In 1965, we were two Cornell University students who traveled to West Tennessee to support Black citizens fighting for a right that should never have been denied them: the right to vote. Sixty-one years later, we are asking Memphis voters to remember their courage — and exercise that right in November.
The Fayette County Movement, which began in 1959 and continued into the early 1970s, was described by The New York Times as the nation’s longest sustained civil rights protest. Black sharecroppers who attempted to register to vote faced devastating retaliation. Families were evicted from homes where some had lived for generations. Many found shelter in a makeshift encampment that became known as Tent City. Others were denied access to groceries, fuel, medical care, and the necessities of daily life. One photograph from that era shows a family standing beside a canvas tent, children gathered close to their parents. It is a stark reminder that these were not statistics or footnotes in history. They were mothers, fathers, and children who endured displacement rather than surrender their claim to citizenship.
These were not distant stories to us. We lived with sharecropper families whose generosity exceeded their means. Our volunteer organization paid a modest stipend, but our hosts offered us their best rooms. They were risking their homes, livelihoods, and personal safety simply to claim the rights promised by the Constitution.
We had joined the Cornell-Tompkins County Committee for Free and Fair Elections, also known as the West Tennessee Voters Project, led by Cornell professor Douglas Dowd. Alongside local residents and other student volunteers, we worked on voter registration and freedom schools. We joined demonstrations against segregation, including a campaign to integrate the school system in Covington. Both of us were arrested and spent time in segregated jails. We witnessed threats, violence, and intimidation intended to keep Black Tennesseans from full citizenship.
Yet what remains most vivid is not our own discomfort. It is the determination of the families who welcomed us and refused to surrender. We arrived imagining that we could help change their lives. In truth, they changed ours. Their courage shaped our subsequent careers in education, housing, and community development, and our understanding of what democracy demands of its citizens.
Memphis author Alice Faye Duncan has preserved this history for younger readers in her illustrated children’s book, Evicted!: The Struggle for the Right to Vote. Her account of Tent City reminds us that the right to vote was won not through abstract debate, but through the sacrifices of ordinary families. Their children and grandchildren deserve to know what it cost.
One family especially deserves recognition. John and Viola McFerren helped establish the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League in 1959. Their grocery and oil business became a gathering place for organizers and volunteers. Their daughter, Daphene McFerren, now executive director of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, has continued to explain why the hard-won protections of the voting rights movement still matter.
The barriers facing voters today are not identical to those of 1965. We no longer confront the same system of literacy tests and poll taxes. But questions of fair representation remain urgent. Redistricting can weaken a community’s political influence even when its members can cast ballots. The reshaping of Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District has brought those questions directly to Memphis. People of good faith may disagree about candidates and policies; every voter nevertheless deserves a meaningful voice in choosing representatives.
We have tried to connect the past with the present in a modest way. With the help of volunteers in Rochester, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut, we mailed more than 5,000 postcards to Memphis residents. Many carried handwritten messages encouraging participation in this election and a link to our fuller account of the Fayette County struggle. The response of our volunteers showed us how powerfully this history still resonates across generations and state lines.
Our message is not that today’s election is a replay of 1965. It is that democracy never becomes self-sustaining. The people who lived in Tent City understood that voting was more than a private privilege. It was a way to protect their families, shape their communities, and insist that government answer to them.
We ask Memphis voters, whatever their party or preferred candidate, to make a plan, go to the polls, and encourage neighbors to do the same. Remember the sharecroppers who lost their homes rather than abandon the ballot. Honor them not only by remembering their story, but by using the voice they struggled to secure.
In 1965, the people of Fayette County taught us that democracy requires courage. In 2026, Memphis has another opportunity to show that it also requires participation.
The Rev. Stuart J. Mitchell III is CEO emeritus of PathStone Corporation and currently serves as parliamentarian to the New York State Community Commission on Reparations and Remedies. Dr. James Paley earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and has led Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven for more than four decades.
