Freedom Summer
Page 41
84 Dear Mom and Dad: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mississippi Burning Case, File 44-25706 (hereafter, MIBURN), part 3, p. 53.
84 “issuing dictatorial orders”: Association of Tenth Amendment Conservatives brochure, MDAH SCR ID# 2-61-1-95-2-1-1.
85 “What’re you doing here?”: COFO, Mississippi Black Paper, pp. 67-68.
85 “sons of bitches”: Branch, Pillar of Fire, p. 143.
85 “niggers on a voter drive”: Zinn, SNCC, p. 204.
85 “arrest any Mississippi law enforcement officer”: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/meiklejohn/meik-8_2/meik-8_2-4.html.
85 “cooling off period”: Payne, I’ve Got the Light, p. 108.
86 “a true Marxist-Leninist”: Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 103.
86 “We do not wet nurse”: Ball, Murder in Mississippi, p. 57.
86 “Which side is the federal government on?”: Zinn, SNCC, p. 215.
86 “There is a street in Itta Bena”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 192.
86 “Good evening. Three young civil rights workers”: Walter Cronkite, “History Lessons: Mississippi 1964—Civil Rights and Unrest,” June 16, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=4706688&m=4706689.
87 “the other Philadelphia”: New York Times, June 29, 1964.
88 “ fair-minded, Christian people”: Ibid.
89 “They’re sending them in by buses”: Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 313.
89 “I asked Hoover two weeks ago”: Ibid., pp. 425-26.
89 “I’m afraid that if I start”: Ibid., p. 431.
89 “I think they got picked up”: Ibid., pp. 431-32.
90 “I don’t believe there’s three missing”: Ibid., p. 434.
90 “Are they all right?”: Goodman, “My Son Didn’t Die,” p. 164.
90 “changed from a public figure”: Ibid.
91 “Burned Car Clue”: Washington Post, June 24, 1964.
91 “Dulles Will Direct Rights Trio Hunt”: Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1964.
91 “Wreckage Raises New Fears”: New York Times, June 24, 1964.
91 “They had no business down here”: Mars, Witness in Philadelphia, pp. 87-88.
91 “Farmer, don’t go over there”: James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New American Library, 1985), p. 273.
92 “Where do you think you’re goin’?”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 343.
92 “hid somewhere trying to get”: New York Times, June 23, 1964.
92 “destroy evidence”: Lewis, Walking with the Wind, p. 257.
92 “If there has been a crime”: Ibid.
92 “We don’t want anything to happen”: Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, p. 276.
93 “It’s a shame that national concern”: Lewis, Walking with the Wind, p. 258.
93 “I imagine they’re in that lake”: Beschloss, Taking Charge, p. 440.
93 “We are basically a law abiding nation”: New York Times, June 24, 1964.
93 “We need the FBI before the fact”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, p. 15.
94 “knowed for mean”: Carmichael, Ready for Revolution, p. 377.
94 “praying for sunrise”: Ibid.
94 “those same peckerwoods”: Ibid., p. 378.
94 “Ain’t no telling”: Cleveland Sellers and Robert Terrell, The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 88.
94 “So and so said”: Charles Cobb Jr., personal interview, July 16, 2008.
95 “would have an irretrievable effect”: “Mississippi—Summer of 1964: Troubled State, Troubled Time,” Newsweek, July 13, 1964, p. 20.
95 “a local matter for local law enforcement”: New York Times, June 25, 1964, p. 20.
95 “a thousand of these youngsters”: Kotz, Judgment Days, p. 171.
95 “the chiefs of police”: Ibid.
95 “this breathtakingly admirable group”: Washington Post, June 25, 1964.
95 “a second Reconstruction”: New York Times, June 26, 1964.
95 “firm, positive statement” and “will be on the hands”: Tupelo Journal, June 25, 1964; and Washington Post, June 25, 1964.
95 “I’m not going to send troops”: Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 479.
96 “We throw two or three”: “The Limpid Shambles of Violence,” Life, July 3, 1964, p. 35.
