Kissing Case

The boys were arrested in October 1958, separated from their parents for a week, beaten and threatened by investigators, then sentenced by a Juvenile Court judge.

[1] Leaders and members of the local NAACP, including Robert F Williams, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Eisenhower, and other civil rights organizations, such as the New York-based The Committee to Combat Racial Injustice (CCRI), protested the charges, trial and sentencing.

In late October 1958, Sissy Marcus,[3] a 7- or 8-year-old white girl (sources vary), told her mother she had kissed 9-year-old James "Hanover" Thompson, and 7-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson, on their cheeks.

[5][6] Local officials unlawfully detained the two young boys, who were arrested in October 1958, and for a week refused to allow them to see their parents or legal counsel.

[1][5] As was happening in other cities and towns across the South, in the postwar period African Americans began to press to regain their civil rights and social justice.

Many men had served the United States during World War II and, especially in the South, they resented returning to find out they were expected to submit to being second-class citizens.

[7] Following these activities, a "large, heavily-armed" Ku Klux Klan motorcade, led by James W. "Catfish" Cole, had attacked Perry's home.

Harry Golden, in a 1959 article entitled "Monroe, North Carolina and the 'Kissing Case,'" said that such attempts to desegregate the pool were "unwise", "naive" and "unrealistic" because of the "crude emotions of a small agricultural community."

A few days later Juvenile Judge Hampton Price found them guilty, saying "since they just stood silent and didn't say nothin', I knew that was a confession of guilt.

Williams called Conrad Lynn, a noted black civil rights lawyer from New York, who came to aid in the boys' defense.

It became an international cause célèbre: Joyce Egginton, a journalist with the London Observer (United Kingdom), got permission to visit the boys and took their mothers along.

"[10] Her story of the case and the related photo were printed throughout Europe and Asia; the London Observer ran a photograph of the children's reunion with their mothers under the headline, "WHY?"

In a National Public Radio interview in 2011, members of the Thompson family said they still remembered "sweep[ing] bullets off [their] front porch" and the "burning crosses" in their yards.

[2] The committee's founders included Dr. Albert E. Perry, v-p of the Monroe NAACP chapter; L. E. Austin, editor of the Carolina Times; Conrad Lynn, New York attorney active in civil rights cases; and Reverend C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida.