[Marxism] Mrs Doris Allison

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:

This short obit of our dear friend and colleague, Mrs Doris Allison, is done
at the request of Bruce Hartford, intrepid webmaster of Civil Rights
Movement Veterans, http://www.crmvet.org/  Still very early in an Idaho
mountain morning, I've been up with my Bobcat/cat for several hours
listening, appropriately, to the soundtrack of Legends of the Fall.
________________________________________________________________

Mrs Doris Allison, life long civil rights activist at Jackson, Mississippi;
close friend of many decades; died at her home at Jackson on August 27,
2004.  With her husband, Ben, who survives she is Godparent of my
grandson/son, Thomas, himself half Mississippi Choctaw of Red Water [Leake
and Neshoba] roots.  She lived virtually her entire life in Mississippi and,
while I never quite had the courage to ask her precise age, I know she
almost reached 90. Consistently devoted to the Movement and its ideals and
always to the sterling memory of Medgar Wiley Evers, her mind was as clear
as a mountain stream all the way through. When Medgar became in 1954 the
first NAACP Field Secretary in Mississippi, she played for him a key
supportive role. In the turbulent beginning of the '60s, as heavy storm
clouds gathered over the Magnolia State, she became President of the Jackson
Branch of the NAACP.  On May 12, 1963, she joined Medgar and myself
[Advisor, Jackson Youth Council of NAACP] in signing the "throw down the
gauntlet" letter to all of the components of the Mississippi economic and
political power structure -- which moved our Jackson Boycott Movement into
the massive, nonviolent [and very, very bloodily attacked] Jackson Movement
which numbered many, many thousands of youth and adult demonstrators. She
was one of the first adults arrested during the mass phase of the Jackson
Movement and a large photo on the front page of the Jackson Daily News shows
Captain J.L. Ray seizing her and her picket sign on downtown Capitol Street,
outside the embattled Woolworth store.

Over the many decades, she and Ben faithfully supported every Freedom
Movement in Mississippi.  And she was also, I should personally add, a
generous and wonderful  -- and legendary -- cook.

I recall an interesting colloquy between herself and Medgar as the storm
clouds were beginning to break into thunder and lightning in late May, 1963.
The state newspapers were screaming constantly about "communism."

"What's all this communism business?" Mrs Allison asked Medgar.

He thought for a moment, then said, "It can mean taking from the rich and
giving to the poor."

"Sounds good to me," said she.  But, of course, she formally remained --
with Ben -- a very good Catholic indeed.

With her passing, a beautiful mountain has now lifted 'way high into the Sky
and Beyond.  Her great courage, and that of Ben, will always be with us.

Hunter Gray/Hunter Bear [John R Salter, Jr]  See my Jackson, Mississippi: An
American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism, Krieger, 1987.


HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR]   Micmac /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]












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