by Howard Zinn
Weaver stayed on after the Freedom Ballot campaign. He was jailed several times, and was once threatened by a policeman with a pistol-whipping if he didn’t say “Yes, sir.” He wrote to a friend back home, as if he were simply offering a piece of news: “We are not afraid.”
When the Freedom Ballot campaign was over, 80,000 Negroes had marked ballots for Henry and King, four times the number officially registered in the state. It showed, Bob Moses said, that Mississippi Negroes would vote, in huge numbers, if given the chance. It showed that Negro and white youngsters were still not afraid, despite everything that had happened in the last two years, to move into the towns and villages and farmland of Mississippi and talk to people about what the future might be like.
For SNCC the McComb days of 1961 had been a quick and ugly rebuff. The Greenwood concentration of 1962–1963, in spite of the violence and the pain, had awakened voices and hopes in Mississippi that could not be stilled. Perhaps 1964 would be the year for the transformation of the state of Mississippi. SNCC now had 130 staff members throughout the South, with forty of these jail-hardened youngsters concentrated in Mississippi, spread out in different places throughout the state. One of these places, in Forrest County, was the little city of Hattiesburg.
6. Mississippi III: Hattiesburg
It was a bumpy air ride going west out of Atlanta on the twin-engined Southern Airways DC-3. The tall, very friendly air stewardess was surprised to see the airplane crowded with clergymen from the North on their way to Hattiesburg, and joked with them all the way in her deep drawl. I was the only one in the group not a member of the clergy, but when they found that I was also going to Hattiesburg to be with SNCC for Freedom Day, I was almost ordained.
Driving from the airport to SNCC headquarters, we passed a huge sign: “In the Beginning, God Made Us Holy.” Some months before, a SNCC field secretary had written from Hattiesburg to the Atlanta office:
We plan to let Guyot speak.… We are going to announce an interdenominational Bible study course that will be dedicated to the proposition that religion doesn’t have to be bullshit. We hope to tie in an active image of the Christ, and what would he have done had he been here, now … you see?
The ministers probably would have approved.
Hattiesburg, a short drive from the Gulf in Southern Mississippi, had been looked on by SNCC workers with some hope, ever since Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins left school in the spring of 1962 to start a voter registration campaign there, at the request of their McComb cellmate, Bob Moses. CORE man Dave Dennis had done some crucial ground-breaking work there. “Hattiesburg,” one of the reports to Atlanta read, “is fantastic material for a beautifully organized shift from the old to the new … they are ready now.…” Hattiesburg Negroes were not quite as poor as those in the Delta; police brutality seemed not quite as harsh there. As we drove into town, we passed the mansion of Paul Johnson, whose father had been governor of Mississippi, and who had just been elected governor himself. The radio was reporting Governor Johnson’s inaugural address; it had a distinctly more moderate tone than his fierce campaign pronouncements on race.
In the rundown Negro section of Hattiesburg, on a cracked and crooked street filled with little cafes, was SNCC’s Freedom House, owned by Mrs. Wood, a widow and a member of a prominent Negro family in Hattiesburg. (When John O’Neal, a SNCC worker from Southern Illinois University, arrived to work in Hattiesburg in the summer of 1963, he wrote to Moses: “Mrs. Wood received us late Wednesday night, and put a room open for us. She’s a fine old warrior…”) Outside the headquarters, a crowd of Negro youngsters milled around in the street, talking excitedly. Snatches of freedom songs rose here and there. This was Tuesday, January 21, 1964, and tomorrow was Freedom Day in Hattiesburg.
Inside the Freedom House, which was cluttered with typewriters, mimeograph machines, charts, photos, and notices, and was filled with people and an incessant noise, the first person I saw was Mrs. Hamer sitting near the doorway. Upstairs, Bob Moses greeted me and took me past the big open parlor area where a meeting was going on planning strategy for the next day. He showed me into the room where he and his wife Dona were staying; only a few weeks before he had married Dona Richards, a diminutive, attractive University of Chicago graduate with a tough, quick mind, who had come to Mississippi to work with SNCC on a special education project. It was a combination bedroom and SNCC office, with a huge mirrored closet, carved mahogany bedstead, four typewriters, a gas heater, a suitcase, a wash basin, a map of Hattiesburg, and a vase of flowers.
