Harold Titus's Blog - Posts Tagged "c-c-bryant"

Here is a useful map of Mississippi.

https://socketize.com/7124/no7141/

It is a truism of the era that the further south you travel the more intense grows the racism, the worse becomes the poverty, and the more brutal is the repression. In the mental geography of the Freedom Movement, the South is divided into zones according to the virulence of bigotry and oppression: the "Border States" (Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and portions of Maryland); the "Upper South" (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Texas); and the "Deep South" (the Eastern Shore of Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana). And then there is Mississippi, in a class by itself — the absolute deepest pit of racism, violence, and poverty.

Duing the post-Depression decades of the 1940s and 1950s, most of the South experiences enormous economic changes. "King Cotton" declines as agriculture diversifies and mechanizes. In 1920, almost a million southern Blacks work in agriculture, by 1960 that number has declined by 75% to around 250,000 — resulting in a huge migration off the land into the cities both North and South. By 1960, almost 60% of southern Blacks live in urban areas (compared to roughly 30% in 1930).

But those economic changes come slowly, if at all, to Mississippi and the Black Belt areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. In 1960, almost 70% of Mississippi Blacks still live in rural areas, and more than a third (twice the percentage in the rest of the South) work the land as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and farm laborers. In 1960, the median income for Afro-Americans in Mississippi is just $1,444 (equal to a bit over $11,000 in 2013), the median income for Mississippi whites is three times higher. More than four out of every five Mississippi Blacks (85%) exist below the official federal poverty line.

Education for Blacks is totally segregated and severely limited. The average funding for Afro-American schools is less than a quarter of that spent to educate white students, and in rural areas the ratio is even more skewed. In 1960, for example, Pike County spends $30.89 to educate each white pupil and only $0.76 cents per Black student. It is no surprise then that only 7% of Mississippi Blacks finish high school, and in the rural areas where children are sent to the fields early in life, functional illiteracy is widespread.

Mississippi is still dominated — economically and politically — by less than 100 plantation barons who lord it over vast cotton fields worked by Black hand-labor using hoes and fingers the way it was done in slavery times. They are determined to keep their labor force cheap and docile. The arch-segregationist Senator James Eastland provides a good example of the economic riches reaped by racism in Mississippi. His huge plantation in Sunflower County produces 5,394 bales of cotton in 1961. He sells that cotton for $890,000 (equal to almost $7,000,000 in 2013 dollars). It costs Eastland $566,000 to produce his cotton for a profit of $324,000 (equal to a bit over $2,500,000 in 2013). The Black men and women who labor in his fields under the blazing sun — plowing, planting, hoeing, and picking — are paid 30 cents an hour (equal to $2.34 in 2013). That's $3.00 for a 10-hour day, $18.00 for a six-day, 60-hour week. The children sent to labor in the fields are paid even less.

This system of agricultural feudalism is maintained by Jim Crow laws, state repression, white terrorism, and the systematic disenfranchisement of Afro-Americans. Overall, whites outnumber Blacks in Mississippi, but the ratio of Blacks to whites is higher than any other state in the union. And in a number of rural counties, Blacks outnumber whites, in some cases by large majorities. Given these demographic realities, the power-elites know white-supremacy can only be maintained if they prevent Afro-Americans from voting. And in that they are ruthless — using rigged "literacy" tests, white-only primaries, poll taxes, arrests, and economic retaliation. And also Klan violence, and even assassinations, which over decades have become an accepted part of Mississippi's southern way of life. On average, six Blacks have been, and are, lynched or killed in racial-murders every year in Mississippi since the 1880s.

According to the 1960 Census, 41% of the Mississippi population is Black, but in 1961 no more than 5% of them are registered to vote. In many of the Black-majority counties not a single Afro-American citizen is registered, not even decorated military veterans. Across the state, of those few Blacks on the voter rolls, only a handful dare to actually cast a ballot. This systematic denial of Black voting rights is replicated in the Black Belt areas of Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and Southwest Georgia (Mississippi 1-3).

Back in the summer of 1960, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, and other local Black leaders in Mississippi told Bob Moses that they needed help with voter registration more than demonstrations against segregation. He promised he would return in the summer of '61, and in July he begins voter registration work in McComb. Staunch, long-time, Movement supporters such as Harry Belafonte and many of SNCC's student leaders also believe that SNCC should focus on voter registration rather than direct action such as sit-ins and Freedom Rides. They argue that poor, rural Blacks have no money for lunch counters or other public facilities and what they need most is political power that in Mississippi has to begin with winning the right to vote.

Other SNCC leaders — many just released from Parchman Prison and Hinds County Jail — argue that the Freedom Rides and other forms of direct action must continue. The protests are gaining momentum and bringing the Movement into the darkest corners of the Deep South, raising awareness, building courage, and inspiring young and old. They are deeply suspicious of Kennedy's demand that they switch from demonstrations to voter registration, and they are unwilling to abandon the tactics that have brought the Movement so far in so short a time.

In August, the issue comes to a head when SNCC meets at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. After three days of passionate debate, SNCC is split right down the middle — half favor continuing direct action, the other half favor switching to voter registration. Ella Baker proposes a compromise — do both. Her suggestion is adopted. Diane Nash is chosen to head direct action efforts and Charles Jones is chosen to head voter registration activity. Both groups send activists to join Bob Moses in McComb.

Amid the fires of the Freedom Rides and the heat of debate, SNCC as an organization is rapidly evolving away from its campus/student roots. More and more SNCC activists are leaving school to become full-time freedom fighters. With money raised by Belafonte, first Charles Sherrod, then Bob Moses, then others are hired as SNCC "field secretaries," devoting their lives to the struggle in the rural areas and small towns of the south. In September, James Forman becomes SNCC's Executive Director to coordinate and lead far-flung projects and a growing staff. Increasingly, it will be the SNCC field staff from projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and Maryland who will shape and lead SNCC in the years to come (Direct 1-2).

Black voter registration in the Deep South is entirely controlled by the white power-structure. For decades they have maintained a savage system of oppression, repression, retaliation, and legal restrictions to keep Blacks politically disenfranchised. The "Jim Crow" schools and school attendance laws systematically and deliberately keep Blacks illiterate and ignorant of government and their political rights while at the same time literacy and civics are made the essential requirements for voter registration through the so-called "literacy tests." Brutal violence, often deadly, and swift economic reprisal are used to deter and punish Black men or women who dare attempt to gain the political franchise.

