Waubonsee Community College

How to become sheriff ... when born poor and black in segregated Mississippi, by Donald Blank

eng

videorecording

For College; Adult audiences

How to become sheriff ... when born poor and black in segregated Mississippi

electronic resource

780744107

by Donald Blank

49

Black studies in video

For two centuries, Mississippi blacks have had to endure slavery, poverty, discrimination, and violence. Finally in the 1960s, the civil rights campaign in the South brought real change. Mississippi now has thirteen elected black sheriffs. This film tells the story of one of them: Sheriff Frank Davis and how he gained acceptance by the community of Port Gibson as its major law enforcer. Frank was one of eleven children of Mary Triplett, whose mother and grandmother had been victims of Jim Crow. Mary could not vote or eat in a restaurant of work as a clerk in a store. His father was a mechanic and although they never missed a meal, the Tripletts were very poor, attended segregated schools and lived in shabby houses on unpaved streets. In 1965, the Port Gibson branch of the NAACP organized the first non-violent civil rights marches and boycotts there. When young Frank attended the first civil rights rally, he was immediately fired from his job in a white-owned supermarket. Frank was drafted and sent to Korea. On his return, he was hired as Deputy Sheriff by Port Gibson's white sheriff, with one piece of advice, "Be fair." He was then elected to the office, becoming one of the first three black sheriffs elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction. Thanks to Federal civil rights legislation and enforcement, along with the brave efforts of its black citizenry, this town has come a long way

general