Theron Lynd
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Theron Carl Lynd (May 30, 1920– January 31, 1978) was an American
circuit clerk Circuit may refer to: Science and technology Electrical engineering * Electrical circuit, a complete electrical network with a closed-loop giving a return path for current ** Analog circuit, uses continuous signal levels ** Balanced circui ...
and voter registrar in
Forrest County, Mississippi Forrest County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 78,158. Its county seat and largest city is Hattiesburg. The county was created from Perry County in 1908 and named in honor of Nat ...
, who refused to register Black people during the civil rights movement. Lynd was the first southern voter registrar to be held in violation of charges of discrimination under the Federal Civil Rights Acts. Even after being ordered to cease denying African Americans voting rights in federal court, he continued to obstruct their registration by various means. Despite Lynd's segregationist stance and his six years of legal troubles, he continued to be re-elected until his death in 1978.


Early life and education

Theron Carl Lynd was born on May 30, 1920, in
Moss Point, Mississippi Moss Point is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 12,147 in 2020, a decline from the figure of 13,704 in 2010. The Moss Point Historic District and several individual buildings are listed on the National Reg ...
. His family moved to
Hattiesburg Hattiesburg is a city in the U.S. state of Mississippi, located primarily in Forrest County (where it is the county seat and most populous city) and extending west into Lamar County. The city population was 48,730 in 2020, making it the 5th m ...
when he was three years old, where he attended public schools. Lynd attended
Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Mississippi State, Mississippi, Un ...
to study business and graduated in 1943. In college he was a member of the
Lambda Chi Alpha Lambda Chi Alpha (), commonly referred to as Lambda Chi, is a fraternities and sororities, collegiate fraternity in North America. With over 300,000 initiates as of 2024, it is the third-largest social fraternity in the world by number of initia ...
fraternity.


Career

He joined his father's oil and gas business, before working at the Hattiesburg Typewriter Company in 1958. Lynd was elected Forrest County Circuit Clerk in 1959, replacing Luther Cox, who had died in office. Lynd reported to and was surveilled by the Hattiesburg
Citizens' Council The White Citizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark ''Brow ...
and the
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (also called the MSSC or Sov-Com) was a state agency in Mississippi active from 1956 to 1973 and tasked with fighting integration and controlling civil rights activism. It was overseen by the List of G ...
, a state agency established to fight desegregation efforts, these two organizations wanted to insure segregation was still happening in the court system.


''United States of America, v. Theron C. Lynd, and the State of Mississippi''

The United States Government requested Lynd to open his voter registration records to federal inspectors for photography and examination on August 11, 1960, in compliance with Title III of the
Civil Rights Act of 1960 The Civil Rights Act of 1960 () is a United States federal law that established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote. It dealt primarily wi ...
, but he refused. In July 1961, the
United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...
filed a lawsuit against Lynd in violation of federal law title 42 United States Code Annotated section 1971(a), claiming Lynd and his office had routinely violated the civil rights of Black people in Forrest County by denying them the right to vote. In March 1962, a Federal District Court injunction hearing was held in under Judge Harold Cox. Malcomb Mettie Roberts (also known as M. M. Roberts) was Lynd's lawyer; and Department of Justice lawyer and chief counsel
John Doar John Michael Doar (December 3, 1921 – November 11, 2014) was an American lawyer and senior counsel with the law firm Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York City. During the administrations of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, h ...
handled the case for the federal government. The court case concluded that discrimination existed but it did not acknowledge the plaintiff's request for a
preliminary injunction An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable reme ...
, so the Justice Department appealed Judge Cox's decision to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is one of the 13 United States courts of appeals. It has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: ...
in the Southern District (S.D.) in Houston. The court ruled on April 10, 1962, during the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals meeting in New Orleans under Judges
Elbert Tuttle Elbert Parr Tuttle (July 17, 1897 – June 23, 1996) was the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1960 to 1967, when that court became known for a series of decisions crucial in advancing the civil rights of ...
,
John Minor Wisdom John Minor Wisdom (May 17, 1905 – May 15, 1999), one of the "Fifth Circuit Four", and a United States Republican Party, Republican from Louisiana, was a United States federal judge, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appe ...
and J.C. Hutcheson, "the trial court's decision to neither grant nor deny a request for a preliminary injunction in effect equated with denying the request altogether" and issued injunction requiring Lynd to stop discrimination. Lynd's attorneys then appealed to the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
asking to reverse the 5th Circuit's decision. On November 5, 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court denied
certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of a prerogative writ in England, issued by a superior court to direct that the recor ...
. On May 2, 1962, Lynd was served with papers and the federal government again filed suit against Lynd for allegedly ignoring the 5th circuit injunction order. From September 17–21, 1962 the case was heard in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit under Judges
Griffin Bell Griffin Boyette Bell (October 31, 1918 – January 5, 2009) was the 72nd Attorney General of the United States, having served under President Jimmy Carter. Previously, he was a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fift ...
, John Minor Wisdom, and John Robert Brown, and the federal government entered into evidence collected by the F.B.I. and had 51 witnesses testify. Rev. W. Ridgway testified before a congressional subcommittee that out of 12,958 African Americans in the county, only 25 people were permitted to vote. Such testimony and voter registration efforts drew the ire of Citizens' Councils groups and surveillance from the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. The 5th circuit court decided on July 15, 1963, that Lynd failed to comply with the first injunction, and he was found guilty on civil contempt charge. Lynd's litigation continued until 1967.


