We are deliberately scattered throughout the state, living in the homes of different families (all Negro, of course). Bob Moses said we needed to “melt away” into the Negro community, that they would house and harbor us.
My hosts for now are the Lewises. They have taken me in at great personal risk. All of us volunteers are achingly aware that while we will leave at the end of the summer, the Negroes welcoming us into their homes will remain, and surely face retribution. Do you know that two years ago the state shut down the commodities program—which gives surplus food to poor colored families—as retaliation for a group of eighteen Negro Mississippians trying to register to vote?
The Lewises’ house is comprised of only two rooms. The boys sleep on the floor so that I can have the mattress they usually share, which is thin, lumpy, and narrow. Mr. Lewis (James) farms on rented land, and Mrs. Lewis (Hattie) cleans house for a white woman in town. And by “cleans house” I mean she does everything from scrubbing the toilets, to cooking the food, to caring for her “Boss Lady’s” three young children, sometimes staying overnight in the maid’s room when her employers drive over to Doe’s (a steakhouse in Greenville) and don’t get back until late, or decide to go all the way to New Orleans for a night on the town. Of course, they don’t tell Hattie when they decide to do this; she just knows that if they’re not home by eleven or so she is expected to spend the night and fix them elixirs in the morning to help with their hangovers.
If Hattie’s employers discover that she is hosting me, there might well be hell to pay. Same with the white man who is renting James his farmland. Ironically, the Lewises are probably best protected by the bigotry of their bosses. They don’t like to visit what they call “N-town.” (Although of course they don’t use an abbreviation.)
The Lewises have two boys, James Jr. (“Jimmy”) and Jonah. They are eight and six, respectively. Jimmy is a card, whereas Jonah is serious and eager to learn. That said, Jimmy is quite brilliant. I taught him a few knock-knock jokes and now he tells them all the time, making up his own punch lines. Here’s one he made up the other day after we finished eating:
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Overall.”
“Overall who?”
“Overall that was a fine supper!”
The other day I recited as much as I could remember from The Cat in the Hat to James and Jonah, and they loved the whimsy of it. They had never heard of Dr. Seuss. There are no libraries for colored people down here, and the textbooks the state provides are secondhand copies of fourth-rate textbooks. One of the other volunteers, Ellen, got her hands on a history book used in the colored school, and it was appalling. It was filled with quotes about how plantation slaves were looked after kindly, with all needs provided. How, content with their lot, they would sing happy songs as they worked the fields.
Before I came to Mississippi, I would have laughed at such an absurd claim, same as I laughed at that absurd county registrar. But none of it is funny anymore, not when you start to love the very real people who are so brutally oppressed by such ludicrous ignorance. (Though it’s not just ignorance, is it? It’s deeply entrenched evil, camouflaged by some sentimental fantasy of moonlight and magnolias.)
Bob Moses amazes me. After all he has endured, after all he has seen as a black man trying to register voters in Mississippi, he still has it in him to say, “White Mississippians are more oppressed, in their ability to speak, than Negroes.” For instance, one white couple who has lived here forever invited one of the white organizers over for coffee, just to ease tension. Now they are facing bomb threats, and someone killed their dog. I heard they are planning on moving out of state.
I should add that the field secretaries from SNCC are doing all they can to protect us. We are warned never to walk alone. We are reminded to remain focused on the task, not to shoot our mouths off at some racist provocateur. I am definitely learning self-control. It reminds me of the lessons taught during that unit on Buddhism they did at the UU church during my senior year of high school. I wish I could go back and take that class again! At the time it didn’t seem to apply to my life. Detachment from outcome? Humility? Those were lessons my seventeen-year-old self could not really comprehend. But wow, do I need them now.
Do you think you might have Mother send my copy of The Cat in the Hat, as well as any other childhood books that might be lying around? I’d love to offer James and Jonah a little “library.” Ferdinand would be a great choice. I’m so grateful I thought to bring Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks with me. When I shared it with Hattie, she was just stunned. “Someone published a book of poems by a colored woman?” she asked. “Not only that,” I said. “But it won the Pulitzer, one of the most prestigious prizes in literature.”
What is stunning to me is the fact that after all the Lewises have been denied, after all the humiliations they have endured (Mr. Lewis bows and tips his hat to every white man who crosses his path, not out of deference but self-preservation), their souls are very much intact. They humble me. And I’m thankful to you, Daddy, for supporting my doing this. Not all of the volunteers here have parents as supportive as you and Mother.
Your loving daughter,
Daniella
July 22, 1964
Dear Eve,
You would love Jimmy and Jonah Lewis, the two little boys I’m staying with—along with their parents, Hattie and James. They live in Leflore County, just outside Greenwood, where Caro Foster at Belmont was from, though granted, her Mississippi is not the same one the Lewises live in—or rather it is, just the flip side of the coin.
My mom sent a care package for the boys containing The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Make Way for Ducklings, and The Snowy Day. The Snowy Day was an inspired choice, as the little boy in it, Peter, is colored. You would not believe how delighted Jimmy and Jonah were by that! They loved the Dr. Seuss books, too, especially Green Eggs and Ham, which they thought the height of comedy.