Voter registration procedures in the Deep South — which vary from state to state and county to county — are based on a voter application and a so-called "literacy test" that prospective voters must pass in order to be registered. The system is designed to allow the county Voter Registrars (all of whom are white, of course) to rig the outcome however they wish. Whites are encouraged to register regardless of their education (or lack thereof), while applications from most Blacks are denied even if they answer every question correctly.

In McComb, for example, the "literacy test" consists in part of the Registrar choosing one of the 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution and asking the applicant to read it aloud and interpret it to his satisfaction. He can assign an easy section, or a dense block of legal baffelgab that even law professors cannot agree on. Then it is entirely up to the Registrar to decide if the applicant's reading and interpretation are adequate. Voters are also required to be of "good moral character," and again the Registrar has sole authority to decide who does, or does not, posses sufficient "moral character."

Blacks who attempt to register in defiance of the white power-structure are harassed and threatened. They are fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes. Many are beaten. Some are murdered. …

In urban areas of the Deep South, a few token Blacks — usually ministers, teachers, doctors, and other professionals — are allowed to register, but never enough to affect the outcome of an election. In the rural counties, particularly those with large Black populations, only a handful — or none at all — are permitted to register (Voter 1-3).

With 12,000 residents, McComb is the largest city in Pike County, Mississippi. … Financed by a wealthy oilman, Klavern #700 of the United Klans of America has over 100 members. McComb's mayor is Chairman of the White Citizens Council, the police chief heads the local chapter of Americans for the Preservation of the White Race (APWR), a virulently racist white-supremacy organization, and the county sheriff participates in their meetings.

According to the 1960 Census, Blacks comprise 42% of McComb's 12,000 residents. The railroad, now part of the Illinois Central, is still a major employer of both Blacks and whites, and because they are protected by union contract, Black railroad workers cannot be summarily fired for opposing segregation or advocating Black voting rights. From these union ranks emerge activists and leaders of the Pike County Voters League and the local NAACP chapter.

In July of 1961, NAACP leader Reverend C.C. Bryant invites Bob Moses to begin a voter registration project in McComb. Moses is soon joined by SNCC members John Hardy of the Nashville Student Movement and Reginald Robinson from the Civic Interest Group in Baltimore. Webb Owens, a retired railroad man and Treasurer of the local NAACP chapter introduces the SNCC organizers to people in the Black community and urges them to support the voter-registration project with donations of food, money, and housing for the civil rights workers. He takes them to the South of the Border Cafe owned by Aylene Quinn, "Whenever any of [the SNCC workers] come by, you feed 'em, you feed 'em whether they got money or not" he tells her.

Before beginning work, Bob Moses writes to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asking what the federal response will be if Blacks are prevented from registering. In line with the Kennedy administration's promise to defend voting rights if the students will turn away from direct action, the DOJ replies that it will "vigorously enforce" federal statutes forbidding the use of intimidation, threats, and coercion against voter aspirants (McComb 1-2).

Bryant, a brusque, energetic man with a high-pitched voice and a warm handshake, was one of the stalwarts of the Movement. He ran a barbershop in front of his house in Baertown, a small black community the city fathers had deliberately zoned outside the town limits. He also operated a loading crane for the Illinois Central, whose tracks, along with the Gulf, Western & Ohio, cut right through the heart of McComb. On the west side of town were paved streets; a few blocks of retail stores, and the white suburbs, spread out under a canopy of shade trees and embroidered with flowers. On the east, Burgland, the all-black town with its shabby stores, ramshackle houses, and dirt roads. The general air of grinding poverty was broken by the occasional brick house of somebody who worked for the railroad (Heath 4).

C. C. Bryant wasted no time plugging Moses into McComb’s black community. One of the first people he introduced Moses to was retired railroad man and NAACP membership chair, Webb Owens. Every morning for the rest of July, Webb picked Moses up and took him around town, introducing him to key figures in the community. They secured enough support from McComb’s Black community—in $5 and $10 contributions—to support the project.

House to house canvassing began at the start of August. Some honor students from the local high school that Webb had recruited accompanied Moses as he worked his way through McComb’s neighborhoods (Bob Moses 1).

At first, children stopped playing hopscotch and huddled together as I walked by. "He's a Freedom Rider," they whispered. Their wary parents would pass me on the road without meeting my eyes, but I could feel their stares and questions jabbing into my back. Many were frightened; I meant nothing but trouble. I would tell them, "Get ready, the Movement is coming your way," but that wasn't anything they wanted to hear. One man stooped down behind the tomato plants in his garden to avoid me. Another time, a little girl came to the front door and said, "Mama say she not here" (Heath 5).

He often introduced himself as “C. C. Bryant’s voter registration man.” At each house, he would show a voter registration form and ask if the person had ever tried to fill it out. Then, as a way to cut through people’s fear about registering, Moses asked if they wanted to try filling it out right there in their home (Bob Moses 1).

People listened and gave what they could--a nickle, a dime, a quarter--to support a handful of SNCC workers. Soon I was joined by John Hardy, Reggie Robinson, Travis Britt, and a few others who had been in jail in Jackson for taking part in the Freedom Rides. Also, several of the local students got involved. One in particular, Brenda Travis, always bright-eyed and brimming with questions, would sit on a family's porch talking to them for hours if necessary until they were convinced of the need to register. Thanks to Curtis Bryant, who, in addition to being head of the local NAACP, a deacon in his church, a Sunday school teacher, and a scoutmaster, was also a high official in the Freemasons, we were able to set up a Freedom School in the Masonic Hall over the Burgland grocery store. Saint Paul's Methodist Church, across the street, agreed to let us hold meetings there too.

The people flocked to our school. All 21 questions on the application form have to be understood. All 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution have to be mastered. When we explained the power of the vote, they squirmed in their chairs and glanced at each other. One heavyset woman up front fanned herself harder every time I mentioned the word freedom. Within a few days we sent several students to the Pike County courthouse in Magnolia. When they learned that they had passed, we held a party that lasted long into the night. It seemed for the moment as if everything would be easy. Then the local paper, the Enterprise-Journal, ran an article on what we were trying to do. Whites became alarmed. The next day, the registrar rejected our students, and that evening one of them, in an incident apparently unrelated to voter registration, was shot at. As the news spread, I noted the panic in people's eyes; they saw a connection. Fewer and fewer came to the Freedom School. (Heath 6-7).

More SNCC workers arrive in McComb direct from the Highlander meeting: Ruby Doris Smith, Marion Barry, Charles Jones, and others. In late August, after training in the tactics of Nonviolent Resistance by the SNCC direct action veterans, two local teenagers — Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes (Muhammad), both of whom go on to become SNCC field secretaries of renown — sit-in at the local Woolworth's lunch counter. They are arrested (McComb 3).

