Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [128]
Jogging behind James Forman, the two stars entered the Elks Hall. The crowd exploded. A woman lowered herself from the balcony to throw her arms around Belafonte. Freedom Songs followed, including one based on Belafonte’s hit:
Freee-dom! I say Free-ee-ee-dom
Freedom’s comin’ and it won’t be long.
Belafonte later sang his own “Day-O,” then, to great cheers, held up his satchel and handed it over. When Poitier stepped to the podium, his suavity failed him. “I have been a lonely man all my life,” he said, choking up, “until I came to Greenwood, Mississippi. I have been lonely because I have not found love, but this room is overflowing with it.” Belafonte and Poitier spent an anxious night in a house guarded by shotguns. To keep calm, they did calisthenics and told ghost stories. The next morning, they flew back to New York.
Harry Belafonte was the biggest star to grace Freedom Summer, but his was not the only famous voice. The Mississippi Caravan of Music ranged from little-known Greenwich Village acts to headliners who had just sold out the Newport Folk Festival. With the folk boom at its height, young urban whites had recently “discovered” old Mississippi bluesmen—Muddy Waters and Mississippi John Hurt had both played at Newport. Now folksingers came south to share their music. Singing in Freedom Schools, they introduced black children to English ballads and American folk songs. Singers were startled to meet kids who had never heard of Leadbelly, or even Mississippi-born “Big Bill” Broonzy. After evening performances at Freedom Houses, the musicians often sang with stragglers till well past midnight. For volunteers, the songs brought relief from long, lingering days. For singers, banjos and guitars kept terror at bay, terror that had gripped them the moment they entered Mississippi.
“Are you coming down here to sing for the niggers?” a man asked Pete Seeger when he landed in Jackson.
“I’ve been asked down here by some friends to sing,” Seeger replied. “I hope that anyone who wants to hear me can come, Negro or white.”
“Well, you just better watch your step,” the man said. “If we hadn’t been on the plane when I heard you talking I would have knocked the shit out of you.”
To Seeger, who had cut short a world tour to lend his voice to Freedom Summer, Mississippi was just another impoverished country, but for other singers, it was a nightmare. Judy Collins planned a two-week tour but, after singing in Greenville and Clarksdale, canceled further concerts. Phil Ochs, whose song “Too Many Martyrs” eulogized Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, was convinced he would be shot onstage. At each concert, Ochs had another singer scan the audience, then sprinted offstage after his last song. Black folksinger Julius Lester felt death all around him. “Each morning I wake thinking, today I die,” he wrote in his journal. Touring for two weeks, Lester slept in his car and lost fifteen pounds. Every car backfiring, every slam of a screen door, made him jump. But once back in Greenwich Village, Lester convinced other singers to head south. More came to Mississippi, although the no-shows included the Staples Singers, Tom Paxton, and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Other than polite applause, no one is sure how black kids reacted to whites strumming “Skip to My Lou” and “Hava Nagila.” But none could doubt their reaction to their first live drama.
On a sultry night in early August, beneath spotlights laced with swarming insects, six actors stared out from a barren stage behind the Freedom House in McComb. Adults fanned themselves. Squirming kids fell silent.