SNCC- The New Abolitionists

by Howard Zinn

  Over a hundred pickets were walking now, the rain still coming down. A blond Episcopalian minister was carrying a picket sign with an inscription in Hebrew. A Negro schoolboy carried a sign: “LET MY PARENTS VOTE.” Jim Forman escorted a Negro woman across the street, through the rain, up the stairs. But they wouldn’t let her in the courthouse. Voter registrants were lined up on the steps outside the glass door, which was guarded on the inside by the sheriff. Only four people were being allowed inside at a time, and it took about an hour for another four to be admitted, so the rest of the people formed a line down the steps, exposed to the rain. At ten o’clock what had been a medium drizzle became a downpour. No one left the line. Bob Moses escorted a Negro man across the street and up the steps.

  I walked around the back, got inside the courthouse, and made my way to the registrar’s office, just inside the glass door. Television cameras were focused on Theron Lynd, the three-hundred-pound Forrest County Registrar, who was now under final injunction by the Supreme Court to stop discriminating against Negroes under penalty of going to jail. Lynd was dressed in a black suit, his grey hair cut short, a stub of a cigar in his mouth, his manner affable. At a federal court hearing in March, 1962, the Justice Department pointed out that Lynd, who had never registered a single Negro, had allowed 1,836 whites to register without filling out the application form or interpreting a section of the constitution. Until January 30, 1961, no Negro had even been permitted to fill out a form. In early January, 1964, the Supreme Court had affirmed a Fifth Circuit Court decision that Lynd was guilty of civil contempt unless he complied with court orders not to discriminate.

  Two Negro women were filling out blanks at the counter, and one Negro man was there, with a big SNCC button on his overalls. Lynd ambled around, apparently trying to be helpful, as newspapermen and photographers stood nearby. I spoke to him: “Mr. Lynd, is it to be assumed that all orders of the court are being followed now?” He turned to me: “Yes, indeed. I will treat all applicants alike, just as I have always done. To us this is no special day.”

  I went outside. It was still raining, coming down hard. Someone said that Bob Moses had just been taken off to jail. He’d been arrested for standing on the sidewalk opposite the courthouse and refusing to move on.

  Jim Forman stood just outside the glass door of the courthouse, shirt collar open under his raincoat, pipe in his right hand, gesticulating with his left hand, Negro men and women bunched around him. He was calling to the sheriff and two well-dressed official-looking men who were holding the door shut from the inside: “Sheriff, it’s raining out here, and these people would like to come into the courthouse. You seem to have plenty of room inside.” No reply. Forman held the arm of an old Negro woman and called again through the glass door: “Sheriff, will you be a Christian and let this old lady inside, a lady who has toiled in the fields of Forrest County many years, an old lady who now must stand out in the rain because she wants to register to vote? Is there no compassion in Forrest County for a woman seventy-one years old, whose feet are wet as she waits, who has nursed white children in her time, who can’t even get a chair so she can sit down, for whom there is no room in the county courthouse?” No reply. A newspaperman gestured to me: “Forman is really putting it on, isn’t he?”

  It was 11:15 A.M. and still raining. Forman motioned to the people standing in line on the steps. “Maybe if we get down on our knees and pray, someone will hear us.” Twenty people knelt in the rain on the courthouse steps and an old Negro man prayed aloud. Below, in the long line of people with signs moving in front of the courthouse, someone was handing out little boxes of raisins and crackerjacks to sustain the energy of those who had been marching for three hours.

  At noon the courthouse closed for lunch. Through the morning twelve people had gotten inside to fill out applications. I walked back with Forman to SNCC headquarters. He said: “Maybe it seems strange to make a fuss over standing in the rain, but it’s exactly in all these little things that the Negro has been made to feel inferior over the centuries. And it’s important educationally. To show the Negroes in Hattiesburg that it is possible to speak up loudly and firmly to a white sheriff as an equal—something they’re not accustomed to doing.”

