Percy Dale East collection

Collection

Identifier: 053

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection consists of materials relating to Percy Dale East's career as editor and publisher of The Petal Paper and as an enthusiastic and outspoken supporter of civil rights. The collection consists primarily of photocopies of correspondence but also consists of some clippings and a speech given by East. Also included is a 9" by 14" photograph of East smoking a pipe, shot by his closest friend, John Howard Griffin.

Correspondence describes the numerous threats East received, including the $25,000 bounty purportedly put out on him by a segregationist group in Jackson. In other letters, East details personal affairs, including social engagements and his legal struggles. East's correspondence with A. I. and Fay Botnick, typically self-deprecatory in tone, also discuss his local harassment and personal struggles. In his letter to Theron Lynd, Circuit Clerk of Forrest County, Mississippi, East implores Lynd to either apologize for or prove his accusations that East is a known communist. Other correspondence includes a letter from East to subscribers of The Petal Paper apologizing for the growing infrequency of the publication and communication with publishers regarding East's novel.

A speech given by East, entitled "On the Attainment of Distinction," he describes the local repercussions to his paper's ardently anti-segregationist stance, often with the humor and self-deprecatory tone that characterizes much of his satirical writings: "My newspaper has the lowest local per capita circulation of any in the world. I confess to an abounding ignorance of arithmetic, but I think in dealing with material objects the lowest count is zero." This speech attests to East's legacy as a Southern dissident, humorist, outcast, and polemicist.

Dates

Created: 1961-1969
Other: Date acquired: 01/01/1973

Creator

East, Percy Dale (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright to these papers has not been assigned to the Amistad Research Center. It is the responsibility of an author to secure permission for publication from the holder of the copyright to any material contained in this collection.

Biographical or Historical Information

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.

Note written by Andrew Salinas