Other SNCC people drifted into the room, and a session on Freedom Day strategy began. It was assumed that, as in every case where a picket line was set up in Mississippi, the pickets would be arrested. So a number of decisions had to be made. Some SNCC staff people would have to go to prison to keep up the morale of those who were not so experienced in Mississippi jails—Lawrence Guyot, Donna Moses, and five or six more; others would have to stay out to run the voter registration campaign after the jailings—Jesse Harris, Mac-Arthur Cotton, Mrs. Hamer. Bob Moses, it was decided, would join the picket line, would go to jail, and would stay there, to dramatize to the nation that the basic right of protest did not exist in Mississippi.
The meeting moved outside into the hall, so that Donna Moses could begin packing the few little things they would need in jail. A wire was sent to Attorney General Robert Kennedy:
Tomorrow morning, hundreds of Hattiesburg’s citizens will attempt to register to vote. We request the presence of federal marshals to protect them. We also request that local police interfering with constitutional rights be arrested and prosecuted. Signed, Bob Moses.
The meeting was interrupted briefly as Ella Baker and John Lewis walked in, having just arrived from Atlanta after a long and wearying train ride. Plans for the summer of ’64 were put forth. A thousand or two thousand people would be brought from all over the country to work in Mississippi during the summer months, to man newly set-up community centers, to teach in “freedom schools” for Mississippi youngsters, and to work on voter registration. The National Council of Churches was going to give massive help. Both CORE and SCLC would send more people in. As the group talked, you could hear the young kids outside singing: “We will go-o-o to jail…. Don’t need no bail.… No, no, no, no … we won’t come out… until our people vo-o-o-te!”
That night there was a mass meeting in a church, with every seat filled, every aisle packed, the doorways jammed; it was almost impossible to get in. The lights went out, and a buzz of excitement ran through the audience; there were a thousand people, massed tight in the blackness. Then, out of the dark, one person began singing, “We shall not, we shall not be moved …” and everyone took it up. Someone put a flashlight up on the speakers’ stand, and the meeting began that way until after a while the lights came on.
Aaron Henry, for whom Hattiesburg Negroes had turned out en masse to vote in the Freedom Ballot (3500 Negroes out of 7400 of voting age in Forrest County cast Freedom Ballots) told the crowd that it was back in 1949 that the first affidavit had been filed in Hattiesburg with the Justice Department citing discrimination against Negroes trying to register, and here it was fifteen years later and the Federal government had not been able to make good. “We don’t plan to leave Hattiesburg,” Henry said, “until the Justice Department takes Registrar Lynd in hand. That’s why we’re here.”
Henry introduced John Lewis, saying about SNCC: “If there is any group that has borne more the burden of the struggle, none of us know about it.” After Lewis spoke, Annelle Ponder spoke for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Dave Dennis for CORE. A lawyer from the National Council of Churches, John Pratt, pointed out that the Justice Department had just secured a final decision from the Supreme Court ordering Registrar Theron Lynd to stop discriminating and to stop picking out of the 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution different ones for Negroes to interpret than were given to whites: “We’re here to prod the Justice Department a bit.” A rabb
i spoke, one of two in the delegation of fifty ministers who were ready to picket and go to jail the next day.
Then Ella Baker spoke, holding before the crowd, as she did so often, a vision beyond the immediate: “Even if segregation is gone, we will still need to be free; we will still have to see that everyone has a job. Even if we can all vote, but if people are still hungry, we will not be free.… Singing alone is not enough; we need schools and learning…. Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.”
