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By Root 1732 0

writing. Farther south, in Petal, Mississippi, P. D. East, editor, publisher, ad salesman, reporter, and typesetter for the Petal Paper, denounced the spreading “assdom.” East ran mock Citizens’ Council ads asking readers to “Join the Glorious Citizens Clan . . . the Bigger and Better Bigots Bureau.” Like Hazel Brannon Smith, East was boycotted. The Petal Paper survived only on out-of-state sales. And still farther south, in the shipyard town of Pascagoula, publisher Ira Harkey Jr. had the audacity to remove the labels “nigger” and “colored” from his newspaper, then editorialize against local “goons” and “Hateists.” They responded by shooting into his house and burning a cross on his lawn. The hatred hardened, finally bringing on Mississippi’s greatest fear—the return of northern troops.

Mississippians thought they knew how to handle any Negro who tried to enroll at Ole Miss. The first, in 1958, was sent to a mental institution. But in 1962, James Meredith’s pending enrollment threw the charming old town of Oxford into an uproar. “Dixie” blared on radio stations. Confederate flags flew. Rebel yells sounded in the streets, and whites from as far south as the Gulf Coast poured into Oxford armed for battle. Federal marshals arrived on troop trucks. On September 30, as darkness descended on campus, bricks smashed cars and windows. Mississippi highway patrolmen withdrew, enraging Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who sent in more marshals. All night the rioting continued, leaving two dead, twenty-eight shot, hundreds beaten, cars burned, buildings gutted. The next morning, federal troops escorted Meredith through the rubble and into class. “We hate violence,” one student said, “but we are determined to keep our way of life. Nobody can take it away from us, and I would die for it.”

Federal troops stayed on the Ole Miss campus until the following August. Come 1964, three years after the centennial secession parade, the Civil War remained an open sore, the Oxford “occupation” had rekindled smoldering hatreds, and Mississippi had become a pressure cooker. In March, news of the summer project sent tremors through the state. Freedom Summer planners announced, again and again, that volunteers coming to Mississippi would not march, sit in, or protest. In a letter to all county sheriffs, planners explained, “The project is concerned with construction, not agitation.” Yet that spring, the Mississippi legislature passed a spate of laws doubling the number of state police and banning picketing, leafleting, and assembly.

While the state legislature met in emergency session, Mississippi’s KGB made its own preparations for Freedom Summer. Throughout April and May, the State Sovereignty Commission held clinics for sheriffs and cops, advising them of new state laws for handling the incoming wave of “communists, sex perverts, odd balls, and do-gooders.” The agency also hired two black spies it called Informant X and Informant Y. X’s job was to travel with civil rights workers. “It will be a long hot summer in Mississippi,” X reported back, “because they are going to demonstrate in the streets of Jackson until the ‘walls of segregation’ come tumbling down.” Attending the Ohio training, X reported, “The white girls have been going around with the Negro boys and Negro girls going with the white boys.” While X traveled, Y infiltrated the Jackson headquarters of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of civil rights agencies in Mississippi.

COFO headquarters would be the nerve center of Freedom Summer. Located on Lynch Street in the black section of Jackson, COFO shared a low brick building with the Streamline Bar and Billiards. As Freedom Summer approached, the office was far busier than the adjacent bar. Phones rang incessantly. Women sat at typewriters clacking out letters, lists, solicitations, and a stream of reports on all aspects of the summer project. Meetings in smoke-filled back rooms went on past midnight. Boxes of books and clothes—donations from around the country—piled up in corners. Moving freely through