Forrest County: An early battle for voting rights

Many Bostonians travelled to Selma, Ala. last month to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Black Sunday, the day those peacefully protesting for voting rights were attacked by the police. The brutality of the assault on the Edmund Pettus Bridge induced the U.S. Congress to vote shortly thereafter for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, little attention has been given to the role of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in exposing the egregious discrimination in the voting rights of blacks.

Gordon A. Martin, Jr., a retired Roxbury District Court judge, was a member of the DOJ legal team in Hattiesburg, Miss., in Forrest County in 1962, that waged the battle that was so significant in prohibiting racial discrimination at the polls. Fortunately, Martin recorded an account of the engagement in his book, Count Them One by One.

In 2010, an African American judge, Carlton W. Reeves, nominated by Barack Obama, was confirmed to the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi. He has written an afterword to the paperback edition of Count Them. Judge Reeves states in part:

“I hope that when history looks back on my tenure, the record will show that all those who appeared before me were treated with dignity and respect … The work of Gordon Martin, the courage and dedication of the Freedom Riders and the many other citizen soldiers — those who were condemned as outside agitators as well as those native born — who understand that the Vote is Power and the Vote could and indeed would cause the transformation of Mississippi resulted in my ascension to the federal bench. I am the fruit of their labor.”

Martin’s book Count Them One by One enables future generations to have a clear record of a battle for voting rights that unfortunately is not yet quite over.