96 “Why don’t you just float”: Huie, Three Lives, p. 39.
96 “You know damn well our law”: Mars, Witness in Philadelphia, p. 98.
96 “The idea of these people”: Ibid.
96 “if it was boiled down to gravy”: Huie, Three Lives, p. 195.
96 “Bloody Neshoba”: Ball, Murder in Mississippi, p. 64.
96 “I believe them jokers”: Mulford and Field, Freedom on My Mind.
96 “to all parents everywhere”: New York Times, June 26, 1964.
97 “a Negro, a friend”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 366.
97 “I’m just hoping”: New York Times, June 25, 1964.
97 “For God’s sake”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 366.
97 “We’re now looking for bodies”: New York Times, June 25, 1964.
97 “I am going to find my husband”: Marco Williams, dir., Ten Days That Unexpectedly Changed America—Freedom Summer (New York: History Channel, 2006).
97 “that scores of federal marshals”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 354.
97 “I’m sure Wallace is much more important”: Huie, Three Lives, p. 203.
97 “Governor Wallace and I”: Robert Zellner, “Notes on Meeting Gov. Johnson,” June 25, 1964, COFO documents, Hillegas Collection.
97 “that you and Governor Wallace here”: Robert Zellner, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, with Constance Curry (Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2008), p. 250.
98 “I don’t want your sympathy!”: Los Angeles Times, June 26, 1964.
98 “What in the goddamn hell”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 360.
98 “Well, at least he still has a wife”: Ibid.
98 “as near to approximating a police state”: Silver, Mississippi, p. 151.
99 “A wave of untrained”: SNCC Papers, reel 38.
99 “This is for the three in Philadelphia”: Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1964.
99 “swarm[ing] upon our land”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 7, 1964.
99 “Where, oh where”: Turner Catledge, “My Life and ‘The Times,’ ” in Mississippi Writers—Reflections of Childhood and Youth, vol. 2, Non-fiction, ed. Dorothy Abbott (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), p. 85.
99 “Be frank with you, Sitton”: Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2007), p. 360.
99 “Beware, good Negro citizens”: Mississippi Summer Project, running summary of incidents, transcript, USM (hereafter, COFO incidents).
99 “Want us to do to you”: New York Times, June 27, 1964.
100 “You dig it?”: Hodes Papers, SHSW.
100 “like a funeral parlor”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 33.
100 “near psychosis,” or just “character disorders”: Robert Coles, Farewell to the South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp. 246-47.
100 “Suddenly hundreds of young Americans”: Ibid., p. 269.
100 “You know what we’re all doing”: McAdam, Freedom Summer, p. 71.
100 Dear Mom and Dad: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 26.
101 Dear Folks: Ibid., p. 27.
101 “The kids are dead”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, pp. 25-27.
&nb
sp; 101 “In our country we have some real evil”: Ibid.
102 “I would have gone anywhere”: Mulford and Field, Freedom on My Mind.
102 “If someone in Nazi Germany”: Paul Cowan, The Making of an Un-American: A Dialogue with Experience (New York: Viking, 1970), p. 29.
102 “You’re killing your mother!”: Heather Tobis Booth, personal interview, October 8, 2007.
103 “Be strong and of good courage”: New York Times, June 29, 1964.
103 “racial holocaust”: New York Times, June 28, 1964.
104 “I don’t know what all the fuss is about”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, p. 29.
CHAPTER FIVE: “It Is Sure Enough Changing”
106 “History,” “Reference,” “Language,” “Crud”: Sugarman, Stranger at the Gates, p. 108.
106 the Ruleville Freedom School was ready for classes: Ibid., pp. 107-12.
106 looked “exactly” like Schwerner: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 1, 1964.
106 “dirty looks”: Meridian Star, June 30, 1964.
106 “running down all leads on the cranks”: Beschloss, Taking Charge, p. 438.
107 “let off it”: MIBURN 3-96.
107 “Negro boy”: MIBURN 3-93.
107 “got what was coming to them”: MIBURN, 8-75.
107 “You a damn liar”: New York Times, June 28, 1964.
