by Bob Zellner
It was obvious that they all loved each other—these were the veterans who had already spent time in jail together, and I remember thinking, they are not at all full of themselves—just going about their business, completely open and doing what has to be done. This was the core of the movement, and I was a part of it. I had gotten some idea of their bravery in Montgomery where I had visited Jim Zwerg in St. Jude hospital. I remember saying to him, “Your freedom ride is over.” And he said, “Oh, no, as soon as I am able to get back on my feet, I’ll go back to the bus.”
That was an incredible memory for me. If a soldier gets wounded, sometimes he or she will say, “Okay, I did my duty, I’m gonna go to the rear now.”
SNCC life for me really started at that staff meeting on October 4, 1961, in McComb. I already knew that Jim Forman was going to be very important in my life, but I didn’t know what to make of Robert Moses at first. All I knew was the immense mystique that surrounded him (and that grew ever larger with the years). That day in McComb when I first came face-to-face with him. I was what? Enchanted, mesmerized, astounded? Yes. He was quiet. He was roaringly quiet. Here he was standing stolidly, equal weight on both feet, peering intently into my eyes. His eyes were deep brown and clear white, hooded slightly behind round gold-rim glasses. He had on a short-sleeved plaid shirt and was built a little like a boxer. He looked me directly in the eye and said simply, “I’m glad you came. Thanks for taking my messages.”
People were coming into the room in ten- or fifteen-minute intervals. Bob said, “We may not have much time so we’d better get started. Everybody here doesn’t know each other,” and he started introductions. “We all know Chuck McDew, our SNCC chairman. Charles Jones, Reggie Robinson, Marion Barry . . .” and so on around the room.
Moses then gave a quick rundown of the local situation. Herbert Lee, a farmer who had been helping Moses organize in the black community in Amite County, had been shot to death on September 25 by E. H. Hurst, a white Mississippi state legislator from Amite County. Hurst, Lee’s next door neighbor, had followed Lee to the cotton gin near Liberty. After parking behind Lee, Hurst got out of his pickup truck, walked up to Lee’s truck and threatened him with a gun, telling him, “Get out of that pickup, nigger.”
Lee said he wouldn’t get out of the truck until Hurst put the gun away. Hurst refused to leave or put the gun away so Lee got out of his truck on the opposite side to leave. Hurst walked around the front of Lee’s truck and shot him in the head. The body lay in the dust at the cotton gin for over three hours. A quickly-assembled coroner’s jury found no cause of action against Hurst. Two black witnesses to the murder were forced to testify that Lee attacked Hurst with a tire iron. After Moses convinced them to tell the true story to the FBI and to John Doar of the U.S. Justice Department, the information was passed to the local police and the sheriff broke the jaw of one of the witnesses. (The other witness, Lewis Allen, was later shotgunned to death in December 1963 as he locked his front gate on his way out of the state.) That was more or less the report from the voter registration wing of the SNCC staff in McComb.
McDew stood up to make the report of the direct action project. “Hollis [Watkins], Curtis [Hayes], Brenda Travis and the others have just been released from over a month in jail for trying to use the white waiting room at the Greyhound bus station in McComb,” McDew reported matter-of-factly. “Brenda,” he continued, “returned to school yesterday and was refused admittance by the principal. Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes are going over there today with her to try to get her reinstated. If that Tom principal don’t let her back in, the kids are going to walk out on that handkerchief head.”
I thought later how much like a movie it was when Chuck suddenly stopped talking, and everyone in the room held their breath because of an eerie sound. I didn’t know what it was at first because I was not that familiar with the civil rights anthem, but soon the words were unmistakable. I was listening to young voices lustily singing “We shall overcome.” The singing got louder and someone in the room said quietly, “Holy Jesus!” Then the students, who were from McComb’s Burgland High School, noisily tramped up the stairs. Without hesitating the students flooded into the small meeting room and, in my memory, they immediately sprawled on the floor. Poster boards and magic markers materialized, and they started making picket signs.
