Aaron Henry

Aaron Henry
Henry at the 1964 Democratic National Convention
Born	(1922-07-02)July 2, 1922 Dublin, Mississippi, USA
Died	May 19, 1997(1997-05-19) (aged 74) Clarksdale, Mississippi
Cause of death	Congestive heart failure
Nationality	American
Occupation	Civil rights leader; politician;
Known for	Civil Rights Movement; NAACP; Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Aaron Henry (July 2, 1922 – May 19, 1997) was an American civil rights leader, politician, and head of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP. He was one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which tried to seat their delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

Aaron Henry was born in Dublin, Mississippi to parents Ed and Mattie Henry, who worked as sharecroppers. While growing up, he worked on the Flowers brothers' plantation, which was twenty miles east of Clarksdale in Coahoma County. Henry detested everything about growing cotton because of the hardships that it brought upon the African Americans working on the plantation. Henry’s parents believed education to be essential for the future of Henry and his family; therefore, he was able to attend the all-black Coahoma County Agricultural High School. After graduating from high school, Henry worked as a night clerk at a motel to earn money for college, but ended up enlisting in the Army. Three years in the army taught him that racial discrimination and segregation were common, many instances of which he described to Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?. At the same time, it confirmed his feelings that the desegregation was worse in his home state. He decided that he would work for equality and justice for black Americans as soon as he returned home after the war. When he returned to Clarksdale in 1946, a Progressive Voters' League had been formed to work for the implementation of the 1944 Supreme Court decision abolishing white primacy.

As a veteran, Henry was interested in the decision that the Mississippi legislature had exempted returning veterans from paying the poll tax. Under the poll tax laws, a person had to have paid his poll tax for two years prior to the time that he voted. Therefore, he tried to get black Mississippians to go down to the courthouse to register to vote. However, several veterans, who were non-white, were unable to register. When Henry went to the circuit clerk's office to register, he was rejected, as had been other black Americans. The clerk asked Henry to bring a certificate showing that he was exempt from the poll tax. Although he brought the certificate, the clerk said that Henry still needed to pass various tests to show that he was qualified to vote. He was finally able to register to vote after he read several sections of the state constitution and went satisfactorily through more tests. Henry used the G.I. Bill, a law that provided educational benefits for World War II veterans, to enroll in the pharmacy school at Xavier University. When he graduated in 1950 with a pharmaceutical degree, he married Noelle Michael and went into his own pharmacy business. As a businessman in Clarksdale, he became involved in local and state activities, particularly events such as African-American voter registration. He decided to organize an NAACP branch in Clarksdale because of the incident where two black girls were raped by two white men who were subsequently judged not guilty. W.A. Higgins, who was the principal of the black high school and already a member of NAACP, made the suggestion, and the NAACP national headquarters encouraged Henry and Higgins to organize a local branch of the NAACP. In 1959, Henry was elected president of the Mississippi organization, and served in the NAACP for decades. Henry became close friends with Medgar Evers, who worked as a secretary for the NAACP in 1950. On June 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi and his assassination had a great impact on Henry.