Peggy Ryan Poole (second from left) on Registration Day, August 2, 1965, reviewing the registration form.
Bloody Sunday occurred in March 1965 when Alabama State Troopers attacked peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, injuring many young and old, some requiring hospitalization. This was the impetus for Martin Luther King Jr. to call for volunteers to come to the South to register voters during the summer of 1965 and pressure President Johnson to push the Voting Rights Bill through Congress.
I was an 18-year-old freshman at Chico State College that spring and was determined to answer the call. I wrote to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) offering to help and was accepted contingent on my parents' permission. At that time you weren't legally an adult until you were 21. I knew that my parents would not give me permission, as three civil rights workers had been murdered already that year. So I went to the Student Health Clinic and asked to speak with a psychologist about the best way to get permission. He advised me to write them a letter, and when they said no, it would be to the letter, not to me in person, and so I might have a chance to change their mind. I wrote this long letter to them, speaking from my heart. Here's an excerpt:
"It is like a war in a way down there. It is a fight against the past and for the future. It must be won but it can't if everyone sits at home."
My father was so taken with it that he gave it to our assemblyman, Jerome Waldie. Assemblyman Waldie had the letter entered into the Assembly Daily Journal on March 18, 1965. So I got their permission!
On June 14, the SCOPE (Summer Community Organization and Political Education) orientation began in Atlanta, Georgia. I was housed at Morris Brown College, and we attended orientation nearby. The giants of the movement were there: Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, James Bevel, Bayard Rustin, C.T. Vivian, Bernard Lafayette, and others. During our week-long orientation we had sessions on the theory and practice of non-violence, community organization, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black history in the South, and War on Poverty programs. And there were practical issues: never travel anywhere at any time by yourself; if you were in a car at night, be sure the dome light was turned off so you weren't an easy target to be shot when you opened the car door.
At the end of the orientation, SCLC/SCOPE assigned me to the UC Santa Barbara group of three young men. The four of us drove to Petersburg, VA. We reported to Herbert Coulton, the field secretary for SCLC in Virginia. I was assigned to stay with a single woman raising her three children. One evening, her son (18) and daughter (13), and I went to a meeting at a local church. When we returned, the house was dark, and we were hungry. We tiptoed into the kitchen, and her son flipped on the light. There were hundreds of cockroaches that scattered from the table and counter. There was a loaf of bread on the table, which had been covered with cockroaches. The bread was brushed off; I was handed a slice, took a deep breath, and ate it. Thus began my summer in the South.
The town of Waverly, Virginia, refused to provide garbage collection services to Black residents.
Mr. Coulton described Sussex as the worst county in Virginia for Black Americans. It was a small rural county with a population of approximately 12,000 people. The voting age population was 6,428, of which 60% were Black, but only 34% were registered, and 92% of the white population was registered. Registration was at the county registrar's office in the center of the county. The office was open one day per month, but was often closed arbitrarily. Registration required a literacy test, which was meant to prevent registration. For example, how many seeds are in a watermelon? To vote also required that you pay a poll tax. In Sussex County, it was $1.25. 33% of Black families earned less than $1,000 per year, and greater than 80% earned less than $4,000 per year. The median family income in the US was $6,900 per year. So the poll tax was a great deterrent to voting.
Police stationed outside the courthouse registrar’s office.
We attended Black churches every evening and Sundays and walked the hot, dusty roads of Sussex County to talk with people and get them interested in organizing and registering to vote. So many people in the Black community lived in dire circumstances: no running water, no electricity, and no indoor plumbing. Most of the streets in the Black community were not paved. Garbage was not picked up in the Black part of town. The adults formed the Sussex County Improvement Association and attended a Waverly Town Council meeting with requests for garbage service and other improvements in the Black areas of Waverly. They got some concessions, which surprised both the Black and white communities.
Literacy was also a focus. An older Black man approached me and asked for help in learning to write his name. He was a laborer, and it was very hard for him to hold a pencil and manipulate it. We worked together for several hours, and when he finally was able to print his name, he started crying. I cried too. The power that it gave him to not just do an X but to write his name, I will never forget.
Segregation was the norm. A local restaurant, the Blue Tavern, was segregated. Blacks were allowed to come up to the back door and order food, but not allowed in the restaurant. We went in and sat down in the very busy restaurant. The owner came over, and she refused to serve us and said that she was closing. I said, "You know we will come back," but she said that she was closing for good. We left, and the next day a big sign went up in front of the restaurant that said "Closed on account of n—-s." The restaurant and the sign were on Highway 395, which is a major north-south highway. The sign came down, but the restaurant never reopened.
Marching to the Sussex County courthouse
On July 23, a call came from SCLC/SCOPE in Atlanta to start demonstrating for voting rights and in support of the Voting Rights Bill. The registrar's office had not been open since we had been in Sussex County, and the registrar refused to speak with us. We organized several demonstrations at the courthouse, where the registrar's office was located. At the July 31st demonstration, Mr. Coulton announced that Martin Luther King had asked President Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act in Sussex County. No one expected that to happen, but it was a great boost to the Black residents that Martin Luther King was interested in their county.
On August 2, the registrar's office opened with a line of people waiting to register. And there was a line throughout the day. A total of 183 Black citizens registered to vote that day, and over 125 of them also paid the poll tax for the first time. The Voting Rights Act was signed by President Johnson on August 6, 1965. The poll tax and the literacy test were abolished.
The summer of 1965 was the start of great change in Sussex County and throughout the South. I returned with my family in 1985, and the Sussex County Improvement Association had an office on Main Street in Waverly. There had been a Black mayor, a Black sheriff, the streets were paved in the Black area of town, the schools had all been integrated, and there was garbage pickup throughout the town.
I'll always remember the generosity, courage, kindness, and dignity of the Black citizens of Sussex County, Virginia.
Peggy Ryan Poole in Selma in 2025, marking the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
Peggy Ryan Poole is a longtime OLLI member and a retired nurse practitioner in the ER at San Francisco General.