Freedom Summer - Bruce W. Watson [99]
As July crawled toward August, volunteers wondered—had it only been a month? The slow, sweltering afternoons, the dark, fearful nights, the roof-lifting mass meetings, the soulful dinners with host families, the Fourth of July picnics, all leading back to the shocking disappearance and rush of arrival—hadn’t the summer lasted forever? Did their comfortable lives back home still exist? Bob Moses had warned of this, too. “When you’re not in Mississippi, it’s not real,” he had told them in Ohio, “and when you’re there the rest of the world isn’t real.”
But one eternal month had not merely warped time—it had accelerated Freedom Summer. Mississippi remained a powder keg, rife with random beatings, absurd arrests, and roaring pickups circling project offices. Several attacks per day were now being chalked onto a blackboard outside COFO headquarters in Jackson.
• McComb: Mount Zion Hill Baptist Church in Pike County bombed or burned to ground.
• Philadelphia: Columbia law student and a writer beaten with chain by two middle-aged white men in early afternoon.
• Batesville: 8 people detained one and one-half hours by sheriff . . . released into crowd of whites standing about. Local volunteer hit hard in jaw by white man.
Encounters with whites had become a manic game of chance. Crossing the tracks and heading downtown, one never knew what might happen. Those huddled men on the bench ahead might just glare or flash their middle fingers. The thin-lipped man in the passing car might merely pass. That trio of young toughs hanging around the gas station might settle for threats. But just as easily, the men on the bench could uncoil. Empty beer bottles could fly from that car. Those three thugs might explode. Volunteers pressed their luck every day, and most came home unscathed. But every day, luck ran out for a few.
A month of Freedom Summer had weeded out the fearful. Several volunteers had given up and gone home. The rest, hardened by Mississippi, inspired by its local heroes, dug in and focused on their jobs—teaching another class, knocking on another door, or just being there, white with black in Mississippi. By the third week of July, the tender wounds of violence were hardening into a callused defiance. The defiance showed in how volunteers joked about their lives. “The mosquitoes down here are vicious,” a Hattiesburg volunteer wrote in her diary. “I’m sure they must be hired by the Klan or the White Citizens Council.” From Ruleville, a man wrote home: “You will all be glad to hear that my odor is strong enough to kill a sunflower at 20 feet.” And in Greenwood, a volunteer gave his parents graphic descriptions of recent mayhem, then concluded, “Ho hum. This violent life rolls on. We Shall Overcome.”
The defiance also revealed itself in a new attitude toward Mississippi’s “tough towns.” Once avoided, places like Drew and McComb were now invaded by volunteers, filling beehive offices, meeting local heroes, daring police and locals to pounce. Even Emmett Till’s watery graveyard—Tallahatchie County—would soon have its day at the courthouse. Finally, the defiance changed the way violence was described. Calls to the WATS line now spoke of “the usual police harassment,” “the usual speech” from a cop, “the usual” phone calls spewing “the usual” hatred. A beating was “nothing serious. Bruises on face. And cuts.”
Freedom Summer’s gathering momentum spread this renewed boldness to every corner of Mississippi. COFO sued Sheriff Rainey, the Klan, and the Citizens’ Council, charging that they had “engaged in widespread terroristic acts . . . to intimidate, punish and deter the Negro citizens of Mississippi.” No one expected to win the suit, but at least the chaw-chewing sheriff would have to hire a lawyer and swagger into court. In Harmony, where a cross had blazed in response to the Civil Rights Act, the rhythmic rapping of hammers echoed across farms and fields. Denied a building