Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [33]
“We’re gonna give you a hard time, goddamn it!”
“We ought to kill these bastards right now!”
The volunteers were stunned. Had these stellar specimens of humanity gotten up at 5:00 a.m. to threaten them? Had they stayed up all night? Wasn’t there anything better to do in Batesville—wherever it was? Cars and pickups kept passing. Nine volunteers stood slapping at mosquitoes, their suitcases and duffel bags in a heap, their hopes on hold. Someone had better come soon, someone said.
The opening day of Freedom Summer began with volunteers stranded on Mississippi Route 6. What followed was a day like few others, a day when it seemed possible to believe there were no barriers between black and white, a day when history seemed forgiven and the future worth the wait. Some 250 Americans had come to the poorest, most explosive state in the nation, and even if they were seen as “invaders,” they shrugged off the label and went to work. Back in Ohio, Bob Moses had told them to get busy right away to show “that you did not come down to organize any sit-ins . . . marches or demonstrations.” But it was Sunday, the first day, and their only work was simply to be there, whites walking through the black side of town, eating in black homes, introducing themselves in black churches, sitting on porches where no whites had ever sat before. The day would end ominously, but one woman later recalled its beginning, the first meetings: “Their demeanor, how they treated us, how they approached you, how they were courteous and polite, and how they didn’t talk down to you. There was no fear associated in talking to them. There was no consciousness of your place with them.” This was why, despite all the warnings, the fears, the skepticism about what little they could accomplish, they had come to Mississippi, after all.
On the road somewhere near Batesville, volunteers waited another ten strange minutes. Insect swarms tormented them. More cars and pickups zoomed into view, revved their fury, and roared down the road. A police car passed, then the sheriff. The sun climbed the simmering sky. Finally toward 5:30 a.m., an old white panel truck pulled up. The driver introduced himself as Mr. Miles, their contact, and with a palpable sense of relief, the whole group piled in the back. The highway patrolman quickly pulled the truck over and gave Mr. Miles a ticket for running a stop sign he had not run, but he was allowed to go on. Within minutes the truck had crossed the railroad tracks, had taken a U-turn onto a frontage road, and was approaching a modest house behind the deep drainage ditch that ran the length of Tubbs Street. As they entered Robert Miles’s home, volunteers noted several bullet holes in the white side paneling. Inside they spotted rifles and shotguns behind doors. But the breakfast, served by a middle-aged black woman still in her bathrobe, was all anyone could ask for.
Over eggs, spicy sausage, and the first grits most had tasted, volunteers met the Miles family. Dressed most often in white shirt and tie, fifty-year-old Robert Miles exuded confidence, though whites called it “arrogance.” “He thinks out his moves carefully and doesn’t take any crap from the white man,” Chris Williams wrote home. Since returning from World War II, Miles had been a civil rights pioneer. In the late 1950s, he had cofounded the Panola County Voters League, which had sued the county to open up voter registration. For his courage, Miles had seen his home shot into and a cross burned on his lawn. Violence, he had long ago decided, was “something I had to live with . . . we weren’t going anywhere, we didn’t have anywhere to go.”
At the breakfast table, volunteers smiled at eight-year-old Kevin Miles and his younger brother Vernon who, if they were startled to see white