News of the voter registration efforts in McComb spread, and farmers from neighboring Amite and Walthall County reached out to Moses about starting voter registration schools in their areas. These rural areas of Southwest Mississippi were notoriously violent and poor. The Ku Klux Klan was stronger here than in any other part of the state. Many locals in McComb feared SNCC workers would be killed and tried to discourage SNCC from attempting a voter registration campaign. But Moses felt like he had little choice: “You can’t be in the position of turning down the tough areas because the people, then, I think would lose confidence in you” (Bob Moses 3).

Rev. Bryant introduced Moses to Amite County NAACP leader E.W. Steptoe, and the project spread to cover Amite and Walthall Counties. On August 15, Moses accompanied three local people to the Amite County courthouse in Liberty. The registrar forced them to wait in the courthouse for six hours before they were allowed to fill out the forms. As the group drove from the courthouse, a highway patrolman followed them, pulled them over, and arrested Moses. While in custody, Moses placed a loud collect call to John Doar in the U.S. Justice Department and then spent two nights in jail for refusing to pay $5 in court costs.

Two weeks later, Billy Jack Caston, the cousin of the local sheriff [and son-in-law of E. H. Hurst the State Representative], attacked Moses with the blunt end of a knife after he accompanied two more people to the courthouse (Voter Expands 2).

"I remember very sharply that I didn't want to go immediately back into McComb because my shirt was very bloody and I figured that if we went back in we would probably frighten everybody," he recalls. So, Moses washed up before heading back to McComb. He later required eight stitches to close his head wound (Lake 2).

Steptoe didn’t even recognize Moses, when he returned bloodied to the farm with three gashes in his head that required eight stitches. The next day, in an unprecedented move, Moses pressed charges against Caston. Caston was quickly acquitted, but the case drew even more attention to SNCC’s work. White people underestimated the power of Black organizing when SNCC first arrived in McComb. But by the end of August, they realized that SNCC’s campaign wasn’t about helping a handful a Black people vote but ushering in systemic change that would upset the white power structure (Voter Expands 2).

That night in McComb, more than 200 Blacks attend the first Civil Rights Movement mass meeting in the town's history to protest the arrest of the students and the beating of Moses. They vow to continue the struggle.

Brenda Travis, a 15 year old high school student in McComb, canvasses the streets with the SNCC voter-registration workers. To awaken and inspire the adults, she leads other students on a sit-in. For the crime of ordering a hamburger, she is sentenced to a year in the state juvenile prison. She is also expelled from Burgland High School. In response, McComb's Black students form the Pike County Nonviolent Movement — Hollis Watkins is President, Curtis Hayes is Vice President.

The Klan, the Citizens Council, and racist whites in general react violently to Blacks beginning to assert their rights. White "night riders" armed with rifles and shotguns cruise through the Black community at night (McComb 4).

… more SNCC activists came to Southwest Mississippi as the line between direct action and voter registration blurred. SNCC activists like Ruby Doris Smith, Charles Sherrod, Charles Jones, and Marion Barry, many fresh off of a prison stint from the Freedom Rides, recruited high school students and began training them in non-violence. With these young people, the Movement in McComb grew to include direct action protests as well as voter registration.

But those SNCC workers in the rural areas focused solely on voter registration and that work only became more dangerous. A week after Moses’s beating, a white man attacked SNCC’s Travis Britt at the courthouse Amite County, choking and punching him “into a semi-conscious state” as he and Moses took people to register. Two days later, the Wathall County registrar smashed a pistol against the head of John Hardy in his office, and when Hardy stumbled outside, law enforcement arrested him for disturbing the peace (Voter Expands 3).

In late September in Amite County, Herbert Lee, a local volunteer working with Moses. was murdered.


Works cited:

“Bob Moses Goes to McComb.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and uke University. Web. https://snccdigital.org/citation-copy...

“Direct Action or Voter Registration?” Civil Rights Movement History 1961. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.h...

Heath, William. “The Children Bob Moses Led.” The Washington Post. Web. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/...

Lake, Ellen. “Bob Moses.” The Harvard Crimson. December 4, 1964. Web. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/19...

“Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm.” Civil Rights Movement History 1961. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.h...

“The McComb Project.” Civil Rights Movement History 1961. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.h...

“Voter Registration & Direct Action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct).” Civil Rights Movement History 1961. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.h...

“Voter Registration Expands in Southwest Mississippi.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and uke University. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/voter-...

Here is a useful map of Mississippi. https://socketize.com/7124/no7141/

Who was Bob Moses?

With an M.A. in philosophy from Harvard and a job teaching mathematics at the prestigious Horace Mann School in Riverdale, New York, I was a part of what W. E. B. DuBois termed "the talented tenth"--a black man who could succeed in the white world playing by white rules. I had had an elitist education since I was eleven, passing a citywide competitive exam to attend Stuyvesant High School in downtown Manhattan. President of my senior class, I received an academic scholarship to Hamilton, where I was one of three black students at the college.

It was at Hamilton, thanks to my French professor, that I discovered Camus. I read The Rebel and The Plague and began asking hard political questions: "Can revolution be humane?" "Can the `victim' overthrow the `executioner' without assuming his office?" For a time I believed that the only change worth working for was a change of heart, and so I joined a group of campus Pentecostals who traveled on weekends to Times Square to testify to the coming of the Kingdom. I considered becoming a preacher like my grandfather, but my father had his doubts. "That's not just any job," he said. "You've got to be called." …

In the fall of 1956 I began graduate work in philosophy at Harvard. … Before long, however, I tired of thinking about thinking and the meaning of meaning. In that remote realm of tautologies, indexes, and surds, I was in danger of forgetting that the meaning of life was no abstract speculation but my immediate and concrete concern. …

Then in the spring of 1958 my forty-three-year-old mother died of cancer; my father was so distraught he had to be hospitalized at Bellevue for several months. I dropped out of Harvard, accepted a job teaching math at Horace Mann High School, and moved back to Harlem to look after him. My father and I had always been close; we used to have long talks about what America denied and offered. Like many of his generation, he had been hamstrung by the depression. Intelligent, articulate, and handsome, he sacrificed his talents for the sake of his family, accepting a low-paying job as a security guard at Harlem's 369th Division Armory. He and my mother scrimped and saved to ensure that my brothers and I would get ahead. The stress and strain took their toll: my mother once suffered a minor breakdown, and my father would sometimes slip into fantasies that his name was not Gregory Moses but Gary Cooper--a man brave enough, in spite of his cowardly town, to stand up for what was right.

