Booker Wright: Greenwood, Mississippi 1965

Meet Booker Wright. He was filmed for a documentary in 1965 by a white movie maker trying to present Mississippi's story from the point of view of Mississippi's whites. The movie maker thought to interview a waiter at a popular white restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi. The waiter's name was Booker Wright and the movie maker got more than he bargained for. Here is the clip of what Booker Wright said.

The interview of Booker Wright was shown on NBCTV in May of 1966. Mr. Wright was beaten, lost his job and lost his business. But he apparently never regretted what he said.

I know Mississippi. I was three when I first visited the state in August, 1940. I started to school in the first grade in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1943. The summer before first grade, I had a vivid lesson in the fact that black people didn't like how they were treated by white people.

To white people who grew up in the state, though, this was unwelcome news. So unwelcome, they refused to believe it.

A decade before the film was made, fifteen year old Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood. I was a student at the University of Mississippi at the time.

Many fine people have grown up in Mississippi. Most of them left it.

I don't know anyone who lived in Mississippi in the 1930's. 40's, 50's and 60's who wasn't bent.

Some have overcome the experience.