Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [127]
Whether due to the heat or the ambient hatred, previous Augusts had unleashed numbing brutality—Emmett Till’s murder being just one example. And this August would oblige with a weekend when Mississippi verged on anarchy. Yet just as it ripened the cotton, lay-by time brought the flowering of Freedom Summer. During these “dog days,” Mississippi’s first touring theater dramatized black history on makeshift stages. Folksingers strummed in “hootenannies.” Two of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities snuck into Greenwood. And defying one last Mississippi tradition—of taking it easy in August—volunteers mounted their final surge, knocking on doors, signing up names, helping SNCC finish frantic preparations to take Freedom Summer to the national stage.
A grim irony surrounded the name of the juke joint frequented by volunteers in Greenwood. The sign above the door read Bullin’s Café, but the manager went by the name of Blood, so everyone called the place Blood’s. Inside, where a red neon glow lit pool tables and pinball games, Blood’s offered a safe—even air-conditioned—spot to talk over Greenwood’s escalating violence. More shots fired into the SNCC office. More canvassers assaulted, cars chased, Freedom Democrat forms thrown into the street. While SNCC struggled to quell black rage—“They keep killin’ our people, when are we goin’ to stop them? When? ”—a group of teenagers calling themselves “The Peacemakers” began pushing adults to be more militant. Silas McGhee, still trying to integrate the Leflore Theater, still getting beaten, chased, arrested, was elected Peacemaker president. Silas’s entire family, feisty Laura McGhee and her sons, was now leading the outcries at raucous, bitter mass meetings. So it was with some surprise that, on the night of August 10, a different kind of Freedom Song filled the Elks Hall where Martin Luther King had appeared so triumphantly in July.
Harry Belafonte had responded to a call for help. SNCC did not have enough money to send Freedom Democrats to the convention in Atlantic City. Throughout the first week of August, the world-famous calypso singer, who had helped bankroll the Freedom Rides and the March on Washington, held $50-a-plate dinners in five East Coast cities. With the discovery of bodies making headlines, money poured in, more than Belafonte could safely wire to Mississippi. He decided to go to Greenwood himself—carrying $60,000 in cash. For security, he took a friend. “They might think twice about killing two big niggers,” Belafonte joked to Sidney Poitier. Wary of Mississippi but wanting to help, Poitier agreed. Shortly after midnight on August 10, they sent word ahead. The singer whose “Banana Boat Song” had become a folk standard and the first black to win a Best Actor Oscar would arrive in Greenwood that same evening. Belafonte wanted to be met at the airport “by someone important,” COFO heard. Preferably Bob Moses. “No press on arrival, please.” Word of the visit electrified Greenwood, and by dusk, the Elks Hall was rocking.
Shortly after sunset, skimming in low over the Delta, the Piper Cub arrived right on time. So did the Klan. Three SNCC cars sat on the tarmac in the muggy darkness. From the small plane stepped the two celebrities, Belafonte’s wide smile instantly recognizable, Poitier’s onscreen serenity seeming on edge. James Forman met the pair, shook hands, and steered them to the middle car. The convoy pulled out and drove through the airport gate. Suddenly, headlights flashed in the distance. Belafonte, holding the satchel stuffed with cash, noted how comforting it was to see SNCC support all around them, but Forman told him the headlights belonged to Klansmen. For the next twenty minutes, the three vehicles wove through cotton fields like hunted rabbits. Klansmen repeatedly rammed the rear car, which shifted back and forth