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Biography/History:
Jane Menefee Schutt was born January 2, 1913, in Washington, D.C., to Randolph and Gertrude Menefee. She graduated from public high school in 1929, and attended George Washington University from 1929 to 1932, when she left college to help support her family by teaching piano. In 1934, she married Wallis I. Schutt, an engineer and graduate of George Washington University. In 1942, they moved to Mississippi, where Mr. Schutt was recruited to work on the construction of military bases in Jackson and Gulfport. They settled in Jackson when he joined M. T. Reed Construction Company as a civil engineer. The Schutts raised five children: Wallis J. Schutt, Patricia Schutt Herzog, Ella Schutt Hamilton, Nancy Schutt McCorkle, and John Cogswell Schutt.
Mrs. Schutt is a lifelong Episcopalian, and has always been active in church life. In Jackson, she was a member of St. Columb’s Episcopal Church, and was also a leader in the Middle Mississippi Council of the Girl Scouts of America. She became active in Church Women United (formerly United Church Women) while living in Memphis, Tennessee, and joined the Mississippi chapter when she moved to Jackson. Founded in 1941, Church Women United was an ecumenical women’s organization that strove for unity and social action across Protestant faiths. Mrs. Schutt served as state president of United Church Women of Mississippi from 1960 to 1963, at a time when many white women’s chapters in the South were in conflict with National Church Women United and the National Council of Churches, both of which supported integration. In September 1959, the Mississippi chapter, led by Mrs. Schutt and Mrs. A. C. Griffin, declared its intention to remain allied with the national organization and clarified its position on race relations. While calling for “social justice,” the statement also advocated the “framework of separate races working together harmoniously.” This wording led some journalists to mistakenly describe Mrs. Schutt as a segregationist.
Although not a strong statement in favor of integration, the Church Women United resolution caught the attention of staff members at the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which was created in 1957 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. They sought persons willing to serve on a state advisory committee in Mississippi, which was one of the last two states to form an advisory body to the federal commission. While several members of United Church Women of Mississippi were invited to consider being nominated to the committee, only Mrs. Schutt expressed willingness. With the support of her family and her Episcopal Bishop Duncan Gray, Sr., she agreed to serve as one of the founding members of the Mississippi Advisory Committee. The announcement of her decision came just days after the Citizens’ Councils called anyone agreeing to serve on the committee a “traitor” and a “scalawag Southerner.”
The Mississippi Advisory Committee was established in 1959 as a fact-finding body that investigated and reported on denials of equal protection and voting rights in the state. While it had no enforcement powers, the committee advised the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the preparation of final reports and held public meetings to hear complaints and testimony on civil rights abuses, which it forwarded to the federal office. The committee produced its first report to the Commission on Civil Rights in 1961, identifying rights violations in the areas of voting, education, instrumentalities of justice, and employment. In 1963, it produced its second report, Administration of Justice in Mississippi. These reports were the first government-published accounts of rights violations in Mississippi.
The first chairman of the Mississippi Advisory Committee was the Reverend Murray Cox, a retired Methodist minister from Gulfport. The other founding members of the bi-racial committee were James Lucius Allen, Admiral Robert Briscoe, and Dr. A. B. Britton. Mrs. Schutt assumed the role of chairman in 1962, following the death of Reverend Cox. The committee faced many obstacles, including harassment and violence against its members and a lack of cooperation from local officials. Mississippi Attorney General Joe T. Patterson informed circuit clerks across the state that they had no obligation to report information on voter registration levels to representatives of the committee. The committee also had difficulty securing places to hold meetings, and could meet only in federal buildings, churches, and private homes. While the Mississippi Advisory Committee hoped to hold federal public hearings in Jackson, territorial disputes between the Commission on Civil Rights and the Department of Justice forced these hearings to be postponed. The Department of Justice feared that increased hostility in the wake of the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 would impede its pending indictment of Governor Ross Barnett for obstruction of justice. In spite of these obstacles, however, the Mississippi Advisory Committee received testimony of over 150 civil rights violations across the state in the first few years of its operation. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held public hearings in Mississippi in 1965.
