Little Union Baptist Church

The epicenter of the Civil Rights struggle in Shreveport was located on the “Mother Road” for the Civil Rights Movement in Shreveport, where mass meetings and strategy sessions were held during the 1960s.

Little Union Baptist Church was guided during that period by Reverend Claude Clifford McClain, who remained the congregation’s pastor for 32 years.

The minister, staff, and members of the congregation were harassed regularly by authorities who were attempting to suppress civil rights activities through unwavering intimidation.

Several incidents at Little Union gained national attention during the Civil Rights Movement, including an intimidation attempt during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference‘s (SCLC) annual conference held at Little Union in Oct. 1960.

By the early 1960s, many authorities and federal agencies in Louisiana branded the NAACP as a communist front organization. This was a severe problem for the Civil Rights movement in the American South. Without an organized movement, there could be no movement.

And though they weren’t necessarily trying to replace the NAACP, new organizations that carried the organization’s mantle formed across the American South.

Some of the new organizations were the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the United Christian Movement (UCM.)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the SCLC’s president, and in 1960, the SCLC’s annual conference was to be held in Shreveport. MLK was scheduled to speak at the event on Oct. 11-13, 1960.

MLK and the SCLC annual conference at Little Union

On October 11, 1960, the day the SCLC annual conference began, MLK visited Evergreen Baptist Church in Shreveport and told the SCLC executive board that the organization “must do something creative this year.”

MLK’s words were heeded, too.

At the time of the SCLC conference at Little Union, authorities in Shreveport were trying to repress the movement. Police even tried to disrupt the SCLC annual conference by arresting one of MLK’s good friends, C. O. Simpkins, right after Simpkins pulled away from Little Union Baptist Church in a brand-new station wagon he had bought earlier in the day.

Simpkins was in the process of transporting activists from the conference when police pulled over his station wagon. He was arrested, as was Reverend Ralph Abernathy (President of the Montgomery Improvement Association), Guy Carawan (Music director at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee), and John Brooks (NAACP Director of Voter Registration.) All the men were held for about an hour and a half before being released.

Carawan had come to the SCLC annual conference in Shreveport to play and sing movement music, which he did at the conference’s opening. Carawan had co-authored the revision of an old song that would later become the Civil Rights anthem: We Shall Overcome. Then he toured the south to teach We Shall Overcome and other movement music to activists.

Shreveport was one of the first places that We Shall Overcome was sung.

Later, Shreveport Police Chief Harvey D. Teasley denied that police took the men in the station wagon into custody.

The arrests were a close call for MLK, but Joiner said there was a good reason why King wasn’t arrested during the conference.

“King was being protected by his security, most likely the Deacons of Defense, who used the church’s back door. It was at night, and the police force was occupied with the front of the building,” said Joiner.

The typed program for the SCLC annual conference reveals the message that MLK delivered at the conference in Shreveport.

“I am convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that the philosophy of nonviolence will redeem the soul of America,” MLK wrote for the program. “There is a great temptation to accept nonviolence solely as a strategy, a device; this we must guard against. This is one of the chief aims of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: To broadly disseminate through intensive training the heart of nonviolence, that our commitment to nonviolence will not only be as a technique, but shall become for us a way of life with love and redemption as its center. The other chief aim of SCLC is in the area of voter registration. Here again, it must be recognized that the right and proper use of the ballot is vital in our struggle for first-class citizenship. The SCLC stands ready to serve in developing and organizing grassroots voter registration programs. One of the most significant steps that the Negro can take at this hour is that short walk to the voting booth.“

Reactions to the arrest of SCLC activists were peaceful. Instead of squashing the local Civil Rights movement, police accidentally unified activists who, as Christians, did not believe in using violence.

But that’s not the end of Little Union’s Civil Rights history. The most publicized of Shreveport’s racial clashes were still yet to come.

MLK’s lieutenant arrested in Shreveport

MLK revisited Shreveport on June 8, 1962, and by then, northwest Louisiana had become a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity. The national Ku Klux Klan organization had even made a promise that MLK would be assassinated if he came back to Shreveport.