My only civil rights activity at that time was to participate in the Youth March for Integrated Schools that Bayard Rustin sponsored in Washington. Then, one day in February 1960, I saw a picture in the New York Times of the sit-ins that had just begun in Greensboro, North Carolina: a row of neatly dressed black students sat at a Woolworth's lunch counter, while a crowd of white toughs in duck-tails and sleeveless T-shirts waved a Confederate flag and shouted at their backs. Some of the students tried to read books, others stared calmly at the camera. I was struck to the core by the determination on their faces. They weren't cowed, and they weren't apathetic--they meant to finish what they had begun. Here was something that could be done. I simply had to get involved.

Over spring break, I visited my father's brother, a teacher at Hampton Institute in Virginia. One day I saw some students picketing stores in Newport News. I slipped into the line of march and suddenly felt a great release. All my life I had repressed my resentments and played it cool. Now the sense of affirmation and the surge of energy that came from this mere gesture at protesting were exhilarating. I had had a taste of action and wanted more. That evening I went to a mass meeting where Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference spoke. He talked about the need to collect money to defend the Reverend Martin Luther King from legal harassment, mentioning that Bayard Rustin was directing a fund drive in New York.

When I got back to Harlem, I volunteered my services to the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King, and so every day after school, I devoted time to organizing a Harry Belafonte fundraising rally at the armory where my father worked. But I didn't feel right licking envelopes while others were putting their lives on the line. I confided my discontent to Bayard Rustin, whose advice I respected.

"Go down to Atlanta, Bob," he told me. "I'll write to Ella Baker to tell her you're coming. She and Martin will find something for you to do."

As soon as my teaching duties were over for the summer, I packed my bags and took a bus headed south (Heath 1-3).

“The sits-in woke me up,” recalled Harlem, New York-native Robert “Bob” Moses, discussing how his involvement with southern struggle began. When he first arrived in Mississippi in the summer of 1960, there was no student movement in the state. Moses was sent by Ella Baker to find students from the Deep South to participate in a SNCC conference that October in Atlanta. SNCC’s voter registration efforts began when Bob Moses met Cleveland, Mississippi NAACP president Amzie Moore, one of the people Miss Baker had put him in contact with. Moore decided to attend the October conference and placed the idea of voter registration on SNCC’s table.

Moses learned of the denial of Black voting rights from his discussions with Amzie Moore. “I was taught about the denial of the right to vote behind the Iron Curtain in Europe; I never knew that there was denial of the right to vote behind a Cotton Curtain here in the United States.” Moore also told Moses that he wanted to use the energy of the student activists in SNCC for voter registration. The young math teacher promised to come back the following summer after his classes at the Horace Mann school were out.

When Moses returned in 1961, Moore told him he was not quite ready to begin organizing in the Delta and sent him to his NAACP colleague, C.C. Bryant, in McComb. There, with other local community leaders, Bob Moses began SNCC’s first voter registration organizing effort.

What SNCC workers learned while working in that small Southwest Mississippi city, and the surrounding rural counties, forever shaped SNCC’s organizing style. Moses nurtured the development of local grassroots leaders, and he recognized the untapped potential power and unheard voice of locals who spoke up at meetings and participated in voter registration efforts. ‘‘Leadership is there in the people,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t have to worry about where your leaders are, how are we going to get some leaders…If you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge” (Bob Moses 1-2).

Herbert Lee

A Wisconsin Republican, John Doar had been asked to stay on in the Kennedy Justice Department partly because he had pioneered a go-out-and-poke-around-for-yourself approach to civil rights lawsuits, which made him unusual among Washington desk-bound lawyers. With Moses, Doar visited Negro farmers who were afraid to come to registration meetings because of the intangible reality of rural life—ominous messages maids and sharecroppers were hearing—and several were particularly worried about signs of anger on the part of E. H. Hurst, a state representative of local influence, against Herbert Lee, an NAACP farmer who attended Moses’ registration meetings. Doar promised to drive out to Lee’s farm on his next trip, but he found waiting at his office the next day a message from Moses that Hurst had just shot Lee to death in full public view outside the Liberty cotton gin (Branch 50-51).

Herbert Lee had played a key role in supporting the Amite County voter registration movement. He helped found the Amite branch of the NAACP along with E.W. Steptoe in 1953, and he was an active member even after law enforcement began cracking down on the organization in 1954. As a prosperous independent dairy farmer, Lee could sell his goods across state lines where he would get a better price and protect himself from the economic pressures from local whites for his civil rights work. When SNCC came to Amite to help Steptoe register blacks to vote, Lee offered to ferry activists around the county as they canvassed the area to recruit registration applicants. Because of his economic independence, Lee had the freedom to openly fight the area’s oppressive racial policies, but this would draw the ire of his white neighbors (Ramsey-Smith 68).

Herbert Lee was the first local person to be killed because of his involvement with SNCC. On September 25, 1961, Lee drove to the cotton gin in Liberty, Mississippi. State legislator E.H. Hurst approached Lee with a gun in his hand saying he wanted to talk. “I won’t talk to you unless you put the gun down,” Lee said. Hurst ran towards Lee’s truck and shot him.

The murder took place in broad daylight in front of a dozen people. “Lee’s body lay on the ground that morning for two hours, uncovered, until they finally got a funeral home in McComb to take it in,” Bob Moses remembered. Hurst claimed that Lee had attacked him with a tire iron, and the sheriff coerced the Black witnesses into corroborating his story. Hurst was acquitted by an all-white coroner’s jury that same afternoon.

Lee and Hurst lived on adjoining farms and played together as boys. Through adulthood they maintained a cordial relationship. At one point, Hurst had helped Lee apply for a loan for his farm. Hurst’s affections towards Lee changed when he started attending voter registration classes and driving Bob Moses around the county. His association with SNCC made him a target.

The murder was devastating to SNCC. At Lee’s funeral, his wife approached Moses and said, “You killed my husband! You killed my husband!” “I had no answer,” he remembered, “It is one thing to get beaten, quite another to be responsible, even indirectly, for a death.”

Lee’s death forced SNCC to confront its inability to protect local people from white retaliatory violence. Before Lee was killed, the Department of Justice sent Assistant Attorney General John Doar to Amite County. E.W. Steptoe and Bob Moses spoke with Doar and told him that Hurst had threatened Lee because of his involvement with the Movement. The Department of Justice refused to offer Lee any protection.

