The Wrong Side of Murder Creek

by Bob Zellner

  Very few white people in the Greenwood community, or in the whole state, had anything to do with civil rights workers. Some would try to stay inside the society and be of service there. Some might boldly come to the office, but usually if we were going to meet with them, we did so in secret. Another choice for a moderate or slightly progressive person was to be a member of the Mississippi Human Relations Council, made up of white and black Mississippians. Even the terrorists had to draw distinctions between the inside moderates and the real “outside agitators” and “civil rights workers.” It seems that someone was always “listening.” If a white person said the wrong thing in a diner over a cup of coffee, someone would correct them right away, and if they maintained their silence or admitted error, it was okay, but they would remain a suspect. A white person who got involved or took any action would be punished—you could suffer an economic boycott by the White Citizens Council, your house might be shot into, the traditional cross might be burned on your lawn, you could receive threatening telephone calls. Then your choices often were to stay and fight, or to flee. I do remember Lady Montgomery. Her first name really was “Lady.” She started by calling up the Greenwood SNCC office and wanting to talk to people. We met and she became a sympathetic white person. She was one of the few. She was obviously from the upper crust, and she had connections and could give us information. There were also the Barones, who lived in Greenwood, and there was a small Catholic underground. There weren’t a lot of Catholics or Jews in the Delta, so consequently those who were there may have felt somewhat under siege themselves. Some among the Chinese population were also sympathetic. They had come to build levees or railroads generations before and had stayed. They sometimes ran grocery stores in the black community.

  Though SNCC was the initiator, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) had been formed to sponsor the summer project and to help pull in national, state, and local support. COFO included SNCC, CORE, SCLC, and the NAACP. Working in Greenwood, we tried to balance voter registration work and Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) organizing, along with the Freedom Schools effort, but the need for voting just cried out. The Delta rural population was majority black with Greenwood and other towns being around fifty-fifty white and black. But practically no blacks were registered to vote. Maybe a few school teachers, undertakers, or business people had been “permitted to register,” but even then often they did not actually vote, because that might be pressing the issue. We’re talking about maybe fifteen black voters out of a county population of ten thousand. The few blacks who were “allowed” to vote lived in town; black people out in “the rural” were not registered.

  The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was a strong part of our focus that summer. It was easier to organize with that as our specific goal rather than work around the abstract idea of “the right to vote.” The formation of a political party began in the spring of 1963 when Al Lowenstein from Stanford, and others had sent some volunteers down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They ran a political campaign with some candidates from the black community; a dress rehearsal for Freedom Summer ’64. The MFDP grew out of that mock election held in 1963. The election was our answer to white Southerners who were fond of saying “Niggers don’t want to vote. They’re incapable of it. They’re not interested in it.” The growing excitement and enthusiasm for the MFDP revealed a tremendous hunger for political inclusion. Aaron Henry and Ed King ran for governor and lieutenant governor. Since blacks weren’t allowed to go to the county caucuses, and they weren’t allowed to register or vote, they set up their own procedures, paralleling the regular Democrats’ official processes. Everybody who signed up for the mock election, registered, and when the election came, they had their own polling places. Black Mississippians cast thousands and thousands of votes across the state. It gave concrete evidence that the grassroots were not only organized, they were ready and eager to move. This strategy also gave the black people training in holding local meetings and nominating candidates, preparing campaign literature, dealing with the press, and a host of other activities. We in SNCC and the MFDP were educating future generations of political leaders for Mississippi, which in a remarkably few years would have more elected black public officials than any other state.

