In 1965, Natchez experienced a pivotal phase of its civil rights struggle after the August 27 bombing that nearly killed George Metcalfe, president of the local chapter of the Natchez Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After the city rejected a list of demands submitted by the NAACP, Governor Paul Johnson sent 650 National Guardsmen to Natchez, and the National Guard patrolled Saint Catherine Street on September 3. On September 30, the city obtained an injunction against demonstrations, and over the next several days more than 500 demonstrators were arrested, with the City Auditorium used as a temporary detention center and about half of those arrested bused to Parchman Penitentiary, where they received cruel treatment from the warden. After the U.S. District Court lifted the injunction against protest marches on October 6, about twelve hundred marchers took part in the largest march of Natchez's Civil Rights Movement, proceeding quietly and orderly through downtown to the Adams County Courthouse while Klansmen often stood on street corners to intimidate them. Led largely by hardworking local Black men and women rather than prominent outside figures, the movement organized demonstrations, an economic boycott, and armed self-defense in response to Klan violence and lack of police protection. During a march up Franklin Street on October 30, Jack Seale of neighboring Franklin County stood on a street corner in paramilitary clothing to intimidate marchers; both he and his brother James Ford Seale were implicated in murders and bombings in southwest Mississippi. In early December, at Zion Chapel A.M.E. Church, activist Bill Ware called for a Christmas boycott against white merchants, and the boycott and demonstrations of 1965 led the city and local businesses to concede virtually all of the NAACP's demands, with the city formally conceding on December 3, 1965.
