The growling stomachs of more than 20,000 sharecroppers could be heard from a mile away. These farmers just wanted to feed their families but the White Citizens’ Council (WCC) decided to crush the civil rights movement in one of the cruelest ways possible.
Starvation. Down the road from the WCC’s main headquarters in Greenwood, Mississippi was the office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), young activists mentored by the NAACP and ready to fight segregationism across the Delta. But their work terrified and angered white leaders.
Influenced by the WCC’s efforts, the Leflore County Board of Supervisors voted to end the Federal Surplus Food Commodity Program in the fall of 1962, leaving thousands of sharecroppers who relied on the program with nothing to eat. According to a SNCC report, “If this is taken away, they have nothing at all.”
But all was not lost.
The SNCC organized food drives and created free food distribution programs. The young activists mobilized the collection of food donations from across the country. In the spring of 1963 they got the House Judiciary Committee to intervene and force Leflore County to reinstate the food program.
The Greenwood Food Blockade shows that while anti-Blackness can try to take the food out of our bellies, it can’t starve the spirit of resistance that resides within all of us.