Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [53]
“Mr. President, I wanted to let you know we’ve found the car. . . . Now whether there are any bodies in the car, we won’t know until we can get into the car ourselves . . . but I did want you to know. Apparently what’s happened—these men have been killed.”
“Well now, what would make you think they’ve been killed?” the president asked.
“Because of the fact that it is the same car that they were in in Philadelphia, Mississippi . . . ,” Hoover answered. “This is merely an assumption that probably they were burned in the car. On the other hand, they may have been taken out and killed on the outside.”
“Or maybe kidnapped and locked up.”
“Well, I would doubt whether those people down there would give them even that much of a break.”
Hoover called back an hour later, but the conversation was cut short when Carolyn and Robert Goodman were escorted into the Oval Office. With them was Nathan Schwerner. Frazzled, red-eyed from lack of sleep, the parents had flown from New York that morning. Hearing the president mention the car, Carolyn Goodman wanted to leap over the huge desk, shouting, “Are they all right?” LBJ hung up, stepped around the desk, and, towering over the slim blond woman, took her hand and broke the news. The “three kids” were still missing, he said. All the powers of the Justice Department and the Department of Defense were being thrown into the search. After twenty minutes, the families left, impressed that the president, as Carolyn Goodman recalled, “changed from a public figure . . . to a human being genuinely concerned about the life of my son.”
That afternoon in Neshoba County, heat melted into thundershowers, curtailing the FBI search, but aftershocks continued to ripple across America. TV bulletins interrupted soap operas and quiz shows: Robert Kennedy was canceling a trip to Poland. The president was sending former CIA director Allen Dulles to Jackson. More FBI agents were on their way. When night fell again, COFO’s WATS line recorded local shock waves. Every report of harassment, every call about a late volunteer, stirred panic. And for the third night in a row, the terror ratcheted up another notch. Shots hit a black minister’s home and a Negro café in Jackson. A firebomb struck a meeting hall on the Gulf Coast. Rumors spread through the coastal town of Moss Point—two black children had eaten poisoned candy thrown from a passing car. One was dead. In the Delta, whites chased reporters out of Ruleville, then drove through “the quarters” hurling bottles and Molotov cocktails.
On Wednesday morning, photos of the charred station wagon jutting from a Mississippi swamp accompanied front-page headlines across the nation: “Burned Car Clue in Hunt for Three Men” (Washington Post), “Dulles Will Direct Rights Trio Hunt” (Los Angeles Times), “Wreckage Raises New Fears over Fate of Missing Men” (New York Times). By noon, marchers were picketing federal buildings in Chicago, New York, and the nation’s capital. At the NAACP national convention in Washington, D.C., members walked out to join the protests. Robert Kennedy went with Myrlie Evers, Medgar’s widow, to shake hands with demonstrators. Back at the epicenter, police with shotguns, automatic weapons, and riot clubs circled the Neshoba County courthouse. All along the street, all through shops and stores, all up and down covered sidewalks, locals seethed with rage and denial.
“They had no business down here.”
“COFO must have burned their own car to make the hoax look convincing. They’re probably far out of the county laughing.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if they had stayed home where they belong.”
“How long do you think we’d last in Harlem? ”
Swarming with reporters, invaded by the FBI, “the other Philadelphia” was just a shot away from a full-blown race war. Shortly after noon, the trigger was cocked when a caravan