Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [67]
Mississippi’s other island of hospitality lay seventy miles from Greenville. During that first week of July, Holmes County volunteers were hosted by a pale, red-haired woman wearing a string of pearls. Hazel Brannon Smith, the crusading editor fresh from winning the Pulitzer Prize, welcomed volunteers into the white-pillared house she called Hazelwood. Other Mississippi newspapers were blasting these “race mixing invaders,” “leftist hep cat students,” and “nutniks.” And although most volunteers were as clean-cut as the sailors still searching the swamps, other newspapers described them as “unshaven and unwashed trash.” But Smith’s Lexington Advertiser proudly introduced “thirty college students who are interested in human and civil rights.” Calling the summer project a “Peace Corps type undertaking,” Smith profiled volunteers, their colleges, majors, and interests. All over town, she had heard the grumbling, the idea “that if everyone would just leave us alone we would work out all our problems.” In her “Through Hazel Eyes” column, she answered back. “The truth is these young people wouldn’t be here if we had not largely ignored our responsibilities to our Negro citizens.”
Yet Carter and Smith stood alone. Mayors throughout Mississippi, though deciding against protesting in the nation’s capital, condemned volunteers for “doing irreparable damage to the friendly relations that exist among our people.” Police found any excuse to arrest them—for speeding, reckless driving, even “reckless walking.” And rednecks, peckerwoods, “white trash,” used every brand of terror to drive them out. The actual number of homegrown terrorists may have been only a dozen in each town, but the rest, if they disapproved of the relentless violence, said nothing.
By early July, the nerve center of Freedom Summer was run ragged. With its air-conditioning broken, the COFO office in Jackson sweltered. Sweat ran down foreheads, soaked clothes, dripped off chins. Dogs roamed freely through the clutter of old newspapers, boxes of books, and empty RC Cola bottles. A sign on one wall read, “Nobody Would Dare Bomb This Place and End This Confusion.” Each day seemed to pile on the tasks—always more bail to raise, more reports, lists, and letters to type, another volunteer’s hometown press to contact. Then there were visitors in need of couches to sleep on, rides to arrange, calls to raise more money. And now that everyone had settled in, the time had come to harvest democracy, shack by shack.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party waited in the wings. The MFDP’s bold challenge at the Democratic National Convention was still seven weeks away. To unseat Mississippi’s all-white delegation, Freedom Democrats would need as many registration forms as possible for their parallel party. But in early July, both Atlantic City and late August seemed as far off as distant countries. There would be time to sign up Freedom Democrats—later. With so many eager faces suddenly swarming through project offices, SNCC’s immediate goal was getting blacks down to their county courthouses in numbers no one could ignore. Freedom Days, focusing the energy of entire offices on one-day voting drives, were planned for Greenwood, Greenville, Cleveland, Holly Springs . . . To get would-be voters out, volunteers took to the streets.
Like the resurrection of so many decaying buildings, the scene was repeated all over Mississippi that week. A gravel road. A row of cabins. Men and women slumped on porches, numbed by twelve hours of cleaning, cooking, or toiling in the fields. As the western sky reddens, up the road come the “Riders,” clipboards in hand, hair neatly combed, white shirts and pastel blouses spotless and starched. Some in white pairs, others racially mixed, they stride onto each porch, introduce themselves—Len and Bill, Chris and Pam—then talk about the summer project, the registration process, the dream of voting. A few blacks say “Yes, sir” or “Yes’m,” but most just sit and