The Wrong Side of Murder Creek

by Bob Zellner

  I was in Atlanta before Stokely came on the SNCC staff and maybe helped him get his sea legs in the Deep South, suggesting some ways to operate without getting himself killed right away. He said once that knowing me helped him understand white Southerners better. Stokely wasn’t as committed to nonviolence as some of the other staff and was always more political than religious, but he certainly understood the tactical uses of nonviolence. If we had not used it the summer of 1964, the events would have been a war. In a way, it was a war, but the other side was waging it, and we had the moral weight and our side won. Stokely did something else as well. Because he was not philosophically committed to nonviolence he would press the issue to a closer edge with the bad guys.

  Some of his comments and actions might have gotten him killed in certain situations, but Stokely knew where the fine line was and was willing to go right to it. In demonstrations, he would sometimes confront white racist law officers, calling them out to their faces, calculating that The Man would not kill him in such a public place. If he miscalculated, he was willing to pay the price. With his great grin and his fearlessness, he was de-legitimizing law enforcement as a source of terror—taking away the weapon of fear and saying, “We’re not scared of you, and these people are not afraid of you.” If he had to risk a revolutionary suicide to accomplish his aim, he figured it was worth it.

  Local people couldn’t believe him. He operated this way in Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1965, and in other areas where he organized, and they kept telling him he would not survive if he kept tearing the law people down. He would say, “Maybe I won’t survive, but tear ’em down we will.” Then they would see him the next day on the Today Show, grinning his grin, doing his thing, and people would day, “Well, Stokely’s still kicking. I guess it’s possible to do and say what he does.”

  It is difficult to assess the impact of the SNCC kids on Mississippi from 1960 on. Amzie Moore, himself a longtime civil rights leader, was from Cleveland, Mississippi, in the Delta. As a U.S. postal worker (no relation to William Moore, the postal worker gunned down in Alabama), he was somewhat insulated from the pressure of the White Citizens Council and the Klan and the organized white community. He talked about how fearless the young people seemed as they tried to register voters. In an interview, Moore described Bob Moses and the SNCC staff people that came to stay with him and start projects: “When an individual stood at a courthouse like the one in Greenwood and in Greenville and watched tiny figures [of the SNCC workers] standing against a huge column . . . [against white] triggermen and drivers and lookout men riding in automobiles with automatic guns . . . how they stood . . . how gladly they got in the front of that line, those leaders and went to jail! It didn’t seem to bother ’em. It was an awakening for me . . .”

  People like Amzie Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, E. W. Steptoe, and Aaron Henry had fought lonely battles in their communities for many years. We could understand their reluctance about the young new workers. Sometimes, like Amzie, they had a special economic niche or they might be bootleggers, beauticians, morticians, small store owners, federal employees, independent farmers owning their own land, or union workers. Many were war veterans like Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, and Aaron Henry, who said, “I fought for this country and I’ll continue my fight in this country against the enemy—now my fellow Americans.” They were determined to vote and welcomed our emphasis on voter education and registration in black communities. Local people, at great risk to themselves, welcomed the volunteers during Freedom Summer.

  Long before that summer, the techniques, tactics, and strategies of nonviolent direct action began to be applied to voter registration. Voter registration in most cases is kind of mind-numbing, water dripping on the rock, staying at it, sticking to it. In registering black people to vote in Mississippi you had all of that plus the theatrics and mental elements of nonviolent direct action; you had to do a number of things at one time. You began with a tremendous organizing effort to put out canvassers to talk to people at the grassroots—on their front doorsteps, in churches, at schools, in the playgrounds or the pool hall—wherever you found them. Then you went with them to register to vote, and you stood with them while they took the voter registration literacy test at the office of the voter registrar. Many of the people you are taking down to register are to some degree semi-literate or illiterate. So at the same time you had to be setting up an educational system to teach basic reading and writing, maybe to teach people for the first time to sign their own names instead of an X. Both Highlander Folk School and SCLC’s citizenship schools helped tremendously in training people to meet these huge literacy hurdles that were put in place by white state and local officials to keep blacks from voting. If poor schools and high rates of illiteracy did not do the trick, intimidation would.

  The infamous questions were to interpret certain sections of the Mississippi Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrars, who might have only a ninth-grade education themselves. Semi-literate people were thus asked to interpret to a ninth-grade Southern racist, to his satisfaction, an article of the state constitution. People who taught constitutional law could fail the registration test. Other questions often asked included how many bubbles are in a bar of soap, or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or how many windows are there in this courthouse?

  Still, we spent hours teaching people how to take the tests. The side benefit was that people learned to read and write. When you applied nonviolent, direct action techniques to voter registration, you also had to have a massive propaganda campaign going on nationally and internationally, putting pressure on the federal government to force local officials to provide at least a modicum of protection. Sometimes, the amount of protection you got was based on the media coverage, public opinion and world opinion, or the federal government. It was progress if the local police would simply be neutral—there had been cases when a person trying to register was actually beaten by cops, or thugs and bullies would get the nod from the cops to start their beatings. That fear had to be overcome.

