by Bob Zellner
“This Is Not a Social Call”
In the spring of 1964 while still in Boston, Dottie and I began screening people for SNCC’s Mississippi Summer Project, also known as Freedom Summer. We recruited and interviewed all over New England. The project began with an orientation in Oxford, Ohio, for the large group of young people who were going to Mississippi. I went through the first week in Oxford, as a trainer in workshops on nonviolence.
The Freedom Summer Project was controversial from the beginning. Bob Moses and a few others were absolutely insistent on our doing it, and while there was indeed opposition, at that point nobody had more moral authority than Moses. He had been in Mississippi so long. Discussion of the summer project began in the fall of 1963, and SNCC’s rationale sometimes has been portrayed as rather cynical. Actually, it was very political because we knew that if black people were brutalized and arrested, neither the country nor the government was going to care. But if the son of white lawyer so-and-so or the daughter of white senator such-and-such got beaten or arrested—or God forbid, killed—people would pay attention and demand that the government do something about it. It’s hard to believe that this would still have to be in our thoughts as late as 1964, after the Freedom Rides of 1961, McComb and Albany in ’62, and Birmingham and Danville in ’63. After all of that brutal history and accompanying worldwide news coverage, we still had to pressure the government to do something to protect the people in their right to vote—the simplest and most basic right of a democracy.
By 1964, we could count how many people had already been killed, and only one of them, William Moore, had been white. We needed to home in on the closed society and the bastion of segregation—Mississippi. We would have to pull out all the stops. A thousand volunteers from middle-class families, black and white, from all over the United States would converge on Mississippi. That would get attention and possibly protection for people attempting to register and vote. Some of the critics inside SNCC felt that bringing in volunteers would in some ways interfere with the kind of grassroots organizing that had been the essence of our work for three years—the effort to build up the people in the community and develop resources from within.
In any case, plans for the summer project came together. As the volunteers gathered for the orientation program on the campus of Oxford’s Western College for Women, most seemed aware of the fierce opposition they would be facing. Some veteran staff members were concerned that the new recruits weren’t fearful enough; we wanted to make absolutely sure they knew what they were getting into. We didn’t have to exaggerate. If any of the summer volunteers thought at first that we were overdoing the fear factor, by the end of the first week when the three civil rights workers disappeared in Neshoba County, they realized we were deadly serious. Still, though the volunteers knew it was a life-and-death situation, very few who had signed up to go to Mississippi backed out after the orientation.
When it was apparent that James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andy Goodman were indeed missing, our first order of business at staff meeting was to designate someone to go to Neshoba with Rita Schwerner, Mickey’s wife. It was immediately problematic. A black person wouldn’t be able to go with Rita and do the things she was going to have to do, because the local white authorities wouldn’t deal with a black person. It needed to be a white person. It should be a Southerner, and it should be somebody who had experience. There weren’t a lot of choices: It was me, and I never gave that a second thought. James Chaney was a young black worker from Meridian. I had never met him. I knew both Andy and Mickey. I may have met Andy in New York, and I saw him during that first week of orientation in Ohio—one among many, but he seemed more sophisticated and knowledgeable; he seemed to be an exceptional person. Mickey had worked with the Congress of Racial Equality and was already the leader in the Meridian office. I had some close relationships with CORE staff from visiting New Orleans, which was kind of a CORE town, and because of the William Moore march which was a joint SNCC/CORE operation.
The Jackson COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) office knew there was trouble when Schwerner failed to call in from Neshoba County. We had established rules that when you went into the field, you had to call in regularly, and if you didn’t, our security machinery would go into full alert. It was a Sunday, and we already knew the three were probably missing by the time they would have been jailed in Philadelphia, the Neshoba County seat. However, the timing is somewhat complicated here, since COFO did not sound an alarm until after the young men were released from jail and taken by the mob.
In retrospect, if the FBI or Justice Department had called the jail before the three were released, their lives might have been saved. The local law/Klan would have known they were under scrutiny, and some of us might have gotten to the three workers on Sunday night before they were taken off to be murdered. Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI would make the call. They told us that the three would have to be missing twenty-four hours before the FBI could assume that anything bad had happened to them. We kept telling John Doar in the Justice Department about our ironclad security mechanism. People’s lives depended on it: if somebody didn’t call in at the proper time it meant they couldn’t—they were in a place where they couldn’t make a call.
We realized that even if we got the FBI or Justice Department to go in, the black community probably wouldn’t talk to them. They’d had too many experiences of talking to the Justice Department or the FBI who immediately gave the information to the local police, which was practically the same as giving the information to the Klan. Early on, I think we all knew in our bones that our three workers were dead.
But traveling with Rita, I held out hope that we could find out otherwise—maybe they had been kidnapped, and we might find information that could lead to where they were being held. But then officials “found” the burned-out car the three had driven when they left the jail. We asked to see it but were told it was none of our business. Of course, the sheriff and his deputy were both in on the murders. Rita would look the authorities right in the eye, and say, “My husband is missing, and our two workers are missing, and they disappeared here, and they disappeared in the car you have found, and we insist on seeing it.”
