Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [144]
Having introduced Fred to sex, Freedom Summer had also taught him to handle Mississippi cops. When an Indianola volunteer was arrested, Fred made three quick calls and had the man bailed out within the hour. “Standard Operating Procedure,” he wrote his father. And for the first time all summer, Fred could laugh at Mississippi. One day toward the end of August, he played a little joke on Indianola. A COFO lawyer, hoping to challenge the state ban on leafleting, needed evidence of a permit unjustly denied by the city. Leaflets for mass meetings were usually approved. What event was certain to be turned down? Handwritten fliers were quickly mimeographed:
COME ONE, COME ALL
To the
“FREEDOM HOP”
Indianola’s First Integrated Dance
Big Mixer at the Freedom School
Let’s see all you Southern Guys and Gals . . .
With leaflets in hand, Fred went before the city council. Angry councilmen glared down COFO’s spokesman, who could not say a word. Finally a councilman barked, “What’s this all about?” Fred stood and, without cracking a smile, explained that an integrated dance “would be good for the community, would get everybody together.” Faces reddened. Men muttered—“asking for trouble, just asking for trouble.” A calmer official called an executive session, where the permit was refused. Indianola never held its integrated Freedom Hop, but the law on leafleting was eventually overturned.
On the afternoon Fannie Lou Hamer spoke in Atlantic City, Fred and several others crowded around Mrs. Magruder’s black-and-white TV. Like many volunteers, Fred had heard Hamer tell her story. “We all knew that if she told it on national TV, it would really hit the fan.” She was due to speak . . . due to speak . . . She was speaking—on TV!—telling America about being ordered to withdraw her registration, of telling her boss, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.” Hamer’s voice was strengthening now. “I had to leave that same night.” She sat, arms bulging from her flowered dress, hands folded. At committee tables, members leaned forward, all eyes focused on her.
On the tenth of September 1962, six-teen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker—for me. That same night two girls were shot—in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald’s house was shot in. And June the ninth, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi . . .
Suddenly the networks cut in: “We will return to this scene in Atlantic City but now we switch to the White House.”
Suddenly, on all three networks, the president was preempting the sharecropper. “On this day nine months ago,” LBJ began, “at very nearly this same hour in the afternoon, the duties of this office were thrust upon me by a terrible moment in our nation’s history.” Johnson, knowing he had to talk for ten or more minutes to forestall Fannie Lou Hamer, went on to discuss—nothing. He told reporters he had not chosen a running mate. He explained, in painstaking detail, his criteria. By the time he finished, so had Hamer. Testimony continued. Rita Schwerner told of Governor Paul Johnson slamming the door in her face. CORE’s James