Biography
John Hardy was a twenty-one-year-old Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee field secretary working on voter registration in southwest Mississippi. On September 7, 1961, the Walthall County registrar struck Hardy over the head with a pistol after Hardy accompanied two Black residents to register. Officials then arrested Hardy for disturbing the peace and inciting a riot and confined him first in Tylertown and then in the jail at Magnolia. The Justice Department sued to block the retaliatory prosecution. The reviewed court and movement records do not give his release date.
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Custody record
The Fifth Circuit’s United States v. Wood opinion describes September 7, 1961 Tylertown confinement, transfer to Magnolia that evening and release on bond the next morning. It supports September 8 release without establishing any earlier Parchman imprisonment.
Payne individually names Hardy among the Freedom Riders released from jail before joining the McComb movement in 1961. This is an earlier custody context than his September 1961 Tylertown voter-registration arrest. The account does not establish his individual Freedom Ride jail-admission date, discharge date or duration, and the group’s mid-August arrival context is not treated as his exact jail release.
Source: Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (2007 edition), original PDF page 93.
