Dr. C.O. Simpkins: Civil Rights and the Price of Staying

Dr. Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins was a dentist who practiced in Shreveport in the nineteen fifties and sixties. He was also a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization that Martin Luther King led.

That combination, a professional practice in a segregated Southern city and active membership in one of the most visible civil rights organizations in America, made him a target. His home was firebombed. His dental office was firebombed.

The message was not subtle. Simpkins left Louisiana and spent twenty-six years in New York before returning to Shreveport. He eventually served in the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Democrat from nineteen ninety-two to nineteen ninety-six.

In twenty twenty, a presidential action renamed the post office in Mansfield, Louisiana in his honor. His story sits alongside those of other Shreveport civil rights figures. Dr.

Harry Blake pastored Mount Canaan Baptist Church and was beaten by police officers in nineteen sixty-three for his activism. Dr. E.

Edward Jones led Galilee Baptist and organized his congregation in the face of the same pressures. Shreveport's civil rights history is not primarily a story of dramatic confrontations, though those occurred. It is more often a story of people who held professional positions in a city structured against them, did their work, organized their communities, paid a serious price, and in several cases left and came back.

The records of what was threatened and what was destroyed are incomplete. The records of who stayed and who returned are somewhat clearer.