Lawrence Guyot, who had come after his beating in Winona and his long prison term in Parchman to direct the operation in Hattiesburg, was introduced, and a great roar went up. Everyone in the church stood and applauded as he came down the aisle; it was a spontaneous expression of the kind of love SNCC organizers receive when they have become part of a community in the Deep South. Guyot combines a pensive intellectualism with a fierce and radical activism. He stood before the audience, his large frame trembling, raised a fist high over his head, and shouted, pronouncing slowly and carefully: “Immanuel’ Kant….” The church was hushed. “… Immanuel Kant asks—Do you exist?” In the front row, teen-age boys and girls stared at Guyot; a young woman was holding two babies. Guyot paused. “Kant says, every speck of earth must be treated as important!” His audience waited, somewhat awed, and he went on to get very specific about instructions for Freedom Day at the county courthouse.
When Guyot finished, someone cried out: “Freedom!” And the audience responded: “Now!” Again and again: “Freedom … Now!” The meeting was over, and everyone linked hands and sang “We Shall Overcome,” then poured out into the darkness outside the church, still singing. It was almost midnight.
At the Freedom House, on Mobile Street, some people prepared to go to sleep; others stood around, talking. Mrs. Wood came down to the big cluttered open area where we were, anxious that we should all have a place to stay for the night. She took Mendy Samstein and me to a little room in the back and pointed out the cot she had just set up for both of us. We returned to the front and continued talking. The place began to empty as youngsters drifted out, or lay down to sleep on tables, benches, chairs, the floor. It was one in the morning; over on a long counter a half-dozen people, including Donna Moses, were lettering the picket signs to be carried seven hours later.
Lawrence Guyot sat wearily on a chair against the wall and we talked. He was born in a tiny coastal town in Mississippi, on the Gulf, named Pass Christian (“That town is the most complete mechanism of destruction I have seen”), the eldest of five brothers. His father was a cement finisher, now unemployed, his mother a housewife and a maid. When he graduated from Tougaloo College in 1963 he had already been a SNCC staff member for many months.
Why did I join the movement? I was rebelling against everything. I still am. I think we need to change every institution we know. I came to that conclusion when I was seventeen years old. At first I thought of being a teacher, or a doctor; now I would like to get married, and do just what I’m doing now…. I’m not satisfied with any condition that I’m aware of in America.”
Mendy and I decided to hit the sack for the night, but when we went back we found a body snoring on our cot; it looked like Norris MacNamara, free-lance photographer and audio man who decided some time in 1963 to give his talents to SNCC. We decided to let him be, and went back into the front room. At 2:00 A.M. there were still a dozen people around; the signs were still being made; we talked some more. Guyot said someone was trying to find a place for us to stay; there were four of us now looking for a place to sleep. Besides me, there were Mendy Samstein, Brandeis graduate and University of Chicago doctoral candidate in history, a faculty member at Morehouse College, now a SNCC field man in Mississippi; Oscar Chase, Yale Law school graduate, now with SNCC; and Avery Williams, a cheerful SNCC man from Alabama State College. At 3:00 A.M. we began looking for a good spot on the floor, since all the benches and tables were taken, but then someone came along with a slip of paper and an address.
A cab let us out in front of a small frame house in the Negro part of town. It was about 3:30 A.M. The street was dark, and the house was dark inside. We hesitated, then Oscar approached and knocked cautiously on the front door. A Negro man opened the door and looked at us; he was in his pajamas. Here we were, three whites and a Negro, none of whom he had ever seen. Oscar said hesitantly “They told us at headquarters….” The man smiled broadly, “Come on in!” He shouted through the darkness back into his bedroom, “Hey, honey, look who’s here!” The lights were on now and his wife came out: “Can I fix something for you fellows?” We said no, and apologized for getting them up. The man waved his hand: “Oh, I was going to get up soon anyway.”
The man disappeared and came back in a moment dragging a mattress onto the floor near the couch. “Here, two of you can sleep on the mattress, one on the couch, and we have a little cot inside.” The lights went out soon after. There was a brief murmured conversation in the dark among us, and then we were asleep.
