A Yellow Rose Project
For some, the struggle for the right to vote did not end in 1920. Photographer Betty Press and I collaborated to photographically honor five Black women who worked during the 1960s to improve voting rights in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, an epicenter for voter registration activity. These four images are my contribution. We found a common thread among them—they never responded to hate with hate. With courage, faith, and an enduring expectation for progress, they worked to make real change against discriminatory practices with effective results for themselves and their community. One hundred and five women photographers from 29 states were invited to make responses to the centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification. Thank you to Meg Griffiths and Frances Jakubek for conceiving and creating this important opportunity.
Elle Davis Dahmer
Vying for the attention of Ellie Dahmer, reporters crowd in for interviews at the January 2020 dedication of a sculpture honoring her husband, Vernon, and his message, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” Their home was firebombed, and her husband killed in 1966 for their family’s tireless work defending voting rights in Mississippi.
Eight years after his murder Mrs. Dahmer reflected, “Well the only way I can look at Vernon’s death and not cry about it is when I walk in the bank, I see Black faces there. You see buses driving; you see Black faces on them. You see the police force; you see Black faces. Well, if his dying did all this — then, it’s worth it and he would have done it again.”
Ellie Dahmer was undeterred. Among her many contributions, she went on to serve as Forrest County Election Commissioner for 12 years and reopened her husband’s case, which, in 1998, resulted in a murder conviction of a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
I made this portrait at the dedication in front of the Hattiesburg Courthouse.
Doris Townsend Gaines
“In the afternoons, we went into some of the Black neighborhoods with some older youth to canvass for potential new voters, encouraging people to register and vote. When we got a favorable response, we would arrange transportation downtown to the courthouse for potential voters to register. I remember vividly sometimes we were afraid. It was very difficult times, but we were careful and stuck with the adult leaders.” Memories from attending a Freedom School in Hattiesburg, Mississippi during Freedom Summer 1964.
I made this portrait at Rowan High (now Elementary) School in Hattiesburg. Doris is the creator and editor of The Class of 1968: A Thread Through Time a compilation of coming-of-age stories from Rowan High, a segregated school during a monumental time of integration, assignations, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Lillie Dwight
“We were not transported to a jail but to the Jackson Fairground…. People were being beaten to the point that blood was flowing from their heads and bodies.” Lillie describes the day that she and her sister, as teenagers, peacefully protested in a march for voting rights in Jackson, Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964.
I made this portrait in front of her family home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a rallying point for civil rights activists in the 1960s and where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hosted just two weeks before his assassination. Her dream to have her childhood home declared an Historic Landmark was realized in 2019.
Ruby Wilson
From 1959–1962 all Black voter applications in Hattiesburg, Mississippi were rejected by Theron Lynd, the county registrar, including Ruby’s. Among his tactics for denial was to require Black applicants to interpret difficult sections of the state constitution in writing. When her application was read as evidence in federal court, “The judge looked over to Lynd and said, ‘I couldn’t have interpreted it any better myself.’”
I made this portrait in front of the Hattiesburg Courthouse where, in 1962, Ruby and 16 other witnesses testified in federal court exposing discriminatory voting practices. Forty-three Black people had their formerly-rejected applications approved and left the courthouse as registered voters.