  The picket line continued all afternoon. Two white girls from Mississippi Southern University in Hattiesburg stood on the courthouse steps, watching, taking notes. They were from the University radio station. They would not oppose a Negro’s admission to the University, they said. Lafayette Surney, a nineteen-year-old SNCC staff member from Ruleville, Mississippi, came over, and the three of them chatted amiably, about Mississippi, civil rights, voter registration, and college.

  Down on the picket line I could see the familiar form of Mrs. Hamer, moving along with her characteristic limp, holding a sign, her face wet with the rain and turned upwards, crying out her song against the sky: “Which Side Are You On?” A little later I took her picket sign from her and walked while she rested on the steps. At five the line disbanded, gathered briefly on the courthouse steps to bow in prayer, and marched back to headquarters. The policemen ended their vigil.

  There was one more piece of news: Oscar Chase had been taken off to jail. His car had bumped a parked truck that morning, doing no damage, but a policeman had noted what happened, and about 4:00 P.M. he had been hustled into a police car and carted away. The charge: “leaving the scene of an accident.”

  It had been a day of surprises. The picketing went on all day with no mass arrests. Perhaps this was due to the desire of the newly-elected Governor Paul Johnson to play the race issue slow; perhaps it was due to the presence of clergymen, TV cameras, newspapermen; or perhaps it was simply a tribute to the tirelessness of SNCC in putting people out in the streets again and again, until police and politicians got weary of trundling them off to jail. At any rate, over a hundred Negro men and women had come to register, though few got through the courthouse door, and only a handful were eventually declared to have passed the test.

  So, Freedom Day passed as a kind of quiet victory and everyone was commenting on how well things had gone. Nobody was aware, of course, that about six o’clock that evening, in his cell downtown, Oscar Chase, the SNCC man fresh out of Yale Law School, was being beaten bloody and unconscious by a fellow prisoner while policemen stood by watching.

  No one knew until the next morning. I awoke at six on the narrow cot in the back of the Freedom House. Everyone around me was still asleep. Through the wall I could hear the faint sound of a typewriter and wondered who the heck was typing at six in the morning. I dressed and went into the next room. A Negro kid, about fifteen years old, was sitting at a typewriter, pecking slowly at the keys. He looked at me apologetically, seeing he had roused me: “Writing a letter to my sister.”

  I walked into the big front room, where in the darkness I could make out the forms of sleeping youngsters. One fellow was stretched out on a wooden table, one on the counter where the signs had been lettered, one on three chairs, using his jacket as a pillow, one leaning back in a chair, his head against the wall. Around a desk sat three teen-agers, as if holding a conference, sound asleep in their chairs. The first rays of sunlight were coming in through the windows.

  I walked outside to get some breakfast, and SNCC field secretary Milton Hancock joined me at a little cafe across the street. We sat at a table, ate, and talked, and watched through a window as a man on the sidewalk unloaded a batch of fresh-caught sheepshead fish from a truck, just up from the gulf. Then someone came along to say that Oscar Chase had phoned in to headquarters that he had been beaten the night before, and he wanted to be bonded out. Two of the visiting ministers were going down to fetch him, and I went along.

  The police dogs in their kennels were growling and barking as we entered the jailhouse. It was a few minutes before 8:00 A.M. The bond money was turned over. A moment later, Oscar came down the corridor, unescorted, not a soul around. A few moments before, the corridor had been full of policemen; it seemed now as if no on
e wanted to be around to look at him. Even the dogs had stopped growling. He was still wearing his badly worn corduroy pants, and his old boots, caked with mud. His blue workshirt was splattered with blood, and under it his T-shirt was very bloody. The right side of his face—his lips, his nose, his cheek—was swollen. His nose looked as if it were broken. Blood was caked over his eye.

  We called for the police chief: “We want you to look at this man as he comes out of your jail, chief.” The chief looked surprised, even concerned. He turned to Oscar, put his face close to his, “Tell them, tell them, didn’t I take that fellow out of your cell when he was threatening you?” Oscar nodded. He told us the story.