After Lee’s death, Doar asked the FBI to open a federal investigation. The local FBI rejected his request three times before they finally looked into Lee’s death. Meanwhile, SNCC tried to find a witness who could testify in a federal case. A man named Louis Allen recanted and offered to testify against E.H. Hurst. But word got out about Allen’s offer. For three years, Allen faced harassment and economic reprisals for his willingness to testify and on April 7, 1964, the night before he planned to leave Mississippi, he was killed outside his home (Herbert 1-2).

Interviewed several years later by Eyes on the Prize, Moses said: … the Citizens Councils and the Klans in Mississippi, they were in back of the action which resulted in those kind of murders. Because what we knew was that there were meetings in Liberty drawing cars and license plates from all across the southern part of Mississippi, and on up into the middle part of Mississippi. People coming and sitting down talking, what are they going to do about this voter registration drive. Now, we don't know what they planned, but we do know that after the meetings there's violence began to break out, direct attacks on us as the voter registration workers and then these murders. First Herbert Lee and then a couple years later Lewis Allan, both killed right there in Liberty, Mississippi (Interview 2).

One girl in particular was affected by Moses’ condition, as he wrote, “At the mass meeting, a young girl kept staring at me… I think the sight of my battered and bandaged head registered some great outrage in Brenda [Travis].” The next day, August 30th, high school student Brenda Travis, along with recent graduates Bobbie Talbert and Ike Lewis, organized a sit-in at the white section of the Greyhound bus terminal in McComb. Just as in the sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter, police quickly arrested the young activists and sent them to jail for roughly one month (Ramsey-Smith 67).

On October 2, the NAACP and the SCLC paid for the bond of the five young activists, including the high school students Brenda Travis and Isaac Lewis. While Watkins, Hayes, and the others could risk their safety by continuing their civil rights work, Travis and Lewis wanted to further organize their classmates to build a larger nonviolent student movement. This presented a difficult problem for the black Burglund High School, where school administrators had little appetite for the chaos that would be brought on by open civil rights work. The murder of Herbert Lee made the issue especially sensitive, as students would no doubt use him as a symbol to continue rebelling. Commodore Dewey Higgins, principal of the high school, expelled the two students in hopes that the rest of the student body would be too afraid to continue organizing with SNCC (Ramsey-Smith 70).

… more than 100 Black high-school students led by Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes ditch school and march in McComb to protest Lee's killing and the expulsion of Brenda Travis. When they kneel in prayer at City Hall, they are arrested, as are the SNCC staff who are with them. Bob Moses, Chuck McDew, and Bob Zellner (SNCC's first white field secretary) are beaten. The SNCC workers are charged with "Contributing to the delinquency of minors," a serious felony.

More than 100 students boycott the segregated Burgland High School rather than sign a mandatory pledge that they will not participate in civil rights activity. SNCC sets up "Nonviolent High" for the boycotting students with Moses teaching math, Dion Diamond teaching science, and Chuck McDew teaching history. Nonviolent High is one of the seeds from which grow the "Freedom Schools" that spread across the state three years later in the summer of '64.

Late in October, an all-white jury convicts the SNCC members on the "Contributing" charge. Their attorneys appeal, but bail is set at $14,000 each (equal to $107,000 in 2012 dollars). Unable to raise such a huge amount, they languish in prison. With their SNCC teachers in jail, Nonviolent High cannot continue, and the boycotting students are accepted by Campbell Junior College in Jackson.

Meanwhile, arrests, beatings, and shootings continue. CORE Freedom Riders are brutally attacked by a white mob when they try to integrate the McComb Greyhound station. Paul Potter and Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) are dragged from their car and beaten in the street when they come to McComb to support the Movement. Shotgun blasts from a Klan nightrider almost kill Dion Diamond and John Hardy.

Despite their repeated promises of protection for voter registration, Kennedy, the Justice Department, and the FBI do nothing. The DOJ's legal efforts are feeble and ineffective. The arrests, the reign of terror, and the brazen murder of Herbert Lee by a state official, all take their toll. The McComb-area voter registration drive is suppressed — for the moment.

Finally, in December, SNCC manages to raise the bail money and the jailed SNCC staff are released on appeal.

In a narrow sense, McComb is a defeat for SNCC — the project is suppressed and driven out by arrests, brutality, and murder. But in a broader sense it is an important milestone; the crucial lessons learned in McComb form the foundation for years of organizing to come, not just in Mississippi but in hard places across the South — places like Selma Alabama and Southwest Georgia. In McComb they discover that courage is contagious and that local people — particularly young people — will respond to outside organizers. They discover that as student activists they have much to teach, but also much to learn from the community, and that if they respect the community the community will in turn protect, feed, and nurture them. And from the community will come new leaders and new organizers to expand and sustain the struggle.

Bob Moses wrote: One of the things that we learned out here [in Amite County] was that we could find family in Mississippi. We could go anyplace in Mississippi before we were through, and we knew that somewhere down some road there was family. And we could show up there unannounced with no money or no anything and there were people there ready to take care of us. That's what we had here in Amite. One of the things that happened in the movement was that there was a joining of a young generation of people with an older generation that nurtured and sustained them. ... It was an amazing experience (McComb 4-7).

Veteran activist Tom Hayden says a key to Moses's success as an organizer was his hunger to learn from local people. "Bob listened," Hayden wrote in The Nation. "When people asked him what to do, he asked them what they thought. At mass meetings, he usually sat in the back. In group discussions, he mostly spoke last. He slept on floors, wore sharecroppers' overalls, shared the risks, took the blows, went to jail, dug in deeply" (Speech 1).


Works cited:

“Bob Moses.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University. Web. https://snccdigital.org/people/bob-mo...

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters. Digital Education Systems. Web. https://library.duke.edu/digitalcolle...

Heath, William. “The Children Bob Moses Led.” The Washington Post. Web. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/...

“Herbert Lee Murdered.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/herber...

“Interview with Bob Moses.” Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954-1965). Washington University Libraries. May 19, 1986. Web. http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/t...

“The McComb Project.” Civil Rights Movement History 1961. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.h...

Ramsey-Smith, Alec. “A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg”: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Local Voting Rights Activism in McComb, Mississippi, 1928-1964. Department of History, University of Michigan. Web. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstr...

“Speech on Freedom Summer at Stanford University." Say It Loud, Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches. Web. http://americanradioworks.publicradio...

To locate these two communities (Greenwood north of Jackson and McComb south of Jackson) access this map: https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/natio....

On July 2nd, President Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In some Movement battlegrounds segregation of public facilities begins to collapse. The St. Augustine business community defies Klan threats by agreeing to end "white-only" policies. In Albany, Blacks are served instead of arrested, and SCLC holds its convention in Birmingham with Dr. King and other Black ministers staying at the brand-new Parliament House hotel. But in Selma, whites violently attack young Blacks who dare to defy the color-line, in Jackson the Robert E. Lee hotel converts from a public facility to a "private club" rather than admit Blacks, and across the South deeply entrenched customs of racial segregation remain in place until they are directly challenged. As the old saying goes: "Where the broom don't sweep, the dirt don't move."