Wyatt Tee Walker and Burke Marshall were in charge of MLK’s movements. Marshall was in constant contact with U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. President John F. Kennedy‘s brother. Marshall contacted the Shreveport Police commissioner and the Sheriff of Caddo Parish, but authorities in Shreveport would do nothing to help. Walker even found two judges in northwest Louisiana who said they would intercede, but neither judge could guarantee that law enforcement would do their duty to protect MLK.

Dr. C. O. Simpkins and other local leaders asked MLK to cancel. The KKK had already firebombed Simpkin’s home and his dental office, after all.

But MLK came anyway.

Police surrounded Little Union Baptist Church as MLK arrived, claiming they would “protect” him.

King went inside and spoke in the sanctuary before an overflowing crowd. Walker and Reverend Harry Blake went outside to talk to Shreveport Police Commissioner Earl Downs, and the two men were arrested for loitering. Both were listed as loitering fugitives, and the arrest blotter shows that Commissioner Downs, Chief Teasely, and Lt. Tilly made arrests at 8:35 p.m. The bond was set at $52.50 for each man, and later, the remarks on the police blotter were arrested.

No one inside the church realized Walker and Blake had been arrested until much later.

Walker, who was in charge of King’s security, was not released as quickly. He was held in the city jail all afternoon, all night, and into the next day. The Caddo Parish coroner, Dr. Stuart DeLee, interrogated him and attempted to declare Walker insane.

Dr. King left the city while Walker was still in prison, and Walker flew to Chicago to meet with Reverend Billy Graham the next day.

Yes, that Billy Graham.

Violence erupts at Little Union Baptist Church

On September 16, 1963, the KKK dynamited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and four little girls were killed.

The entire nation was outraged.

Black ministers in Shreveport planned a march and memorial service for the following Sunday.

George D’Artois, the new Commissioner of Public Safety, announced that anyone who marched would be arrested, and the march was officially canceled, but many people marched anyway.

Other agencies assisted Shreveport police, who arrived in their full riot gear with mounted patrol officers on horseback. City sanitation workers showed up with trash trucks, and the police forced people in the Little Union neighborhood off their front porches and inside their homes.

Shreveport Commissioner of Public Safety George D’Artois (foreground) The photo was taken early during the confrontation at Little Union Baptist Church on September 22, 1963. Source: Northwest Louisiana Archives, Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Shreveport.

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Shreveport historian, professor, author, and activist Willie Burton described the scene:

“On Sunday, September 22, 1963, hundreds of blacks met at Booker T. Washington High School to participate in the march. However, some 200 city policemen, sheriffs, marshals, and other law enforcement officials had blocked parts of Milam Street. Approximately 80 marchers took an alternate route that brought them down Lewis Place, Looney Street, Norma Street, and Little Union Baptist Church on Milam Street. There, they were joined by some 300 to 400 blacks, and the police riot squad was waiting,” wrote Burton.

The service at Little Union continued as planned, and more than five hundred people attended.

Inside the church, a young minister named Reverend Harry Blake lashed out at the “Storm Troopers” outside Little Union’s front doors.

Blake was Shreveport’s NAACP chapter president at the time, and he had already been arrested twice that week by Shreveport Police patrol officer C. R. Paine.

The photo was taken early during the confrontation at Little Union Baptist Church on September 22, 1963. Note the mounted patrol officer to the right of the utility pole. (Source: Asriel Gamaliel McClain, Coming Forth As Pure Gold: A Look At Civil Rights Activities In Shreveport 1959-1968. Shreveport, LA: Published by the Author, N.D.)

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Jesse Stone, the NAACP’s attorney, also spoke at the service. So did H.D. Coke of Birmingham, Clarence Laws (the Southwest Regional Secretary of the NAACP), Reverend C. C. McClain, and other movement leaders.

Outside of Little Union, tension was building between demonstrators and the 200 or more shotgun-waiving, Billy club-swinging, horse-riding, and bayonetted policemen. Police had already pushed some of the protestors back down Norma Avenue.

Attorney Jesse Stone tried to ease the tension by speaking with D’Artois, who agreed that people could leave the sanctuary two by two. But as people began exiting the church, police confronted Revered Harold Bethune. Some of the younger members of the crowd became vocal about their disapproval of police being at Little Union.