108 “You dig into yourself ”: Moses and Cobb, Radical Equations, p. 59.
108 “While professing to believe in ‘equality’ ”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, June 23, 1964.
108 “I find more resentment”: Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 1964.
108 “It’s the best thing that’s happened”: John Hersey, “A Life for a Vote,” Saturday Evening Post, September 26, 1964; reprinted in Library of America, Reporting Civil Rights, p. 223.
109 “as if I was some strange god”: Coles, Farewell to the South, pp. 250-51.
109 “Now it wasn’t just these ‘Negroes’ ”: Fred Bright Winn, personal interview, November 13, 2007.
109 “We Shall Overcome”: Fred Bright Winn, correspondence, June 15, 1964.
110 “My spirit lives on”: Ibid.
110 “a young twenty-year-old”: Winn, interview, November 13, 2007.
110 “broke the ice”: Ibid.
110 “There were people in Mississippi”: Ibid.
110 “If the Klan gets a hold of you”: Ibid.
111 “scarier than shit”: Ibid.
111 “It’s like eating sandpaper slugs”: Ibid.
111 “Dad, I hope you realize”: Winn, correspondence, June 1964.
111 “I’m sorry, Mr. President”: Greenburg, Circle of Trust, p. 191.
112 “June 30—Page 7 Holly Springs”: WATS Line, June 30, 1964.
113 “You Are in Occupied Mississippi”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, p. 52.
113 “Violence hangs overhead like dead air”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 168.
113 “to walk along the street”: Rims Barber, Oral History, USM.
113 “You’re both purty gals”: Lake, “Last Summer in Mississippi,” p. 243; and Ellen Lake Papers, SHSW.
113 “Which one of them coons”: Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), p. 164.
113 “broke bread with”: Hodding Carter III, e-mail interview, September 26, 2008.
114 “I was adamantly against”: Ibid.
114 “race mixing invaders”: Greenwood Commonwealth, June 30, 1964.
114 “leftist hep cat students”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, June 29, 1964.
114 “nutniks”: Carthage Carthaginian, July 2, 1964.
114 “unshaven and unwashed trash”: David R. Davies, ed., The Press and Race: Mississippi Journalists Confront the Movement (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2001), p. 45; and Katagiri, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, p. 163. 114 “thirty college students”: Lexington Advertiser, July 2, 1964.
114 “doing irreparable damage”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 1, 1964.
114 “reckless walking”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 147.
115 “Nobody Would Dare Bomb”: New York Times Sunday Magazine, July 5, 1964, p. 6.
116 “Know all roads”: SNCC Papers, reel 40.
116 “surviving and just walking around”: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, pp. 239-40.
116 “The whole scene”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 55.
116 “I just can’t get my mind on all that”: “Mississippi—Summer of 1964: Troubled State, Troubled Time,” Newsweek, July 13, 1964, p. 18.
116 “I don’t want to mess with that mess”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, p. 50.
116 “I can’t sign no paper”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 69.
117 “Did that nigger invite you in here?”: Jay Shetterly and Geoff Cowan, personal interview, January 15, 2008; and “Mississippi—Summer of 1964,” 19.
117 “a somewhat neurotic redhead”: Williams, journal.
117 “Goddamn motherfucker, pissed me right off!”: Claire O’Connor, personal interview, January 5, 2008.
117 “kind of goofy”: Ibid.
118 “our great leader”: Williams, journal.
119 “agitators . . . come to Mississippi”: Ibid.
119 “He said they ought to send me home”: Williams, correspondence.
119 “I have developed a real taste”: Ibid.
119 “hard on the Negroes”: Mars, Witness in Philadelphia, p. 76.
119 “Nigger, do you know”: Cagin and Dray, We Are Not Afraid, p. 255.
120 “I have no proof”: Ibid., p. 340.
120 “Now come on sheriff”: MDAH SCR ID# 1-8-0-18-2-1-1.
120 “number one suspect”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, December 3, 2007, p. 4A.
121 “Now if I were a teacher”: James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers,” in Critical Issues in Education, ed. Eugene F. Provenzo (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2006), p. 203.