Greenwood

In many ways, Greenwood is the epicenter of Freedom Summer activity. It is the heart of the Delta where the majority of projects are located, and SNCC's national office is temporarily relocated there from Atlanta. Here, the strategic priorities are clear — voter registration, community organizing, and building the MFDP [Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party] towards the challenge at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Human and financial resources are stretched desperately thin. Sit-ins to test the new Civil Rights Act divert organizer time and attention, cost bail money, and inevitably result in activists languishing in jail. Mississippi whites are already enraged over the "invasion" of "race-mixers" and "agitators," to say nothing of Blacks socially interacting with white activists, particularly young white women. Movement leaders fear that direct-action protests for hamburgers and library cards will intensify both violent retaliation and police repression. But "freedom is in the air," courage is contagious, and the daily humiliations of "white-only/colored-only" cry out for defiance (McGhees 53).

From the beginning, with the first voter-registration effort in McComb after the Freedom Rides SNCC's Mississippi strategy has been based on two premises: First, that the primary goal must be achieving political power for Blacks, which requires voter-registration. Second, that most Afro-Americans in the state cannot afford to patronize white restaurants or theaters, so integrating them is at best merely symbolic. But there is a long-standing disagreement between those who argue that integration efforts provoke so much white violence and state repression that voter-registration is crippled, and those who believe that defiant action by young people awakens courage in adults, helps them rise above their fears, and encourages them to register. That may be true, argue others, but staff and volunteers languishing in jail cells can't canvas or organize and diverting desperately need funds to bail them out weakens the central effort.

But after passage of the Act, young Blacks across the state are eager to defy segregation and exercise their new rights. They want to "spit in the eye" of white racists by integrating hamburger joints and movie theaters. Three years of Movement activity have filled them with courage and now they believe the law is on their side.

Whites, however, are already enraged by the mere existence of Freedom Summer and further inflamed by Johnson signing the Act. In Greenwood and other communities, carloads of armed thugs prowl the streets looking for trouble, some are members of the Sheriff's posse, some are outright Klan. One of these "auxiliary" deputies is Byron De la Beckwith, and everyone in Leflore County, Black and white, know that he murdered Medgar Evers.

The question is thrashed out in meeting after meeting. The majority of SNCC staff agree with Bob Moses that they have to remain disciplined, stick to the plan, and not let themselves or the Movement become distracted. But some staff and some summer volunteers argue that it was the sit-ins and Freedom Rides of the early 1960s that sparked and energized the Movement and that if the Civil Rights Act is not tested and enforced immediately it will wither away and become just another unenforced law. By and large, adults in the community agree that now is not the time for integrating lunch counters. But young activists not yet old enough to vote are restless, in some communities they take independent action on their own, and when they are arrested or beaten a portion of Movement time and resources has to be diverted in response. Yet at the same time, their courage and defiance does encourage and inspire their elders.

The issue is most acute in Greenwood which has been a center of Freedom Movement activity since early 1962. It comes to a head after national NAACP leaders swoop into town accompanied by reporters and FBI agents. They integrate a few upscale establishments to great media acclaim and then drive off. Afterwards, no one, not even SNCC, can restrain Greenwood's Black youth from direct action at "white-only" establishments (Direct 27-29)

Silas McGhee, 21, is Chair of the Greenwood NAACP Youth Council's Testing Committee. His brother Jake is Assistant Chair. On July 5th, Silas walks three miles from his family's farm to the Leflore Theater in Greenwood. Defying a century of rigid segregation, he takes a seat on the "whites-only" main floor rather than the "Colored" balcony. He is attacked and harassed. The cops haul him home with a warning. When his brothers ask why he went by himself he tells them, "Well, you wasn't nowhere around when I decided to go. I just went."

Greenwood is a small town and word of his attempt to break the color-line spreads through the Black community — and among whites as well. On July 16, Silas observes Freedom Day from across the street. He is not one of the 111 people arrested. As he walks home alone, three Klansmen ambush him and force him at gunpoint into their car. They beat him with clubs and try to lock him in a shed, but he manages to break free. He evades their pursuit and reaches the FBI office Greenwood. Agents arrest the three attackers under the new civil rights law — the first case of its kind in Mississippi.

The McGhees are a tight-knit family and they're not known for backing down. Silas's mother and brothers join him in action and the cops discover that arresting the McGhees just makes them more determined.

Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) narrates: “The rest of July was a running battle between the McGhees, the theater, the mob, and the cops. ... Silas and his brother Jake kept going back to the theater. Five or six times. Each time when they tried to leave, a mob greeted them. ... Another night Jake and Silas went back to the movies, but this time when the mob formed, a towering (6'8"), linebacker-built paratrooper in full dress uniform appeared and faced down a member of the mob. Turned out it was their older brother, Clarence (Robinson), a decorated Korean War veteran on active duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. A trained American fighting man, taking leave to come defend freedom, democracy, the Constitution, and his younger brothers in his hometown. Then he got himself jailed for assault.”

On Monday evening, August 15, after being released from jail, Silas is resting in a car outside of Lulu's Cafe on Avenue H in the Black community. Rain is pouring down and the night is dark. Two white men in a car drive slowly by, they shoot Silas in the head and speed off. SNCC field-secretary Bob Zellner and summer volunteer Mark Winter strip off their shirts to try to stop the bleeding. With volunteer Linda Whetmore Halpern, they rush Silas to the segregated Greenwood public hospital. Cops at the hospital won't let them in because they're using the "wrong" entrance. They drive around back to the other door, but the cops again bar them — this time because Bob and Mark are not wearing shirts. Linda has to go in alone, her blue dress drenched red with blood. She gets a stretcher and brings Silas inside.

The white doctors in this tax-financed hospital won't treat a wounded Black man, so Dr. Jackson — the only Black MD in Greenwood — is summoned. While he works to save Silas's life, officer Logan of the Greenwood police department tells another cop "Well, they finally got that nigger Silas!" Other cops make it clear that if Silas doesn't die on the operating table he'll be killed during the night. As soon as Silas is stabilized, Movement leaders arrange to have him transferred to a hospital in Jackson (McGhees 54-56).

