Biography
Ethel Sawyer was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, on March 27, 1961, for the Tougaloo Nine read-in at the whites-only main branch of the Jackson public library, where the students requested service and refused police orders to leave — one of the arrests recorded by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and preserved in the Civil Rights Digital Library, which establishes the arrest and the individual identification photograph. The nine were held roughly thirty-two hours, tried in Jackson municipal court, convicted of disturbing the peace, fined $100 each and given thirty-day suspended jail sentences.
Photo credit
Custody record
Participant accounts place the Tougaloo Nine’s March 1961 detention at more than thirty hours, with estimates varying around thirty to thirty-six hours. The thirty-day sentences were suspended, not thirty days actually served; an exact common hourly duration has not been imposed on all nine.
