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By Root 1704 0

trendy on campuses, Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. It had much to say about good and evil, he said. Then pausing, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, Moses said softly, “The kids are dead.” He hesitated, letting his words sink in. “When we heard the news at the beginning I knew they were dead. When we heard they had been arrested I knew there had been a frame-up. We didn’t say this earlier because of Rita, because she was really holding out for every hope. There may be more deaths. . . .” Across the auditorium, some looked at their feet, others remained riveted on the reluctant “Jesus of the movement.” “I justify myself because I’m taking risks myself,” Moses continued, “and I’m not asking people to do things I’m not willing to do. And the other thing is, people were being killed already, the Negroes of Mississippi, and I feel, anyway, responsible for their deaths. Herbert Lee killed, Louis Allen killed, five others killed this year. In some way you have to come to grips with that, know what it means. If you are going to do anything about it, other people are going to be killed.”

Moses knew what some were saying—that the summer project was “an attempt to get some people killed so the federal government will move into Mississippi.” Yet he saw a bigger, darker picture. “In our country we have some real evil, and the attempt to do something about it involves enormous effort . . . and therefore tremendous risks. If for any reason you’re hesitant about what you’re getting into, it’s better for you to leave. Because what has got to be done has to be done in a certain way, or otherwise it won’t get done.” Volunteers sat, some faces streaked with tears, others just shining on Moses, pinning their faith in America, in humanity, on his words.

“I would have gone anywhere,” one woman recalled. “I would have done anything he asked me to do, I trusted him so much.”

After a few more comments, Moses slowly walked out. No one said a word, no one took the stage. Volunteers sat in the stillness. Finally from the back of the auditorium, a lone woman sang:

They say that freedom is a constant struggle is a constant struggle

They say that freee-dom is a constant struggle.

Across the auditorium, people crossed arms, held hands, joined in.

Many stayed up all night. A laundry room discussion lasted until 4:00 a.m. Others just wandered. A few stood in phone booths, arguing with parents. “If someone in Nazi Germany had done what we’re doing,” one woman shouted, “then your brother would still be alive!” A Long Island woman heard her father yell, “You’re killing your mother! Do you know what it takes to make a child?” But all Heather Tobis could think was, “Do you know what it takes to make a child in Mississippi?” The following evening, Tobis was on one of two buses heading south. Songs again paced the miles through Kentucky and into Tennessee. The buses reached Memphis at 5:00 a.m. Sunday. And there was Bob Moses to help them make connections to Greyhounds stopping in Clarksdale, Vicksburg, Ruleville. . . .

A hot, syrupy haze hung above a sea of knee-high cotton when, at 2:00 p.m., the Greyhound pulled into Ruleville. On that crawling Sunday, the Delta town of 2,000 slumbered, but when twenty volunteers stepped out with luggage, boxes, and bedrolls, Ruleville awoke in a foul mood. Across from the bus station, several brawny white men, beer cans in hand, stared down the newcomers. Seconds later, a woman wearing pink hair curlers drove past the bus and waved her middle finger. The sheriff’s pickup pulled up with a German shepherd in back, snarling, tearing at his cage. Next came the mayor, a short, jowly man stepping from his car, wearing a straw hat. When several black families drove up, another standoff looked likely, but then Fannie Lou Hamer strode onto the scene. The sturdy woman directed host families to take everyone to her house. There they met volunteers who had arrived the previous Sunday. All enjoyed an enormous lunch, then cooled off beneath the billowing pecan tree out front. Filling Hamer’s lawn, fanning themselves in the