Their plan was to march from McComb to Magnolia, the county seat, to protest the murder of Herbert Lee, the August arrests of the McComb students, and the expulsion of Brenda Travis. This was six miles through hostile countryside! Actually, I felt fairly calm, considering the circumstances. I didn’t realize at first that this march would be the first of its kind in Mississippi since Reconstruction a hundred years before. At that time, marches in Jackson were black marches of jubilation celebrating the 1870 election of Hiram R. Revels, the first black United States Senator. I remember thinking that Mississippi in 1866 refused to ratify the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution, yet a mere four years later enough change had occurred that Mississippi was readmitted to the union and sent a black man to the Senate.
Returning to what was going on under my nose in McComb, I felt I was only minimally involved. After all, my job was to visit white campuses, and if I got mixed up in something like this march it would be highly unlikely that I would ever be able to set foot on a single white Southern campus. Besides, I told myself, I can’t go on this demonstration because my father will lose his church and my mother will lose her teaching job. Also, I said to myself, I can’t go (not that anyone’s asking me, of course) because I’ll be the only white person in the march and that might cause more violence than usual. “More violence than usual,” I thought to myself. “How much violence is ‘usual’ in these cases?”
During this long colloquy with myself the students finished their signs and began filing down the steps to form a line of march outside. This caused me to start talking to myself again. “I’m lucky,” I thought to myself, “I know what I’m going to do—or in this case, what I’m not going to do. I’m definitely not going to go on that march.”
For a fleeting moment I wondered how the other SNCC people decided who was going to go and who was going to stay behind to mind the store. Suddenly it hit me, “What the hell am I talking about . . . what about these kids . . . what’s going to happen to them . . . and what about their parents . . . and what about their jobs? This is Mississippi, for Christ’s sake . . . in 1961 . . . these kids are going to be massacred.”
About half the kids and some of the SNCC staff people had filed out when I slipped into the line and headed down the stairs. Nobody said anything to me and I learned later that this was the SNCC way. Nobody ever suggested that such and such a person be part of any particular direct action. Each person made up his mind each time. There were no orders.
Leaving the gloom of the Masonic Hall I was suddenly blinded by the sun of a glorious, brilliant October day. The black people of the Burgland community in McComb, Mississippi, were sky high, right up there with that sun. Smiling, laughing black faces lined the unpaved streets or hung over their front fences and whooped with joy to see this spectacle in deepest, darkest Mississippi. There was banter between the townspeople and the young marchers. We were the old guys, McDew, Moses, and I. I was all of twenty-one, and maybe McDew and Moses, a little older.
As we approached the railroad tracks things began to get quieter until you could hear only the shuffle of feet on dusty gravel. Even the weather, it seemed, began to change as we crossed from “nigger town” to the sidewalks of white McComb. The sky seemed darker and the footfalls were quieter until this nervous quiet was shattered by a shout,
“Zellner, I’ll kill you . . . you dirty bastard. I’ll kill you!” At first I thought I was hearing things. Nobody here knew me. I’d never been to Mississippi before and even these kids, I was sure, didn’t know my name. They knew I was one evermore standout eyesore of a white man in that all-black m
arch, but they didn’t know my name. I kept looking for the source of that scream, “Zellner, I’ll kill you.” The scream seemed to get louder and louder until I finally located a red-faced, bald-headed white man leaning halfway out of a pickup truck.
“Doc,” I thought, “good ole Doc from Huntingdon College, captain of the basketball team, my nemesis from school, the man who hated me most, the Klansman who always talked like my first two names were ‘nigger lover’ as in ‘nigger lover’ Bob Zellner.”
“What luck,” I thought, “I never knew where the son-of-a-bitch lived and now by the greatest good luck I’ve found out.”
