Carolina, one of the flashpoints of the early civil rights movement. The first event involved a black veteran of the Marine Corps, Robert Williams, who had worked for Ford in Michigan; he formed a chapter of the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina, with a local physician, Dr. Albert Perry, as its vice president. One of their first endeavors was to get swimming privileges for black children at the municipal pool. Not wishing to integrate, they just wanted to have one day a week set aside for black swimmers. They were told that the pool “would have to be drained” after each black use and filled up again with fresh water, a procedure that was too costly. Another event was the “kissing case,” which involved a young white girl kissing a young black boy on the cheek. The boy, nine, and his friend, seven, were brought up on rape charges by authorities. They were not allowed to see their mothers for several weeks and were given lengthy sentences. A British photographer sneaked a camera inside the jail and printed the two young boys’ photographs in a London newspaper. The story exposed the North Carolina incident to worldwide scrutiny and notoriety. Protest demonstrations occurred at numerous U.S. embassies in Europe, and subsequently Eleanor Roosevelt asked President Eisenhower to end this farce. Ike, in turn, told North Carolina governor, Luther Hodges, to “deal with it.”7 He did. The children were released to their parents, and the white bigots of Monroe (headquarters for the southeastern division of the Ku Klux Klan) were thoroughly and justifiably ridiculed for their backwardness. Then came the Freedom Riders. Mr. Williams was asked to join them, but he let it be known that, while he admired Dr. King, he would not countenance passive resistance. He formed a rifle club in Monroe with the blessings of the Washington, D.C.–based National Rifle Association (NRA). In late summer 1961 (by now, Genora was working with the Detroit ACLU), a serious altercation occurred between the Freedom Riders and residents of Newtown, the major black district of Monroe, and the white residents. The upshot was that several Freedom Riders were jailed, and Williams was indicted for kidnapping a white couple who strayed into the black community; according to black opinion, he had put them up in his house for safety, and according to white opinion, he had detained them against their will. Williams fled to Cuba to seek the protection of Fidel Castro, whom he had met on previous occasions.
The Monroe defendants activated the Flint chapter of the NAACP. Why the Flint chapter? Apparently “pecksniffian liberals” in the North would not touch any of this stuff, especially the one about “kissing” and “rape.”8 Most important was Genora’s drive to enlist working-class blacks—and even working-class whites, for that matter—into the NAACP.
Nationwide, the NAACP appealed to middle-class black citizens: the small business owners, entrepreneurs, and what is commonly called the white-collar segment. At this time, neither Monroe, North Carolina, nor Flint, Michigan, had a large population of middle-class citizens, black or white; the working class outnumbered them considerably. Genora’s work in bringing the working class to the NAACP was ready-made for her, although she had been born and raised (at least for about sixteen years) in a middle-class atmosphere. Her youthful reactions against a bigoted father who joined the Ku Klux Klan could very well have been one of the subconscious reasons why Genora so constantly favored poor and working classes.
Little news of Monroe filtered down to interested agencies in the North. ACLU attorney Conrad Lynn visited Michigan in December 1960, and, at Genora’s instigation, a meeting in Flint was held and Lynn told all interested parties what was happening in Monroe, North Carolina.9 Genora received a letter from Berta Green, a former SWP activist and secretary of the Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendants (some fifteen of them), asking for help in Monroe.10 In a letter to attorney Sam Duncan on the same day she wrote to Genora, Mrs. Green