  The chief had removed one of the three prisoners in the cell early in the evening, when Oscar complained that he was being threatened. But shortly afterward they put in another prisoner, of even uglier disposition. And this was the one who a few hours later kicked and beat Oscar into insensibility in the presence of several policemen. He was not as drunk as the man who’d been taken out. But he was in a state of great agitation. He announced, first, that he could lick any man in the cell; there were Oscar and another prisoner. “He was very upset about the demonstration—wanted to know why the jail wasn’t ‘full of niggers.’” He had been a paratrooper in World War II, and told Oscar he “would rather kill a nigger lover than a Nazi or a Jap.”

  The third man in the cell proceeded to tell the former paratrooper that Oscar was an integrationist. Now he began a series of threatening moves. He pushed a cigarette near Oscar’s face and said he would burn his eyes out. He said that first he would knock him unconscious and while he was out he would use the lighted cigarette on his eyes. Oscar called for the jailer. The jailer came. Oscar asked to be removed from the cell. The jailer didn’t respond. The ex-paratrooper asked the jailer if Oscar was “one of them nigger-lovers.” The jailer nodded.

  What Oscar Chase remembers after that is that the prisoner said something close to “Now I know why I’m in this jail.” Then:

  The next thing I can remember was lying on the floor, looking up. I could see the jailer and some other policemen looking at me and smiling. I could also see the other prisoner standing over me, kicking me. I began to get up, was knocked down again, and then heard the door of the cell open. The cops pulled me out and brought me into another cell, where I remained by myself for the rest of the night. … I was still bleeding a couple of hours after the incident. Watching from the door of my new cell, I saw the trusty put a pack of cigarettes and some matches under the door of my attacker’s cell. Later I heard the police come in and let him out. I could hear them laughing…

  We went from the jailhouse to the home of one of the two Negro doctors in town, and agreed to meet him at his clinic in a little while. Then we took Oscar to SNCC headquarters. Mrs. Wood kept pressing her hands together, in great distress, “Oh, my poor boy!” Jim Forman came out of his room sleepily, waking up quickly as he saw Oscar. He shook his head: “Jesus Christ!” The lawyers were summoned, and we prepared to go to the F.B.I.

  There was one moment of sick humor as the incident came to a close. Four of us waited in the F.B.I. office in Hattiesburg for the interrogating agent to come in to get the facts from Oscar Chase about his beating. John Pratt, attorney with the National Council of Churches, tall, blond, slender, was impeccably dressed in a dark suit with faint stripes. Robert Lunney, of the Lawyer’s Committee on Civil Rights (set up as a volunteer group to aid in civil rights cases), dark-haired and clean-cut, was attired as befit an attorney with a leading Wall Street firm. I did not quite come up to their standards, because I had left without my coat and tie, and my pants had lost their press from the rain the day before; but I was clean-shaven, and not too disreputable looking. Oscar sat in a corner, looking exactly as he had a few hours before when I saw him come down the corridor from his cell, his face swollen, his clothes bloody. The F.B.I. agent came out from the inner office and closed the door behind him. He surveyed the four of us with a quick professional eye and then asked, “Who was it got the beating?”

  At four that afternoon, the Hattiesburg Municipal Court convened to hear the case of Robert Moses, on trial for obstructing traffic by standing on the sidewalk and refusing to move on when ordered to by a policeman. Many of the white ministers went to the trial, and we had agreed that we would sit in the Negro section; so far, any attempt made in Mississippi to sit integrated in a local courtroom had ended in arrest. I entered the courtroom, sat down on the “colored” side of the aisle, and noted that there were about ten white people on that side, and an equal number of Negroes on the “white” side. Nine marshals stood against the wall. The judge entered the chamber and everyone rose. To our surprise, it was a woman, Judge Mildred W. Norris, an attractive, gracious lady who smiled and posed for the photographers as she approached the bench, then nodded for everyone to be seated. She smiled pleasantly at the spectators, paused a moment, then said sweetly, “Will the marshals please segregate the courtroom?” Everything was quiet.

