NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co.

Facts

In March 1966, black citizens of Port Gibson and Claiborne County, Mississippi, presented white elected officials with a list of nineteen specific demands for racial equality and integration, including desegregation of public schools and facilities, hiring of black policemen, public improvements in black residential areas, selection of blacks for jury duty, integration of bus stations, an end to verbal abuse by law enforcement officers, and employment of black clerks and cashiers in stores. When no satisfactory response was received by April 1, several hundred black persons voted unanimously at a local NAACP meeting to boycott white merchants. The boycott continued for seven years with varying intensity, involving speeches by leaders including Charles Evers and Aaron Henry, picketing, store watchers who identified boycott violators, publication of violators’ names, and social ostracism. Some isolated incidents of violence occurred in 1966, including shots fired at homes, property damage, and physical altercations. The boycott intensified following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and the shooting death of Roosevelt Jackson by Port Gibson police in April 1969. White merchants filed suit in October 1969 seeking damages for business losses and injunctive relief.