Freedom Summer

by Bruce W. Watson

  Freedom Day had been a harbinger of change in America. Across Mississippi, however, it was just another day. Cops harassed volunteers. Threats came into project offices. Cars and pickups roared outside. In McComb, rumor had it that whites would soon blow the Freedom House “off the map.” In Natchez, a white minister was collecting funds to rebuild burned black churches. The fund already topped $1,000. And in Shaw, phone calls were still going out to parents soliciting $4,500 in bail needed for volunteers in Drew’s sweatbox jail. In Greenwood, however, bail was out of the question.

  Deep in the bowels of the Leflore County courthouse, 111 people were packed into dank, muggy cells. Facing a long night, the prisoners sang, talked, and refused to eat. The women had started the hunger strike after one spit out her rice and lima beans—laced with pepper. Dusk and the afternoon downpour had brought little relief from the heat. Sweat shone on faces and darkened mattresses already reeking with vomit. Did jail seem like a novelty now? In their cells, men discussed freedom and women, women and freedom, while women upstairs passed the hours pitching pennies and playing hopscotch on a grid drawn with a bar of Ivory soap. When would they hear from their lawyers? Would others join their hunger strike? When would SNCC get them out?

  Late that evening, a tap came on the wall of the white women’s cell. A small, flat panel opened, and a face appeared. A black face. Identifying himself as a “trusty,” the man passed in candy bars and a note from the black women. “We are not going to eat,” the note said. “Send us cigs. We don’t have light.” For the next hour, the women talked through the face-sized opening, talking with the trusty. His name was Patterson, and he was doing eighteen months for a crime he said he had not committed. The women gave him a dollar for cigarettes. They were thrilled to learn how many had been arrested that day. Then Patterson closed the panel and went to visit other prisoners. Toward midnight on the first day of the 1960s, the door opened for one final note. It came from the black men. “We won’t eat tomorrow,” it read. “We will sing loud about daybreak. Freedom.”

  BOOK TWO

  A Bloody Peace Written in the Sky

  Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.

  —William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

  I wasn’t even sure, in fact, how voting was supposed to help me, but the more I heard about white people being so against it, the more I started thinking there must be something to this voting.

  —Unita Blackwell, Barefootin’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “WalkTogether, Children”

  Trembling, nauseous, and terrified, the remedial reading teacher rode the bus toward McComb.

  In the two weeks since he had finished classes at P.S. 624, Ira Landess had crossed a cultural divide larger than a continent. After taking a bus from Manhattan to Memphis, he was welcomed to the South by a cabdriver who, upon learning his purpose, hurled his bags to the sidewalk. With other teachers in training, Landess had hung his head to sing, “Three are missing, Lord, Kumbaya. . . .” On the Fourth of July, his group had crossed into Mississippi. Stopping for lunch in “the other Philadelphia,” they stared out a café window, wondering which passing strangers might know where the missing men were. On their way out of town, they passed a billboard with a photo of John F. Kennedy splattered with black paint. Arriving that afternoon at the holiday picnic in Hattiesburg, Landess ate catfish, went on the tractor hayride, and took cover when the pickup with the gun rack passed. That night, he bolted awake, startled by strange sounds. Certain the Klan had come for him, he summoned the courage to look outside. A cow was rubbing against his shack. Later Landess met black kids who asked whether Jews like him had tails. And now here he was, riding this steamy, smoke-filled Greyhound, surrounded by blanched faces, crossing into Pike County with its kudzu-choked trees, its Klansmen in the hills, its bombs and burned-out churches.

  When dynamite damaged the McComb Freedom House, SNCC had called for more volunteers to come “share the terror.” Because his former Brandeis classmate, Mendy Samstein, was a SNCC staffer in McComb, Landess signed up. A few days later, terrified at what he had gotten himself into, certain he had been spotted as an “invader,” a Jew, he arrived in the most dangerous town in Mississippi.

