That’s me in the picture: Hunter Gray is attacked at a civil rights protest in Jackson, Mississippi, 28 May 1963

I am half Native American, half white, and a lifelong activist. I’d been a professor at the almost all-black Tougaloo College, north of Jackson, for two years when this picture was taken. Back then I was called John Salter; I later reverted to my Native American name.

In Mississippi at that time, racism and segregation were enforced by police power and vigilantes. My wife and I started mentoring students who were interested in fighting for civil rights, and in the spring of 1963 we arranged sit-ins at the Woolworth lunch counter where they had a “whites-only” policy.

I was arranging for cars to take people downtown to the sit-in with the social activist Medgar Evers. We were in his office when we got a call from one of our spotters – people reporting back to us. Right after noon, white thug types were beginning to come into the store. Many were high-school kids. One protester had been pulled off his chair, knocked unconscious and taken to hospital. The others were being subjected to name-calling and having mustard and sugar dumped on them. Three of us headed right there.

Several hundred people were gathered outside. We walked through them into the store, which by now was filled with screaming, mostly young people, but there were older people, too. We learned later that local radio stations were encouraging people to go there and basically participate in mob activity.

Anne Moody, who later wrote the book Coming Of Age In Mississippi, and is in the centre of this picture, had been joined at the counter by Joan Trumpauer, one of Tougaloo’s few white students. I joined them, sitting to their right. A newsman asked who I was. As a community organiser, my name was becoming well known in the white community, so when he told the mob who I was, several of them started to target me. They cut my face with sharp brass knuckles; someone cut the back of my head with the jagged edge of a broken sugar container. There was a good deal of blood.

They dumped slop on us. I was burned with cigarettes, hit and had pepper thrown in my eyes. The women weren’t struck, but had their hair pulled. All the while the air was filled with obscenities, the n-word – it was a lavish display of unbridled hatred. I have virtually never felt fear, I seem to be wired that way. So while I remember thinking we could get shot, and it was likely I could be a prime candidate, I wasn’t particularly worried.

Shortly after 2pm the mob began to throw merchandise around, so the manager and police ordered everybody out. Dr Beittel, president of Tougaloo College, came to ensure safe passage. The police provided a grudging protection. We went to a mass meeting: hundreds showed up in support. We quickly learned that reports of the sit-in had gone global.

I saw the photo the next morning in the Jackson Daily News. Friends across the country called to say they had seen it, and we got letters from people from all over the world.

Now in textbooks, this picture reinforces my feeling that change came because of the great courage and determination of grass-roots people. I remember sitting at that counter, thinking about the indoctrination of these young people: white councils issuing special curriculums for white schools. And more sinister warnings such as: “Race mixers are communist and traitors.” The kids had been brainwashed with this poisonous stuff all their lives. I saw no free will in that mob, and I couldn’t blame the kids personally.

Fifty years on I continue to feel sorry for them. If I met any of them today, I’d say: “Let’s go have lunch.”

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