During the summer of 1964, McComb was known as the bombing capital of America as the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan joined the more militant United Klans of America in a bombing campaign targeting Black homes and businesses, whether or not their owners were active in the movement. From June through September 1964, McComb's Black community endured over a dozen bombings and numerous acts of violence. McComb had become one of the first strongholds for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi, building on leadership by Black landowners such as C.C. Bryant and E.W. Steptoe, established members of the local NAACP before SNCC arrived in 1961. Their grassroots organization helped fuel SNCC's early success and challenged McComb's explicitly White supremacist power structure, while local police chief George Guy headed a local branch of Americans for the Preservation of White Race. In 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations launched the Mississippi Summer Project and made McComb a central organizing site. As Freedom Summer organizing gained momentum, White resistance intensified, and the United Klans of America used violence and explosives to intimidate the local Black community and thwart the freedom movement. In the early hours of July 26, 1964, as a suspicious vehicle approached the home of Charles Bryant, brother of C.C. Bryant, Charles's wife Ora Bryant fired her shotgun at the car as the perpetrator lobbed a bomb at their home. Supporters and families then organized community self-defense groups that took turns guarding each other's houses at night. Many in the Black community and COFO believed the police were in cahoots with the Klan's bombing campaign. After the home of activist Aylene Quin was bombed on September 20, local police falsely accused her of doing it herself, and in the aftermath police jailed numerous activists. Twenty-four people were ultimately charged with criminal syndicalism because of their involvement in the movement. Quin, Matti Dillon, and Ora Bryant went to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Lyndon Johnson and members of Congress to call national attention to the bombings. After the New York Times editorialized about the violence in McComb, McComb Enterprise-Journal editor Oliver Emmerich began writing about the harmful effects of White violence and organized White community leaders to speak out against the Klan's campaign. Klan members responded by vandalizing the newspaper office and burning a cross in Emmerich's yard. When Governor Paul B. Johnson threatened to send in the Mississippi National Guard to restore order, eleven Klan members were finally apprehended for the bombings. On October 23, 1964, nine of the accused were brought to court, and though they admitted guilt, Judge W.H. Watkins gave them suspended sentences and released them on probation, saying they had been unduly provoked by civil rights activists.