  By mid-July, when nothing worse than fear had attacked him, Landess had settled in. Glad to be back in a classroom, he had shed his initial terror. But nothing made him feel more at home than the greeting he got one afternoon. He was walking through McComb’s black quarters when a bent, gray-haired woman stepped out of her shack. A big smile broke out on her leathery face. She set aside her broom, waved at Landess, and shouted, “Hello, Freedom!”

  As July crawled toward August, volunteers wondered—had it only been a month? The slow, sweltering afternoons, the dark, fearful nights, the roof-lifting mass meetings, the soulful dinners with host families, the Fourth of July picnics, all leading back to the shocking disappearance and rush of arrival—hadn’t the summer lasted forever? Did their comfortable lives back home still exist? Bob Moses had warned of this, too. “When you’re not in Mississippi, it’s not real,” he had told them in Ohio, “and when you’re there the rest of the world isn’t real.”

  But one eternal month had not merely warped time—it had accelerated Freedom Summer. Mississippi remained a powder keg, rife with random beatings, absurd arrests, and roaring pickups circling project offices. Several attacks per day were now being chalked onto a blackboard outside COFO headquarters in Jackson.

  • McComb: Mount Zion Hill Baptist Church in Pike County bombed or burned to ground.

  • Philadelphia: Columbia law student and a writer beaten with chain by two middle-aged white men in early afternoon.

  • Batesville: 8 people detained one and one-half hours by sheriff . . . released into crowd of whites standing about. Local volunteer hit hard in jaw by white man.

  Encounters with whites had become a manic game of chance. Crossing the tracks and heading downtown, one never knew what might happen. Those huddled men on the bench ahead might just glare or flash their middle fingers. The thin-lipped man in the passing car might merely pass. That trio of young toughs hanging around the gas station might settle for threats. But just as easily, the men on the bench could uncoil. Empty beer bottles could fly from that car. Those three thugs might explode. Volunteers pressed their luck every day, and most came home unscathed. But every day, luck ran out for a few.

  A month of Freedom Summer had weeded out the fearful. Several volunteers had given up and gone home. The rest, hardened by Mississippi, inspired by its local heroes, dug in and focused on their jobs—teaching another class, knocking on another door, or just being there, white with black in Mississippi. By the third week of July, the tender wounds of violence were hardening into a callused defiance. The defiance showed in how volunteers joked about their lives. “The mosquitoes down here are vicious,” a Hattiesburg volunteer wrote in her diary. “I’m sure they must be hired by the Klan or the White Citizens Council.” From Ruleville, a man wrote home: “You will all be glad to hear that my odor is strong enough to kill a sunflower at 20 feet.” And in Greenwood, a volunteer gave his parents graphic descriptions of recent mayhem, then concluded, “Ho hum. This violent life rolls on. We Shall Overcome.”

  The defiance also revealed itself in a new attitude toward Mississippi’s “tough towns.” Once avoided, places like Drew and McComb were now invaded by volunteers, filling beehive offices, meeting local heroes, daring police and locals to pounce. Even Emmett Till’s watery graveyard—Tallahatchie County—would soon have its day at the courthouse. Finally, the defiance changed the way violence was described. Calls to the WATS line now spoke of “the usual police harassment,” “the usual speech” from a cop, “the usual” phone calls spewing “the usual”
hatred. A beating was “nothing serious. Bruises on face. And cuts.”

  Freedom Summer’s gathering momentum spread this renewed boldness to every corner of Mississippi. COFO sued Sheriff Rainey, the Klan, and the Citizens’ Council, charging that they had “engaged in widespread terroristic acts . . . to intimidate, punish and deter the Negro citizens of Mississippi.” No one expected to win the suit, but at least the chaw-chewing sheriff would have to hire a lawyer and swagger into court. In Harmony, where a cross had blazed in response to the Civil Rights Act, the rhythmic rapping of hammers echoed across farms and fields. Denied a building for a Freedom School, volunteers and locals had raised enough money to build their own community center. Now, dozens were hammering away. While pickups circled, black women served fried chicken and Kool-Aid. Men in overalls sawed planks and raised skeleton walls beneath the scorching sun. One observer called the Harmony project, which included a honeymooning couple from Milwaukee, “the happiest project I have seen in Mississippi.” Up in the Delta, $4,500 raised by calls to parents was claimed from Western Union at the back of Rexall Drug in Ruleville. All twenty-three prisoners, lice-infested, skin blistered by mosquito and chigger bites, were bailed out of Drew’s miserable jail. Thirty miles south in the Greenwood lockup, bedraggled Freedom Day prisoners continued their hunger strike, fantasizing about ice cream, gin and tonics, and freight trains bringing carloads of chopped liver and bagels from New York.

