Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [132]
With the Atlantic City convention looming, SNCC had become a well-oiled machine, churning out position papers, brochures, lists of delegates to be lobbied. The president of the United States, however, was not sleeping well. For weeks, LBJ had been sitting up nights brooding about the Freedom Democrats. To some, their challenge appeared quixotic, but Johnson knew that if Freedom Democrats came before the full convention, and if, moved by a summer of horror stories from Mississippi, delegates seated them and snubbed Mississippi’s white power elite, the “Solid South” would be solidly incensed. On August 6, Johnson and his advisers met in the Oval Office to discuss this “ticking time bomb.” A week later, they were still seeking a solution. “There’s no compromise,” the president said. “You can seat one or the other. You can’t seat both of them because if you do, then the other one walks out.” And the walkout, LBJ knew, would not be limited to Mississippi. “If we mess with the group of Negroes that were elected to nothing, that met in a hotel room . . . and throw out the governor and elected officials of the state—if we mess with them, we will lose fifteen states without even campaigning.” With just a week left until the convention, United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther agreed with Johnson—if the Freedom Democrats did not drop their challenge, “We’re going to lose the election. . . . We really think that Goldwater’s going to be president.”
With Harry Belafonte’s cash, SNCC had chartered buses to leave for the Democratic Convention on August 19. As the days dwindled, canvassers accelerated their last-ditch drive. Register. Sign here. “Help make Mississippi part of the U.S.A.” Because sharecroppers were no longer in the fields, Greenwood volunteers set up tables in the quarters. Whites drove past, glaring, threatening, but signatures piled up. The trick, SNCC had taught volunteers, was to link the political to the personal. Tired of trudging dirt roads? Join the Freedom Democrats, and someday your streets will be paved. Fed up with senators like John Stennis, mouthpiece of Delta planters, and James Eastland, a Delta planter himself? “If we can get enough people to register, we can throw out Senator Eastland’s party at the big National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. . . . Yes, Mr. Jackson signed. No, no one sees these forms except us, and we take good care of them.” Register. Sign here.
Freedom Schools also did their part. Teachers continued to canvass on weekends, and some even sent their older students door-to-door. The teens were appalled to meet elders who insisted they did not care about voting or “just didn’t have the time.” “I just stood there wondering why he kept saying ‘I don’t have the time,’ ” a student wrote, “because all he was doing was just sitting there doing nothing. . . . As I walked away, my mind kept wondering, ‘Why? Why?’ ”
Back in class, Freedom Schools continued to surpass all expectations. A thousand students had been expected; twice that many were now enrolled. Some schools remained little more than shacks lit only by curiosity. Others met in dingy church basements or in the ample shade of chinaberry trees. Yet regardless of the setting, each school dared Mississippi to dampen its spirit. Hands flew in the air, waved, begged to be called