Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [124]
On the night of August 4, blacks at a Greenwood rally raged against neighbors who still refused to join the movement, to “have some race pride!” Stokely Carmichael promised to “loudmouth everyone in this town ain’t doin’ right!” Then he added, “Another thing. We’re not goin’ to stick with this non-violence forever. We don’t go shooting up their houses. It’s not us who does that.” Later that night at SNCC headquarters, Carmichael and others debated bringing guns back into the office. After agreeing it was about time, Carmichael left the room to call COFO headquarters “to get the mandate from Bob.” No one knows what Moses said, but Carmichael returned chastened. “What I think we ought to do is work harder on freedom registration forms,” he said. All that week, SNCC veteran Bob Zellner asked others, in private, if they were interested in his plan to kill Sheriff Rainey and Deputy Price. None were. Yet not even Bob Moses could keep the “nonviolent” in SNCC’s name much longer.
On Friday, August 7, both James Chaney and nonviolence were laid to rest in Mississippi. Following Chaney’s private burial, a memorial march through Meridian drew streams of silent mourners. At dusk, hundreds gathered inside a church lit by TV lights and filled with shouts and sobs. As a swelling chorus sang “We Shall Overcome,” Fannie Lee Chaney stood in a black veil, hugging her twelve-year-old son, dressed in his Sunday suit. Deprived of his brother, his best friend, Ben Chaney wavered between sorrow and rage. On the way to the funeral, Ben had stared down a photographer, then muttered, “I’m gonna kill ’em! I’m gonna kill ’em!” Watching the casket lowered into the grave, he shouted, “I want my brother!” But now, as mournful voices filled the church, he leaned against his mother, wiped his glistening face, and sang. “We Shalllll . . .” Then realizing the finality of a funeral, that he would never see his big brother again, Ben dissolved in tears. Watching him weep, COFO chairman Dave Dennis decided to scrap the speech he had planned.
Since entering Mississippi as a Freedom Rider, Dennis had taught classes in nonviolence and helped quell the pending riot at Medgar Evers’s wake. Early in 1964, Dennis had met Mickey and Rita Schwerner and suggested they work in Meridian. On June 21, he had planned to accompany Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney into Neshoba County, but a case of bronchitis kept him home. Now he stood before mourners, overwhelmed by grief and guilt. Fannie Lee Chaney had asked him to give the eulogy—something calm, something inspiring—but Dennis suddenly saw nonviolence as “a mistake.” In his high-pitched voice, he began speaking not from notes, nor from the heart, but from an entire race’s resentment and wrath.
“Sorry, but I’m not here to do the traditional thing most of us do at such a gathering,” the skinny, sad-eyed Dennis began. “What I want to talk about right now is the living dead that we have right among our midst, not only in the state of Mississippi but throughout the nation. Those are the people who don’t care. . . .” As Dennis spoke, one hand trembling, the other gripping the podium, mourners rose to meet his words, calling out “Amen” and “All right!” Dennis enshrined James Chaney in the lengthening list of martyrs—Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and Herbert Lee and the countless other blacks in Mississippi whose murders had gone unpunished. Enough, his every word said. His body began to shake. His pitch rose to a fever. Enough.
“I’m sick and tired of going to memorials. I’m sick and tired of going to funerals!”
“Yes!”
“I’ve got a bitter vengeance in my heart tonight.”
“So have I! ”
“And I’m not going to stand here and ask anybody here not to be angry tonight!”
“YES! ”
Dennis spoke of blacks fighting in World War II and coming home to Mississippi “to live as slaves.” He knew that “when they find the people who killed