In a letter to Rev. Henry L. Bird, the text of which follows, Mrs. Robert W.
“Mainly we’re taking food and morale,” Mrs. Stanley Murphy of Chilmark remarked on Tuesday, on the eve of the departure of five Vineyard women - Mrs. David E. Lilienthal Jr., Mrs. Henry C. Smith, Mrs. Nancy Hodgson, Mrs. Milton Mazer, and Mrs. Murphy - for Williamston, N. C., that southern community in which the segregated black population has become allied with the Vineyard in a freedom movement.
Williamston. Town (Pop. 3,966) co, seat of martin Co., n.e. N. C., on the Roanoke and ESE of Rocky Mount; inc. 1779. It is a tobacco market and has fisheries, a peanut processing factory, and lumber mills.
Dr. Robert W. Nevin is on his way this morning to Williamston, N. C., as a participant in the civil rights demonstration in which, last week, the Rev. Henry L. Bird, rector of the Episcopal Parish on Martha’s Vineyard, was arrested and jailed in that southern town. His departure from Boston by automobile, with four others, may have been seen on television by Islanders who have long been his patients, his friends, and his admirers.
The Rev. Henry L. Bird was released from jail in Williamston, N. C., on Wednesday, along with others of the group of fifty, northern ministers and local people, who were arrested last week following a non-violent demonstration.
The bond posted for their release had to be supplied by local taxpayers or property owners (any amount of money had been offered and was ready on the Vineyard), and although the necessary amount was nominal, said to be only $125, even that sum couldn’t be supplied by sympathetic people in the town except by liens on their properties.
