"He could have been a klansman for all I knew"
Activist remembers wholesaler who sneaked gas to Fayette County

During Fayette County's Tent City boycott in the early 1960s, most white business owners refused to sell to blacks. A man named John McFerren fought back, organizing a gas station that kept many blacks stocked through the boycott. Decades later, the Nashville Public Library conducted an interview with his ex-wife, Viola McFerren. She remembered a white gas wholesaler who tried to help, and who suffered for doing so.
Viola McFerren
PHOTO: Jackson Sun
"There was no gasoline available to black people who they could identify as being part of the movement . . . And so John said, 'we need to plan for gasoline even though we can't get any now. And I don't want to use the tanks of the oil company as my brother did, because they took his away when black folks started to register to vote, and I don't want that to happen to me. So we will buy our own.'

"So we bought two 6,000 gallon tanks to begin with . . . well, we couldn't get anybody to dig the pit for us, you know, to put the tanks in. And those were pretty good-sized tanks. And he tried everywhere.

". . . And then John appealed to other black farmers in the county to come with their scoops and tractors and help him dig the pit out. Because at that time white people would drive by at night and they were shooting the tanks that were sitting on top of the ground. We had a lot of money in those tanks, and we didn't have a lot of money to start with, but those tanks cost a lot of money.

". . . And farmers came with their tractors and their scoops, and they worked, and other men came with shovels and picks, and those men worked and worked until they got the place dug out and then the tanks were lowered into the ground . . .
A family in Fayette County is evicted from its home in September 1960.
PHOTO: Ernest Withers
"Then we tried everywhere we knew at refineries to get gasoline delivery. Every one of them denied us. And there's a refinery down in Memphis denied us. And we went to Missouri. Denied. Denied. And so those tanks remained empty, oh, probably almost two years.

"One night -- we were living just a short distance down this road in a little three-room house. And this particular night, John wasn't home . . . a very beautiful green automobile . . . pulled into the yard and pulled on down by the side of the house.

". . . It was a white man, and he got out and came around to the porch. And I went to the door. And he asked me if John McFerren was home. And I asked him who he was.

"He said, "I can't tell you who I am, but I'm your friend and I came to help you.'

"And he looked so pleasant. He was very well groomed. He could have been a klansman for all I knew, but I wasn't thinking that way.

"So John did get back . . . and then the man drove up [again], and he and John sat in his automobile outside, and talked . . . and finally he left, and John came in. And John said, 'He came to help us get gas for our tanks . . . He wouldn't tell me his name, but . . . he wanted to know did I have the money to pay for 12,000 gallons of gas, and I told him that I did.'

". . . He told John they would have the gas at the station at 2:00 in the morning, and John and Laverne met them up there and -- sure enough -- they came and unloaded the gasoline, and John paid this man that was driving one of the trucks -- he was a white man but John didn't know his name, because he didn't give his name. And that gas, that 12,000 gallons of gas, left so fast, because there were so many people that wanted gas and couldn't get gas, and went up and filled up, you know. That gas left so fast.

"And this man gave John a phone number to call in Memphis when he needed gas again. So John called this number, and another shipment of gas came in, deep in the night. And John said when those trucks got there, he said there were so many vehicles driven by white men that came parading by . . . Anyway, when that gasoline was sold out and John called for the next, this man had gone out of business. They put a boycott on him. He had gone out of business.

"He had a wife and children. Young couple. The man had a nervous breakdown, his wife left him, and that's the last we heard of him. I wish I could hear from him. I hope he's doing well."
COPYRIGHT -- the Civil Rights Oral History Collection of the Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Division. Click here to be taken to its website.

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