  We would go to people’s homes, canvassing, getting them signed up, getting them organized in groups, getting transportation for them, a place to park, some food. People stood for days and days on line, sometimes hundreds of people. And as lines built, we adopted the idea of viewing the effort as a demonstration. You have five hundred people waiting, and they would take three applicants in a day. It’s incredible the amount of effort that had to be expended to break through in Mississippi and to get black people registered to vote.

  We all kept careful records—who applied to register, how many times a person applied—because each registrar would have rules about when you could come back if you were turned down, like in thirty days, or ninety days. In many cases, people simply didn’t get registered. In other cases, what would start as a trickle would become a flood.

  In spite of the often brutal responses in Greenwood, sometimes things could be funny, and I often think of how laughter and humor, along with music, were part of our sustenance. Sometimes we turned redneck humor back on them. Hilarity is a potent weapon. On a sweltering day, a huge gathering of Greenwood black citizens waited in the sun for an opportunity to be turned down as potential voters. A speeding pickup truck drove up to the line, skidding to a stop inches from an elderly black woman. Two country-looking white men leaped out of the cab and reached into the truck bed for something. Many in the line thought the white men were reaching for weapons, but the black people moved only a short distance, determined to hold the form of the line. I was on observer duty that day. It was difficult to stand with a clipboard in my hand watching a potentially violent episode unfold. I had to admire the courage of the local folk and gave silent thanks for the hours spent in mass meetings and nonviolent workshops. I was watching true nonviolent direct action in practice—Greenwood’s black citizens standing silently, in the direct presence of danger, demanding the most basic right enjoyed in all democracies. Voting, we knew
was a right, not a privilege.

  Suddenly the men jerked a dark object from the back of the truck and placed it on the ground next to the long line waiting to register. Gasps of surprise and relief rippled up and down the line, as the two slowly walked toward the courthouse leading a wrinkled up old monkey wearing a cotton smock and a sun bonnet. A rope was tied around the animal’s neck and a hand-printed sign hung down the monkey’s front and back reading, “I Want To Vote Too!”

  Some in the line tried to stifle giggles and laughs. Others spoke angrily, “That is an insult.”

  “Hey, no breaking in line, we been here all morning,” a young black man yelled.

  Muttering swept the line of sweating people. How can anybody insult us by using that monkey. A large, vocal black woman, a leader in one of the strongest Greenwood neighborhoods, on first seeing the small ape, shouted, “Get that sorry monkey out of here!”

  Then the dozens started.

  “That’s no monkey,” someone called out, “that, folks, is an eighty-year-old white woman, and she has a right to vote, too!”

  “That’s right, you got that right, and if anybody thinks that old white lady there on that rope can’t vote, then you got to deal with me. She’s got as much right as we do.”

  Some men and a few of the women in the long line, known to participate in a game of chance every now and then, started slapping down dollar bills on the sidewalk leading to the courthouse steps. “Dollar get you ten, my man, if that thing ain’t a full-grown wrinkled up old white lady!”

  During all this, the white men slowed to a stop. The line had imperceptibly turned their backs to the two men, while the monkey was seemingly engrossed in the side-betting and the dozens and the remarks sweeping up and down the line. At one point a very large black man—I think he ran the pool hall downtown—looked over his shoulder at the two men and asked in a loud voice, “Say, brother, are you sure that’s a white woman?”

  The two men briefly and quietly consulted one another and then led the monkey back to the truck. As they were driving away the great citizens of Greenwood quietly picked up their money, gave a few restrained high fives and rubbed palms before resuming their place in line.

  A lasting gift from Greenwood was getting to know movement people like Sam Block and Wazir Peacock, whose early work in Mississippi was so vital to the success of that brutal summer of 1964. Lawrence Guyot was another who was quite a revelation. As a Southern white man I was quite taken with his manner. Guyot, which is the name used universally, let you know right away that he was not trying to be as good or as bright as a white man, he was already better and smarter. And it was true! Guyot was a large, light-skinned black man who did not take anything from anyone. Having him as a boss during the summer of ’64 was great. He was a good movement leader, and what better way to forget the terror around us and the total frustration of trying to light a fire in the middle of an iceberg, than having a good poker game every time Guyot rode into town. He would get me and any other players to the table and my enthusiasm for the game and the relaxation it afforded me, blinded me for a time to how good Guyot really was.

  18

  Seeing Stars

  During the early sixties, a lot of singers and actors began coming South to visit SNCC projects and perform at fund-raisers. Since some of these celebrities were white, it was safer for them to travel with me and Dottie. Many of the big stars had adopted movement people as their heroes. We were just as intrigued with them because we could not really imagine being idolized by people like Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, and Lena Horne. The extended “rat pack” of socially conscious show people also did events and performances for SNCC and SCLC in New York and on the West Coast.

  Harry Belafonte’s help to the movement was absolutely essential to our work. He and Sidney Poitier brought cash from New York to Greenwood in 1964 and were followed by the Klan after landing in a field in a little Piper Cub and being picked up by SNCC workers. In Greenwood, they stayed with Dottie and me and in later years Harry would reminisce about the time he slept in our bed in Greenwood, Mississippi.