The Mississippi Advisory Committee sparked controversy in 1963 when the Commission on Civil Rights sent a special report on Mississippi to President Kennedy with the Advisory Committee’s suggestion that federal funds be withheld from the state if local officials continued to flout federal law. While this proposal was not implemented, it brought widespread attention to the Mississippi Advisory Committee and to Mrs. Schutt in particular. Mrs. Schutt testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights in 1963, supporting the extension of the Commission on Civil Rights’ authority. This increased publicity made her involvement with the Mississippi Advisory Committee more difficult for her family to sustain. Mrs. Schutt resigned from the Mississippi Advisory Committee in 1963, citing personal reasons. Since the beginning of her membership on the committee, her family had come under economic pressure, as had other families involved in the civil rights struggle. Mr. Schutt’s employers, the Reed brothers, were Citizens’ Council members, and exerted pressure on him to encourage Mrs. Schutt to resign. Records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission confirm an effort to force her resignation.
During her tenure on the Advisory Committee, Mrs. Schutt continued her activities on behalf of Church Women United. In 1961, the National Assembly of Church Women United met in Miami and adopted a project known as “Assignment Race,” with each delegate signing a pledge to do whatever possible to bring about better race relations in her local community. Soon after, Mrs. Schutt began making contacts with African-American church women in Jackson, and traveled to Atlanta to attend an integrated meeting with Mrs. M. G. Haughton of the Pearl Street African Methodist Episcopal. Church. Her exposure to issues at these and other regional meetings deepened her commitment to civil rights work. Church Women United of Mississippi began holding integrated prayer fellowships in Jackson, first meeting in private homes, including the Schutts’, and at black churches. Following the passage of Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred discrimination in public accommodations, the group held its first integrated meeting in a public place at the Sun and Sand in Jackson. Mrs. Schutt, along with other members of the Mississippi Advisory Committee, helped to revive the Mississippi Council on Human Relations, a bi-racial group dedicated to interracial dialogue and racial reconciliation. She hosted students working on Freedom Summer in 1964, and transported white children to integrated Head Start centers in Jackson.
Mrs. Schutt carried out these efforts despite opposition from other white Mississippians. Her family became accustomed to hate calls, frequent visits by the police, and surveillance by Sovereignty Commission staff and other officials. Even after her resignation from the Mississippi Advisory Committee, a cross was burned in front of the Schutts’ house. Mrs. Schutt turned the burned cross into a Christmas display in her front yard.
Mrs. Schutt has received numerous awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., Award from the Mississippi Council on Human Relations (1973), an honorary doctor of humanities degree from the Prentiss Institute (1975), the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference Award (1978), and Church Women United's Valiant Woman Award (1979). Mrs. Schutt resided in Florence, Mississippi. She died July 23, 2006.
Scope and Content:
This collection primarily spans the period of Mrs. Schutt’s involvement with the Mississippi Advisory Committee (1959-1963). It contains official records of the committee, including correspondence of its first two chairmen, the Reverend Murray Cox and Mrs. Schutt. It also contains typescripts and printed material collected by Mrs. Schutt to support her civil rights work in these years. The collection is divided into six series: Mississippi Advisory Committee records, correspondence, reports, typescripts, printed material, and clippings. Folders in each series are arranged in alphabetical order by subject; items in each folder are arranged chronologically.
The Mississippi Advisory Committee records contain minutes, agendas, and organizational files related to the activities of the committee from its founding in 1959 until 1963, when Jane Schutt resigned as chairman. It documents committee meetings, civil rights complaints from African Americans and white civil rights volunteers, efforts to secure information on voter registration and law enforcement, and procedural guidelines. The correspondence series contains the official correspondence of chairman Murray Cox, Jane Schutt, and staff members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights working with the Mississippi Advisory Committee. It documents a range of public opinion about the establishment of a state advisory committee in Mississippi, communication with civil rights leaders, including Aaron Henry and Medgar Evers, and challenges faced by the committee. The reports series contains printed reports and supporting material produced by the Mississippi Advisory Committee, as well as other organizations interested in civil rights. The typescripts series contains a range of commentaries, statements, papers, sermons, and speeches about civil rights by parties in support of and against integration in Mississippi that were collected by Jane Schutt. Some authors of these typescripts are identified, while other authors are unknown. The printed material series contains a variety of brochures, leaflets, and periodicals concerned primarily with civil rights issues, including material produced by anti-integration groups. It particularly documents religious positions on segregation and integration. The clippings series contains photocopies of clippings collected by Jane Schutt from 1959 to 1964. They document the formation of the Mississippi Advisory Committee, commentaries on civil rights from newspapers around the state, the relationship between the Sovereignty Commission and Citizens’ Councils, and public reaction to Mississippi Freedom Summer.
