Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [176]
Bright Winn took time out from his plumbing business to watch in his San Francisco home. He looked in vain for his son in the crowd on the Mall, then got a call from him, with cheering in the background. Muriel Tillinghast, though having worked tirelessly for Obama, declined to celebrate in Washington, D.C. Wary of crowds in her native city, she watched the inauguration alone with her cats and turtle in her church in Brooklyn.
. . . and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath. So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. . . .
During the speech, many who had been in Mississippi thought about the martyrs—not just Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, but Herbert Lee and Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and more than a dozen others killed in Mississippi in the name of civil rights. And later that afternoon, some Freedom Summer veterans called each other for the first time in a decade. “It took fo rty-five years,” one said, “but we helped make this day.” Looking back, they took measure of the summer so long ago. They had not been heroes— that honorific was still reserved for the locals. Nor were they crusaders— many had gone before them. The volunteers had merely gone to Mississippi when few others dared to go. As witnesses, as spotlights, they had lent their youthful energy to the struggles of the downtrodden and neglected. Living in shacks, singing in mass meetings, surviving sticky summer nights and inching afternoons, they had endured Mississippi’s hardships. Yet the men and women of Freedom Summer had done more than endure. Echoing William Faulkner’s famous dictum, they had prevailed. They had transcended the hatred, spread the hope, lifted and revived the trampled dream of democracy. Forty-five years after Freedom Summer, their own personal past, filtered through the historic inauguration of a black president, added up to a “freedom high” that lasted for days. And then time went back to work, marching on into an America most dared not imagine they would live to see.
“At the end of it all, I guess what really caught me by surprise is that my fellow citizens voted for Obama in such large numbers, giving him a resounding victory,” Chris Williams said. “I didn’t think we had reached that place yet. How can we not be optimistic?”
Acknowledgments
Because Freedom Summer involved more than one thousand people, each with stories to tell, I am indebted to those who shared their stories, either with me or in letters, journals, diaries, and other first-person sources. Of the fifty-two people I interviewed, some were telling their stories for the first time, and I thank them for their bravery and candor. Many more, including Bob Moses, Hollis Watkins, and other SNCC veterans, graciously took time out from their ongoing activism to share, once again, oft-told stories of that singular summer.
Four names in particular stand out from my list. To Chris Williams, Muriel Tillinghast, Fran O’Brien, and Fred Bright Winn, I offer my deepest thanks. Each put up with two long interviews followed by innumerable nit-picking questions that surfaced from out of nowhere on their e-mail queues. And each responded with more thought and detail than I had any right to expect. Along with my admiration for their courage in going to Mississippi, each has my thanks for looking back over so many years to dredge up memories both joyous and painful.
To my mother’s best friend, dedicated teacher Georgie Cooper, I owe heartfelt thanks for getting me started with a detailed reading list from her native Mississippi. Sadly, Georgie passed away before I could show her all she had taught me. I will never forget her enthusiasm, her accent, or her passion for life and literature.
Thanks also to Jan Hillegas, a Freedom Summer volunteer who has lived in Mississippi since 1964. Jan opened her sizable archive of COFO documents, notably the complete WATS line reports that