  The other main aspect of our work in Mississippi that summer was the Freedom Schools—a fantastic idea. The concept was born in McComb in 1961 because one of the first things that faced us was the expulsion of scores of kids from high school. They had demonstrated at the library and the bus station where they were arrested. Over a hundred students arrested with Bob Moses, Chuck McDew, and me in McComb on October 4, 1961, were expelled. The early SNCC kids—Hollis Watkins, Curtis Hayes, and others—were leaders on their high school campuses. A Freedom School was set up for them in Jackson. Sometimes the classes were taught by SNCC staff who were appalled at what they discovered. The books being used for black schools in Mississippi in the early 1960s were from the 1920s. Many textbooks referred not to the Civil War, but to the War Between the States or even the War of Northern Aggression. Charlie Cobb and some of the SNCC people developed the idea of the Freedom School, and it came to full flower in 1964; Staughton Lynd was chosen to be the coordinator. There were traditional subjects but also debates and discussions—violence versus nonviolence, black leaders, and black history. Volunteers with particular expertise would be commandeered to go to the Freedom Schools and share their knowledge.

  Most of the time, the schools met in churches, or they would simply meet outside. A lot of times, the Freedom School would be out in the yard of the local Freedom House, and if a church became available, the school would move. From the beginning, because of the voter registration meetings and mass meetings, churches became targets for bombings and arson. Many were burned down because Freedom Schools were meeting there. In Philadelphia, Mississippi, a church was burned because it was being used for the freedom activities. Local whites were so sure we would rush to support the church people that they laid in ambush for us; it later led to the murders of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman. A few times, if a church wasn’t available, volunteers built community centers, as in Holmes County where Hartman Turnbow was one of the leaders. Those centers were used for a long time, and now some of them are in ruins.

  The community in Greenwood was so thoroughly mobilized, I don’t think that many black ministers could resist. Sometimes it was the minister who took the lead and came forward to give the church space, even if some of the deacons might be a little reluctant or fearful of fires being set. But in the majority of cases, the minister’s congregation got organized by SNCC or COFO or the local movement. Then they came forward and donated their church. So in movement history the role played by ministers and by the churches is indeed important.

  Local young people wanted to do their own thing in testing public accommodations. The McGhees of Greenwood are an example of a really strong family with young boys. There were three brothers, Clarence, whose last name wasn’t McGhee, but he, Jake, and Silas were all Mrs. McGhee’s children. Growing up in Greenwood, they had their own piece of land, so they were very independent-minded and brave. Their mother, Mrs. Laura McGhee, was as fierce as they come. Clarence, an Army Ranger of the Big Red One Division, was as lean as a piece of leather, the toughest man I ever met. He and I would debate violence and nonviolence in the Freedom Schools. He believed in violence for self-defense. I said that I had the highest respect for him, and he said he did for me, even if I was nonviolent. Clarence told me and the Freedom School class that as a dark-skinned black man in uniform, he never knew when someone might try him. He showed us some of the self-defense things he had learned.

  Silas and Jake insisted on testing the public accommodations act that passed Congress on July 2, 1964. They said that now that they had the legal right to go to the theater and the bowling alley, they were going.

  We discouraged them because SNCC was concentrating on organizing MFDP and feared getting bo
gged down in sit-ins. Silas and Jake said they were going to do it anyway, and that we couldn’t keep them from doing it.

  The two of them would go to the theater and buy tickets, and they would see the movie, maybe, if they weren’t mobbed before the movie. Then when it was time to leave there would be a mob outside that was going to beat them up, so they would call the SNCC office. The police cooperated with the thugs, letting them beat Jake and Silas whenever the opportunity arose. So I would organize a caravan of two or three cars—one car couldn’t do it, but if you had two or three, you could get in there and get them out of the theater into the cars and get back okay.

  One time they did arrest Jake, and he called and said, “I’m in jail. I need a lawyer. Will you go get my mother and bring her down.”

  The Lawyers Guild always tried to help us, and they would send lawyers down for a week or ten days at a stretch; sometimes we had some young lawyers who might not understand the South. But I picked one up and got Mrs. McGhee. I told the lawyer, “We want to go down and find out what the charges are, what the bail is, and we want to arrange for bail and get Jake out of jail. The main thing you want to remember is whatever discussion you have with the police or the police chief, Mrs. McGhee must be there. She is the one looking after Jake’s safety. This is important, because they’re gonna try to talk to you, and not her.”