Series Identification:
This series is organized into the following subseries: minutes and agendas and organizational files.
1.1 Minutes and Agendas. 1960-1963. 3 folders.
This subseries contains handwritten and typewritten minutes, agendas, and announcements for monthly meetings of the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1960 until 1963. It also contains agendas, conference information, and notes from the State Advisory Committee Chairmen’s Conference and Commission on Civil Rights Second Annual Conference held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, from March 20-22, 1960.
Box 1, folders 1-3
1.2 Organizational Files. 1959-1963; n.d. 11 folders.
This subseries contains records created by members of the Mississippi Advisory Committee. Types of records include contact and membership lists, background information on Mississippi counties, legal documents and testimony, press releases, notes, surveys, and operational guidelines provided by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Box 1, folders 4-14
This series is organized into the following subseries: member correspondence, commission correspondence, and memoranda.
2.1. Member Correspondence. 1959-1964; n.d. 2 folders.
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence of the first committee chairman, the Reverend Murray Cox, and the second chairman, Jane Schutt. The correspondence includes official correspondence as well as incoming personal letters that congratulate or criticize Cox and Schutt for their participation in the Mississippi Advisory Committee. Correspondents include Aaron E. Henry, Medgar Evers, and members of the Citizens’ Councils. Filed with the chairmen’s correspondence are letters to and from committee secretary Richard Ellerbrake.
Box 1, folders 15-16
2.2. Commission Correspondence. 1959-1963. 2 folders.
This subseries contains the official correspondence between members of the Mississippi Advisory Committee and staff of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Key issues discussed include Aaron Henry’s involvement with the Mississippi Advisory Committee and jurisdictional conflicts between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Department of Justice in handling civil rights abuses in Mississippi.
Box 1, folders 17-18
2.3 Memoranda. 1960-1963. 1 folder.
This subseries contains memoranda of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to members of the Mississippi Advisory Committee. Some memoranda concern the withholding of surplus commodities from civil rights activists in Leflore County.
Box 1, folder 19
This series is organized into the following subseries: reports by the Mississippi Advisory Committee and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and reports by other organizations.
3.1 Reports by the Mississippi Advisory Committee and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 1960-1963; n.d. 6 folders.
This subseries contains printed reports and drafts of reports produced by the Mississippi Advisory Committee. It also includes the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s special report on Mississippi and a report by the North Carolina Advisory Committee.
Box 1, folders 20-25
3.2 Reports by Other Organizations. 1959-1962. 4 folders.
This subseries contains printed reports created by the following organizations: Group Research, Inc., U.S. Housing and Home Finance Administration, Mississippi AFL-CIO, Southern Regional Council, Tuskegee Institute, and the Urban League of Greater New Orleans.
Box 1, folders 26-29
This series contains commentaries, devotional readings, handbooks, papers, sermons, and speeches supporting and opposing civil rights in Mississippi and the South. Authors include William L. Higgs, the Council of Federated Organizations, members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, women from Vicksburg opposing the United Church Women’s stance on integration, the Reverend Alex Dixon, Jr., of St. Columb’s Episcopal Church, Russell H. Barrett, Dick Sanders of WLBT, and Evans Harrington. Also included is a historical narrative entitled “Restrictions on Negro Voting.”
Box 1, folders 30-38
This series contains advertisements, brochures, newsletters, pamphlets, periodicals, and printed articles about a variety of issues reflecting the interests of Schutt, including civil rights, religious positions on civil rights, race relations, and nuclear disarmament. These include issues of Liberation and Southern Patriot, brochures on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and “The Bible Speaks on Race,” and an anti-integration pamphlet produced by the Mississippi Department of Public Welfare.
Box 1, folders 39-49
This series contains clippings from state and national newspapers compiled by Schutt during her tenure on the Mississippi Advisory Committee.
Box 1, folders 50-56