While white Mississippi mobilizes to defend the "Southern Way of Life" with billy clubs and jail cells, guns and bombs, the White House and Justice Department do nothing. Despite repeated pleas from civil rights leaders, they refuse to condemn or criticize the hate and hysteria being whipped to fever pitch in Mississippi. They refuse to issue any public statement or give any private signal that violence or state repression against nonviolent voter registration efforts will be prosecuted as required by federal law. They refuse to even acknowledge that registering voters and teaching children are neither criminal acts nor subversive plots. FBI Director Hoover does, however, tell the press: "We will not wet-nurse troublemakers."

In early June, just before the [Freedom Summer] project is to begin, a Black delegation [had traveled] … from Mississippi to Washington to warn of impending violence and beg for protection. The President [had been] … out of town. The Attorney General [had been] … unavailable. Congress [had been] … uninterested in holding any hearings. The FBI [had rebuffed] … them as subversives and Communist dupes.

Desperate for someone to hear their pleas, the delegation [had held] … a conference at the National Theater, addressing a volunteer panel of writers, educators, and lawyers, along with several hundred ordinary citizens. Fannie Lou Hamer [had described] … the brutal police beating in Winona MS, Mrs. Allen [had testified] … about the recent murder of her husband, a boy of 14 [had told] … of police brutality against peaceful pickets, and SNCC worker Jimmy Travis [had talked] … of being shot in Greenwood and [had asked] … for federal marshals to protect voter registration workers. Legal scholars [had described] … the statutes allowing — in fact, requiring — the federal government to enforce the law, make arrests, and protect the rights of voters. The transcript [had been] … sent to President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. There [had been] … no response.

At the volunteer-orientation in Oxford Ohio, DOJ official John Doar [had addressed] … the volunteers who are about to go down into Mississippi. They [had asked] … him: "What will be the role of the federal government in protecting our lives?" He [had replied] … that so far as their government is concerned they will have to take their chances with a hostile state — defenseless. They will be in the same situation that southern Blacks have endured for generations. The volunteers [had booed] …, but Bob Moses [had stopped] … them, saying, "We don't do that." He [had told] … them that Doar is just being honest (Washington 12-14).

Greenwood's Black community is enraged. More than a dozen young Black men armed with rifles ask SNCC field-secretary Wazir Peacock about invading North Greenwood — a white neighborhood — and retaliating in kind. He tells them that it wouldn't be right to attack whites who had nothing to do with the shooting. He also understands that doing so would bring down a wave of violent repression against the entire Black community. The Klan is known to have been stockpiling military-type weapons, and it's possible that the shooting of Silas is intended to provoke just such a war. The young men agree to concentrate on defending the Black community from further KKK attack.

The shooting of Silas McGhee halts neither the McGhee family nor the work of the Freedom Movement. Voter registration and building the MFDP continue, as do efforts to implement the Civil Rights Act (McGhees 57)).

McComb

Back in the Fall of 1961, the McComb voter-registration project — SNCC's first — was temporarily suppressed by Klan violence, the brutal murder of Herbert Lee, economic retaliation, the expulsion of more than 100 high-school student protesters, federal indifference, and the incarceration of the SNCC staff on trumped up charges. But SNCC has neither forgotten, nor abandoned McComb. In the Fall of '63, SNCC workers briefly return to mobilize support for the Freedom Ballot, and again in January of '64 for voter-registration classes. But Klan repression is unrelenting, threats and intimidation are constant, night-riders shoot up Black homes and businesses, and on January 31st Louis Allen who witnessed Herbert Lee's murder is assassinated.

As they begin planning the Summer Project in early 1964, SNCC activists are determined to re-establish a permanent Freedom Movement presence in McComb. They know with dead certainty that doing so means a showdown with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the United Klans of America, the two KKK factions who have turned the Pearl River area of Southwest Mississippi into "Klan Nation."

The forces of white-supremacy are of the same opinion. Pike County sheriff R.R. Warren tells a meeting of Americans for the Preservation of the White Race (APWR) that he expects a "long hot summer" and that he may need to recruit their assistance if law enforcement is unable to suppress the COFO "threat." Rumors swirl through the white community that Black men identified by white bandages on their throats have been specifically assigned to rape white women. Parents are warned to know where their small children are at all times. Sales of guns and ammunition spike upward, and Klan membership soars. The oilman who financially backs the Klan has easy access to dynamite, and on the night of June 22nd — 24 hours after the lynching of Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman — explosions blast through the Black community, damaging the home of NAACP leader C.C. Bryant who grabs his rifle and fires back at the bomber's car.

Initially, COFO leaders judge Southwestern Mississippi too dangerous for the highly visible northern white students, so the McComb and Natchez projects are put on temporary hold until the situation stabilizes. By early July, FBI agents have flooded into the state and the news media is providing extensive coverage of the search for Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman so COFO decides to risk restarting the McComb project. Led by SNCC organizer and former McComb activist Curtis Hayes (today, Curtis Muhammad), the first contingent of Freedom Summer workers arrive on July 5th.

They open a COFO freedom house on Wall Street in the Black community. Two nights later a dynamite bomb damages the house, injuring Curtis Hayes and volunteer Dennis Sweeney. The FBI "investigates" and does nothing. Over the following days, Black churches are burned in Pike and Amite counties, SNCC field secretary Mendy Samstein is attacked and beaten on a McComb street, and the home of C.C. Bryant's brother is bombed. With no protection from police or the federal government, local Blacks active with the Movement stand armed guard each night against Klan bombers and night riders.

Except for a core of dedicated and courageous activists like the Bryants, Aylene "Mama" Quin, Webb Owens, Willie Mae Cotton, Ernest Nobles, Joe Martin, and a handful of others, fear is pervasive in McComb's Black community. No churches are willing to open their doors for mass meetings, voter-registration classes, or Freedom Schools. The few Blacks who dare the short trip to the county courthouse in Magnolia on voter-registration days face threats of violence and economic retaliation. COFO canvassers are hard pressed to find any willing to take that risk.

But as it was back in '61, it's the Black youth who stand up and move forward. With no church or other building open to it, the McComb Freedom School meets in the dirt yard of the bombed freedom house. Joyce Brown (16), a Freedom School student-teacher pens The House of Liberty, a poem addressed to the community's adults that reads in part:

I asked for your churches, and you turned me down,
But I'll do my work if I have to do it on the ground,
You will not speak for fear of being heard,
So you crawl in your shell and say, "Do not disturb,"
You think because you've turned me away,
You've protected yourself for another day.

— Joyce Brown.

Young activists and COFO organizers circulate her poem throughout the Black community and the elders respond. A church opens its doors to the Freedom School and soon more than 100 students overflow the space — some of them the younger sisters and brothers of the those who had protested and been expelled from Burgland High three years before. "The Freedom School is inspiring the people to lend a hand in the fight," reports school director Ralph Featherstone. "The older people are looking to the young people, and their courage is rubbing off."

