Dates: 1967-2011 (bulk 1967-1972 and 1988-1989).
Original newsclippings in box 5 are restricted; photocopies in box 3 or microfilm holdings must be used instead.

Biography:

Norma Sanders Bourdeaux

Norma Sanders Bourdeaux was born in Birmingham, Jefferson County, Alabama, on June 10, 1930. She graduated from Meridian High School in Meridian, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, and received a bachelor of arts degree in commercial art from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa in 1952. After a career as an artist and business owner in Meridian, and many years of service on various public commissions and boards, Bourdeaux was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1991. She served three terms before losing her bid for re-election in 1999. She received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Mississippi in Oxford in 2004, and has exhibited her artwork around the state. Her husband, Thomas D. Bourdeaux, who died in 1995, was a prominent Meridian lawyer who served as city attorney there in the 1960s. The couple had four children.

Thomas and Norma Bourdeaux were supporters of civil rights for African Americans, a stance that brought them threats and harassment from the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan during and after the Freedom Summer Project of 1964 in Mississippi. The intimidation intensified when Norma Bourdeaux was named in 1967 to the federal grand jury that indicted nineteen men in the case of murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The three were killed in June 1964 on Highway 492 outside of Philadelphia, Neshoba County, Mississippi. Since the state refused to bring murder charges, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe led to the federal government pursuing a case for violation of the workers’ civil rights. The grand jury on which Bourdeaux served was the second convened in the case; earlier indictments against the suspects had been thrown out on grounds that the grand jury was not sufficiently representative of the area’s population. In the subsequent trial, United States v. Cecil Price, et al., seven of the men were convicted and received sentences ranging from three to ten years.

 

Scope and Content Note:

This collection consists of trial notes, scrapbooks, and scrapbook materials related to civil rights collected by Norma Bourdeaux. Much of the collection relates to the 1967 federal trial of nineteen men in the case of the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. However, a large amount of the collection was collected at a later time and is not contemporary with the trial; this includes material related to the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, which was based on the federal investigation into the murders.

 

Series Identification:

Series 1: Trial Notes, 1967.

This series contains notes from the U. S. v. Price, et al. trial. Most of the notes (folders 1-2) were written by the defendants to their lawyers during the trial and are on scraps of paper. They suggest potential questions for witnesses, provide additional information about testimony, or offer background information on events of the case. Bourdeaux received the notes from a deputy after the trial. The series also contains her own notes from the trial (folder 3), which she attended daily. All the notes were stored in the white and red scrapbooks contained in the second series, either loose or in envelopes.

Box 1, folders 1-3

 

Series 2: Civil Rights Scrapbooks, 1967-1984.

This series contains scrapbooks of materials related to civil rights. The scrapbooks primarily contain clippings from The Meridian Star and The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, along with a few from other Mississippi and national newspapers and magazines. The clippings contain articles on a range of civil rights events in the years covered, but a large portion of them are about the U. S. v. Price, et al. trial, or the trial of the men accused of the murder of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, Forrest County, Mississippi. The scrapbooks also contain a few photographs, a list of grand jurors in the U. S. v. Price, et al. trial and their addresses, and a list handwritten by Bourdeaux of defendants in the Dahmer case. A few clippings and other items found loose inside the scrapbooks are also included in the series. Of particular interest among these are a pamphlet from the Citizens’ Council and three threatening postcards sent to Thomas Bourdeaux by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. According to newspaper interviews with Thomas and Norma Bourdeaux, the couple received many other similar postcards, which they turned over to the FBI.

Box 1, folders 4-7
Box 2

 

Series 3: Civil Rights Scrapbook Materials, 1985-2011.

This series contains other materials related to civil rights saved for later use in scrapbooks. These include correspondence, programs, photographs, and other materials documenting Norma Bourdeaux’s participation in events commemorating the civil rights movement, such as conferences and media interviews. The series also includes newsclippings and sections containing articles about civil rights issues, mainly from The (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger and The Meridian Star, but also from some other Mississippi and national newspapers and magazines. Many of the clippings and some of the other materials concern the 1988 film Mississippi Burning, which was based on the FBI investigation into the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. These include a personal note to Thomas and Norma Bourdeaux from the film’s director, Alan Parker. Also of special interest are the interviews and access to her scrapbooks Norma Bourdeaux gave to national and international newspapers as part of the media coverage surrounding the film, and the related notes and correspondence.

Box 3
Box 4
Box 5 (restricted originals)

 

Box List:

Box 1: Trial Notes and Loose Items from Civil Rights Scrapbooks, 1967-1975.

Folders 1-2: Defendants’ notes from U. S. v. Price, et al., 1967.
Folder 3: Bourdeaux Notes from U. S. v. Price, et al., 1967.
Folder 4: White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan postcards, 1968.
Folder 5: Citizens’ Council pamphlet; n.d.
Folder 6: Miscellaneous items from scrapbooks, 1967; 1975.
Folder 7: Loose newsclippings from scrapbooks, 1967; 1972.

Box 2: Civil Rights Scrapbooks, 1967-1984.

Scrapbook 1 (black), 1967-1970.
Scrapbook 2 (white), 1967.
Scrapbook 3 (red), 1967-1972.
Folders 1-2: Loose newsclippings from scrapbooks, 1971-1984.

Box 3: Civil Rights Scrapbook Materials, 1986-2008.

Folder 1: Covering the South symposium, 1986-1987.
Folder 2: The Civil Rights Movement and the Law symposium, 1989.
Folders 3-6: Civil rights commemoration materials, 1987-2008.
Folders 7-10: Newsclippings and related materials, 1988-1989.

Box 4: Civil Rights Scrapbook Materials, 1985-2009.

Folder 1: Mississippi newsclippings, 2002-2009.
Folders 2-3: National newsclippings, 1985-2008.

Box 5: Civil Rights Scrapbook Materials, 1987-2011 (restricted originals).

See appendix for listing.