Washington D.C. President Truman heard about Green's speech in Washington, and he liked what he heard. Almost a year later. Percy Greene and I were sitting, talking in the Jackson Advocate office on Farish Street when the telephone rang. We need the vote without intimidation, or poll tax. . One year later, LIFE magazine and a score of other magazines and newspapers covered Percy Greene as he voted in a house that had been previously lived in by arch racist and Mississippi senator Theodore G. Bilbo.
LIFE feature the occurrence in an unprecedented three-page spread.
That was 1948. Percy Greene had secured the vote for blacks almost single-handedly. Next he went after Bilbo. As you would imagine, Percy Greene had become the target of the Ku Klux Klan, the Citizens Council, the Aryan Nations, and other groups screaming for racial purity. On at least three occasions, we were fired on while driving from a speech, or a lecture Greene had given in Mississippi.