As a young Presbyterian minister serving a church in Davenport, Iowa, Rims Barbour accepted a call to come to Mississippi in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Movement to help register Black Mississippians to vote.
As part of that effort, he rubbed shoulders with legends of the Civil Rights Movement. Now 89, Barber is something of a legend himself as he and his wife of almost 50 years, Judy, continue to advocate for the needy.
Judy, who went to the same Chicago high school as Rims, also ventured to Mississippi to be a social worker for the state Department of Health. Together, they never left Mississippi. They raised a blended family and never stopped working to improve the lives of Mississippians.
Over a two-day period, Judy and Rims Barber answered questions from Mississippi Today Ideas. The first day of the interview was in the sanctuary of Fondren Presbyterian Church in Jackson, where the Barbers remain active. The second day was at their home in Jackson.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Mississippi Today Ideas – I appreciate you taking a few minutes. It’s a real honor to sit down and discuss issues with y’all. First of all, tell me a little bit about what y’all have been doing. I mean, what do you do, and why do you do it?
Rims Barber – Well, I came to Mississippi in 1964 with the National Council of Churches to support Freedom Summer work, and really got involved with some of the local people who were brave in the face of the terror that was there, and was impressed with the work they were doing and wanted to be supportive of them. And so I’ve been trying to support local community groups.
We did a lot of voter registration. We did, you know, community organizing. And out of that came programs like the Child Development Group of Mississippi. The Head Start program in our state came out of those community meetings where people said one of the main things they wanted was better education for their children. And one of the main things we worked on was healthcare.
It’s interesting that Mississippi was the last state to get in the Medicaid program in January of 1970. They put the children in Medicaid, but didn’t put their mothers on. And it was a very limited program, and we were working with community groups who wanted to expand that program and ended up filing a suit to get the mothers involved, to make the state offer services to those mothers, and won that lawsuit. We worked over the next number of many years in expanding that program from its base, which was probably 70,000 people in the state, to 700,000 (enrolled in Medicaid), which is what it is currently.
Judy, my wife, when she was working with the Health Department, had contacts in all the counties, and we could get stories from them about what their needs were and why they should be eligible for Medicaid and why they should get transportation services and housing services and things like that, and advocated for public policies that would try and meet their needs.
One of the early things I got involved with was the election of Robert Clark as the first Black legislator in the (20th) century. Robert was the only Black legislator in the Mississippi Legislature for eight long years. He was elected in 1967, and the next Black to get elected was in 1975. And I worked with (state Sen.) Henry Kirksey on developing the plans that enabled the increase in Black people getting elected, and it’s made a great difference.
We’ve had a strong Black legislative caucus, and I’ve tried to help them whatever way I could to fashion pieces of legislation that would meet the needs of their folks, and they could identify the needs.
Mississippi Today Ideas – I forget the exact phrase, but behind every great man, there’s a great woman, and you and Ms. Judy have been a team for a long time.
Rim – We’re a team.
MT Ideas – How long y’all been married?
Judy Barber – Almost 50 years, in September, yeah.
MT Ideas – You’re a social worker by training?
Judy – Yep. And they needed a director of social work in the Health Department although they did not know what to do with her.
MT Ideas – And then y’all sort of teamed up, got married, and made your life in Mississippi for a long time. What made you decide to stay here?
Judy – The people, the local people.
Rims – So impressed with the local people and what they were doing and trying to make life better in their community. You know, through the political process change the way the Democratic Party selected its leaders across the nation and helped bring about the Voting Rights Act, which made a big difference for many communities
MT Ideas – You were part of so many historic moments in the Civil Rights Movement. You were involved in the march after James Meredith was shot, You were also at Selma when people were killed.
Judy – You were still in Iowa, but you came down. You were sent down to house the people who actually made the march. Actually, that was significant for me because Viola Liuzzo was shot to death (in Selma) and she left two kids at home and was trying to help people do the right thing. And I thought, “That should’ve been me. I should’ve been doing that.” And that sort of triggered my getting more involved in things.
MT Ideas – You’re a Presbyterian minister by training. What made you want to get involved?. What made you decide to come to Mississippi?
U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, right, hugs friend and fellow civil rights veteran Rims Barber of the Mississippi Human Services Coalition before the Friends of Mississippi Civil Rights gala Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, in Jackson. Lewis, who died in 2020, and four other civil rights veterans were honored. Lewis traveled to Mississippi in 1961, was arrested and jailed with other Freedom Riders, Black and white, who challenged segregation in a bus station. He continued working for racial equality in Mississippi and across the South in the 1960s, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Rogelio V. SolisRims – I was at a church in Davenport, Iowa, and involved in some of the local events. You know, even in that area there were questions about residency. As some of the big companies in that particular area brought in Black executives, they needed to find a place to live, things for their children, et cetera, and I got involved with that sort of stuff.