Personal life and death

He married Miriam Howell in 1958. They had no children. Lynd was a big and physically intimidating man, over 6 feet tall and over 300 pounds. He was obese and a diabetic, and had an amputation of both legs around 1977. He died of apparent heart failure in January 30, 1978 at the age of 57, while serving his 5th term in office as the Circuit Clerk and Registrar of Voters for Forrest County, Mississippi. He is buried in a mausoleum in Roseland Park Cemetery in Hattiesburg. His wife was appointed to his office until a special election could be held.


Legacy

As a result of the voting discrimination in 1962, Hattiesburg civil rights activist
Vernon Dahmer Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer Sr. (March 10, 1908 – January 10, 1966) was an American civil rights movement leader and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was murdered by the White Knights of the K ...
started an African American voter registration drive and invited the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emer ...
(SNCC). The following winter hundreds of people protested Lynd’s refusal to register Black voters at the local courthouse on “Freedom Day”. In the 1960s, Lynd had earned national recognition in depictions in comics and caricatures as a symbol of Southern racism. On September 26, 1962, the
CBS Reports ''CBS Reports'' is the umbrella title used for documentaries by CBS News which aired starting in 1959 through the 1990s. The series sometimes aired as a wheel series rotating with ''60 Minutes'' (or other similar CBS News series), as a series of i ...
television series aired nationally on
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
, the episode "Mississippi and the 15th Amendment" featured Lynd, calling him "one of the most powerful men in America." Lynd is included in archives at Mississippi Department of Archives and History, University of Southern Mississippi, and Digital Library of Georgia. Gordon A. Martin, a former Civil Rights Division attorney, judge and professor, wrote chapters on Lynd and the events in his book, ''Count Them One By One; Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote'' (2010). Lynd is also profiled in the William Sturkey book ''Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White'' (Harvard University Press, 2019).


See also

*
Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States, was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in the South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from ...
*
Freedom Summer Freedom Summer, also known as Mississippi Freedom Summer (sometimes referred to as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project), was a campaign launched by civil rights movement, American civil rights activists in June 1964 to r ...
*
Samuel Bowers Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. (August 25, 1924 – November 5, 2006) was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand Dragon of the Mississi ...
*
Clyde Kennard Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927July 4, 1963) was an American Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In the 1950s, he attempted several times to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College (now the Univer ...


References


Further reading

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External links


Excerpt from "CBS Reports" Season 4, Episode 2, "Mississippi and the 15th Amendment," aired 26 Sep. 1962)
video that features Lynd, on
C-SPAN Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American Cable television in the United States, cable and Satellite television in the United States, satellite television network, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a Non ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynd, Theron 1920 births 1978 deaths American civil servants Mississippi State University alumni American segregationists People from Hattiesburg, Mississippi People from Moss Point, Mississippi