Pillar of Fire

Question 1

Vernon Dahmer

Answer 1

Murdered in Hattiesburg Mississippi, Jan 1966

He tried to get people to register to vote - he was targeted and threatened
He and his wife stayed up at night to guard their house they slept in shifts
His house was fired bombed, he died of smoke inhalation
Four sons in the military

Question 2

What school was James Meredith trying to get into and when

Answer 2

September 20 - 1962 - University of Mississippi

Question 3

What did JFK do to get James Meredith into Mississippi State?

Answer 3

JFK issues cease and desist order
4,000 National Guard Troops nationalized
108th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Mississippi National Guard

Question 4

What was the Battle of Oxford?

Answer 4

This was the rioting in the University of Miss with the admission of James Meredith
The two people who were killed were not rioting or resisting.
One was a guy who just went there to see what was going on
Another was a British reporter who was shot in the back

Question 5

Who was Herbert Lee?

Answer 5

1961 - shot in broad daylight by state rep Eugene Hurst
Liberty Mississippi Sept 25
All white jury acquitted Hurst - said it was self defense (Lee came at him with a tire iron?)

Question 6

What happened to protesters of the Herbert Lee murder

Answer 6

Robert Moses got some SNCC students and local high school students to march
SNCC kids thrown in jail - drunk tank
Moses taken to Amite county line and told to leave

Question 7

Who was Louis Allen?

Answer 7

Murdered in January 1964
He testified in the Eugene Hurst Trial, falsely claimed Lee had pipe in his hand - helped fake self defense Hurst claim
Started to talk to Justice Dept, harassed by local police
then murdered

Question 8

Who was Medgar Evars

Answer 8

Murdered in his driveway in June 1963
Byron De La Beckwith two hung juries - finally convicted in 1994
Evars worked with NAACP, investigated Emmett Till and tried to get into U of MS Law School

Question 9

Emmett Till - how old what he he when murdered and when did it happen?

Answer 9

14 Years old - August 1955

Question 10

What was Delta Famine

Answer 10

1963 Sunflower and LeFlore counties in Mississippi decline federal food assistance as resistance to Civil Rights Movement
(Leflore County was where Till was murdered)

Question 11

Who was murdered in January of 1964 becuase he witnessed the murder of Herbert Lee?

Answer 11

Louis Allen

Question 12

Who murdered Herbert Lee in broad daylight?

Answer 12

Eugene Herbts

Question 13

Who was the Civil RIghts Activist murdered in June 1963 - he was field secretary for the NAACP

Answer 13

Medgar Evars

Question 14

Who wa a major organizer of the 1963 March on Washington but gets almost no credit for it?

Answer 14

Bayard Rustin

Question 15

What was the longest speech in Senate history?

Answer 15

Robert Byrd - Democrat of West VA - against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964

Question 16

What’s the name of the hotel and it’s owner who poured acid in the pool water after he saw black kids swimming in it?

Answer 16

St. Augustine, Monson Hotel, William Brock

Question 17

What was the name of the Kennedy mistress sent back to East Germany

Answer 17

Ellen Rometsch

Question 18

Who was the Gov of Mississippi State who “stood in the doorway” to keep James Meredith out?

Answer 18

Gov Ross Barnett stood in the doorway

Question 19

How many troops were sent to University of Mississippi?

Answer 19

23,000 during the Cuban missile crisis

Question 20

When was the Letter from a Birmingham Jail written?

Answer 20

May of 1963

Question 21

What was the official name of the March on Washington?

Answer 21

March for Jobs and Freedom

Question 22

What preparations were made in response to fear for the March on Washington ?

Answer 22

• 2 Baseball games were cancelled

- 19,000 troops were in suburbs ready to go

Question 23

When were women finally admitted to the National Press Club?

Answer 23

1971

Question 24

What was the name of the county from which three Civil Rights workers were murdered (Mississippi Burning) and the same county from which Reagan announced his candidacy for president in 1980

Answer 24

Nashoba County, Mississippi

Question 25

What are the names of the three Civil Rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964?

Answer 25

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney

Question 26

When did King wing the Nobel Prize and what happened in Oslo when he got it

Answer 26

1964 - the FBI reported that police were going to arrest a prostitute coming out of King’s brother’s room - Bayard Rustin talked them out of it

Question 27

What did Strom Thurmond say about Freedom in the election of 1964?

Answer 27

Should Democrats prevail, freedom, as we know it in this country, is gone.

Question 28

What was both common and unusual about the burial of the three Civil Rights workers murdered in Mississippi in August of 1964?

Answer 28

They were buried in segregated cemeteries

Question 29

What was the month and year of Gulf of Tonkin?

Answer 29

August 1964

Question 30

When could someone argue the phrase “Black Power” was born?

Answer 30

Stokely Charmichael was new chairman of SNCC in Mississippi in 1964 (SCLC and CORE were also coming into the state) and he was arrested in Greenwood, MS. After release when asked how many times he had been arrested, he said that black people had to take power for themselves - and this was the beginning of “black power”