  United in spirit, volunteers also found fresh sources of support. Across the state, the spreading network of CB radios linked more SNCC cars with home bases. If James Chaney had only had such a radio. . . . Dozens of medical teams—doctors, nurses, dentists, psychiatrists—were making two-week tours of Mississippi, tending to volunteers’ health, giving black children their first medical exams, then going home to share stories from the “police state” of Mississippi. More than a hundred lawyers from across America had come to prepare more lawsuits. Celebrities were arriving, too, just to lend support. One afternoon, an attractive woman with bright red hair and blue jeans dropped in on Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamer did not recognize the “little white lady.” She was later surprised to hear that “a real movie star” named Shirley MacLaine was in her kitchen stirring the beans. Boston Celtics star Bill Russell was giving basketball clinics in Jackson, and within a few days, the biggest name in the civil rights movement, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., would tour the state. Yes, it had been only a month, and more than a month remained, but Freedom Summer rolled on.

  The summer had not exhausted its surprises. In Itta Bena, the tobacco-chewing old woman whose spunk had amazed boarders way back in June was now showing off the tea set a volunteer’s girlfriend sent her. You could use the little cups for tea, she told friends on Freedom Street. Or you could use them for whiskey. But a month in Mississippi had finished off the naïveté that had frightened SNCC veterans back in Ohio. Light switches on cars were now taped down, lest an opened door illuminate a nighttime target. Host families no longer found their guests “plain cute.” Volunteers did not wash their hands in the water bucket; they were experts at outhouses, well pumps, and bathing in tin washtubs. They could eat whole plates of collard greens without a grimace. Their internal clocks were now set to the local time zone—Rural Southern Time. “If you want to start a meeting at 8,” one wrote home, “schedule it for 7.” And Fannie Lou Hamer no longer had to worry about white girls “out under the trees in the back yard playin’ cards with the Negro boys!” Still, there were near-misses and constant reminders of danger.

  One Saturday evening, Chris Williams was in the Mileses’ backyard in Batesville. Volunteers were standing around trading jokes when the drone of insects was shattered by a rifle blast. Everyone began shouting, diving for cover, until Robert Miles, “laughing his ass off,” came out to explain. Another volunteer, unfamiliar with guns, had picked up a loaded rifle. “Someone shot at you from inside the house,” Miles said. The bullet buried itself in the field out back, near the hogs.

  Fred Winn was still mired in Shaw. Since the Saturday night when they had “waited for the bombers,” volunteers had settled down, but the project had not. Like the town itself, strung out along a swamp flanking its main street, Shaw’s project was a backwater. With no local movement to build on, mass meetings drew just a few adults. Rumors rustling through the black community did not help. Some spoke of a white volunteer living with a black woman, even sitting, shirtless, on her porch all morning. Others talked of a tall white woman and a local black man sleeping together in the Freedom House. The California carpenter paid no attention to the rumors. Fred continued to build bookshelves, install screens, fix toilets. Writing home often, he was feeling closer than ever to the father he had barely known. And his father, feeling the same bond, had begun asking friends for donations to SNCC. (One wrote back, “I don’t believe in this sort of thing and think Freddy is a big jerk for doing it.”) But restless nights and disjointed days had left Fred with the nagging certainty that he would always feel like a stranger in Mississippi.

