East, Percy Dale
Biographical Statement
Percy Dale East, more commonly known as P. D., was among the most zealous and outspoken of white racial liberals from the Deep South during the Jim Crow era and into the Civil Rights Movement. East was a native of Mississippi who grew up in various saw mill camps in the southern part of the state, and even as a youth East was acutely sensitive to the racial discrimination he encountered on a routine basis. As the publisher of The Petal Paper in Petal, Mississippi, East became more candid on his views of racial equality in the immediate wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 when he advocated for full observance of the new law. East's paper soon took on a satirical, darkly sardonic, and even jocular tone. As a newly-dedicated supporter of legal equality for people of all races, East worked with such people as William Faulkner, John Howard Griffin, Lillian Smith, Hodding Carter, and Medgar Evers. The local White Citizens' Council responded to East's public and editorial stances on race relations by leading an economic boycott against The Petal Paper. By 1959, the paper had lost all 2300 local subscribers and most local advertisers, though it survived with the support of liberals throughout the country. East figured prominently in John Howard Griffin's book Black Like Me, where Griffin was particularly struck by the social isolation of East and his wife.
East enjoyed a favorable national reputation in the early 1960s due in part to the publication of his autobiography, The Magnolia Jungle, and his reception of the Florina Lasker Civil Rights Award from the New York Civil Liberties Union. With this fame and the lack of any local support - coupled with a deteriorating personal life - East sank deeply into a depression further fueled by obscene phone calls, social ostracism, and death threats. A racist group in Mississippi put a $25,000 bounty on his life. Concerned about his safety, East relocated to Fairhope, Alabama, though with declining health and this relocation he soon found himself on the periphery of the movement for social change. East died in 1971.