Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [138]
At 10:00 p.m., the buses pulled out with a great cheer that broke into Freedom Songs. Instructions had been left in the COFO office—a delegate would call once the buses were safely out of Mississippi. Calculating the distance over winding roads, leaders said the call would come by 3:00 a.m. If no one checked in by 3:15, “begin action.” Singing, shouting out, marveling at the Promised Land where they were bound, delegates rolled north toward the Tennessee line. The call came at 3:02 a.m. The Freedom Democrats were on their way.
If you ask what my politics are, I am a Humanitarian.
—Tennessee Williams
CHAPTER TEN
“The Stuff Democracy Is Made Of ”
All 5,200 delegates descending on the faded resort of Atlantic City at the end of Freedom Summer were Democrats, and all were in a mood to celebrate. With Lyndon Johnson heavily favored to win in November, they looked forward to a political convention without politics. In lieu of debate, there would be parties, dinners, and perhaps a little hijinks. For one rollicking week, democracy would become a showcase. But for sixty-seven Mississippians stepping off buses, blinking in the morning sun, inhaling the salty air, democracy was no showcase; it was a matter of life and death.
The Freedom Democrats included two sons of slaves. Several were veterans—of World Wars I and II—and all were veterans of Mississippi. Many had bullet holes in their front doors, and one had them in his neck and shoulder. All bore the scars of Jim Crow—childhood memories of lynching, adulthoods rife with insults, lives trampled by constant intimidation. Their jobs, like their hometowns, were hardscrabble. Freedom Democrats were farmers and sharecroppers, barbers and undertakers, maids and cooks. Several were illiterate, but all had a seasoned wisdom no classroom could teach. Most were making their first trip out of Mississippi, some their first trips out of the counties where they had been born. Though more comfortable in overalls and housedresses, all had spent two nights on the bus in their Sunday clothes—suits and ties, porkpie hats, ironed skirts and blouses. Their faces were the colors of the mud from which they rose—Delta black and amber clay, brown loam and beige soil. And as proof that theirs was not a “nigger party,” four Freedom Democrats were as white as the Gulf Coast sands—one was a fisherman signed up by the White Folks Project in Biloxi.
Legally, they represented no one. The Freedom Democratic Party was not a legal party in Mississippi. Many expected to be arrested, or worse, when they went home. But morally, the Freedom Democrats represented the very idea of democracy. Their presence in Atlantic City challenged the most sacred American rhetoric. Was America a nation of “liberty and justice for all” ? Was voting a right or a privilege? Did democracy apply just to some, or did it extend from top to bottom, from mansions to shacks, from the halls of power to the broken porches of the powerless?
Their journey north had seemed eternal. Freedom Songs grew tiresome before the buses even reached the state line. Then, shortly after calling to say they were safely out of Mississippi, they were nearly ambushed in Tennessee. Spotting a Klan roadblock ahead—ten white hoods, ten men with rifles—passengers had ducked into the aisles. But a few were ready.
“They start anything, I have a gun,” Hartman Turnbow said. “And my wife—she got one, too. Baby, get out your gun.” Plump, moonfaced “Sweets” Turnbow reached in a paper bag and pulled out a pistol. “We gonna,” her husband drawled, “we gonna kill up a few of ’em.” The driver slowed, but a slim woman crept behind him,