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Located in Sunflower County, Ruleville became the target of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella organization of national and regional groups engaged in the freedom struggle in Mississippi. Established in 1962 to capitalize on the efforts of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the NAACP, it focused on voter registration and education. The COFO targeted Ruleville, a town of approximately 1,100 people, because black Rulevillians were drawn to the Mississippi freedom struggle there that was the result racial oppression. It was also the target of the COFO because Ruleville was the home of Senator James Eastland, the ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate.

As early as 1960, blacks attempted to register at the Ruleville courthouse, but the highway patrol turned them away. In 1962 local resident Celeste Davis started citizenship classes under the sponsorship of the SCLC; Ruleville’s mayor quickly suggested that those attending the citizenship classes would be given a one-way ticket out of town. True to his word, Mayor Charles M. Dorrough fired Davis’s husband, Ruleville sanitation worker Leonard Davis, because of her attendance at the citizenship classes. In addition, Marylene Burks and Vivian Hillet of Ruleville were later severely wounded when an unidentified assailant fired shots through the home of Hillet’s grandparents, who were active in the voter registration drives.

Notwithstanding threats and physical abuse, women were prominent in the Mississippi freedom struggle. Fannie Lou Hamer, for one, is the best known woman leader out of Ruleville. On August 31, 1962, Hamer was fired from her timekeeping job on the Marlow Plantation outside of Ruleville, the same day she attempted to register at the Sunflower County Courthouse. After enduring a brutal jail beating, Hamer became the county supervisor for citizenship training and later an SNCC field secretary. In 1964 Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic Convention.

Linda T. Wynn