Klansman visited deathbed of crusading black publisher

By Valencia Mohammed
Special to the NNPA from the
Afro-American Newspapers

JACKSON, Miss.-At first, DeAnna Tisdale was startled to see the wizened old man sitting outside the hospital room of her father, legendary black newspaper publisher and long time civil rights activist Charles Tisdale.

"Grand Wizard?" she inquired.

The short white man looked straight ahead with an unexpectedly endearing smile and tearful eyes. Sure enough, there he was, the white supremacist who had preached segregation as hard as Tisdale, now laying in a coma in his hospital bed, had spent his years championing equal rights.

"I'm Mr. Richard Barrett," Tisdale's daughter recalled him saying. "I've known your father for years. I'm not coming to start any trouble."

There he was, the man known by most local residents as the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, coming to pay his respects to a man against whom he had fought for years over one of the nation's most intractable issues-race. And, the issue was race in a place, Mississippi, that for many African Americans still symbolizes one of the darkest chapters in America's history.

"I have the utmost respect for your father," Barrett told Tisdale, now the assistant publisher of her father's paper.

For nearly 30 years, Tisdale, the owner of the weekly Jackson Advocate who died recently, and Barrett engaged in heated debates about race, the abolition of slavery, Jim Crow, hangings, the civil rights movement, the Confederate flag, the Nation of Islam, food stamps, public housing and black culture.

But, as soon as Barrett read in a daily newspaper that his adversary was in critical condition and possibly near death, he headed to his bedside.

In some ways, the meeting reflects the many changes that have taken place in a city and state that during the civil rights movement was the home of the nation's most intractable racists and racism.

Just the mention of the name Mississippi during the 1950s and 1960s would send a shiver through blacks living in the South. Blacks were routinely lynched-more than 500 from 1882 to the mid-1960s- and murdered for speaking out against racism, and sometimes just for speaking.

It was in Mississippi that Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy visiting his relatives the summer of 1955, was killed by white racists for speaking to a white girl, igniting the civil rights movement. It was here that civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner disappeared in 1964 one of the most brutal slayings by white racist of the era.

While Jackson and the rest of Mississippi still have some problems, much has changed.

In 1997, for example, Harry Jackson became the city's first black mayor. The current mayor, Frank Melton, is also black. Ronnie Agnew, the editor the local daily newspaper, the Jackson Clarion- Ledger, is African American. And there are signs throughout the city of black economic prosperity.

Still, when Tisdale died in July, there were barely a handful of whites among the more than 300 people gathered to pay their last respects.

The relationship between Tisdale and Barrett reflects that dichotomy. The two were hardly friendly, but, "we were cordial to each other and honest with one another," Barrett said in an interview with the AFRO.

"We told it just like it was to each other," Barrett said. "And, I admired him for that. I will never forget Charles Tisdale, a 'character' and ''of character.'"

Tisdale started his media career as an advisor to the J. Strickland Company, Pepsi Cola and national Distillers Products Company. In 1954, he joined the staff of the Tri- State Defender, a black-owned newspaper in Memphis. In the course of more than 50 years in journalism, Tisdale edited the Memphis Times Herald and the Midsouth Times before buying the Jackson Advocate in 1978.

The newspaper was firebombed twice, in 1978 and in 1998. Barrett said neither he nor the Klan had involvement in the bombings. To date, no one has been charged in either bombing.

Tisdale, known for his quick and sometimes called "volatile" temper was considered controversial with his views on racism, corrupt politicians, the lack of black leadership, injustices in the judicial system, reparations and illegal drug activity.

Tisdale was a founding member of the Mississippi Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, the Republic of New Afrika, N'COBRA and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

Barrett and Tisdale fought vigorously over the display of the Confederate flag as a state symbol. Tisdale led the charge to delete the flag as a state symbol. Barrett filed a lawsuit and won the rights to let it remain.

"The victory was a symbol of defiance to the Black Caucus," Barrett said. "We fought long and hard, and I won that battle, but I lost many others."

Barrett recently attended a rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands of black people paraded in the small predominantly white town to show their displeasure with the justice system's treatment of six black teens involved in a fight.

He was there still fighting against black advancement. Barrett stood out in the crowd as the only white person who voiced opposition to the rally. He stood in the middle of young black college students holding a banner that read, "No King Over Us." The crowd laughed at him hysterically.

It wasn't the same when Tisdale fought Barrett by trying to stop the enactment of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

DeAnna Tisdale said she thinks she knows why Barrett wanted to visit her father on his deathbed.

"I truly believe Mr. Barrett saw his own mortality in my father's dying," the young assistant publisher said. "Most of the time, my father would be the only person to engage in heated discussions with Mr. Barrett."

This is part of the November 21, 2007 online edition of Frost Illustrated.

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