‘Youth changed the city.’ Biloxi wade-in participants pass bullhorn to next generation

Sixty years after Biloxi’s Bloody Sunday, the original demonstrators on Saturday decided to “pass the bullhorn” to the next generation.

Dozens of Black teenagers and children walked from Lighthouse Park down to the beach to commemorate the wade-ins, a milestone in Mississippi’s civil rights movement and a civil disobedience demonstration against the segregated beaches.

This time, the youth had police protection. But in 1960, a violent white mob armed with bricks, baseball bats and chains descended on Black demonstrators seeking equal access to the beach. Law enforcement knew about the mob ahead of time and did nothing, sending out a skeleton crew of officers who watched the attacks.

The white nurse who filled out injured protesters’ hospital admissions forms wrote that the cause of their injuries was “integrational.”

The next wade-in wasn’t until 1963, when Biloxi police prevented white onlookers from attacking. Instead, they arrested the demonstrators. Despite being built with taxpayer money, the man-made beaches were considered property of the beachfront homeowners.

The most famous photograph of the day shows a line of mostly young Black people being led off the beach by police.

On Saturday, the youth chapter of the Biloxi NAACP — formed after the first wade-in — partially recreated that iconic photo.

‘Youth changed the city’

One attendee, Le’Roy Carney, was just 11 years old when he went to the wade-in that became known as Bloody Sunday.

“Youth changed the city of Biloxi forever,” said event coordinator John Kemp, whose 17-year-old son Saveair Kemp co-hosted and brought along members of the JROTC team he leads.

That message resonated with a crowd hungry for change in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and protests against racial injustice around the country.

After the walk to the beach, attendees asked questions of three men who had participated in the wade-ins: Carney, Clemon Jimerson, who was 14 on Bloody Sunday, and Gilbert Mason, Jr., whose father organized the demonstrations.

“We keep seeing this happen — we’ve seen Black men shot in their own living room,” one attendee asked. “How do we keep from having our kids having their grandkids 50 years from now still fighting this fight?”

They urged attendees to register to vote, get involved in local government, and show up at the polls.

“Be the candidate,” Mason Jr. said.

‘Water is like air’

The speeches and performances before the walk to the beach contained moments of inter-generational exchange and interpretation.

Saveair Kemp and co-host Madison Pavlus read aloud the “roll call” — the list of those who had gone down to the beach on Bloody Sunday. Family members in attendance were asked to stand when their relatives’ names were called. Kemp stepped forward and saluted as the names of seven members of his family were called. It was his first time hearing the roll call.

“It was emotional,” Kemp said. “I knew my family had ties. I didn’t know it was seven people.”

Some of Kemp’s JROTC teammates said they had known almost nothing of the wade-ins before Saturday’s event.

Judy Lombard Barkum wrote a poem titled “Water” for the 40th anniversary of the wade-ins. On Saturday, her 16-year-old granddaughter Marley Whitfield read the poem at the gathering.

“How could we not come to the Water?” Whitfield asked in her grandmother’s words. “What force would keep us from the Water?”

Lombard Barkum, 66, was a young child in Gulfport at the time of the wade-ins. She said she remembered people coming to her house to tell her parents what had happened on Bloody Sunday. As she wrote the poem decades later, she was thinking about “the ridiculousness” of barring people from the sea.

“The whole idea — who would ever keep us from water?” Lombard Barkum said. “Water is like air, God-given and free.”

Whitfield said she hadn’t known much about the wade-ins until this year, when her grandmother told her about them and asked her to read the poem at the commemoration event.

“I feel like I’ve done my job of passing on the legacy of being involved with civil rights,” Lombard Barkum said.

For members of the generation in between those old enough to recall the wade-ins and those young enough to be learning about it for the first time, Saturday’s event was an opportunity to reflect on how their lives had been shaped by the sacrifices of protesters — in many cases their own relatives.

Renée Winn’s father joined the wade-ins though her mother had asked him not to, fearing for her husband’s safety.

“He told her he was going out there to protect his children’s future,” Winn said.

When Winn was growing up in the 1970s, their family visited the beach regularly; her mother was perhaps the most enthusiastic beach-goer.

“Every Sunday after church, she took us to the beach,” Winn said. “She loved Easter, Christmas and the beach.”

This story was originally published June 21, 2020 at 2:49 PM.