The locals’ attitude was halfway civil because the news people were everywhere, and Rita had a lawyer. They took us to see the car. We spoke briefly to the press and told them we were gong to Jackson to see the governor. One of the sheriff’s men then said, “I will take you to the city limits and kiss your ass goodbye, and you are strictly on your own.” It was part of the terror tactic.
At one point during our search, I thought it odd and symbolic that Rita Schwerner and I, accompanied at different times by a varying number of people, had gone all the way from the local and county “authorities” in Neshoba County and Philadelphia, Mississippi, to the president of the United States. This journey took us from the threatening glare of Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price, both complicit in the murders, to the “helpless” hand of the FBI local operatives—supposedly pulling out all the stops to find the missing boys—to the state capitol building and the governor’s mansion in Jackson. There, Rita and I encountered Governor Paul Johnson in the company of my old friend, Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace.
Seeing Governor Wallace in Jackson was bizarre. We had just escaped the wilds of Neshoba County where neither the local law nor the federal law was willing to offer protection. In order to say we had touched all bases, Rita and the CORE, SNCC, and COFO leadership decided we should go to Jackson and demand a meeting with Governor Johnson. SNCC Chairman John Lewis and other leaders had flown into Meridian and, like Rita and me, had gone up to Klan country to find out what they could. The feeling, as they fanned out through the woods and swamps near the area where the burned car had been found, was that we had to do something. Braving gators, mosquitoes, and poisonous snakes—reptile and human—during the search was the least of everyone’s concerns.
Demanding a meet
ing suddenly became moot when Rita and I, accompanied by Reverend Ed King, got out of our car in front of the governor’s mansion in downtown Jackson. I noticed a gaggle of uniformed state troopers, cameramen, and reporters with notebooks hurrying down the sidewalk past us, surrounding two men in suits. With considerable amazement, I realized it was George Wallace and the Mississippi governor. Motioning to Rita and Ed to follow, I blended in with the reporters, moving up close to Johnson while being careful to keep out of Wallace’s line of sight; Little George knew me but Governor Johnson did not. What could be better, I thought, to get some action than to have Rita confront the governor of the terrorist state of Mississippi? Paul Johnson was as responsible for the Klan action against our workers as the actual murderers.
Johnson was in a jovial mood with the press corps. We could hear the tail end of what he was saying, obviously in response to a question about the missing civil rights workers, “George Wallace and I are the only ones who know where they are, and we are not saying!”
“Is Governor Wallace here to offer you advice in the current situation?” one of the reporters asked.
I was afraid to wait any longer so, smiling broadly, I stuck out my hand to Governor Johnson. Counting on the inability of any politician to resist grabbing an extended hand, I was not disappointed.
Johnson clasped my hand. I took his in both of mine, clamping down with a death grip. Still smiling, I turned to the press people and said loudly so everyone could hear, “Governor Johnson, I’m Bob Zellner and this is Rita Schwerner, the wife of one of the men you are talking about. Is it true, as you just said, that you and Governor Wallace here,” nodding my head toward Wallace, “know where the missing civil rights workers are?”
Bedlam ensued. A reporter blurted, “He was kidding, right?”
They shouted questions while the troopers, incredibly slow to move, finally pounced on me. Johnson was trying to yank himself free of my grip, but I was holding on with both hands like life depended on it, I bought time while the troopers tried to break my hold.
Through it all, we had been approaching the front door to the mansion. I kept my eye on Wallace. George had run up the steps and darted inside and was now peering at the melee through the front door glass. Johnson shouted at his trooper bodyguards, “Get me loose from this madman, you fools!”
I continued to yell to the press. “If these governors can joke about this tragedy, how serious do you think they are about finding our men?”
A reporter I knew tried to say something, “They didn’t know you were listening, Zellner.”
“They knew you were listening . . . Are you going to report this?” I replied. “Look at Governor Wallace hiding in the house,” I shouted. “He and Johnson don’t have the nerve to speak to Mrs. Schwerner!”
At last the state police separated me from the governor. He ran into the house to join his fellow governor of the great state of Alabama. Following our “meeting” with the governors, we walked over to the Federal Building where we were ushered into the presence of former CIA head Allen Dulles, who was President Johnson’s personal representative sent to oversee the search. Gaining no satisfaction there, James Forman booked flights for us to Washington, D.C., where we linked up with New York Congressman William Fitz Ryan. We went to the White House and had a long visit with Pierre Salinger, LBJ’s press secretary, who suggested we speak to Nicholas Katzenbach, the acting U.S. Attorney General, while waiting for the President to be available. The highlight of the meeting with Katzenbach was his reply to Rita’s concern that not enough was being done by the federal government to find her husband and James Chaney and Andy Goodman, nor was our government doing anything meaningful to protect voter workers from further terrorism. Ignoring completely the second part of Rita’s concern, and the growing likelihood that our comrades would never be found alive, Katzenbach’s cool retort was to ask Rita what qualifications she had to direct a search of this magnitude.
