Kissing Case

The Kissing Case was an incident in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

In 1958 in Monroe, North Carolina, two African American children, seven year old Fuzzy Simpson and nine year old Hanover Thompson, were arrested for violating the state's Anti-miscegenation laws. They had participated in a kissing game with a white girl during which the girl kissed Thompson on the cheek. The girl subsequently told her mother, who had the sheriff arrest the boys on charges of attempted rape.

The children were detained for six days and then sentenced to reform school until they turned 21. Under pressure from Robert F. Williams and the local chapter of the NAACP, assisted by New York attorney Conrad Lynne, the local and state government at first refused to back down; Governor Luther H. Hodges and attorney general Malcolm Seawell opposed Williams' writ to review the detention of the boys. However, the case drew heavy press coverage from other countries; the "London Observer" ran a photograph of the children's reunion with their mothers under the headline "Why?", and the United States Information Agency reported receiving more than 12,000 letters regarding the case. In the face of this scrutiny, Hodges backed down; the children were released after three months in detention.

References

*Kennedy, Randall. "Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption". New York: Vintage, 2004.
*Nelson, Truman. "People With Strength in Monroe, North Carolina". Privately printed, 1958.
*Tyson, Timothy. "Robert F. Williams, NAACP: Warrior and Rebel." "The New Crisis" December 1997/January 1998.