Jackson Free Press

Fifty years ago, at least 13 people were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace in Mississippi. As far as anyone can tell, these people were not being drunk and disorderly, trespassing or even whooping and hollering at a commencement ceremony. In the eyes of Mississippi authorities, they were doing something much more disturbing—registering blacks to vote.

According to the University of Mississippi's Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive, during Freedom Summer in 1964, local police regularly arrested young people during voter registration drives. On July 31 of that year, two white organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, were assaulted by a white mob at a doctor's office. The Rev. Edward K. Heininger and John Polacheck were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace because the doctor claimed the men used profanity while they were assaulted.

In August of that year, a volunteer named John Luther Bell was jailed in West Point for disturbance of the peace and larceny during voter canvassing. The same month, in Amory, black volunteers Adair Howell, Andrew Moore and Essie Carr were charged with disturbing the peace and coercing a woman to sign a voter registration form.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed explicit racism and discrimination in public-accommodation segregation laws, authorities had to find more creative ways to punish African Americans for drinking out of a whites-only water fountain or attempting to exercise the franchise.

Usually, that was relying on Mississippi's disturbance of the peace statute, which legal experts say is broad enough to mean whatever police and judges want it to mean. Legal experts say it's important to know the history of this sweeping law when it comes to understanding Senatobia City Schools Superintendent Jay Foster's decision to press charges against people for cheering at a high school graduation last month. This week, Foster dropped the charges. Before that happened, Ursula Miller told WREG-TV that when her niece, Lakaydra Hearn, walked across the stage, "I just called her name out. 'Lakaydra!' Just like that." Henry Walker, whose daughter, Lanarcia, also graduated, yelled on his way out of the auditorium, "You did it baby!"

Walker, Miller and two other people who were not identified in media reports were asked to leave because Foster said he wanted the ceremony to be solemn and dignified and asked that audience members hold their applause and celebration

Weeks later, court summonses showed up; a hearing was scheduled for June 9. Under state law, a conviction for peace disturbance can come with a fine of $500 and up to six months in jail.

"We were instructed to remove anyone that cheered during the ceremony, which was done," Zabe Davis, the chief of the campus police and a Senatobia High alumnus. "And then Jay Foster, the superintendent, came and pressed charges against those people."

Matt Steffey, who teaches constitutional law at Mississippi College School of Law, said the Senatobia case harks back to the Jim Crow era when white authorities frequently used disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct laws, and their wide interpretations, to maintain control over every aspect of African Americans' lives and behavior.

"I just think this is heavy-handed and obtuse and seems designed to make the minority conform to the norms the white superintendent wants to impose," Steffey told the Jackson Free Press.

Early on, Foster scoffed at the idea that the move was racially motivated, telling The Clarion-Ledger that of those asked to leave the commencement, two (Miller and Walker) are black and two are white.

Even without the element of racial discrimination, the ACLU of Mississippi believes the charges infringe on the Constitution's protections for freedom of expression.

"Citizens should be able to enjoy the right of free speech, especially at a congratulatory event, like a high school graduation. The cheering by the family does not qualify as a disturbance of the peace and should not have elicited a criminal response.

Additionally, the family's celebration was not calculated to provoke a breach of the peace, nor would it have led to a breach of the peace," the ACLU of Mississippi said in a statement.

So far, the ACLU isn't actively involved in the case. Charles Irvin, the organization's legal director, said his group is watching the Senatobia case closely and believes the disturbing-the-peace law mainly applies to acts of violence and intimidation that are intended to cause a disturbance.

"I don't think they intended to disturb anyone's peace," Irvin told the Jackson Free Press. "The whole thing sends a message of overreach."