1.
GV.PAN. Tents in field.
0.06

2.
SV Tent.
0.08

3.
LV.INT. Family in tent.
0.10

4.
SV Ditto.
0.13

5.
CU Small negro child.
0.15

6.
SV. Family in tent.
0.19

7.
LV. Relief supplies being loaded onto lorry.
0.21

8.
SCU Ditto.
0.29

9.
SV. Negro relief workers loading lorry.
0.35

10.
STV Ditto.
0.38

11.
CU Notice on back of loaded truck 'Truck lift' to Freedom Village.
0.41



Initials TDH/N/WS/CW



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Contending that they were evicted from their leased land because they registered to vote in the November Presidential election, about 75 Negroes have moved into eleven tents, set up just outside Somerville, Tennessee, USA, on land owned by a Negro farmer.

Negro citizens of Somerville are donating money, food and clothing to aid the "Tent Town" residents to continue their stand against "white victimisation."
White farmers, who leased the land to the Negro tenant farmers, claim that the Negroes were redundant of increased mechanisation.

Until April 1960 there was nowhere in the area for the Negroes to vote. Then a Negro sponsored organisations was formed to encourage Negroes to register. White people then organised themselves to enforce economic sanctions against members of the Negro organisation. Their names were distributed to Landlords who were asked to remove share croppers (tenants who give up part of their crop as rent). White people sat in cars checking off the names of Negroes who registered. soon Afterwards share-croppers began receiving eviction notices. Some had lived on their lands for forty years.

A Cincinnati, Ohio, Court of Appeals met Dec 29 to review a recent ruling by Federal Judge Marion Boyd of Memphis. He refused to stop the evictions on the ground that the Civil Rights Acts did not give him authority to tamper with property and contract rights.