Tent City, also called Freedom Village, was an encampment outside of
Memphis in
Fayette County,
Tennessee
Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...
for African Americans who were evicted from their homes and blacklisted from buying amenities as retaliation for registering to vote during the
Civil Rights Movement. It began in 1960 and lasted about two years.
Origins
In 1960, 1,400 Black Americans registered to vote in deeply segregated Fayette County. In retaliation, white landowners evicted 257 Black sharecroppers from their homes. Shepard Towles, a local Black landowner, let the displaced farmers camp on his land. Towles stated, "These people had nowhere to go. I decided to let them come in free, let them use the water from my deep well—as long as it lasts."
This became known as Tent City.
Previously, John McFerren and Harpman Jameson founded the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to 'promote civil and political and economic' community progress.
McFerren, Jameson, and J.F. Estes, a Memphis lawyer, travelled to Washington, D.C. to lobby the Justice Department to intervene on behalf of the sharecroppers. The
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights law passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. E ...
prohibits "against intimidating, coercing or otherwise interfering with the rights of persons to vote for the President and members of Congress." The white community then retaliated further by refusing to sell groceries and other amenities to Black registered voters.
National attention
McFerren appealed to national newspapers to draw attention to the plight of residents in Tent City.
[Viola McFerren. Oral history interview. Civil Rights Oral History Project. Special Collection Division, Nashville Public Library.] Gulf Oil
Gulf Oil was a major global oil company in operation from 1901 to 1985. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the Seven Sisters (oil companies), Seven Sisters oil companies. ...
,
Texeco, and
Esso
Esso () is a trading name for ExxonMobil. Originally, the name was primarily used by its predecessor Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the original Standard Oil company in 1911. The company adopted the name "Esso" (from the phon ...
refused to deliver gasoline to McFerren's store. The
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
called for a national boycott of these chains.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered the Justice Department to investigate civil rights violations in Fayette County.
The
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a national trade union center that is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 61 national and international unions, together r ...
published a pamphlet, ''Tent City... "Home of the Brave"'' calling for donations.
In 1961, trucks arrived with 150 tons of donated food and clothes.
National attention drew white civil rights advocates from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
, the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
, and the
Religious Society of Friends
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
(Quakers). The national attention intensified voter registration drives and this eventually led to black majority voter registration, though elections were still fixed in favor of whites.
Dissolution
The largest impromptu settlement on Towles' farm lasted approximately two years. Residents moved with other black families or relocated to other parts of Tennessee.
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
* - Section 4 of the "October 1960: The Untold Story of Jackson's Civil Rights Movement" series by the newspaper ''
Jackson Sun''
African-American history of Tennessee
Fayette County, Tennessee
Shanty towns in the United States
Civil rights movement
Housing in Tennessee
Populated places in Tennessee established by African Americans
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