Witness to the Truth

John H. Scott's Struggle for Human Rights in Louisiana

John Henry Scott, Cleo Scott Brown

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781570038181, 9781570034893
• eBook ISBN: 9781643364247
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

The inspirational saga of one man's fight for civil rights for African Americans in Louisiana

Witness to the Truth tells the extraordinary life story of a grassroots human rights leader and his courageous campaign to win the right to vote for the African Americans of Lake Providence, Louisiana. Born in 1901 in a small, almost all-black parish, John H. Scott grew up in a community where black businesses, schools, and neighborhoods thrived in isolation from the white population. The settlement appeared self-sufficient and independent—but all was not as it seemed. From Reconstruction until the 1960s, African Americans still were not allowed to register and vote. Scott, a minister and farmer, proceeded to redress this inequality. Ultimately convincing Attorney General Robert Kennedy to participate in his crusade, Scott led a twenty-five year struggle that graphically illustrates how persistent efforts by local citizens translated into a national movement.

Told in Scott's own words, Witness to the Truth recounts the complex tyranny of southern race relations in Louisiana. Raised by grandparents who lived during slavery, Scott grew up learning about the horrors of that institution, and he himself experienced the injustices of Jim Crow laws. Without bitterness or anger, he chronicles almost one hundred years of life in the parish, including migrations between the two world wars, the displacement of African American farmers during the New Deal, and the shocking methods white southerners used to keep African Americans under economic domination and away from the polls. Chapter president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for more than thirty years and a recipient of the A. P. Tureaud Citizens Award, Scott embodied the persistence, strength, and raw courage required of African American leaders in the rural South, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. His story illustrates the contributions of local NAACP leaders in advancing the human rights movement.

Cleo Scott Brown, Scott's daughter, draws on oral history interviews with her father conducted by historian Joseph Logsdon as the basis for the book. She also uses personal papers, court transcripts, records of the East Carroll chapter of the NAACP, interviews with other East Carroll residents, family recollections, and her own conversations with her father to complete the biography.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Witness to the Truth
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One The Beginning
• Two Grandfather
• Three A Different Kind of Place
• Four Rabbit, Possum, and Coon Brains
• Five A Matter of Respect
• Six Running When You Can't Hide
• Seven An Awakening
• Eight New Deal/Bad Deal
• Nine Life after Transylvania
• Ten Am I Not a Citizen Too?
• Eleven Worse Than You Can Imagine
• Twelve A Glimmer of Hope
• Thirteen All of One Accord
• Fourteen Victory and Defeat
• Fifteen A Cross for Every Voter
• Sixteen Creative Solutions to the Negro Problem
• Seventeen A Cause Worth Dying For
• Eighteen Gross Injustice
• Nineteen Trouble on Every Hand
• Twenty One Hundred Years
• Twenty-One Deliverance
• Twenty-Two Our Eyes to the Future
• Appendix
• Index