by T. Scott Boatright
As Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists’ were fighting for equality for all in the 1950s and ’60s, the struggle did not go unnoticed here in Lincoln Parish.
The late Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, who served as president at what was then as Grambling College in those days, was a quiet force in the fight for civil rights as part of an interracial partnership — and, more importantly, friendship — that teamed to improve education for Blacks.
The Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, was the first undergraduate institution in the South to peacefully integrate after a successful lawsuit that allowed the first black students to register for classes in the summer of 1954. By the fall, 80 black students were in attendance.
That institution’s president at that time was Joel L. Fletcher, who became friends with Jones in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
A paper that Fletcher developed in the early 1950s and now resides in the UL-Lafayette archives is titled “Some of the Needs in Negro Education in Louisiana,” and promoted greater investment in historically black colleges.
Files in the UL-Lafayette archives reflect Fletcher’s personal efforts in collecting data and information about Southern black high schools and black college campuses as far away as Virginia, indicating that he was invited to speak on the topic in early 1951 to the Rotary Club in Lake Charles, and that his research after that time showed his continuing interest in the topic.
In his 24-page paper, Fletcher made numerous mentions of Grambling, its successes in supporting public education in communities around the college, and its specific needs that were not being met by state funding. Those needs included better facilities, clinics to develop communication skills, trained librarians, greater opportunities for professional growth for teachers, workshops for principals, and more generous sabbatical leave.
At the bottom of a typewritten letter from Jones to Fletcher dated Oct. 9, 1950, letter to Fletcher, Jones added a handwritten message — “You are one of the best friends that I have.”
Lincoln Parish’s role in civil rights history had some darker moments, too.
According to a newspaper article written at the time, in the wee hours of July 17, 1965, John Wesley Wilder, a 32-year-old Black man, was outside a cafe in Ruston, Louisiana, with a group of other Black men when a patrolling Ruston Police officer reportedly heard “shouting and obscene language” from the group.
The officer reported Wilder when he got out of his car and asked what he was doing there. When the officer asked Wilder his name, Wilder reportedly refused to answer, as did another Black man, Billy Williams. The officer then attempted to arrest both men, both of whom he said had been drinking.
As bystanders gathered to watch, the officer ultimately drew his pistol and fired five shots, fatally wounding Wilder.
Circumstances involving the shooting were always disputed, but in the days following the shooting, the Ruston Police Department issued a statement saying that Wilder had attacked the officer while resisting arrest. The police department also said more than 100 bystanders had jeered and thrown rocks and bottles as the officer and another officer who arrived as backup.
An inquest by the Lincoln Parish Coroner ruled the killing a justifiable homicide, determining the officer had fired in self-defense.
In the days following the shooting, black residents from both Grambling and Ruston held a series of mass meetings and a committee representing the two towns held a lengthy meeting with Ruston Mayor John Perritt.
Wilder’s brother Emzie Wilder released a statement through the Grambling College’s public information director saying numerous eyewitnesses saw the shooting, but none to his knowledge were asked to give testimony in the coroner’s inquest.
In 2008, the FBI initiated a review of the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death, pursuant to the Department of Justice’s “Cold Case” initiative and the “Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007,” which charges the Department of Justice to investigate “violations of criminal civil rights statutes . . . result[ing] in death” that “occurred not later than December 31, 1969.”
Three years later, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing by the RPD office, citing that the case lacks prosecutive merit and officially closing it as of June 1, 2011.