Well, cut to about a week later when Lew Feinstein stopped by the house to pick me up for canvassing. Lew is from Brooklyn and, as you can probably tell by his surname, is an actual true Jew, whereas I am just sort of a half-ass one (as Lew likes to joke). Lew grew up in a very religious family, and while he himself doesn’t keep kosher, his parents do, and he still doesn’t eat pork of any kind. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult that is down here, where nearly every cooked vegetable is seasoned with a piece of fatback. Indeed, surely Lew has eaten pork in Mississippi—he just doesn’t know it.
So Lew was at the house and we were about to leave for the day to go canvassing. Hattie had packed us some sandwiches. (I pay her $5 a week for room and board.) Well, what do you know, the sandwiches were filled with deviled ham. We wouldn’t have even known what was in them except that Hattie was so excited that she announced it. Ham is a big deal down here, even from a can. Lew gets this funny look on his face, but he obviously doesn’t want to say anything. But Hattie notices and sort of forces it out of him, and he ends up telling her that he doesn’t eat ham because he’s Jewish. Jimmy, who is eight, has just been sort of hanging around the whole time watching all of us “grown folk” talk. He asks, all incredulous, “You don’t eat ham?” And Lew says, “I don’t.” Jimmy asks, “You do not like ham?” and Lew says, “I do not,” mimicking the sort of strange way Jimmy put it. And then Jimmy says, “Would you eat it on a boat? Would you eat it with a goat?” And suddenly I catch on. He’s doing a riff on Dr. Seuss!
What a smart, smart child he is. Hattie ended up sending Lew off with a tomato sandwich, and the two little boys got to split the deviled ham.
I miss you, dear Eve. I wish you would write and tell me everything that is happening in your life. Every day I hope to receive a letter from you saying that all is okay between us. This summer is already heartbreaking enough. Please don’t let it divide us.
Love,
D
August 1, 1964
Pete,
I told m
yself I was not going to write you, but I can’t get your words about the southern Negro out of my mind, especially in light of what happened to me recently. You told me “those primitive and uneducated people” were not yet ready for the vote. That the situation in Mississippi was all very “sad,” but granting a “virtual child” voting rights would only result in poor governance and state-sponsored “giveaways.” Do you realize that was the night I decided to end our relationship? The moment you said those words my feelings for you just clicked off. Even though I had been so in love, even though a part of me still longs for what we once had.
Let me tell you about primitive Mississippians. Let me tell you about the white people who gathered around the courthouse on the day that I, along with a group of volunteers, accompanied a group of elderly Negroes to register to vote in Leflore County. Let me tell you about being spit on and called a “commie nigger lover,” and how the registrar pulled me aside and asked me to tell him about “how big a nigger penis is” because he knew “sexual relations” were going on between “you white college gals and them niggers you live with.” He then walked over to our group of elderly Negroes, pulled out his pistol, and asked, “Alrighty, which one of you wants to register first?”
Or let me tell you about what happened to me a week ago. Lew (my field partner) and I were canvassing, and he stayed behind at the home we had just visited to see if he could help this little boy put back together an old rocking horse that had broken. I went on to the next house (a shack, really), which wasn’t too far down the road. It was stupid of me to be out walking alone, and something the SNCC officers have repeatedly warned us against, but I just wanted to get on with the canvassing. I am absolutely possessed with a sense of urgency when I’m doing it, like if I can just knock on enough doors I can make a difference. (Though the sad truth is very few of the people we talk to will attempt to register, even with our urging. The risk of doing so is just too great.) So I was walking down this dusty road by myself when I hear a motor behind me. I turn around and see that it’s a brown pickup truck with a Confederate flag plate on the front bumper. The truck passes me at a crawl before stopping just ahead of where I am. There are four white men in the truck, two in the cab, two in the bed, all young—in their late teens or early twenties. One of them isn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of cutoff jeans. I keep my head down and keep walking, but the one without a shirt jumps out of the cab. He’s lean, with tan skin, and he’s got snuff stuffed into his lower lip. He walks right up to me and gets so close I can see the sheen of sweat on his skin. I want to step back, but I’m afraid if I do so he’ll attack. He is clearly dangerous. He smells musky, and he’s almost twitching with energy.
“Ain’t this our lucky day,” he says, with a look that is both a sneer and a grin. “We’ve killed plenty of niggers before, but we ain’t never killed a nigger-loving white lady.”
He pulls a pistol from the back pocket of his shorts. He puts the pistol to my head. I can feel it there, cold and heavy. And I think, “Oh my God, this is it.” And in that moment I have the oddest reaction: I hope that my parents won’t be too devastated by my death, and I recognize that the world will keep spinning after I’m gone. And I am also exquisitely aware that I would choose to go to Mississippi again if I could do it all over. That my life will hinge on this summer, whether I live past it or not.
