The Struggle for Democracy

In l987 I was contacted by Patrick Watson of Toronto, Ontario, Canada who told me that he had read a book named “Blood Justice” which was a history of the killing of Mack Charles Parker, who had been taken out of the Pearl River County, Mississippi jail at Poplarville, Mississippi and murdered by a mob. Mr. Watson further said that Wilson F. Minor, a newspaper columnist of Jackson, Mississippi had recommended that he talk to me. Mr. Watson wanted to talk to me and see the grave of Parker at Lumberton, Mississippi.   He explained that he was doing a ten million dollar television series on democracy that would be seen worldwide. I told him I would be glad to accommodate him.

I was the second person interviewed by Mr. Watson. His group first interviewed former President Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia and then flew to New Orleans prior to driving 90 miles to Lumberton, Mississippi where I then practiced law and had been Mayor of the City for 16 years.

We discussed democracy for some time.  Mr. Watson wanted my ideas on it and I told him I would study the Greeks, the Magna Carta and the American bill of rights. I had been involved in some school desegregation cases in State and Federal Courts and we discussed Brown vs. Topeka wherein the Supreme Court ruled that Miss Brown’s liberty superceded the white man’s segregation laws.   They also filmed me in front of City Hall in Lumberton, Mississippi. Mr. Watson wanted to know if my views changed during this violent period. I told him, “I think most southerners did. I was originally a segregationist. As events started unfolding, I started thinking. Number one, I was an American. I had gone to Korea in the Korean conflict. And then the rightness of things that are involved:  I didn’t like to see people taking law into their own hands…We had to be ruled by law, and I believe in the system, I believe in democracy. So I had to come around, change my views.” 

Mr. Watson and Benjamin Barber also wrote a book from their televised series bearing the same name “The Struggle for Democracy” published by Little Brown.  In the book in the chapter dealing with the rule of law and in reference to my comments they said,

“What this thoughtful American was saying was that taking the law into your own hands-as good a definition as we have!-must be curtailed if we are to live under the rule of law. That for him democracy does not mean people doing whatever they want, using the law to legislate their prejudices,  but doing what is lawful.  Doing what comports with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.”

I did not see the televised portion when I was on TV.  The night it showed my niece, Ann Washburn and her husband, Judge Kent Washburn, of Burlington, North Carolina saw the program and called me. Kent liked what I said about the rightness of things.  Thereafter, when I went to Ole Miss football games people would look at me as if they knew me.   Later, one of my clients who had gone to Germany, named Ann Todd, who was a school teacher, said that she attended a teachers meeting there and that the TV was on and she saw me in Germany. It’s a small world. Our eyes are now glued to TV.

Mr. Watson’s program was broadcast in five hour long programs.    I felt honored in being able to participate. It was the second time that I was on National TV. At the Democratic Convention in Miami in 1972, which I attended, ABC focused on me for several minutes as the convention commenced, I was unaware of this until I returned home and was so informed by friends.