Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [131]
While Freedom Day unfolded in Sharkey County, one hundred miles south in Hattiesburg, a Freedom School teacher helped five teenagers try to get cards at the whites-only library. Sandra Adickes and her students quickly learned another lesson—that in Mississippi, even librarians could be mean. “Look, close your mouth and open your mind,” the librarian snapped at the kids. “Try to act intelligent. You don’t really want to use the library.” When the students insisted, cops came and closed the library. When the students returned the next week, the Hattiesburg Public Library was closed indefinitely.
That same Friday, the Neshoba County Fair drew to a close. Many left disappointed. As expected, the storytelling and singing had lasted till dawn. The smell of kerosene had wafted above the aroma of cotton candy and moonshine sold by strolling vendors. But “Mississippi’s Giant House Party” had long been known for its rousing political speeches kicking off campaigns. (Ronald Reagan would start his presidential campaign there in 1980.) In the summer of 1964, however, the stigma of speaking just two miles from a triple grave had scared politicians away. Barry Goldwater Jr. and George Wallace canceled appearances, leaving crowds to settle for their own governors. Ex-governor Ross Barnett joked about summer volunteers needing “Mr. Clean.” Paul Johnson praised the “law-abiding” people of Neshoba County and blasted Freedom Summer. “The white people of Mississippi know that the vast majority of the colored people of this state have turned their backs on the motley crew of invaders of our state,” the governor said. “We will not permit outsiders to subvert our people and our rights.” In midweek, the Klan leafleted the fair, a small plane dropping billows of brochures calling Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney “Communist Revolutionaries, actively working to undermine and destroy Christian Civilization.” Fairgoers were in no mood. Most simply stepped over the white trash littering the fairgrounds. Following a Friday of harness races and Grand Ole Opry shows, the fair closed just after midnight. By then, the lull following the discovery of three bodies had ended. That weekend, a human firestorm swept across Mississippi.
COFO’s blackboard dutifully charted each incident, but there was no more order to the mayhem than there was to the weather. Starting with a midnight bomb shattering windows and gouging a gaping hole outside a supermarket in McComb, the weekend spiraled into chaos. Shots echoed down the mean streets of Jackson, the quaint streets of Canton, the embattled streets of Greenwood. A bomb meant for the Natchez Freedom House ignited a tavern next door. A mob in Laurel brandished baseball bats. In Greenwood, volunteers were closing the SNCC office when someone shouted, “They’ve shot Silas! They’ve shot Silas in the head!” Peacemaker Silas McGhee, sleeping in a car outside a restaurant, had awoken just in time to see a pistol aim, a spark flash. When the car door was opened, Silas tumbled into the gutter. Frantic SNCC staffers tore off their shirts to soak up the blood, plugged the hole in Silas’s jaw with their fingers, then rushed him to a hospital, where he lay on a gurney in a hall, waiting for the “colored doctor.” Though his jaw was shattered, Silas survived after surgery. Laura McGhee, now even more legendary after decking a cop with a right hook, kept the bullet.
Elsewhere in Mississippi, a pickup rammed a SNCC car in some little hamlet where everyone knew everyone and everything had been peaceful before the invaders came. Then there were arrests for no sane reason, a mindless beating or two, four random shootings that missed. And to cap the madness, at precisely 10:00 p.m. Saturday night, a hundred crosses blazed