Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [97]
Toward 9:00 p.m., California time, the crisp, white-haired candidate stepped to the podium. When Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” applause shook the Cow Palace for nearly a minute. Back in Mississippi, Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers was watching. Taken by Goldwater’s signature phrase, Bowers added it to his Klan Konstitution. When Goldwater finished, red, white, and blue balloons drifted from the ceiling to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Goldwater would lose badly that November, but the conservative revolt he started on that so-called Freedom Day would grow throughout the decade.
Republicans in San Francisco had not yet begun to celebrate when the fear of another disappearance in Mississippi ended with a phone call. At 6:30 p.m., one of the missing in Jasper County got through to the Meridian office. He had called several times, but the phone had been busy. All four men were safe and on their way back.
In Canton, Barney Frank was at an auto yard, struggling to claim the confiscated truck and its dangerous cargo of Freedom Democrat forms. The Harvard grad student was assisted by a movie star. Richard Beymer, handsome leading man of West Side Story and The Longest Day, had taken a summer away from Hollywood to volunteer. “I was always complaining about America,” Beymer remembered, “and my agent finally said, ‘Look, why don’t you either do something or shut up.’ ” So Beymer had put his career on hold to spend a summer in Mississippi. Along with canvassing in Canton, he was filming a documentary about the summer project. When he arrived at the auto yard that Thursday, Beymer found Barney Frank arguing with the owner. They would need $35 to claim the vehicle, Frank said. The two scrounged the money, and by the time an enormous orange sun silhouetted plantation shacks on the Delta, the future congressman and the movie star were driving the truck north to Greenwood. “Beymer drove because I couldn’t drive a stick shift,” Frank recalled. “I remember the papers were flying all over the place.” No one had inspected the truck’s contents. No names had been revealed. And back in Canton, the two volunteers had been released.
Freedom Day had been a harbinger of change in America. Across Mississippi, however, it was just another day. Cops harassed volunteers. Threats came into project offices. Cars and pickups roared outside. In McComb, rumor had it that whites would soon blow the Freedom House “off the map.” In Natchez, a white minister was collecting funds to rebuild burned black churches. The fund already topped $1,000. And in Shaw, phone calls were still going out to parents soliciting $4,500 in bail needed for volunteers in Drew’s sweatbox jail. In Greenwood, however, bail was out of the question.
Deep in the bowels of the Leflore County courthouse, 111 people were packed into dank, muggy cells. Facing a long night, the prisoners sang, talked, and refused to eat. The women had started the hunger strike after one spit out her rice and lima beans—laced with pepper. Dusk and the afternoon downpour had brought little