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By Root 1775 0

faces at their table, did nothing more than giggle. Later that week volunteers would learn why Mrs. Miles—Mona—seemed on edge. A few years earlier, a town marshal had badly beaten her niece “on account of your father being a smart NAACP nigger!” Bullets later blasted into Mona’s brother’s house and a cross was burned on his lawn, causing him to move to Detroit. The stress had left Mrs. Miles with a “nervous condition.” She spoke freely, read widely, but lived in her bathrobe, never going outside. Still, she managed to temper the constant danger with humor. “I don’t see why they don’t let us swim in segregated pools,” she often said. “It’s been proven that we don’t fade.” When talk at the table turned to farming, Mr. Miles—volunteers would always call him that—spoke of his six hundred acres of wheat, soybeans, cotton, and corn. After breakfast, “Junior,” the Mileses’ oldest son, recently graduated from Alcorn A & M, took the group around the farm. Chris was amazed by the pigs, especially an eight-hundred-pound sow buried to its snout in mud to escape the heat that by 10:00 a.m. already topped 90 degrees. A tour of the discolored old barn filled the remaining time until church.

West Camp Baptist Church stood just a few blocks from the Miles home, but it was a world away from any church Chris or the others knew. There were no soaring ceilings, just one small room filled with people in their “Sunday best.” Little girls wore cotton-candy dresses, boys chafed at coat and tie, men and women were decked out as if for a wedding. When the hymns began, the music burst from every soul. The preacher’s exhortations were punctuated by calls of “Amen!” or “Tell it!” that filled the room with power and purpose. At the close of the service, “Deacon Miles” introduced the volunteers. Each stood, shyly offering a name and hometown. Baltimore. Ann Arbor. Amherst, Massachusetts. Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Then their host warned the congregation. “Y’all gonna hear a lot of different stories from white folks about what these people are and why they’re down here,” Robert Miles said. “White folks are gonna tell you they’re agitators. You know what an agitator is? An agitator is the piece in the center of a washing machine that spins around to get dirt out. Well, that’s what these people are here for. They’re here to get dirt out.” After parting handshakes and pleased-to meet-you’s, it was back home for lunch. While volunteers ate, then sat out sweltering hours beneath a tree, Robert Miles was on the phone arranging last-minute housing.

Meanwhile across Mississippi, a century of Jim Crow began its long, slow thaw. For this one day, at least until sunset, a sense of wonder drowned all sense of foreboding. Host families took volunteers around “the quarters,” showing them off like prized possessions. “Have you seen my girls yet? ” Old women stopped young “girls” and touched their skin, calling them “skinny” or “pretty.” Children fingered their hair. Hands waved from porches, smiling faces leaned out of windows. Everywhere volunteers walked on that sultry afternoon, down dirt roads leading deeper into labyrinths of shacks, along dust-deviled streets teeming with children, past stoop-shouldered old men sitting and staring, they noticed themselves being noticed. Strangers came out to greet them. Careful to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” they were unfettered in their gratitude.

“We’re mighty glad the good Lord sent you to us.”

“It’s a right fine Christian thing, a fine thing that you all have come here.”

Children ran to the newcomers, asking their names, or stood shyly in the background, whispering behind cupped hands: “There they is!” And from every soul crushed into the Mississippi soil, the same feeling emerged. “I’ve waited eighty years for you to come,” the gray-haired son of a slave told one volunteer. Pressing a dollar into the white hand, he added, “I just have to give you this little bit to let you all know how much we appreciate your coming. I prays for your safety every night, son. God bless you all.”

They had been told to expect the worst