Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [110]
White Vicksburg paid no attention to Martin Luther King. The Miss Mississippi pageant was under way. Captivating the town with parades and parties, the pageant was in its third night—the swimsuit competition. Across town, Fran O’Brien was finishing classes as the dinner hour approached. King was scheduled to dine with volunteers, then speak at a church, but he was late, and some were beginning to wonder if he was coming at all. Toward 6:15 p.m., Fran was straightening her classroom when someone told her to hurry. The last car was leaving. She rushed down the long driveway, and there in the front seat was Martin Luther King.
At first, Fran thought it must be someone who merely looked like him, but when a friend asked whether she was just going to stand there gawking, Fran jumped in the back. All the way to dinner, other volunteers fell over themselves to tell King about their summer work. Fran sat in silence. Finally, King turned around. “And what about you, young lady? ” he asked. “What do you do in the project? ”
“Nothing,” Fran managed to say. “I just work with the kids.”
“What do you do with the kids? ”
Shyness stifled Fran, but another volunteer burst in and told King what a great teacher she was, doing arts and crafts, backyard games, and now a chorus and piano and sewing lessons. . . . Fran smiled weakly. King studied her, then asked, “Do you call that ‘nothing’? ”
“No, sir.”
Then, getting serious as only Martin Luther King could get serious, he said, “Young lady, don’t you ever say you ‘just work with the kids.’ Our children are the future and you are forming it.” After dinner, King spoke to a boisterous crowd, but Fran O’Brien would not remember a thing he said that was more important than what he said to her.
The following morning, back in Jackson, King taped a TV show, then headed for Philadelphia. Bob Moses had not wanted King to venture into the town where a mob had recently driven off NAACP leaders, but King insisted. No events were planned there; no locals were expecting him. FBI agents met his caravan at the Neshoba County line and cleared the road ahead. An hour later, blacks in Independence Quarters were startled to see fifteen cars rumble over the railroad tracks. Kicking up red clouds of dust, the caravan came to a halt in front of a church. King walked again through the streets and stopped at another pool hall, this time taking off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves, and playing a game of eight ball. He lost. Climbing on a bench, he addressed the crowd: “Three young men came here to help set you free. They probably lost their lives. I know what you have suffered in this state, the lynchings and the murders. But things are going to get better.” Then, quoting an old spiritual, King told the group, “Walk together, children, don’t you get weary.” As he left the pool hall, an old woman approached and reached out a withered hand. “I just want to touch you,” she said. King moved on beneath afternoon thunder and rain. He stood on the ashes of the Mt. Zion Church, sharing parishioners’ sorrow but rejoicing “that there are churches relevant enough that people of ill will will be willing to burn them.” He spoke that Friday evening in Meridian before returning to his hotel to sweat out his last night in Mississippi, sitting in his boxer shorts and drinking beer with friends. His plane left for Atlanta the next morning.
The night after King left Mississippi, Rita Schwerner spoke to blacks in Greenwood. “I know what fear is,” she said, “but I know that you can risk