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By Root 1819 0

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 there would be “canvassing, which you all know about.” And in a few days, Martin Luther King would tour Mississippi, putting his