And then we had a call from the National Council of Churches that came out and invited ministers to come to Mississippi for Freedom Summer to assist in the programs, and I bought into that, and I came and was so impressed with the people working to make changes in their lives and in their communities that I have stayed for the rest of my life. (He briefly returned to Iowa to get his personal financial matters in order before moving permanently to Mississippi.)
It’s been my life’s work. I worked for the Delta Ministry from ’65 to ’76, and then with the Children’s Defense Fund from ’77 to ’89, and then I’ve kind of been on my own with a nonprofit organization to work with local people on public policy issues. And now I’m getting old and going blind, so it gets harder and harder to keep doing the work.
MT Ideas – And Ms. Judy, you help him.
Rims – She’s my eyes. Seeing eye person.
MT Ideas – I would just say in a general sense you advocate for the needy.
Rims – We worked closely with the development of the Coalition for (Citizens With) Disabilities and for the Mississippi Immigrant Alliance, I was there for the formation of the ACLU chapter and the League of Women Voters. We offered office space for them, and also for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance.
In (1983), I guess it was when Bill Allain was running to be the governor, somebody said he had a boyfriend encounter. And since I had the Gay Alliance in my office, the telephone was ringing. People would say, “Is Bill Allain there?” You never know. And I’d say, ‘“No, he has his own office.” So we’ve had that kind of fun stuff.
MT Ideas – And your training, as we talked about, was as a social worker, and you came here to work with childcare and initiating some of those programs in Mississippi. I mean, I guess your beliefs were just – sort of – simpatico. So y’all were a natural fit?
Rims – Yeah. I fell in love. It’s been a wonderful time together.
Judy – You have so many interesting people that come to your office. Well, the office is now closed, but it was just a hub for people wanting to know what’s going on in Mississippi.
MT Ideas – Do you have any stories about some of the people you met along the way?
RIms – I had a long relationship with Robert Clark doing some of his legislative work. We gave him an office on Farish Street with a secretary and a typewriter and that sort of stuff. And people would come. Black folks across the state thought he was their legislator because he was the only Black one there, and people would call and ask him for help. And we worked together for those eight years.
You know, we used to have two state teachers associations. One was the Black Teachers Association and the other was the white Mississippi Education Association. They got merged, and we worked with the merger of the Black and white Democratic Party folks, and I was on the committee that was involved in that merger in 1976 when we finally put it all together and got the blessing of the national Democratic Party.
MT Ideas – Was Ms. Hamer involved in that?
Rims – Absolutely. Oh, yes. Ms. Fannie Lou, I remember sitting in her carport shelling peas. Shelling peas. and talking about voter registration.
MT Ideas – You didn’t learn to shell peas in Chicago, did you?
RIms – No, I didn’t.
Judy – Probably from your immigrant grandmother.
MT Ideas – As you said the Democratic Party was split and work was done to bring it together.
Rims – Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer and others worked from ’64 to ’76 in order to get that accomplished. Everything takes a long time. You can’t do anything quickly in this state, but you can persevere.
I helped Robert Clark initiate kindergarten legislation and compulsory attendance legislation back in 1968, and those didn’t pass until William Winters’ 1982 Education Reform Act. So it just took forever, but we got it accomplished. And it made a difference and people are better off today than they were back then.
MT Ideas – Going back to Robert Clark for just a second. He was there as the only Black legislator for eight years. Did he ever just want to give up?
Rims – Well I don’t want to say give up, but it had to be a difficult transition. He didn’t have a seatmate. Everybody else in the House of Representatives had a seatmate, but he was on his own, in a desk all by himself and didn’t have assistance of any type in getting legislation put together. So that’s why we set up an office that he could come to, and just to get out of the Capitol and do some real work before he went back.
MT Ideas – And then there were the legislative lunches?
Rims – He’d go to those luncheons and nobody else would sit at the table with him, so he ate all the desserts. And his wife wasn’t happy about that. His wife was not happy that he gained so much weight. But his sons are now – one is a judge up in Holmes County, and the other took his seat in the Legislature.
MT Ideas – I’ve known y’all for a good long while. Now there’s a lot more people in the Capitol who advocate for needy people. When y’all were doing it in the mid-’90s there weren’t a lot of people doing it.
Rims – When we started doing it in the ’60s and ’70s, there was nobody else. And eventually more people got involved, and we put together a coalition of folks who would share their goals and we could help each other. So that was very important.
MT Ideas – Y’all may not remember this, but the first time you caught my attention, it was in the mid-’90s. It was a joint legislative hearing, a public hearing, and you testified. I can’t remember the issue, but I’m sure you testified on behalf of needy people. I remember the chair looking at you and saying, ‘Mr. Barber, you’re not from Mississippi, are you?’ Do you remember that at all?
Rims – Oh, yeah, I remember that.
MT Ideas – And you said?