  The full extent of Harry’s fight for freedom and justice world-wide may never be known. In March 2008 he spoke at length to a conference of Mississippi civil rights veterans and never missed a beat and had us all laughing and crying.

  I remember helping to organize a fund-raiser at Miles College, a black school in Birmingham. At the concert, I met and hung around with Ray Charles and Johnny Mathis. The damnedest thing happened at the concert. Ray Charles raised so much hell on the homemade stage that all the supports fell off. It did not help that every Negro in Birmingham tried to make his or her way onto the tiny platform while Ray pounded the keys. In the next act Johnny Mathis strode to center stage, opened his mouth to sing “September Song”—“It’s a long, long time . . .”—and the stage collapsed in a cloud of dust and bodies.

  Every event SNCC organized was supervised by specially trained “observers” or “marshals.” Jim Lawson of the Nashville movement had taught us to do this. Several SNCC marshals joked that they stopped a sprinting Johnny Mathis a half-mile from the college. Mathis was a track star in college, and they swore they would never have caught him if he had not gotten out of shape since his competitive days. They had a hell of a time convincing Mathis that it was rickety construction that made the stage collapse and not the KKK.

  Another funny thing happened when I was driving Marlon Brando to an event in, I think, Gadsden, Alabama. Forman and I met Brando at a small airport and Forman said that since we had no FBI protection—even with such a distinguished visitor—that it would be safer if Mr. Brando and I drove in one car to the mass meeting. Forman put it this way, “Zellner, you drive Marlon, and the two of you try to act like ordinary white people.”

  “I can do that,” I told Forman, “I don’t know if Mr. Brando can.”

  Forman looked at me like I had taken leave of all my senses. “What are you talking about, man? Marlon is an actor.”

  Mr. Brando and I dashed to my old green Chevy and we took off. Brando had not said much in regard to the initial question of protection for us. “Bob,” he mumbled to me, “where the Christ is the FBI?” although Forman had explained for the umpteenth time that we had no protection. Apparently, the big star had never believed that we were like wild rabbits loose in Alabama and Mississippi—“It’s open season on civil rights workers at all times and Uncle Sam doesn’t care and Mr. Charlie likes it like that.”

  Now Brando sat quietly in the front passenger seat while we drove through the Southern night. Suddenly he turned toward me and mumbled, “Man, I got to piss. Forman hustled us out of the airport so fast, I didn’t have a chance to pee.” “Okay,” I said, and he kept on talking. “The little crop duster you guys had me on didn’t even have a bed pan, and I have got to pee, Zellner.” “Okay,” I tried again, “We’ll be there in a few minutes. “I can’t wait a few minutes, Bob.” I was surprised he knew my first name. “Is there a bathroom near here?”

  “There’s a truck stop up here a ways—we can make a speedy stop there, Mr. Brando.”

  “Don’t Mr. Brando me, Zellner. Call me Marlon or hey you, but don’t call me mister.”

  “Okay, Marlon,” I agreed.

  He was quiet for a minute, but then he got agitated again. “What kind of bathroom they got at the truck stop?”

  I told him it was a normal bathroom for truck drivers and travelers. “Yes,” he said, “but do they have stalls or just a line of urinals, and it’s okay, too if they have dividers between the urinals.”

  He was quiet for a minute, and I had to pursue it, “Why dividers between the urinals?”

  “It’s just terrible,” he replied, “you have no idea. If there’s just a line of urinals along the wall, and I’m standing there taking a whiz, some guy next to me doing the same thing all of a sudden will say, while turning quickly towards me, pecker in hand, ‘Ohm
igod, you’re Marlon Brando.’ It’s ruined many a good pair of shoes for me.”

  All this time, he was setting me up, baiting the hook and then reeling me in, so he could tell his urinal story.

  While I was organizing nonviolent workshops in Alabama at Talladega College and preparing students for lunch counter sit-ins and marches, Jim Forman persuaded Pete Seeger to make a series of appearances in the South to raise money and support our work.

  In preparation, I talked by phone with Pete and his wife Toshi, who did all his scheduling. I told Pete that I couldn’t wait to bring him to somnambulant little Talladega. I described the town square with its antebellum courthouse and the ubiquitous Confederate soldier standing atop his obelisk facing ever Northward.

  Dottie and I traveled with Seeger to most of his Alabama appearances including Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, and Miles College in Birmingham, both private church-related black institutions. Before driving down to Talladega, Pete asked me to find him a large log and a sharp double-bladed ax and to place them center stage for the event in Talladega. The audience was humming with anticipation in the packed auditorium when I introduced the famous political figure, musician, and American icon.

  “Pete Seeger has come to us tonight to demonstrate the love and support that the American people have for what you young people are doing here in the heart of Dixie. Pete has not been a stranger to sacrifice and controversy and I know that he has a lot of respect for our movement and the difficulties of sometimes going against the wishes of your parents and other elders. But we must be free! Here he is . . . Pete Seeger. Pete, say hello to a whole bunch of freedom fighters here tonight.”