Here's what we know for sure:
On October 28, 1958. Two African American boys, David ‘Fuzzy” Simpson and James Hanover Thompson, ages eight and ten, met some white children in a vacant lot on Harvard Street in Monroe NC. A game ensued in which the ten-year-old Thompson and an eight-year-old white girl named Sissy Sutton kissed one another.
Here's where the stories diverge:
- Some people say that the girls in the group were playing 'house', that Sutton recognized Hanover as a childhood playmate and kissed him on the cheek.
- Others say that Simpson and Thompson trapped the white girls in a culvert and would not let them out until one of them gave Thompson a kiss.
What happened next was without dispute and is explained well by the fine folks at Wikipedia:
The girl subsequently told her mother, the girl's father and neighbors armed themselves with shotguns and went looking for the boys and their parents. That evening, James Hanover and Fuzzy were arrested on the charge of rape. The young children were detained for six days without access to their parents or legal council, during which they were handcuffed and beaten in a lower-level cell of the police station. A few days later a juvenile court judge found them guilty and sentenced them to indefinite terms in reform school. The boys, who were again denied legal counsel, were told they might get out when they were 21 years old.
Despite pressure from civil rights leader Robert F. Williams, the local chapter of the NAACP, former first lady/civil rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt and New York attorney Conrad Lynn, the local and state government at first refused to back down; Governor Luther H. Hodges and attorney general Malcolm Seawell opposed Williams' writ to review the detention of the boys. Williams called well-known Black civil rights lawyer Conrad Lynn, who came down from New York to take the case. The mothers of the two boys were not allowed to see their children for weeks.
Joyce Egginton, a journalist from England, got permission to visit the boys and took their mothers along. Egginton smuggled a camera in and took a picture of the mothers hugging their children. Egginton's story of the case and 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?", and the United States Information Agency reported receiving more than 12,000 letters regarding the case.
An international committee was formed in Europe to defend James and Fuzzy. There were huge demonstrations in Paris, Rome and Vienna and in Rotterdam, the U.S. Embassy was stoned. This was an international embarrassment for the U.S. government. In February, officials asked the boys' mothers to sign a waiver with the assurance that their children would be released. The mothers refused to sign the waiver, which would have been an admission of guilt. Two days later, after three months in detention, James and Fuzzy were released without conditions or explanation.
"Rarely in history does an incident so small open a window so large into the life of a place and a people, a window that revealed both the visceral power of sexual questions in racial matters and the complex dynamics of Cold War politics for the African American freedom struggle ." - Patrick Jones