Reverend Harry Blake (center) confers with Shreveport police officers. The photo was taken just before the confrontation at Little Union Baptist Church on September 22, 1963. (Source: Northwest Louisiana Archives, Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Shreveport.)

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Bethune suddenly lost his temper and ran back into the sanctuary, hollering, “If you want me, you have to come in here and get me!”

D’Artois ordered his men to storm the church, and mounted patrol officers rode their horses up the front steps and inside, swinging their batons at people to clear the doors.

D’Artois and other policemen pulled Reverend Blake, who was standing near the door, outside, and some of the policemen began to beat him with their billy clubs on the front steps of the church. Others rode horses onto the porches of neighboring houses and used cattle prods to beat demonstrators.

Blake later stated there was “no doubt in my mind or anyone else’s” that D’Artois had personally attacked him.

Reverend Harry Blake received medical attention After being clubbed by police. Reverend C.C. McClain is on the left, and his wife, Norma, is on the right. (Source: Willie Burton, On the Black Side of Shreveport: A History. Shreveport, LA. Published by the Author, 1994, E5.)

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Many attendees of the service at Little Union and residents of the neighborhood were harassed and beaten. One protestor, Myron Latham, was arrested for resisting arrest.

The Reverend’s wife, Norma Blake, came to her husband’s aid as he was taken into the church’s study. Dr. Joseph Sarpy gave Blake seven stitches to close a gash on his head.

Blake was taken to Dr. Mason Reddix’s house on Murphy Street for treatment because many were afraid to use the local hospital, and he was later taken for treatment in Dallas.

The protests in Shreveport continued for days.

Books

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York. Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Burton, Willie. On the Black Side of Shreveport: A History. Shreveport, LA. Published by the Author, 1994.

Carawan, Guy and Candie Carawan. We Shall Overcome! New York. Oak Publications. 1963.

Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island South Carolina―Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs. Athens, GA. University of Georgia Press. 1966.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle. New York. Oak Publications. 1968.

Glen, John M. Highlander: No Ordinary School, 2nd ed. Knoxville, TN. University of Tennessee Press. 1996.

Keith, Bill. The Commissioner: A True Story of Deceit, Dishonor, and Death (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2009 Bill Keith, The Commissioner: A True Story of Deceit, Dishonor, and Death. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co., 2009.

McClain, Asriel Gamaliel Coming Forth As Pure Gold: A Look At Civil Rights Activities In Shrevepoer 1959-1968. Shreveport, LA. Published by the Author, N.D.

Palombo, Bernadette J., Gary D. Joiner, W. Chris Hale, and Cheryl H. White. Wicked Shreveport. Charleston, S.C. The History Press, 2012.

Seeger, Pete and Bob Reiser, “Everybody Says Freedom: A History of the Civil Rights Movement in Songs and Pictures, including Many Songs Collected by Guy and Candie Carawan,” Yearbook of Traditional Music. Vol. 22: 160. 1990.

Newspapers

Chillicothe [Ohio] Gazette, May 9, 2015.

Shreveport Journal, February 22, 1984.

The [Shreveport] Times, October 14, 1960.

Tulsa [Oklahoma] World, May 9, 2015.

Internet Arstechnica https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/the-most-famous-civil-rights-song-we-shall-overcome-is-no-longer-copyrighted/ Guy and Candie Carawan official website Guy and Candie Carawan Homepage Guy and Candie Carawan Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, UNC Chapel Hill Highlander Center Highlander Center official web site

Archives

John F. Kennedy Library. Burke Marshall to Robert F. Kennedy, June 1, 1962.Marshall Papers, Box 16.

Library of Congress "Candie Carawan and Guy Hughes Carawan oral history interview conducted by Joseph Mosnier in New Market, Tennessee, 2011 September 19". www.LOC.gov

Northwest Louisiana Archives, Noel Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Shreveport. City of Shreveport Record of Arrest book, August 25, 1961 – November 20, 1962.

Internet

National Public Radio https://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/404739729/guy-carawan-musician-known-for-we-shall-overcome-dies https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2013/08/20130828_atc_weshall2.mp3?e=404739729&t=progseg&seg=3&sc=siteplayer&aw_0_1st.playerid=siteplayer

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilphia_Horton#/media/File:We_Shall_Overcome