Bombed for a Petition: David Bacon Jr.

Top of the Morning column published in The Natchez Democrat (Wednesday, March 25, 2026, page 4A)  

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Top of the Morning

 

Bombed for a Petition: David Bacon Jr.

 

By Roscoe Barnes III

 

Paul Bacon says he was seven when his father's truck was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1955 in the driveway of their home at 12 Lincoln Street.

 
Paul and his family were in bed when they heard a loud explosion that shook their home and blew out windows in several houses.
 
The bombing came amid escalating intimidation following a petition to desegregate the local schools, according to Paul’s nephew, Willie J. Epps Jr., Chief Magistrate Judge in the Western District of Missouri.
 
No one was injured, and no one was ever charged. But the bombing and other threats by white residents opposed to integration caused a setback in the Black community’s fight for civil rights.
 
Paul’s father, David French Bacon Jr., was president of the Natchez NAACP. He was targeted by white supremacists because of his fight for civil rights.
 
After the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional, the local NAACP circulated a desegregation petition in Natchez and Adams County.
 
When the petition appeared in The Natchez Democrat, the signers became targets of white racists. Some lost jobs, some fled town, and most of them withdrew their names under pressure.
 
The bombing was one of many stories Paul shared about his father's work when we met in October 2025. When he mentioned the petition, it triggered a memory.
 
"Wait," I said. "That was your father?”
 
I suddenly realized I had seen his name before.
 
Whenever I encounter names of local people in history books, I yearn to meet them and learn more about their stories. I also want to thank them for their sacrifice in the struggle for civil rights and share their stories.
 
Paul’s father is mentioned in Charles C. Bolton’s book, “The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980” (University Press of Mississippi, 2007). Bolton writes:
 
“In Natchez, although ‘enthusiasm was high’ within the black community as the local NAACP launched its school petition drive in mid-July, after the publication of the petition and its almost one hundred signers in the Natchez Democrat, three-fifths of the petitioners reconsidered their action. Requests poured into the offices of the newspaper and the school board asking that names be excised from the petition; many of the black parents claimed … that they had misunderstood what they were signing. David Bacon Jr., who worked for a white-owned business, renounced his endorsement of the document and quit the NAACP.”
 
He is also mentioned in Jack E. Davis’ book, “Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez since 1930” (Louisiana State University Press, 2001).
 
Davis notes David presented the petition to School Board President R. Brent Forman. When it appeared in the paper, Natchez whites organized a White Citizens’ Council to resist integration.
 
The school board rejected the petition. “Even David Bacon, apparently feeling pressure from his employer, withdrew his name and resigned as chapter president (of the NAACP),” writes Davis, adding, “the Natchez branch disbanded after the petition defeat.”
 
Paul says his father withdrew for the sake of his family. “There were five of us, and we were not affluent,” he says. “My father had been working at Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, but he lost his job when his name was seen on the petition. He continued working at Cole’s as a utility man.”
 
Despite the petition’s defeat, Paul sees lessons in his father’s experience. “It shows that your integrity is most important, as is your history and your family.  Most essential is your faith in the Lord.”
 
------------

ROSCOE BARNES III, Ph.D., is the cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez.