Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [103]
The making of a parallel political party took more than certitude. Organization and leadership were also vital, and for these, Freedom Democrats relied on SNCC project directors. During Freedom Summer’s opening weeks, a few, like Chris Williams’s “great leader” in Batesville, had to be replaced. A similar breakdown occurred in Vicksburg, where white volunteers rebelled against a young black leader they nicknamed “Papa Doc,” bringing Bob Moses to soothe tensions. But by late July, SNCC had replaced its weaker links, solidifying a corps of black men still in their early twenties yet coordinating manpower like five-star generals.
In Holly Springs, Ivanhoe Donaldson supervised one of Freedom Summer’s most energetic projects. Donaldson had first come south in 1962, leaving Michigan State to make dozens of runs in a truck carrying supplies for ravenous Delta sharecroppers. Thin and wiry, constantly on edge, this son of a New York cop suffered from migraines that sometimes had him lying on the couch in the project office, head in his hands. Tension sometimes led Donaldson to shout at volunteers, especially women. “He has trouble relating to white women,” many said. But no one questioned his dedication nor dared defy his rules. Anyone who broke a rule, Donaldson told volunteers on the first day of summer, “will have to pack his bag and get his ass out of town. We’re here to work! The time for bullshitting is past!” And there would be no surrender to fear. Early that summer when a black volunteer was arrested for “blocking traffic,” Donaldson ordered him back on the street. “We can’t let them think that we are afraid,” he said. “You know that. Go right back to the spot where you were arrested.” Like many other SNCCs, Donaldson had opposed the summer project, convinced it would destroy “the one thing where the Negro can stand first.” But once it began, he ran his project the same way he drove, one foot on the brake, the other on the accelerator, often topping one hundred miles per hour.
Donaldson was known and respected in Holly Springs, but the Delta’s project director was known all over Mississippi and would soon be notorious across the nation. Tall and lanky, with huge eyes and a savage wit, Stokely Carmichael followed his intellect from his native Trinidad to the South Bronx, then on to Howard University. Like Bob Moses, Carmichael had majored in philosophy, and the two sometimes discussed Gödel’s theorems late into the night. Like Moses, Carmichael had won a full graduate scholarship to Harvard, though he turned it down to remain on the front lines. And like Moses, Carmichael seemed to be everywhere that summer—at every meeting, every rally, every protest. Volunteers struggled to keep up with his lightning-quick references to Frantz Fanon and other philosophers of black liberation. Based in the Greenwood office, where his charisma earned him the nickname “Stokely Starmichael,” Carmichael was more relaxed than his peers. He openly flirted with women, leading to speculation on how many he slept with. His constant jive kept the office as loose as his rules. Most project offices had code names on the CB network, names based on John—John Schwarz (Shaw); John August (Clarksdale), etc. But because Carmichael called everyone “Sweets,” he named his CB base “Greenwood Sweets.” Every week or so, when a package arrived at the office addressed to FASC, Carmichael would gather volunteers to share the latest gifts from the group he called “The Friends and Admirers of Stokely Carmichael.” “Young man,” he would say to a volunteer. “Tell FASC what you want and FASC will see to it.” Opening the package, he would pass out toothpaste, candy, insect repellent, and other goodies mailed from “friends and admirers” volunteers could only guess at. But Carmichael was also