By Joe Hadsall
jhadsall@joplinglobe.com
Henry “Bud” Morgan downplays what he did in the early 1960s.
As a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, he verified the identities of three African-Americans who sought voter registrations.
It was important to do that, he said, because blacks were required to have someone vouch for them in order to register.
“If they wanted to register to vote, they had to have a voucher,” Morgan said. “Someone who was already a registered voter, who could say that you were who you said you were.”
Vouchers were one of several hurdles that were declared unconstitutional with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and other laws. Living through that era, Morgan now is thrilled to see an African-American take the oath for the highest office in the land.
“This means the world,” said Morgan, a retired professor of English from Missouri Southern State University. “It means that we're better than we think we are, and that given time the American dream works.”
Separate but equal
Morgan attended USM from 1958 to 1963, earning a master's degree in English. He grew up in the South, in the days of segregation.
“Segregation was called ‘separate but equal’ in the South,” Morgan said. “It was always separate, but never equal.”
Morgan said that lawyers with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argued that if segregation was unconstitutional for schools, then the same should hold true for other aspects of American life, including voting, transportation and even dining out.
At the same time, schools in the South were reluctant to carry out the ruling of the Supreme Court.
“The ruling ordered segregated buildings to be removed with all deliberate haste,” Morgan said. “It ended up taking years.”
Many areas had election laws that ended up disenfranchising blacks, Morgan said. An annual $5 poll tax and difficult literacy tests — which sometimes asked a person to translate Latin — kept many more away from polls.
The voucher system was another a way to keep blacks from the polls, Morgan said.
Although he believed racism was wrong, Morgan's studies and graduate work kept him too busy to join the civil rights movement. But he helped three of his friends by acting as their voucher.
Morgan said that of all the laws passed as a result of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act, which made poll taxes, vouchers and literary tests unconstitutional, was the most important. It passed in 1965.
“That's the one that did the trick,” Morgan said. “Once they were able to vote for themselves, they could turn the situation around.”
History made
Morgan earned his master's degree in 1963, then went to the University of Colorado to earn his doctorate. While there, he saw the same sort of discrimination practiced against Latin Americans.
He worked as part of a government program that found bright Latino students and oriented them into college.
“They had some of the same problems in the West as blacks did in the South," Morgan said. “There was an enormous amount of prejudice against them. Thank God they got over that.”
After earning his doctorate, Morgan taught at MSSU until 2001, when he retired. From 1971 to 1982, he was the faculty sponsor of the university's African-American Society.
Morgan said that Martin Luther King, Jr. would enjoy the historic inauguration Tuesday.
“I don't know if we've realized King's dream yet, but we've come a long way,” Morgan said. “If he was alive, I'm sure he'd be baffled, surprised and as pleased as I am.”
