Barbecue and history were on the menu at Bobby Talbert’s place Saturday afternoon.
The McComb resident, a former Freedom Rider and field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement, held his annual picnic, drawing fellow activists, neighbors, friends, family, public officials and out-of-state guests.
Talbert described the event as part history lesson, part picnic.
“These people want to know what happened back in the day, in the ’60s,” he said. “A lot of them, they knew a lot, but they haven’t ever met nobody that was involved with the real thing.”
And for anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement, Talbert’s picnic is a good place to learn.
He has a vast collection of civil rights-era memorabilia, and many of his guests were active in the movement.
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Carolyn Richardson of McComb said she was involved with SNCC during the 1960s when she was a student at Xavier University in New Orleans.
“They wanted you to knock on doors and talk about your rights,” she said of the organization. “You have rights, you know, and one of the rights was to get out and vote.”
Richardson said the job wasn’t easy or safe. “You’re in danger all the time.”
But she knew it was an important task. The granddaughter of a former slave and a Native American woman, she recalled the difficulties her family grew up with in New Orleans, and that spurred her to action.
“Even when I was in grade school, they would have people park by the school and slurs they would say,” she said. “We had a lot to endure, but you had to keep on your mark.
“You can’t let nothing deter you from doing the things your rightfully supposed to do.”
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Dr. Ellen Carter, who moved from Mobile, Alabama, to McComb two weeks ago to take a job with the city school district, was one of a few white people in attendance who could relate their own stories of the civil rights movement.
Carter attended a Freedom School outside of Jackson when she was 11 years old in the early 1960s.
She said her grandmother attended missionary schools in New Orleans and Mobile at the behest of her father, who wanted her to have a more in-depth learning experience than what was available in rural Mississippi at the time. Her grandmother also had a desire for Carter and her cousins to learn something more than they would have at a traditional school, so she enrolled them in the Freedom School.
“She took us up there and introduced us to some men from New York and Connecticut,” Carter said. “Some of the teachers we were working with had not had an opportunity to go to school, so we were to help tem by keeping our mouths shut. There were two white guys and a black guy who taught us for about a week and a half.”
She said the school closed its doors after a couple of weeks, and she and her cousins didn’t go the last few days, most likely because the situation was getting tense.
She said black churches in the area helped the Freedom School by providing food — and protection.
“When we went outside, we would play ball, and all of these church members stood out around the field,” she said, adding that some carried shotguns. “Now I realize they were protecting us.”
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As the afternoon went on Brenda Travis showed up.
Her name is firmly etched in McComb civil rights history. Her expulsion from Burglund High School after participating at sit-ins to protest segregation led to student walkouts in 1961 — three years before Freedom Summer — and served as momentum for the movement locally.
She said Talbert’s informal gathering helps preserve the memory of sacrifices made a half century ago.
“It’s an awesome thing, and I’m hoping that the children learn from these experiences,” she said. “Someone mentioned to me about passing the torch. This is our way of passing the torch.”
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Sitting under Talbert’s carport eating a plate of food, Spanish Fort, Alabama, resident Henry McDuffy viewed the occasion as a chance to catch up with Carter, a friend of his from Mobile, and expose his wife and three sons to what he viewed as living history.
“What’s significant to me is we get a chance to view history, like in a museum,” he said. “This is living history here. It’s sort of ironic because a few weeks ago, we went to Selma (Alabama) and walked across the bridge, the Edmund-Pettus bridge.
“I think lot of today’s generations are not exposed to enough of this. They may get a smidgen of it in school, but to see it first hand ... I think it really makes a difference.”