As I stared dumbfounded at Doc it occurred to me that the whole town, maybe even the whole state, was rapidly mobilizing to annihilate us. Chains and pipes materialized from nowhere. A speeding car cracked through our line trying to run someone down. Students scattered in unison like a school of fish in the presence of a shark, then immediately come back together when the clear and present danger was past. One man ran his old truck into a telephone pole trying to hit some students, then leaped out with a pipe wrench, swinging it wildly over his head like a club. Our people were beginning to be hit.
When the line approached the City Hall in McComb, it was clear that our intention to pause briefly and then proceed to Magnolia was not going to work. Not only was it too late in the day to risk the open country but our progress was blocked by a huge mob of white people that had formed in the street just beyond the City Hall.
What happened then, as I learned later, was typical of SNCC. When in doubt, pray. Hollis Watkins, who I could see from my place in line, stood up on the stoop of the City Hall, raised his left hand, bowed his head and began to pray. I remembered that he was one of the ones who had just gotten out of jail. In a quavery voice Hollis said, “Oh Lord . . .”
Just then a beefy red-faced policeman reached for him and said loudly, “You’re under arrest!” Hollis raised both hands over his head and shouted, regretfully, I thought, “Oh Lord!” It was as if he was saying, “Oh Lord, here we go again . . . how much jail time do I get this time?”
It wasn’t funny at the time but every time I tell this story I think of the incident with great merriment. Humor and religion: sometimes I don’t know which sustained us the most. As other marchers attempted to lead the group in prayer, the same thing happened as with Hollis. Then a small mob of white men began to gather around me. Without seeing him I could sense that my old friend Doc was in this group somewhere. They’d reach over and shove me or lightly poke at me and then look at the police who were by now standing around waiting their turn to arrest a praying marcher. Each time a member of this small mob would hit me the cops would wink or look away and their body language said very clearly, “He’s fair game, get him and get him good.” I clutched the Bible that Charles Jones had given me earlier. I was standing quietly, determined not to show them any fear. Martial arts training was coming in handy now because I was able, without showing much effort, to minimize the effects of these blows by imperceptibly moving at the very last second, slipping a punch here, rolling with a punch there. At this point I had not even raised my arms to cushion the blows.
As the licks came faster and heavier now I became aware that Bob Moses and Chuck McDew had quietly moved to my side to absorb some of these punches. One stood in front of me and one in back and they faced the attackers without attempting to fight back. They were both stocky and solidly built and they seemed to have absolutely no fear. I would remember this moment as a time of a brotherly male bonding as fierce, I suppose, as any welded in war. When those two—McDew, a dark, superbly trained and conditioned football player, and Moses, light-skinned with the raw power of a boxer, came to my aid I experienced a wild moment of exhilarating insanity.
“We can,” I thought, “whip all these lowlifes.”
Then, with some disappointment, I remembered we were supposed to be nonviolent. This nonviolence was certainly new to me because I was Southern born and bred and a pretty fair street fighter, as well as being trained in boxing, wrestling, and fencing. The Zellner boys had had to fight their way into every little Southern town their Methodist preacher dad had ever been assigned to.
That moment with me, Moses, and McDew against the mob was fleeting, however. I was in the throes of a most pleasant feeling of security, serenity, and absolute joy to find such brave stalwarts for companions when the cops came over and grabbed the two of them. To this day I remember the sound of the billy clubs and blackjacks the cops used as they thudded into the heads of Moses and McDew. I was thinking, “How can one human do this to another human being—especially with everyone watching?”
Then I thought, “If they act like this in public what will they do to a person in their jail?” At this point I became aware of a strange feeling of detachment. I was being beaten while I watched my new-found friends being brutally gashed and bloodied and yet I felt at peace. I had a sense of standing above myself—of being an observer—of actually watching myself being harried by a small knot of men at the edge of a much larger mob in the street. My senses seemed—and now I am convinced they were—heightened to almost super proportions. Then, with Bob’s head bleeding profusely, they dragged him and McDew off. At that point, they could easily have arrested me, but the police obviously didn’t want to arrest me, nor did they want to stop the mob from beating me. I watched in great fascination as the larger mob armed itself. They already had pipes and bats and wrenches and now they were methodically tearing down a brick wall in order to fill their hands with missiles. I heard their screams now as the large mob—the one in the middle of the street—was pleading with the small mob around me, about twelve or fifteen men, to drag me out into the middle of the street.