He looks me in the eye and he pulls the trigger. And the trigger goes click. “Well, damn,” he says. “I meant to load my nigger-lover bullets, but I guess I forgot.” I am wearing a sleeveless top, and he puts his hands on my shoulders, as if he’s going to shove me, then taps my bare skin with his fingers, turns around, and jumps back into the truck as they drive off.
A few nights later I went to a mass meeting led by Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper severely beaten and then kicked off her land for trying to register to vote in 1962. She now works as a field secretary for SNCC. She is Mississippi through and through, with a deep, powerful voice that makes you sit up and listen whenever she talks. She said, “I’ve been tired a long time in Mississippi, but just because I am tired don’t mean it’s time to quit. Now is the time to keep fighting. Now is the time to shine the light of truth on what we’ve suffered down here, on what we’ve endured.” And then she starts singing, her voice expanding with every verse: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” Soon everyone has linked arms and is singing along with her, except I can’t sing, because the words catch in my throat when I try, so I cry instead, just weep, as the voices of everyone else in that room wash over me.
What I’m trying to say, Pete, is that you have it backwards when it comes to who is primitive in this equation. You really, really do.
D
August 4, 1964
Eve,
I got your letter. I know that you gave up Fleur for me, and Belmont, too, to an extent, and that was huge. But Eve, I didn’t ask you to drop out of either. I never made that demand of you. You chose to do so. And I think that after a little time has passed you will see that it wasn’t fair of you to demand that I stay home from Mississippi simply because you weren’t going. The state of Mississippi, the state of civil rights in America, it’s so much bigger than our friendship. We have to de-personalize. We have to recognize that this isn’t about a club I got into and you didn’t. Otherwise our activism is just child’s play.
I’m sorry. I’m frustrated. Tensions down here are high, and sometimes it feels hard to breathe. I’m sure you’ve been following the news, and so you know that today they found the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
D
August 5, 1964
Dear Mother and Daddy,
I am sure you heard that the bodies of Michael, Andy, and James were found. Andy’s and Michael’s bodies will be flown to New York. James will be buried here. The national media is hounding Rita Schwerner. They want to make the story about this poor little white woman who lost her husband. But she won’t let them. She keeps reminding them that had it only been James—a Negro—who died, the media wouldn’t be paying attention at all. She refuses to sink into her own grief. She will not lift her eyes from the goal of this project—to bring the vote to Mississippians, so that the systematic brutality enacted by white supremacy can be driven out. Perhaps she thinks that if voting rights are guaranteed, her husband’s death will not have been in vain.
I used to believe we could beat this awful system. I am not so certain anymore.
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about regarding white Mississippians: Yes, some of them are simply trying to survive; they know that if they were to speak out against Jim Crow, they would be terrorized by their own community. But for many, I think that their hatred stems from the fact that they understand, at least on a subconscious level, the degree of cruelty they have inflicted on the Negro for hundreds of years. They feel that if they were to lose their power, to give the Negro the vote, the liberated Negroes would oppress them in the same way.
There is no way the Lewises or the Hamers or Bob Moses or Julian Bond or any of the other Negroes I have met down here would ever inflict such suffering on another sentient being. But the problem is, white supremacy doesn’t understand empathy or love. It only understands power and dominance.
I am not sure I understand much about love these days, either, but I have come to understand something about forging on. We are holding our state convention in Jackson tomorrow. We are going to elect a slate of delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Our hope is to unseat the official delegates sent by Mississippi, as we believe they are an illegitimate body, considering that half of the population was barred from voting.
You would have thought that finding the bodies of those three men would have demoralized us, but I think everyone knew, deep down, that Michael, Andy, and James were dead. Now we have proof. And now we are more determined than ever.
Your loving daughter,
Daniella
August
7, 1964
Pete,
You don’t need to come down here. You don’t need to rescue me. There are only two weeks left anyway, and besides, you aren’t part of the program. This isn’t just a “free-for-all” that any well-intentioned person can join. Remember, Eve applied and wasn’t accepted.
The letter you sent was lovely, and yes, I accept your apology. You are right—you didn’t understand. Thank you for recognizing that. It means more than you know.
Don’t come to Mississippi, but if you want, you could come to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. I’ll be going up there along with our elected delegates for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The idea is that we can unseat the delegates that Mississippi is sending. It’s a long shot, but I am hopeful it might work. Our legal argument for seating our delegates is sound: Over half of the population of Mississippi was denied the right to vote, so how can the all-white delegates Mississippi is sending be legitimate in any way?
You could join me there. I have no idea if there will be any hotel rooms available, but surely you could figure something out. I don’t really know where to tell you to meet me, but I think if you just look out, you’ll see us. The delegates from the MFDP are mostly Negro, and mostly sharecroppers, maids, hairdressers, etc. We will not look like your “typical” group of politicos, thank God.
You flatter me in your letter, Pete, but you have to understand: I walk away from Mississippi at the end of the summer, but the Lewises and every other Negro family that hosted us do not. They are the heroes. And besides, I think that if you had been raised by my father, and if you had seen firsthand what happened to Miss Eugenia when Eve (stupidly, naïvely) tried to advocate for her, you might have come down here, too.
We Are All Good People Here Page 7