Walker -- Report and Analysis of Community Organizing in Gulfport Miss. (Samuel Walker Papers, 1964-1966; Archives Main Stacks, Mss 655, Box 2, Folder 1)

This 1965 report by two volunteers on their community organizing efforts in Gulfport, Mississippi, is fascinating from several respects. The authors depict Gulfport as a more liberal, wealthier, and whiter part of Mississippi than most other COFO centers, primarily due to its tourist industry and air force base. The black community also differed, say the authors, because its wealthy--and allegedly corrupt--leaders had a vested interest in maintaining the white-dominated status quo. The authors record their discouragement with their Freedom Summer work and their sense that, as white volunteers, they were perpetuating a form of the existing white power structure and not making permanent changes in the poorer people's consciousness, status, or institutions. They go on to describe 1965 efforts at community organizing in which poor blacks successfully challenged the black leadership's collusion with the white power structure and felt empowered by their experiences. One of the most interes