As a young reporter back in the early 1980s, I stayed for weeks at a time in the Mississippi Delta covering the story of the first African-American mayor elected in that state since Reconstruction.
But it’s not to the Tchula, Mississippi town hall that I frequently went to meet with him. I went instead to the Holmes County Jail where he was locked up on false murder charges. The plantation owners were not going to settle for a Black man as the mayor of one of their towns.
The Daily World sent me there in keeping with its role as literally the first national newspaper to emphasize the political importance of Black representation in public office, and I covered what grew into a nationwide and eventually successful struggle to free Mayor Eddie Carthan.
While in Mississippi, I reported on the struggle of an entire Delta town to haul water from surrounding communities because vicious white supremacist landlords succeeded in turning off their water supply to squeeze more money out of them.
I joined reporters from the Jackson Advocate, the storied African-American newspaper, to take pictures at night of Jackson, Mississippi cops actively organizing the prostitution ring in that city.
I reported on how the folks at the Ronald Reagan election headquarters in Jackson were the same people who had donned KKK robes at a voter intimidation rally at the Jackson City Hall a week earlier.
Needless to say, there were forces not happy with all that truth-telling.
As I typed up one of these stories at a desk the staff of the Jackson Advocate had turned over to me, a racist gang of thugs hurled bricks through the storefront window, narrowly missing some of us at our desks.
Getting out the truth in those days was dangerous. Getting out the truth today can also be dangerous.
I knew, after those assignments in Mississippi, however, that I wanted to stick with the Daily World for the rest of my life, and today, 40 years later, I’m here—not as a cub reporter but as editor-in-chief of People’s World, the modern iteration of the Daily World and the Daily Worker before it.
I’ve only been able to realize my dream, and the People’s World is only around today because of you.
We gave voice to the seasonal plantation workers in the Delta who dared to quit their jobs and become construction workers at project sites started by Mayor Carthan. We gave voice to those workers who the plantation owners wanted back in the fields. We gave voice to those workers who won their battle to free their mayor and keep the jobs that gave them the dignity denied to them on the plantations.
We, with your support, gave voice to them because they were saying “no” to racists who wanted them to stop building daycare centers and schools and return to picking cotton.
Big corporations and institutions that you and I thought would last forever have come and gone, but People’s World remains.
It’s a testimony not just to a staff and volunteers ready to risk personal health and safety to bring out the truth but to you, our readers and supporters, who have never failed to step forward.
That powerful relationship just helped win a people’s victory we can all celebrate, but now we have to keep that relationship going to preserve and extend that victory.
You have the power to keep a great thing, People’s World, going. As you have in the past, you have the power to win many victories long into the future.
In solidarity,
John Wojcik
Editor in Chief
CONTRIBUTOR
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