121 “nigger food”: SNCC Papers, reel 39.
121 “leaders of tomorrow”: New York Times, July 3, 1964.
121 “close the springs of racial poison”: Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1964.
121 “time of testing”: Beschloss, Taking Charge, p. 450.
122 “tear gas pen guns”: Jackson Clarion-Ledger, July 2, 1964, SNCC Papers, reel 39.
122 “civil strife and chaotic conditions”: New York Times, June 22, 1964.
122 “People here in Clarksdale”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 70.
122 “Ah’m going swimmin’ ”: Ibid., pp. 71-72.
122 “Judas niggers”: Huie, Three Lives, p. 69.
123 “What have I done in my life?”: Winn, interview, November 13, 2007.
123 “troublemakers” and “uppity niggers”: Holland, From the Mississippi Delta, p. 203.
123 “I kinda figured”: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, p. 234.
124 “in case of emergency”: Sugarman, Stranger at the Gates, p. 75.
124 “When I raised my hand”: Sandra E. Adickes, Legacy of a Freedom School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 15.
125 “scrapping” cotton shreds: New York Times, August 24, 1964.
125 “a knot on my stomach”: Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 21.
125 “Had it up as high”: Fannie Lou Hamer, “To Praise Our Bridges,” in Abbott, Mississippi Writers, p. 324.
125 “I knowed as much about a facto law”: Mills, This Little Light, p. 37.
125 “boss man” was “raisin’ Cain”: Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 15.
125 “we’re not ready for that in Mississippi” and “I didn’t try to register for you”: Raines, My Soul Is Rested, p. 251.
125 “a Snicker”: Unita Blackwell, Barefootin’: Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom, with JoAnne Prichard Moore (New York: Crown,
2006), p. 83.
125 “She was SNCC itself”: James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Washington, D.C.: Open Hand, 1985), p. 385.
125 “The only thing they could do”: Hamer, “To Praise Our Bridges,” p. 324.
126 “The white man’s afraid”: Silver, Mississippi, pp. 341-42.
126 “I feel like a man”: Sugarman, Stranger at the Gates, p. 116.
126 “and more and more and more”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 72.
126 “These young white folks”: Ibid.
126 “Can I speak to Andy Goodman?”: Belfrage, Freedom Summer, p. 64.
127 “Just wanted to know”: WATS Line, July 5, 1964.
127 “Today would be a good day for prayer”: Delta Democrat-Times, June 24, 1964.
127 “It may well be a lesson”: Ibid.
127 “a lotta weight”: Tillinghast, interview, November 28, 2007.
127 “an epiphany”: Ibid.
128 “The food was good”: New York Times, July 6, 1964.
128 “We are just going to abide”: Ibid.
CHAPTER SIX: “The Scars of the System”
129 “Tonight the sickness struck”: Martinez, Letters from Mississippi, p. 137.
129 “What will it take”: Ibid., p. 138.
129 “lying on the ground”: Ibid., p. 137.
130 “Closed in Despair”: “Civil Rights: And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,” Time, July 17, 1974, p. 25.
130 “I’m free!”: Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1964.
130 “unless these people get out”: New York Times, July 5, 1964.
131 she had to say, “Nothing”: Fran O’Brien, personal interview, November 12, 2007.
131 “I hope you’re not too upset”: Fran O’Brien, correspondence, May 27, 1964.
131 “Are you sure”: Ibid.
131 “clearly understood”: O’Brien, correspondence, May 27, 1964.
132 “it occurred to me”: O’Brien, interview, November 12, 2007.
132 “It was just the way she’d grown up”: Ibid.
132 “He’s signing!”: Ibid.
133 “Please try not to worry”: O’Brien, correspondence, July 6, 1964.
133 “which will help you discover”: Goodman Papers, SHSW.
133 “I think Andrew Goodman is a heroe”: Ibid.
133 “Who are these fiends”: Goodman, “My Son Didn’t Die,” p. 158.
134 “no evidence of human remains”: MIBURN 6-78.