  As volunteers struggled to adapt, SNCC leaders were starting to wonder. Precisely what had Freedom Summer accomplished? Freedom Schools were overenrolled, bursting with enthusiasm. A dozen community centers were offering literacy workshops, health classes, day care, sewing lessons, story hours. . . . Yet SNCC’s larger purpose—voter registration—was treading water. Bob Moses had done the math. Despite all the Freedom Days, a SNCC report charted the dismal results: “Canton—Number of those who took the test—22; Number of those who passed—0. Hattiesburg: Number of those who took the test—70. Number of those who passed—5. Greenwood—Number of those who took the test—123. Number of those who passed—2.” In all, of the fifteen hundred blacks who had gone to courthouses, only a handful outside Panola County had successfully registered. If any political progress was to be made in the remaining month, it had to follow the only road left open—the Freedom Party road. This time, however, the stage would not be Mississippi but all of America. On July 19, Moses sent a ten-page memorandum to all staff and canvassers regarding the “high degree of probability that we will not be prepared for the national Democratic Convention.”

  Since its founding in March, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had survived on dreams. Fannie Lou Hamer and three other MFDP candidates had run for Congress in the June primary, yet Atlantic City remained the party’s target. Now just over a month remained until the gavel at the Democratic National Convention. There, Freedom Democrats would challenge Mississippi’s all-white delegation. Before a national television audience, blacks could detail Mississippi’s brutal denial of democracy. And with enough support, perhaps even an outpouring of telegrams and phone calls, the MFDP could win a floor fight and be seated, sending Mississippi’s “official” delegation home in disgrace. But it would take names—Moses was still hoping for 400,000—names signed up as Freedom Democrats. At midsummer, Moses had tallied just 21,431 signatures on the parallel party’s roll sheet. At the present rate, just 60,000 would be enrolled when the convention began. It was not hard to imagine a challenge to the challenge—what about all the other blacks in Mississippi? They must not care about voting. Faced with failure, Moses now turned consensus into decree. There would be fewer Freedom Days, which cost too much in bail money and manpower. Instead, “everyone who is not working in Freedom Schools or Community Centers must devote all their time to organizing for the convention challenge.”

  Moses lowered his sights to 200,000 signatures. Even by SNCC standards, it was a quixotic goal, but Moses, as usual, had thought things out. SNCC would flood black quarters with Freedom Registration Centers—in stores, bars, beauty parlors, barbershops, restaurants, pool halls, garages, and churches. Sound trucks would roam backstreets, blaring announcements of the campaign. Radio and newspaper ads would spread the word. “Big name” folksingers were already in Mississippi, holding concerts to promote the MFDP. More, including Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary, were said to be on their way. Then th
ere would be “canvassing, which you all know about.” And in a few days, Martin Luther King would tour Mississippi, putting his high profile behind the Freedom Democratic Party.

  Moses’ midcourse correction shifted Freedom Summer into high gear. Freedom School teachers began canvassing on weekends. Rollicking mass meetings were now held night after night. Sunday-morning church became obligatory as volunteers—men in shirts and ties, women in stockings and heels—waited until deacons gathered collection plates, then stood to explain the Freedom Democratic Party. They would be outside after the service to sign up everyone. Everyone! The goal of 200,000 signatures—35,000 new names per week—also sent volunteers to the far reaches of each plantation and each day.

  Even in late July, morning comes early to the Mississippi Delta. Above the pancake land, the spreading sky turns salmon pink by 5:00 a.m. Here in the summer of 1964, as they had for decades at that hour, buses roam the plantations surrounding Greenwood, stopping to pick up “hands” to chop cotton. Yet for the first time ever, white hands are among the black. Standing beside shacks glowing with kerosene lamps, volunteers make their pitch to tired men in overalls, to weary women in housedresses and bandannas.

  No, there’s no danger in signing this paper.

  Your name will not be listed in any newspaper.

  The boss man will never know. Most whites don’t even know what the MFDP is. What is it? Here’s a brochure (and a flashlight): “The Democratic National Convention is a very big meeting in August. It is a very important meeting because people in the Democratic Party choose the person they want to run for President of the United States. . . . Mississippi sends a group of people to this national meeting. This summer we are going to send a Freedom group to the national meeting.”