Her reply was classic movement style, “The main qualification I have, unlike you and apparently the President, is that I cannot be bought off.”
Sitting in the Attorney General’s office, in addition to Rita and me, were Congressman Ryan and SNCC Executive Secretary James Forman. We were taken aback by the belligerence in Katzenbach’s voice. Forman cut to the chase and asked the top law enforcement officer of the United States if he would personally guarantee the safety of Buford Posey, a white Mississippian who had given helpful information to the Justice Department concerning relatives who were potential suspects in the kidnappings and possible murders of the civil rights workers. Forman explained to Katzenbach that as we were speaking, the government’s witness was sitting in his house in Neshoba County with a shotgun across his lap, hoping to get out of his native state alive. Forman told of others, going back to Herbert Lee, who had died as the result of federal officials “sharing” information with Mississippi officials—the same as turning the names and information over to the Klan. “Can you assure me, and the people in this room, that Buford Posey will make it out of Mississippi alive?”
The Attorney General fixed Jim with a cold stare and said in a monotone, “We’ve lost witnesses before.”
The meeting with the President was no less shocking. LBJ came into the sitting room where we waited, walked over to Rita and took her small hand in both of his, leaned over her slightly and said, “I’m so pleased to meet you.”
Rita smiled tightly and replied, “I’m pleased to meet you too, Mr. President, but this is not a social call.”
When Rita told the President essentially what she had said to the Attorney General, that she did not think enough was being done to find the missing SNCC workers or to protect voter registration workers in Mississippi, the President gave her a look like a hurt puppy and said, “I’m sorry you feel that way but I have an important meeting of the National Security Council that I have to get to.”
President Johnson turned on his heel and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. It was like he had not been aware what the meeting was about and was disappointed that Rita was not just another happy constituent to pat on the back. As we left, Pierre Salinger scolded Rita, saying, “You don’t talk to the President that way.” She had not been deferential enough.
The absolutely amazing thing about the whole episode was that while meeting with everyone from the county sheriff to the president of the United States—with almost every meeting witnessed and covered by the press—not a single person, including the Attorney General and the President, gave any indication that they even cared about doing a public relations job, much less showed genuine concern. This was the summer of 1964. The world had already been treated to images of burned buses, bloody Freedom Riders, armed attempts to overthrow the government when Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss, and assassinated government witnesses. Now a terrorist Klan was running amok with the active encouragement of Southern state governments and law officials.
17
How Gladly They Stood
I spent most of the summer of 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi, in Leflore County. The county and town are named for Greenwood LeFlore, a slave-owning Choctaw chieftain who lived in Greenwood and raised a family that was both Native American and African American. Greenwood is a strange little place in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. It isn’t a river town like Vicksburg or Greenville, with their ameliorating patina of cosmopolitanism. The bluffs along the Mississippi River are where many of the plantation owners had their homes, while their cotton plantations were in the interior of the Delta. Some of those owners were international travelers and realized there was another way of life besides sharecropping and neo-slavery.
Greenwood was a tough town. It was the hometown of Byron de la Beckwith, who had murdered Medgar Evers in 1963. Beckwith was famous for driving around town in his car with seat covers made of Confederate flags and with a gun rack. Beckwith was a local hero. The pick-up with the gun rack over the back window was a
redneck status symbol; usually they also sported a CB radio whip antenna. When we saw these trucks, we knew we were being tracked by organized Klan, heavily armed and with the latest in communications equipment.
I went to Greenwood because Dottie was working in the communications department—an extremely important job for the well-being and the safety of everybody in the summer project as well as for public relations. She worked as deputy to communications director Julian Bond. Greenwood seemed pretty vicious to me, and a lot of blood was shed there, but strangely enough it was considered a relatively safe area in the summer of ’64. SNCC had been there so long, and it was where the national headquarters was located for Freedom Summer. Even though a lot was happening in Greenwood, it was a whole lot safer than Tallahatchie County or some of those other outlying areas. Stokely Carmichael was project director at the beginning of the summer in Greenwood but was being called to other areas to start things up or to be available when violence was occurring. Sometimes we were up all night listening to hair-raising car chases in Tallahatchie County or other backwoods locations. Peter Orris no doubt saved many lives by working all spring setting up a CB base station for the SNCC headquarters in Greenwood. By ’64 we had enough money to buy new basic Plymouths for staff, equipped with better radios than the Klan. SNCC cars were fast and maneuverable, but Forman had saved money by getting the white ones so the Klan targeted all new white Plymouths in the state. Our drivers got them as dirty as possible as quickly as possible so they would be less noticeable. Eventually, Stokely was gone almost all the time, so Forman asked me to coordinate the volunteers and the freedom schools. I became project director by default. Local leader Silas McGhee, who was shot by the law that summer, came back in the fall to become project director.
I remember trying to make sure that local people remained in the forefront and being embarrassed that Motive magazine, a Methodist publication, was doing a feature article on my work at that time. They followed me around with a camera; I was self-conscious, but I understood that they were trying to get the word out to Methodist youth.