Biloxi wade-ins

The demonstrations were led by Dr. Gilbert R. Mason, Sr. in an effort to desegregate the city's 26 mi (42 km) of beaches on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

However, Mason and his supporters noted that the beaches had been built in a major project completed in 1953 by the Army Corps of Engineers using taxpayer funds, and so thought they should be public and available to all.

It used its extensive investigative powers to spy on citizens and plan economic retaliation against those who were civil rights activists or suspected of being so.

That year they also conducted an extensive voter registration drive, seeking to get past the state-established barriers of poll taxes and subjective literacy tests.

[1] The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was later found to have worked secretly to investigate the signers of the petition to see how they could be pressured to drop their action.

During this period, however, documents that were later unsealed revealed that Dunn had worked with Sheriff Curtis O. Dedeaux and reported on his activities with Mason.

[1] Mason led a second and larger formal protest a week later, on April 24, 1960, where 125 black men, women and children gathered on the beach.

[7] On May 17, 1960, the U.S. Justice Department sued the city of Biloxi for denying African Americans free access to the nationally funded beaches.

[8] The final protest related to the beach access was held on June 23, 1963,[9] two weeks after the assassination of Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary in the state.

Dozens of blacks were assaulted during the protest, including Wilmer B. McDaniel, owner of a local funeral home, whose wife shielded his body as he was beaten with chains causing blood to stain the beach sand.

More than 2000 white residents held a counterprotest, during which they vandalized and overturned Mason's car, but the police restrained them from physical violence against the blacks.

[12] In addition, they continued their grassroots efforts and in 1960 conducted a voter registration drive among African Americans, seeking to overcome their long exclusion from politics since the turn of the 20th century through such barriers as poll taxes and subjective application of literacy tests.

I have to admit I could not stand up to the pressure for being in public life in Mississippi and come out four-square for the elimination of segregation and for that I apologize today.As part of the commemoration a section of U.S. Route 90 near Biloxi was renamed the "Dr. Gilbert Mason Sr. Memorial Highway".