  Sure enough, when we got to the police station, the police chief verified who the lawyer was and took him into his office and closed the door. So Mrs. McGhee walked over and put her hand on the doorknob, and one of the local cops says, “You can’t go in there.”

  She says, “Oh, yes I can, they’re talking about my son Jake. I’ve come to get him out of jail.” Then the policeman stepped between her and the door, knocking her hand off the doorknob. Before he could blink, Mrs. McGhee hit him right over the eye so fast, it knocked him out. As he was sliding down the door he reflexively reached for his revolver. I said, “Oh, my God. He’s gonna pull his gun and shoot in all directions.” Mrs. McGhee hit him again. Every time she hit him, his head hit the door. So, I tackled the guy and held his gun before he got it all the way out of the holster. Meanwhile, the police chief and the lawyer, hearing the commotion, tried to come out of the office, hitting the poor guy in the back of the head with the door. Finally the chief says, “Zellner, what’s happening out there.”

  “Ralph is trying to shoot Mrs. McGhee,” I said, “and I’m not going to let him.”

  “Are you against the door?”

  “Yes, Ralph is leaning against the door.”

  “Well, let us out.”

  “If you make Ralph promise not to shoot Mrs. McGhee.”

  So the chief says, “Ralph, do you promise not to shoot Mrs. McGhee?” Of course, he was unconscious so I gingerly dragged him out of the way. His face was swollen where Mrs. McGhee had hit him. I thought, “Now we are really in for it.”

  Ralph starts to come around a bit, and the chief tells me to let him go and told Ralph to take his hand away from his gun. I thought they were going to arrest Mrs. McGhee for sure, but they didn’t, and the lawyer explained to me later that they would not want to embarrass Ralph or the Greenwood police department by saying that Mrs. McGhee was arrested for knocking him out.

  Silas McGhee was young and not afraid of anything. One night the Klan captured Silas. I think he went by himself to the theater, not even with Jake, so they just grabbed him when he came out. They took him to a barn outside of Greenwood, where they probably planned to kill him. They tied him to a chair and an overhead beam and left him there for a little while. They had beaten him badly, but he was able to get loose and get out of there.

  About three weeks after the barn escape, they did shoot Silas. Those Mississippi rednecks, who thought they were the toughest of the tough, must have thought Silas was one of the toughest individuals they had ever seen; they had captured and beaten the guy, and he still would not stop. This time, he was in his car and the bullet came through the window and hit him in the cheekbone, glanced downward, and lodged in his throat. He was falling out of the car with blood gushing from a gaping wound in his head when I caught him.

  Silas had driven me, Dottie, Forman, and some of the other people from SNCC headquarters to a local eating place in the black community. It was raining and Silas said he was tired and would stay and watch the car. A half hour later we heard the gunshot. I knew before I got to the door that something bad had happened to my friend. I plunged across the rain-shiny street in time to see a car a lot like Byron de la Beckwith’s speeding down the block. Silas opened the driver’s side door and slipped slowly head first toward the puddled surface of the road. A neat hole the size of a half dollar was centered in the window glass, now spidery with cracks. Blood spurted from another hole in the center of the left side of Silas’s head. Against my will the words formed in my brain, “He’s done for.” That was chased away with the next thought which was that only a miracle could save him now; followed closely with, “Let’s make that happen.”

  I cradled Silas’s head before it touched the street. While sitting cross-legged on the muddy street. I whipped off my white shirt and T-shirt. Balling up the undershirt, I quickly tied the white shirt around the tee shirt and Silas’s head, using the sleeves and shirt tails to tie a tight pressure bandage directly on the swelling wound. The blood stopped.

