Brenda’s first arrest came when she and two friends tried to buy a bus ticket at the white counter in the Greyhound bus station. For that she served 28 days in jail, missing the first month of her sophomore year in high school. When she returned, her classmates treated her as a hero; her principal expelled her from school. At a subsequent school assembly the other students talked about walking out in protest; over a hundred of them did so later that day.

They marched to City Hall, where white bystanders beat up three SNCC workers who accompanied them. They were all put in jail. The other students were eventually released. Brenda was taken to the state reformatory for "delinquent Negro youth." She was told she would be there until she reached the age of 21.

In fact she stayed less than a year. The national publicity about her case brought a white professor from a black Alabama college to her rescue. He told her that he had negotiated with the Mississippi Governor to take her to his home. The Governor agreed provided she never return to the state of Mississippi.

The professor turned out to have a bad case of ephebophilia. He showered her with love and affection, calling her his daughter, but wooing her like a prospective lover. When he tried to turn words into action, she walloped him and fled to Atlanta and her friends in SNCC.

More publicity brought more offers of help. She spent some time in New York living with Ella Baker, SNCC’s godmother, who enrolled her into a private school in North Carolina. She spent another year with a white family in a Chicago suburb, and another year in Connecticut, where she finally finished high school. All this time, what Brenda wanted most was to go home to Mississippi and her mother.

Brenda spent most of her life in Southern California. She did get back to McComb many times, where she saw some things change and some remain the same.

On one of these visits, at a ceremony of reconciliation at the high school which had expelled her, she was given a Bronze Star by J. Randall O’Brien, which he had earned as a serviceman in Viet Nam. In an epilog, he writes about why someone who was a young white boy in McComb in 1961 when the black students walked out of their school, thought Brenda should get that medal for her heroism.

Read this book and find out why O’Brien is such an admirer of Brenda Travis.

 © 2019 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com

Pages: 1 · 2

More Articles

• Nichola D. Gutgold - The Most Private Roosevelt Makes a Significant Public Contribution: Ethel Carow Roosevelt Derby
• Department of Labor Awards $5M to Train, Expand Pathways for Women for Registered Apprenticeships, Nontraditional Occupations
• Oppenheimer: July 28 UC Berkeley Panel Discussion Focuses On The Man Behind The Movie
• "Henry Ford Innovation Nation", a Favorite Television Show
• Julia Sneden Wrote: Going Forth On the Fourth After Strict Blackout Conditions and Requisitioned Gunpowder Had Been the Law
• National Institutes of Health: COVID-19 Vaccines Linked to Small Increase in Menstrual Cycle Length
• Ask KHN (Kaiser Health News) - PolitiFact: Is My Cloth Mask Good Enough? The 2022 Edition
• Jo Freeman Reviews: Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict Over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920 – 1963
• KFF, Kaiser Family Foundation: Vaccinating Children Ages 5-11; Policy Considerations for COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout
• Journalist's Resource: Religious Exemptions and Required Vaccines; Examining the Research