3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

On Monday, November 7,1966, the night before the historic election, seven
hundred gathered at the Mt . Mariah Baptist Church to raeive final instructions on what
to do on election day. Campaign signs, emblazoned with the snarling cat, read : "VOTE
NOV. 8TH / PULL THE LEVER FOR THE BLACK PANTHER AND GO HOME ."
ArnKd guards, rowdy for trouble, stood near the polls .
Most felt victory was at hand, but in a devastating defeat, none of the LCFO
candidates wero elected. SNCC workers suspected that white landowners had forced
their black tenants to vote against the LCFO . The defeat was not total . Bob Marts, a
local SNCC worker, claimed (somewhat erroneously) that the LCFO altered the naturo of
state politics by forcing some southern Democrats, such as George Wallace, to run later
as independent candidates ; it also brought about a "cohesiveness," according to him,
among blacks "throughout the Alabama Black Helt
."~ 3
Stokely Carmichael, who combined novel ideas with "old-time religion" to
encourage the people of Lowndes, had left the county after his election in May as
prosident of SNCC, and had taken with him a new understanding of what was important
in the struggle for equality. Lowndes showed him the political power of the vote, but it
also showed him the possibilities ofjuridical power backed by a show of force . He had
known such power in the hands of whites, but Lowndes County was the first place he had
ever seen blacks exercise such prorogative . John Jackson credited Lowndes with
transforming Carmichael's views on nonviolence . "When he [Carmichael] was staying
here," romembered Jackson, "my father had guns and that's why white people didn't mess
~ 3Mants, in Lowndes County FroedomOrasn~, video recording.
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