190 A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI Americans to vote, but the project also established Freedom Schools to supplement the regular school curriculum. Civil rights workers under the umbrella of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) established fifty Freedom Schools in Mississippi, two of which were in McComb and Hattiesburg. The leader of the McComb branch of the NAACP, Curtis Bryant, approached organizer Robert Moses, who as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was seeking a Mississippi town in which to begin an African American voter registration drive. Threats and physical violence escalated and rose to a new level with the murder of dairy farmer Herbert Lee allegedly by white state legislator E. H. Hurst. Although Hurst was acquitted, one African American witness, Louis Allen, claimed that Hurst shot Lee without provocation, but he was afraid that as a witness he would become a target if he told the true story. The January before Freedom Summer started, Allen was murdered as well. It was during Freedom Summer, however, that McComb became known nationwide for racial intolerance. Local whites turned to bombings, church burnings, and the beating of African American citizens as intimidation tactics to deter Freedom Summer activities. NAACP head Curtis Bryant survived two bombings, had shots fired into his home, and a cross burned in his yard in a period of six months leading up to Freedom Summer. Local officials either refused to investigate or did not actively pursue bombing suspects until late September of 1964, when a threat by Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr., to activate the National Guard to keep peace forced locals to make arrests in the bombing cases. Eleven local Klan members were arrested, but at trial nine were given token suspended sentences. Despite this discouraging outcome, as historian John Dittmer noted in his 1995 book Local People, “Blacks and their white allies had won the right to organize in McComb, and the city would never be the same again.” In Hattiesburg, 3,000 local residents and ninety out-of- state volunteers participated in the nonviolent activities of Freedom Summer. Anyone who opposed segregation faced animosity, including threats, intimidation, and violence, although violence in Hattiesburg was minimal compared with McComb. Some local residents, such as Marvin Reuben, the co-owner and general manager of the local television station, supported the Civil Rights Movement and delivered online editorials against the Ku Klux Klan. In response, those against integration burned crosses on the lawn of the television station and shot the television tower. Others, like Hattiesburg native and newly elected Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr., took a more moderate approach. Although Johnson ran as a segregationist, he adopted a cautious approach to civil rights activities. It did not take long for opposition to the Freedom Summer activities to materialize in Hattiesburg. During June, whites distributed literature that read, “Beware, good Negro citizens. When we come to get the agitators, stay away.” They soon followed through on these threats. On July 10, 1964, local whites attacked civil rights workers Arthur Lelyveld, Lawrence Spears, and David Owens, beating them severely. At the urging of the local Jewish community, Rabbi Lelyveld left town. In Laurel, on August 16, several whites beat white civil rights workers David Goodyear and Linnelle Barrett. Two days earlier, on August 14, 1964, Sandra Adickes, a white Freedom School teacher from New York, led a group of African Americans attempting to integrate the Hattiesburg Public Library. In response city officials closed the library, only to have protesters again attempt to integrate the library when it reopened three days later. After leaving the public library on August 14, Adickes then went to the lunch counter at S. H. Kress in downtown Hattiesburg. She sat with the African American youths, and the waitress refused to serve her. As she left, a police officer arrested her and charged her with vagrancy. She later filed a suit for damages against Kress, Adickes v. S. H. Kress, on the basis that her Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated and that Kress and the local police conspired in her arrest. The United States Supreme Court ruled in her favor in 1970. Hattiesburg citizens were also active in 1964 in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).After unsuccessfully attempting to participate in white-controlled Democratic Party election activities,AfricanAmerican Mississippians formed the party as an alternative.At the time, registeredAfricanAmericans represented only 20,000 of the state’s 500,000 registered voters, and the MFDPliterature stated: “The Freedom registration is designed to show that thousands of Negros want to become registered voters.” The MFDPnominated Victoria GrayAdams of Hattiesburg to challenge longstanding senator John C. Stennis and Forrest County native and Reverend John Cameron to oppose Congressman William Colmer. Over 2,500 people attended the MFDPState Convention onAugust 6, 1964, in Jackson, where The early efforts by Hugh White to Balance Agriculture with Industry proved helpful to a number of Mississippians, and in 1965 the number of industrial workers in the state finally exceeded the number of those engaged in agriculture.