Rims – You’re right. I’ve only been here at the time it was over 20 years. Yeah. I was a carpetbagger.
MT Ideas – Ms. Judy, when y’all first got married, which would’ve been in 1976 right here in this church, you just kind of jumped right in and worked with him on all these issues from the onset? Did you continue to have a day job?
Judy – Somebody had to pay the bills. But besides that when you have two children and he had two children, and there’s meals to cook and food to fix.
But I worked for a community health center, and now I’m on the board for Dr. Robert Smith’s Community Health Center, and that’s a real pleasure. And that’s important. The community health centers have made a real difference in the state.
MT Ideas – People who participated in the Civil Rights Movement were arrested or suffered violence. Were you ever arrested?
Rims – Yeah. I was arrested a half a dozen times, I guess. I was only beaten once. There were other incidents of people throwing Molotov cocktails at our house. Not here. It was in Canton.
MT Ideas – Where were you beaten?
Rims – The Madison County Jail. It had to do with taking young Black children to public schools to desegregate the white schools in Madison County. That was illegal. And I got a ticket for that. And I remember that a couple of times when I’ve got traffic citations, what they did was they would put me in jail until they could get a justice of the peace to come and set bond or that sort of thing. I would sit there for hours waiting for something to happen.
And I guess part of the concern that people have today with the immigration issues is that all the police people in the state of Mississippi have to cooperate with the immigration service. That’s part of a new law passed this session. People getting a traffic ticket may have to sit in jail and wait for ICE to come and check their documents.
So that could be going back to some of the same old things that we had in the ’60s. You know, what my button says, “Nobody is free until everybody is free.” You have to be able to work with everybody who has been discriminated against in order to free everyone. We must be together. You can’t separate us one from the other. And so we work with the LGBT people. We work with the immigrants, we work with the disabled – and anyone else who’s been oppressed.
MT Ideas – Y’all have any plans to slow down?
Rims – I can’t help but being slow in many ways because my eyesight is going, and I have to slow down. And we go up to Baptist Fitness Center every day
MT Ideas – When you were in the Madison County Jail, did you have any lingering impact from that?
Rims – No. It just was interesting to watch, you know, the sheriff had to work himself up to be mean, and then he had to work himself back down to go home and pet the dog and hug his wife and stuff. Just came across as an average, ordinary guy. Yeah, it’s not easy being the oppressor.
MT Ideas – I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about what’s going on now. But before I do that, let’s go back to ’64. In ’64, you left your home in Iowa to come down here to Mississippi to work for civil rights and to help register people to vote. And the Voting Rights Act was passed in ’65. It’s made a tremendous difference. What did you think when the Voting Rights Act passed?
Rims – Oh, I was just really excited. Soon after it passed, the federal government set up an office to register people to vote in Canton on Peace Street. And we registered hundreds and hundreds of people through that office because they had been turned away by the sheriff at the courthouse in times past. And being able to go in there and just register, my gosh, it was wonderful. And they made a great difference.
You know that soon we had a Black mayor, Black city council, Black superintendent of schools, Black police chief, you know, and that made all the difference in the world to the people. And it eventually led to a point where Mississippi had, I think, the highest percentage of Black elected officials in the nation.
MT Ideas – But now we recently had the Louisiana decision from the United State Supreme Court that has been in the news and by most accounts guts the Voting Rights Act. What do you think about what’s going on now?
Rims – I think it’s awful. I had a conversation yesterday with one of the lawyers who had helped draft parts of that bill, and he was pretty upset about the whole thing. You know, I mean, it was a well-written bill that enabled people to get real change, make it come. And if they do away with that. I mean, I remember in ’64, I think it was, when the state government moved all the congressional districts from east to west rather than north and south, so that it divided up the Delta into three or four different districts, and there was no way you could get anyone elected who would represent the Black population. But we got that changed.
Then Robert Clark ran for it and lost. The incumbents had these ads on TV saying, “He’s not one of us.” Oh, dear. Well, then Mike Espy ran for it and won. And then when Bill Clinton became president, he made Mike Espy secretary of agriculture, and so that seat was vacated, and Bennie Thompson won that year.
MT Ideas – So how did you know the attorney who helped draft the legislation?
Rims – Herman Derfner worked here for a while in the late ’60s, and I worked with him when he was doing election law. He’s living now in Charleston, South Carolina. And he said that the South Carolina Legislature wants to do away with the one Black congressman from South Carolina, but they’re liable to mess up and end up with two Democrats instead.
MT Ideas – Anything else you want to add?
Rims – I’ve been so blessed to have been able to work with really great people who live here and have worked to change their communities. And in fact, through the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, changed the way the United States elected people to office.
MT Ideas – And you’ve been blessed to have a partner for all those years. Yes.
Rims – Oh, my it is 50 years now.
MT Ideas – Thank y’all.
Judy – Thank you.
RIms – Yeah. Thank you, Bobby.
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