The March on Washington, 1977
The March on Washington in 1977 was perhaps the most audacious and highly visible demonstration the Union ever did. Their ultimate goal was a meeting with President Carter to demand an end to right-to-work legislation, but unfortunately despite traveling over 1,500 miles on foot, the Union was never granted an audience. Regardless, the march did succeed in bringing the struggle of Texan farm workers to national attention for perhaps the first time.
A group of around 40 dedicated Union members and supporters, the marchers traveled throughout much of the Deep South on their trek, however one incident in particular stands out. About halfway through the three month journey in a town called Poplarville, Mississippi the group was suddenly arrested by local Sheriff's Deputies. The exact details of what happened were hotly debated— the marchers claimed they were being harassed while the Sheriff downplayed the entire event.
Here are several news clippings found in the Benson Latin American Collection relating to the mass-arrest of Union marchers in Poplarville, Mississippi.
Note the fact that the Daily Texan article offers a very different narrative of the mass-arrest than the Austin-American Statesman and the Hattiesburg American do.
Read below for more information on this inconsistency.
The first news clipping in the gallery above reports on the march just days before the mass-arrest in Poplarville, Mississippi. The other three report directly on the event. The Hattiesburg American, a local newspaper, and the Austin-American Statesman each offer very similar narratives, while the article from the Daily Texan, the University of Texas student newspaper, offers a drastically different one.
The first narrative is relatively mundane: marchers were briefly detained by Pearl County Sheriff’s Deputies for blocking the roadway before being released when Sheriff Lawrence Holiday returned to the station from business. There is some ambiguity over whether the marchers were formally arrested or merely detained, but both articles contain a quote from the Sheriff claiming the latter. In the Sheriff’s words, “[we] had a short discussion… and they were on their way.” In short, the entire event was a small misunderstanding that was quickly corrected by the good Sheriff Holiday.
However the second narrative, offered by the Daily Texan, is radically different in several important details, particularly about actual role of Sheriff Holiday himself. This is due to information provided by an unnamed “friend of the marchers” that directly contradicts many of the Sheriff’s claims. To begin, the Daily Texan claims “...officers arrested all 46 marchers,” in contrast to the number (35) used in both other articles. The Daily Texan also directly identifies the Sheriff’s quote that no one was arrested as a denial, emphasizing the emerging conflict between the marchers’ and the police’s narratives. The “friend of the marchers” goes on to contest the Sheriff’s story of how the marchers were released, saying they were freed only after “...lawyers from the Equal Rights Congress, Texas State Representative Irma Rangel… and officials from the U.S. Department of Justice intervened,” The Daily Texan article goes on to mention that the march is being monitored by the Department of Justice for the farm workers’ safety, before closing with a quote from the same Rep. Rangel, referring to a dark and continued legacy of racial violence in Pearl County specifically.
In sum, the Daily Texan article provides a very different narrative of events: it depicts Sheriff Holiday and his deputies as aggressors who used their power as law enforcement officers to harass Union members until they were finally restrained by intervention from other political institutions.
Despite our best efforts, it is practically impossible to prove which narrative is more acccurate than the other. Instead, we must consider the context of the situation and decide for ourselves which version we personally find more believable.