  The marshals moved towards us. The lady judge said: “I will ask you to please move to the side of the courtroom where you belong, or leave. If you do not, you will be held in contempt of court and placed under arrest.” No one moved. The marshals came up closer. As one approached me, I raised my hand. He stopped, and said, rather uncertainly, “Do you wish to make a statement?” I replied, “Yes.” The judge said, “You may make a statement.” I got to my feet and said, “Your Honor, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that segregated seating in a courtroom is unconstitutional. Will you please abide by that ruling?” The courtroom buzzed. The judge hesitated. John Pratt, who with Bob Lunney was acting as counsel for Moses, spoke up and asked for a recess of a few minutes, and the judge granted it. The courtroom became alive with conversation again.

  During the recess, no one changed seats. The judge reconvened the court, and the room was absolutely silent. She said: “We here in Mississippi have had our way of life for hundreds of years, and I obey the laws of Mississippi. I have asked that you sit segregated or leave, or be placed under arrest. We would have appreciated your complying.” She paused. “But since you do not, we will allow you to remain as you are, provided you do not create a disturbance.” We sat there, astonished, but silent. And the court session began.

  “Defendant Robert Moses, come right up.” Bob Moses stood before the bench, in his blue overall jacket, corduroy pants, white shirt with open collar, while the charge was read: “… with intent to provoke a breach of peace, did congregate on the sidewalk and did interfere with the passage of pedestrians and refused to move on when ordered to do so.…” He pleaded not guilty.

  Three policemen took the stand, the first one named John Quincy Adams, and testified that Moses had obstructed pedestrian traffic by standing on the sidewalk. The courtroom was hot, and the judge, smiling slightly, picked up a cardboard sign near her and began fanning herself with it. It was one of the exhibits, a picket sign with large letters: “FREEDOM Now!” It showed a picture of two small Negro boys, and said “GIVE THEM A FUTURE IN MISSISSIPPI.” The judge continued to fan herself with the sign.

  Cross-examined by Bob Lunney, Patrolman John Quincy Adams admitted no other pedestrians had complained about the sidewalk being obstructed, and that he did not see anyone who did not have free access. The second policeman was shown a picket sign by the city attorney which said, “JOIN THE FREEDOM FITE”. The attorney asked, “Do you understand what a fight is?” “Yes,” the patrolman replied.

  At about 7:00 P.M. Bob Moses took the stand, the only witness in his defense. After a series of questions by Robert Lunney, he was turned over for cross-examination to the attorney for the city, Francis Zachary, a large man with iron grey hair, a black suit, and horn-rimmed glasses. Zachary kept Moses on the stand for over an hour in the most fierce, pounding cross-examination I had ever seen. Zachary’s voice was filled alternately with anger, contempt, disgust. He walked back and forth in front of the witness, using hi
s voice like a whip, shaking papers in front of Moses’ face, and moving up close and pointing his finger, the combination of voice and gestures and incessant pointless questions adding up to an assault on the senses, an attempt to break down the witness through emotional exhaustion. Through it all, Moses, a little tired from his day in jail, sat there on the witness stand, answering in the same quiet, even voice, pointing out patiently again and again where the prosecutor had misunderstood his reply, occasionally blinking his eyes under the glare of the lights in the courtroom, looking steadily, seriously at his questioner.

  ZACHARY: Let me ask you this: You knew there were 150 of you outsiders in this community demonstrating, didn’t you?

  MOSES: No, that is not true.

  ZACHARY: That is not true?

  MOSES: That is not true.

  ZACHARY (angrily): At the time you were arrested, there wasn’t 150 of you walking around in front of the Court House?

  MOSES: You said “outsiders.” There were not 150 outsiders walking around the Court House.

  Or again:

  ZACHARY: Where would this democracy be if everybody obeyed officers like you did?

  MOSES: I think that it would be in very good shape. I…

  ZACAHARY: Good; now, you’ve answered it, now let’s move on….

  Zachary held up a list of the ministers who had come down for Freedom Day and waved it in Moses’ face. He went down the list, asking about the ministers and the organizations on it.

  ZACHARY: The (he paused, and stumbled over the word “Rabbinical”) Rabbin-in-ical Assembly of America. Are you a member of that organization?