  Someone had positioned a white SNCC Plymouth for a quick getaway. I was glad to see George Green in the driver’s seat, the best wheel man in the organization, and he knew the fastest route to the hospital. Forman shouted that the black doctor was being called to meet us at the hospital.

  I don’t remember much about the ride to the hospital but I do remember talking to the unconscious Silas encouraging him to breathe. All I could hear was a gurgling sound in his throat. I turned him on his side so the blood and water would not collect in his throat and kept a constant pressure on the bandages plugging the wound.

  The emergency entrance to the hospital and the immediate area was crowded with cop cars. It was raining hard now and my window was down to give Silas as much air as possible. I heard a woman’s voice above the rain and the noise, “They finally got that Silas nigger!”

  Our guys had jumped out immediately to get emergency help for Silas. They came right back and said the medics would not bring a gurney; they were waiting for the colored doctor. I told them to keep pressure on the side of Silas’s head. I walked into the emergency entrance and grabbed the first rolling gurney I saw and took it to the car. We gingerly lifted Silas up and rolled him inside.

  “This man needs help,” I announced, and not a person moved. Looking at each of the medical staffers like they were a whole new form of poisonous life, I asked if someone would help this man who had been shot in the head.

  Finally one said, like it was a perfectly sensible explanation, “I’m sorry but we cannot wait on him, it is not allowed, we always call the colored doctor and I’m sure he’ll be on the way.”

  Cops slouched against the walls of the ER. Now two of them came up and said, “We’re sorry but you are going to have to leave.”

  I’m sure we looked at them like they had taken leave of their senses. I could see a number of SNCC people in the hallway, so I didn’t take the cops seriously. George Green, like me, had taken a position next to Silas and I knew an atomic bomb could not move him.

  I replied in my best Southern manner that we wouldn’t be leaving until Silas received the medical treatment every human deserved under the Hippocratic oath each of the medical staff had taken, adding that they had made me ashamed to call myself a Southerner.

  “The hypocritical oath aside, if you refuse to leave, Mr. Zellner,” a little fat cop said, “we’ll have to place you under arrest.”

  Incredibly, he wanted to arrest me for “indecent exposure” because I was undressed from the waist up. “This is my shirt,” I said pointing to the bloody bandage wrappe
d tightly around Silas’s head. I asked the little cop if, since I certainly was not going to leave, he insisted that I unwrap this man’s head and put my bloody shirt back on.

  Well, finally that was too much even for Greenwood’s finest, and the cops stood back and waited with us for the “colored doctor.”

  Greenwood’s only black doctor finally arrived and acquitted himself admirably. First he ordered us to wheel Silas out to a waiting ambulance, which we did posthaste. I heard him tell the cowards in the ER, “If this man does not make it to Jackson alive, I hope it will be on your consciences for the rest of your natural lives.”

  The doctor climbed in the back with Silas and off they drove into a deepening flood. As the ambulance surged slowly toward the main road I wondered if we would ever see Silas alive again.

  However, at the end of that summer of 1964, Silas returned to Greenwood and became the first locally born and raised SNCC project director. The .38 caliber bullet, fired at point-blank range, had luckily gone through the window which may have slowed it somewhat and flattened the slug considerably. Also, thanks to providence, the Klan bullet that was intended to end Silas’s life struck him a fraction of an inch below the jaw bone, not above it. The missile glanced downward into Silas’s throat, not upward into his brain, sparing his life.

  I got along fine with Stokely Carmichael, and was glad to work with him in Greenwood. We first met in 1961, became good friends, and had a close relationship, even up to just before he died in November 1998. I think I was the only white speaker at his memorial service in Washington, D.C., and I think I was followed to the podium by Louis Farrakhan. Stokely was always independent-minded. He and Abbie Hoffman did some work in Greenwood—they had some personality similarities. They were both born stars, charismatic, personally appealing and funny and had an absolute knack for focusing attention on themselves while getting a job done.