In the Storm: William Hansen and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-1967

Abstract

STUCK INSIDE A JAIL CELL IN ALBANY, GEORGIA, in July 1962, civil rights activist William Hansen was having trouble meeting with his attorney. He had been arrested for participating in a demonstration, but when the attorney, C. B. King, insisted on seeing his client, Dougherty County sheriff "Cull" Campbell became enraged. "Nigger, haven't I told you to wait outside?" he said. ' Campbell then picked up a cane and began beating the attorney. The next day the New York Times published a photograph of King, his head bandaged, leaving the hospital.2 Hansen, however, had met with even harsher treatment. He had been thrown into a cell full of whites who were by no means sympathetic to the cause of civil rights and even less sympathetic toward a northern agitator like Hansen. He was savagely beaten, with his jaw shattered and several of his ribs broken. Only twenty-one years old at the time, Hansen had a long career as a political activist ahead of him. Hansen arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas, later that year to head up a new branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a grass-roots organization that sought to harness the rising tide of black political consciousness in the South. Hansen's organizational skills earned him appointment to the post, but his interest in civil rights and his desire to fight racism dated to his childhood. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, Hansen grew up in a strict working-class Catholic family. His religious upbringing helped propel him toward a life as a political activist. "The extreme moral rigidity of American Catholicism in the pre-Vatican II days," he later recalled, "had a way of leading in the direction I went with regard to race and politics .... Its rigid moral doctrine, if accepted, would lead logically toward a certain set of actions."3 Hansen's direct experience with African Americans also shaped his political outlook. He recalled how attending baseball games-sitting in the cheap bleacher seats at Crosley Field to see the Cincinnati Reds play-allowed positive interactions with black people: I was a ten to sixteen-year-old kid who made acquaintances with many of these older black men who, it seemed to me, knew everything about baseball. They took a liking to [me]. I remember at first not being able to figure out why all these Cincinnatians supported the Brooklyn Dodgers over their hometown team. I finally figured out it was because of Jackie Robinson. That realization told me something about the society I was being raised in. Like many people of his generation, Hansen also watched the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, as well as the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, with rapt attention. He quickly found himself siding with civil rights activists, thinking "it was dumb to be arrested for sitting in the wrong seat in a bus."4 Personal relationships with blacks also played a role in the development of Hansen's political consciousness. When he was seventeen years old, he became friends with Bill Mason, a young black man with whom he often played basketball. This was Hansen's first friendship with someone from outside of his working-class neighborhood. Mason often invited Hansen back to his home, where Hansen found he was treated as a member of Mason's family. Two years later, the Masons took Hansen in, and he lived with them for a year. Their warmth offered a stark contrast to how he had imagined blacks and whites normally interacted with one another.5 Hansen made his first foray into the civil rights movement in the fall of 1957 while attending Xavier University in Cincinnati. He became associated with David McCarthy, a local priest who had become active in the cause. Along with Bill Mason, Hansen and McCarthy formed the Xavier Interracial Council. Hansen later downplayed its significance, arguing that it was never more than "a venue for getting to know other people."6 But the council allowed Hansen to make important contacts with other civil rights organizations such as the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). …