Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [152]
The following morning, sixty-seven Freedom Democrats filed onto buses. Perhaps a few took final glances at the pale blue above the shoreline, at the ghetto surrounding their hotel, at the Ferris wheel spinning slowly in the distance. Then the buses pulled out. Across America, the compromise was being hailed in the press—“a significant moral and political victory” (Los Angeles Times); “a triumph of Moral force” (New York Times); “nothing short of heroic” (Washington Post). But Freedom Democrats did not feel victorious. They were headed back to Mississippi, where sharecroppers would soon return to the fields and volunteers would be gone, taking with them the nation’s attention. “You don’t know how they goin’ to do us!” a black man in Greenwood said. “It’s goin’ to be hell when you leave!” The Freedom Democrats continued their long, sad return, west across Pennsylvania and Ohio, then south through Kentucky and Tennessee, heading home.
The last departing volunteers also went home that weekend. The summer of solidarity, of songs sung with hands clasped, heads swaying, ended with young men and women, battered and exhausted, slipping one by one out of the state. Most left unnoticed, but one was spotted on a bus out of Clarksdale. A woman seated beside her noticed her midwestern accent and asked if she had been part of the summer project. When the volunteer nodded, the Mississippi native turned somber. “I just want you to know,” the woman said, “that some of us have really done our best, and we’ve educated the people who have worked for us and have lived with us, and we care about them.” Then the bus crossed the Mississippi line.
Sometime during that final week of Freedom Summer, a Sovereignty Commission investigator went to Batesville to check out voter registration in Panola County. Parking behind the courthouse, the man spotted several black women beside a young white man. All were discussing how to register.
Stepping inside the courthouse, the investigator found his way to the registrar’s office and asked how the voting drive was progressing.
“Fine,” the registrar answered.
And how many Negroes had been registered that summer?
“Something over seven hundred.”
The investigator was shocked. “My country man!” he said. “What has happened that could justify that many Negroes qualifying in the last sixty days to vote in this county? ”
“Well, you know, I’m under an injunction.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that but I still can’t see how that many could qualify in so short a period of time.”
The registrar wearily explained. It seemed some clerks had taken the federal injunction very seriously. They were actually helping Negroes fill out forms. Pointing out mistakes. Allowing them to be corrected. The investigator tried to contain his anger. This was not what the injunction intended, he said. But the registrar insisted—he did not want to be subpoenaed again. Another trip to federal court might bring an even harsher ruling.
Shaking his head, the investigator walked down the hall. In the district attorney’s office, he heard worse news. The COFO drive had “snowballed,” the DA said. It had gone “completely out of control.” Negroes were coming in from all over the county. Nothing seemed to stop them. They just kept filling out forms, dozens each week, all passing without a test, all approved as voters. This was bound to spread to the whole Delta. Tallahatchie was already under an injunction, and more would surely come. What could be done? The investigator said he would take up the matter with the state attorney general. He would be back on Friday. On his way out, he saw more blacks coming, walking up the steps, out of the heat, into the coolness of the