X-"I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Soldier Who Came Home to Die

Byline: Ray Sprigle; 1948-08-19; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; pages 1

Report: "I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days" - Ray Sprigle - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Tags: georgia, jim crow, posed as, racism

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 When they call the roll of Americans who died to make men free, add to that heroic list the name of Private Macy Yost Snipes, black man, Georgia, U. S. A. Death missed him on a dozen bloody battlefields overseas, where he served his country well. He came home to die in the littered door-yard of his boyhood home because he thought that freedom was for all Americans, and tried to prove it. It wasn’t that he didn’t get fair warning. He knew what to expect. And he got just that. Early in July the white folks passed the warning through the Negro countryside around the little sun-warped country hamlet of Rupert, in Taylor county, Georgia. It was brief and to the point. The first Negro to vote in Rupert would be killed, ran the word.  

Description:Sprigle tells a story of the consequences of voting in the south while black, heard while he himself was traveling undercover as an African American man.

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A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that's part of the series, "I Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days." Written by Ray Sprigle.