikipedia (Hamer's RCNL attendance)
- Civil Rights Trail, Cleveland, Mississippi (Mound Bayou sites)Visit Cleveland MS
We checked every date and name on this page against the sources above. If you find an error, write to contact@fannielouhamer.info.
Continue in the archive
- PeopleAmzie MooreThe life of Amzie Moore of Cleveland, Mississippi, a postal worker, WWII veteran and NAACP leader who urged SNCC to organize voters in the Delta.
- MovementVeterans and the movementHow Black World War II and Korean War veterans such as Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry and Clyde Kennard helped start the Mississippi movement Hamer joined.
- MovementMoore, Moses and SNCCHow Amzie Moore's 1960 meeting with Bob Moses turned SNCC toward voter registration in rural Mississippi and led organizers to Ruleville and Hamer in 1962.
- Her lifeFull biographyThe full life of Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), from Sunflower County cotton fields to SNCC, the Freedom Democrats, Atlantic City and the Freedom Farm.