Silver Rights

The Carter family never set out to be leaders in the school desegregation movement in Mississippi. They simply wanted the best education for their children. Matthew and Mae Bertha along with their 13 children had spent a lifetime sharecropping twenty-five acres on the cotton plantations in rural northwest Mississippi. They had watched their five oldest children graduate from the part-time black high school in Drew, only to leave directly thereafter, the boys to the military, the girls to the north to find work, while living with relatives.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in order to comply with the act, most Mississippi school districts implemented a “plan” to desegregate the schools by offering a “freedom of choice” plan to all parents. They never believed that black parents, who were still dependent on white land and business owners for their livelihoods, would choose to send their children to all-white schools. Matthew and Mae Bertha never were educated beyond the fourth grade, but wanted more for their remaining eight children. They knew education was a way out of the cotton fields.

In early August 1965, when the school district in Drew mailed out the freedom of choice notices, all seven of the Carter children, who were school age, made the decision to attend the all-white schools in Drew. It would be much later that they would find out that they were the only black parents to enroll their children in white schools, not only in Drew, but also in the whole of Sunflower County.

It was then that the trouble started. Over the next few months, the family had their animal pens torn down, and the animals stolen. The fields that they had always picked to make extra money were plowed under. The plantation owners threatened them with eviction, and shots were fired into their home. Even so, the children got on the bus for the first day of school, September 3, 1965. Little did they know what would follow. All the children were harassed by the students, and ignored by the teachers. In their stories, we hear about the spitballs, and name calling, and total isolation of the children, by both the white student and their own black friends.

It is a story of the Carter family’s singleness of purpose, courage, and endurance, to obtain the best education possible, and they did. Of the eight children who entered white schools that fateful morning in September, seven went on to “Ole Miss”. Mae Bertha and Matthew continued to be involved in the education of children, working at Head Start, and continuing the