I awoke just as dawn was filtering through the windows, and in the semi-darkness I could see the forms of the other fellows near me, still asleep. I became aware of the sound that had awakened me; at first I had thought it part of a dream, but I heard it now still, a woman’s voice, pure and poignant. She was chanting softly. At first I thought it came from outside, then I realized it was coming from the bedroom of the Negro couple, that the man was gone from the house, and it was his wife, praying, intoning… “Oh, Lord, Jesus, Oh, let things go well today, Jesus … Oh, make them see, Jesus … Show your love today, Jesus … Oh, it’s been a long, long time, oh, Jesus … Oh, Lord, Oh, Jesus …”
The chanting stopped. I heard Avery call from the next room: “Wake up, fellows, it’s Freedom Day.” A radio was turned on with dance music played loud. A light went on in the kitchen. As we dressed I looked through the open doorway into the Negro couple’s bedroom and saw there was no mattress on their bed. They had led us to believe that they had brought out a spare mattress for us, but had given us theirs.
The woman came out of the kitchen and turned on the gas heater in the living room for us: “Come and get your breakfast, fellows.” It was a feast—eggs and grits and bacon and hot biscuits and coffee. Her husband drove down to the Gulf every day to work on the fishing docks, and the woman was soon to be picked up in a truck and taken off to work as a maid; her daughter was a senior in high school. Her young son said: “Yesterday morning, when I woke up, the light from a police car was shining in the windows. Guess they know us.” The woman, waiting outside for her ride, came in for a second to report to us what a neighbor had just told her. Downtown the streets were full of police, carrying clubs and sticks and guns, wearing helmets. She went off in the truck. We prepared to leave, and Avery Williams looked outside: “It’s raining!”
At the headquarters were noise and confusion and great crowds of people—ministers, youngsters, newspapermen, SNCC staff members. We got a lift to the county courthouse, rain falling softly. The picket line was already formed, with white ministers, carrying signs, walking back and forth in front of the concrete steps leading up to the Forrest County Courthouse, employees staring out of the windows of the courthouse, a camera in a second story window focused on the scene.
About 9:30 A.M., there was the sound of marching feet on the wet pavement and two lines of policemen came down the street, heading for the courthouse, all traffic cleared in front of them. A police car swung to the curb, a loudspeaker on its roof, and then the announcement blared out into the street, harsh, hurting the ears: “This is the Hattiesburg Police Department. We’re asking you to disperse. Clear the sidewalk!” There were thirty-two pickets on the line. John Lewis and I stood across the street in front of Sears Roebuck, on the sidewalk. No one made a move to leave. The marching policemen came up even with the county courthouse, in four squads, wearing yellow rain slickers, and blue or white or red helm
ets, carrying clubs. “First squad! Forward march!” The first line peeled off and came up on the sidewalk parallel to the picket line. “Squad halt!”
The loudspeaker rasped again: “People who wish to register, line up four at a time, and they will be accepted. All those not registering to vote move off. This is the Hattiesburg Police Department!” Fifty Negro youngsters came out of nowhere and formed a second picket line in front of the courthouse, near the line of ministers. All four squads of police had peeled off now and were facing the picket line, clubs in hand. It looked as if everything would go as predicted: an order to disperse, no one moving, everyone put under arrest. I could see Moses across the street, peering at the scene, hunched a little under the falling rain.
It was 9:40 A.M. Ten minutes had elapsed since the police had come marching in formation down the street. They were lined up now opposite the two picket lines, twenty-five helmets a few feet from the line and twenty-five more across the street. For the third time, from the police loudspeaker: “All those not registering to vote move off.”
The line of black youngsters merged with the line of white ministers to form one long picket line in front of the courthouse, the messages on their signs clear even in the greyness of the day: ONE MAN, ONE VOTE; FREEDOM DAY IN HATTIESBURG. No one moved off the line. Police began clearing off the sidewalk across the street from the courthouse and we moved across to the steps of the courthouse. The picket line remained undisturbed. The scene was peaceful. There were virtually no white observers. If our senses did not deceive us, something unprecedented was taking place in the state of Mississippi: a black and white line of demonstrators was picketing a public building, allowed to do so by the police. In all of the demonstrations of the past two and one-half years, this had never happened.