| Right: Jim cuts the cake |
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Mr. Draper passed away at 11:05 May 9, Mother's Day. The following article was published on the occasion of his last birthday.
Local residents gathered in Avery Park this
weekend to celebrate the 90th year of Jim Draper.
Jim was born in 1914 in Oswego, Kansas (see page at left for family biography ). He
had entered college but the Great Depression struck and he instead went to work for the
Sun in Parsons, Kansas. From there he graduated to the New Orleans Item, where he was a crime reporter in the night courts. New Orleans at the time was crime-ridden. From New Orleans he
traveled the Mississippi River as a reporter working out of Vicksburg, Yazoo
City and other River towns. He eventually went to Memphis and worked there for the Commercial Appeal.
It was in Memphis that his career took a sharp turn when his 12-year-old daughter, Judy, wrote a letter to the newspaper declaring that she had learned and Sunday school that
"Jesus loves all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white",
and that all the children of the city, of whatever 'color', would be welcome -
she was sure of it - in her Sunday School class..
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| The 12-year-old activist today: Judy (right), along with other family members pictured here, came - in here case - from Arkansas to be with her daddy on the Day. |
The Civil Rights movement was beginning to take shape at the time. The
newspaper's editor gave Jim a choice: write a letter replying to his own child, justifying the segregation of the day, or clear his desk out. He cleared his desk out.
However, while working for the commercial appeal, Jim had made many contacts with local farmers and
sharecroppers, of both Euro- and Afro American descent. He launched a new farm
newspaper and then the Johnson administration, recognizing his wide contacts, asked him to be a community relations representative
for the Justice Department. At that time, the Justice Dept., despite its many
faults, was as removed from today's Justice Dept, led by Ku Klux Klan
sympathizer John Ashcroft,. as Night from Day.
Jim accepted, and in his new job, he traveled widely - smoothing as best he could the
mounting tensions between segregationists and the civil rights movement. At
times he was assigned the role of unarmed guard for people attending voter
registration and civil rights rallies. The job was fraught with risk. Accompanying
a small group of Afro-Americans to a rally, he and they were attacked by a Klansman with a machine gun. The weapons jammed as the small group ran and threw themselves under a barn, and their would-be assassin could only get one round off at a time. Else, we'd have been commemorating the 40th year of his killing rather than a birthday (note: Bruce Klunder, an OSU student, was killed in
a Cleveland sit-in during the era. Click here)
Jim's job eventually took him to the march of James Meredith across Mississippi
to become the first Afro-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
Jim accompanying him, receiving assurances that there would be no violence
directed at Meredith along the route, assurances he was able to transmit to
Meredith.
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| Above: James Meredith, after being shot in the back and leg. Below: Meredith today. Click here for the BBC report of the time. Click here for John Kennedy's speech at the time. |
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2 people were killed and 75 injured in the rioting which ensued at the University. Meredith, in the hospital, turned to Draper with a joke: "some bodyguard you are" (click here for a video clip of Meredith being interrogated prior to the violence by Mississippi police. Even upon his graduation, after completion of his studies, Meredith was accompanied by armed guards to prevent his assassination. Click here. Bob Dylan wrote Oxford Town about the events. Click here to listen.
Incident piled upon incident, and yet Jim - like most - survived. His work drew him into contact with others of the era - Martin Luther King, Fannie Hamer (with whom the local preachers accused Draper of having an affair, he didn't), Jesse Jackson and others. The work ended with the Johnson administration and the election of Nixon, who was later impeached.
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| Above: Fannie Lou Hamer (click here for a short biography or here for an oral history interview.) |
After retiring, Jim lived in San Francisco for a time, and then moved to Corvallis, where he has remained active in local issues to this day. It has been important work, and we honored it, and the man who has carried it, this weekend. We shall do so again next year.
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| One of the party organizers takes a break. |