Next thing I knew, they marched our whole crew into the town hall. I believe I was the only person left outside, and it seemed clear that the police didn’t intend to protect me or keep the little mob around me from taking me out to the bigger mob. It would have had a different outcome when they first started pummeling me, if the police had come and said, “Out of here,” and they could have arrested me very easily. It was like they wanted me to be beaten to death and could say, “There was nothing we could do, there were four hundred people beating this guy to death. Do you expect us to risk our lives for this guy?”
“Bring him here,” the larger mob screamed, “We’ll kill him. Bring him here.” Their banshee screaming sounded like grief—a moan, then a shrill trilling like you hear sometimes in middle Eastern countries during a time of mourning. Then dutifully my little mob began to pick me up and move me bodily toward the street. Up to that point I had been rather passive. I held my Bible close.
Suddenly a thought popped into my head. I heard very clearly in my father’s preaching voice, “God helps those who help themselves.” “Yes,” I thought, “if they take me into that street there is no force on this earth that can save me. They will definitely kill me.”
With this thought in mind I very deliberately placed the Bible on the steps of City Hall and with both hands took hold of the railing pipe that ran down the center of the City Hall steps. It occurred to me that this railing was placed there to help old men and ladies ascend and descend the three tiers of steps to the City Hall.
“I’ll try to ascend,” I thought quixotically.
Then it became a contest. When I showed this first bit of resistance, the mob, which I thought could not get any louder or more frenzied, exploded. My mind returned very rationally to the contest at hand. If I can hold on here, I have a chance to survive. If they pull me loose, I die. I don’t know what held them back but the large mob in the street continued to rely on the small group of men around me.
“This is the vanguard,” I thought. “These are the militant Klansmen.” Their mettle was being tested now so they set about with grim determination to detach me from my railing. Several grabbed my belt while others took hold of my legs, stretching me out horizontal
ly from the pipe, which I clutched in both hands. There were, I estimated, two or three men holding each of my legs. Others attempted to pry my fingers loose from the somewhat rusty pipe. I was glad it was rusty because, I reasoned, the friction would improve my grip. I calmly noted that my strength was incredible. How could this many men not pull me loose instantly? I was actually in pretty fair condition going into this fight, having just come off years of ballet dancing with the Montgomery Civic Ballet, exhibition diving, and the aforementioned boxing, wrestling and fencing.
“So,” I thought, “this is a good contest. I certainly have good motivation at any rate.”
It didn’t seem odd to me at the time that I would be having these rather detached, meandering thoughts, all the while trying to dodge the blows aimed at my hands now by a lead-filled pipe and the odd baseball bat and wrench. Things were happening fast but my thinking and my physical actions seemed to happen even faster. With lightning speed I would watch the pipe or the wrench descend toward my hands and then at the last possible millisecond I’d release the grip of the endangered hand and grab the rail in a different place. This would give me also a dry, blood-free grip on the rail, which would hopefully enable me to move further up the steps. My mind seemed to be keeping up with many things at one time. The men pulling on my body fell into a rhythm. They’d pull hard and then let up momentarily to gather for another pull. When they leaned back, I’d move up the pipe and hold on for their next pull. It kept coming into my mind, “This is a great contest and I think I’m winning.”
This moment of hubris was short-lived, however, as one man behind me became suddenly more hysterical and went for my eyes. I felt particularly vulnerable there because my hands were fully occupied holding onto the rail. This man slipped his hands over my head from behind and began probing into my eyes with his fingers. He seemed to have a purpose in mind beyond just putting his fingers into my eye sockets, and then I realized he was trying to get hold of my eyeball. “Will he really be able to get a grip on my eyeball?” My sociology training came into play at this point as I thought, “This is what they mean when they say ‘eye gouging’—this is mayhem.”