Ten Black businessmen secretly gather in Aylene Quin's South of the Border cafe. Inspired by Joyce Brown's poem, they form a movement support committee and contribute $500 (equal to $3,700 in 2012) towards buying land and materials for a community center that will become a movement headquarters. Soon churches open their doors to mass meetings and attendance begins to grow. Local families contribute food and money to support the COFO staff and volunteers.

…

The McComb Movement calls for a mid-August "Freedom Day," an attempt to get as many people as possible to attempt to register at the courthouse in Magnolia. Klan opposition is fierce — crosses are burned, threats of violence and economic retaliation increase, and two dozen cops raid the freedom house in the middle of the night — looking for "illegal liquor" they claim [McComb is a "dry" city]. Back in 1961, the 2nd floor of the Black-owned Burgland Market was used for "Nonviolent High," the precursor freedom school for the expelled high-school students. On August 14, 1964, the building is bombed. Undeterred, several hundred Blacks attend a Freedom Day rally in McComb, and on August 18th, 23 Black men and women manage to take the voter- test at the courthouse in Magnolia. Their applications are denied by registrar Glen Fortenberry. None are registered to vote.

The following week, local activists, SNCC staff, and summer volunteers head north to Atlantic City for the MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention. On the night of August 27-28, as the betrayed MFDP delegates are bitterly making their way back to Mississippi, a bomb explodes near the home of Willie and Matti Dillon in McComb. She is active in the MFDP, two of their children attended the Freedom School, and Willie repaired a COFO car.

Sheriff Warren warns them, "If you don't cooperate with us more than the COFOs, more then [the bombing] is going to happen to you." Warren and FBI agent Frank Ford accuse the Dillons of planting the bomb themselves, then arrest Willie Dillon for "operating a garage without a license" (for fixing the COFO car) and "stealing electricity" because he had rigged a temporary flood light in defense against Klan night riders. He is quickly tried without a lawyer and sentenced to a $600 fine (equal to $4,400 in 2012) and nine months in jail.

By the end of August, the Black community in McComb has endured more than a dozen bombings since the start of Freedom Summer in late June …. As August ends, most of the summer volunteers return to school and with their departure media interest declines. The FBI takes the opportunity to reduce their 16 agents to 4. This further emboldens the Ku Klux Klan who rest secure in the certainty that they are immune from arrest by both local and federal law enforcement.

But SNCC organizers Jesse Harris, Mendy Samstein, and Cephus Hughes, the Rev Harry Bowie from the Delta Ministry, and several summer volunteers remain in McComb. Along with local leaders like the Bryants and Aylene Quin, they are determined to keep the movement moving forward.

Mama Quin is kind and good to everyone, but more than that, she is a towering figure of strength. She can't be intimidated. Three years ago she was one of the first to welcome Moses and lend him and the SNCC workers her support. Her cafe has always been open — despite the threats. And this summer, again she leads the community. She serves Black and white, night after night.

On August 30, the cops plant illegal liquor in Mama Quin's cafe and then arrest her. The white landlord evicts her, and the cafe is closed. Violence and beatings continue. Unable to intimidate Movement leaders, the Klan expands their terror campaign to Blacks who have never been involved in civil rights activities, bombing their homes and businesses to turn them against the Freedom Movement. SNCC writes to Washington, pleading for federal intervention. The Justice Department does nothing.

On the night of September 20, a bomb shatters Aylene Quin's home injuring her children. A second dynamite blast destroys the wood-frame Society Hill Baptist Church which had opened its doors to freedom meetings (when the congregation reconstructs the church they build it with fire-proof brick). Several hundred angry Blacks, many of them armed, pour into the streets, throwing rocks at the cops and threatening retaliatory violence. Only the desperate efforts of COFO organizers and local activists to calm the crowd avert a blood-bath as 100 heavily armed Mississippi State Trooper swarm into town.

Sheriff Warren accuses Mama Quin of planting the bomb that destroyed her home and almost killed her young son and daughter. Dozens of Black leaders, activists, and students are arrested. Many are charged with "criminal syndicalism" — a new state law that prohibits public speaking and political organizing by "subversive" groups. Almost 150 state troopers — one-third of the entire state force — are stationed in McComb. They are an occupying army sent to suppress the Black community. The number of Blacks arrested on various bogus and illegal charges tops 200. The number of Klansmen arrested for terrorism and bombings remains at zero.

With money from the National Council of Churches, SNCC/COFO sends Mama Quin, Matti Dillon, and Ora Bryant — all bombing victims — to Washington to meet with officials and the national press. The Justice Department brushes off the three women with their usual, "doing all we can," platitudes. But news reports and their meetings with members of Congress generate enough pressure that President Johnson meets with them privately. He's in the middle of his campaign against Goldwater and reluctant to take any action that might stir up more resentment among southern white voters, but he also fears that some dramatic escalation of violence in McComb — the assassination of civil rights workers or a violent confrontation between armed Blacks and the Klan/cops — could damage his reputation. He expresses his concern but makes no promises.

Meanwhile, more bombs explode at Black churches and homes in Pike County. The Delta Ministry mobilize clergymen from around the country to come to McComb. Over the next three months almost 100 ministers respond, and with them comes renewed attention from the national media. A dozen visiting ministers are among the 30 people arrested at a second Freedom Day at the courthouse in Magnolia and more are jailed for voter-registration efforts.

… the Black boycott of white businesses, the general sense of violence and tension, and renewed attention from the national media is depressing economic activity. The shopping district is deserted as both whites and Blacks avoid McComb stores. … Business leaders begin meeting to discuss the economic importance of perhaps expanding their concepts of "law and order" beyond suppressing Black protests to include the radical idea of halting KKK bombings.

On September 29, a rumor flashes through the state's white power-structure that the federal government may be on the verge of declaring martial law in McComb. Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson immediately meets with local officials. He informs them that he is going to mobilize the state National Guard into McComb to forestall federal action. The McComb and Pike County leaders ask him to hold off for two days to give them a chance to end the violence. Within 24 hours, Klan members are being arrested for the bombings. Within a day, 11 of them are in jail and huge amounts of explosives, weapons, and ammunition have been seized. Obviously, local, state, and federal law enforcement knew all along who the bombers were.

As described by author John Dittmer in Local People, the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, a sweet-heart plea bargain is quickly granted to the terrorists:

... they pleaded either guilty or nolo contendere to charges ranging from attempted arson to bombing. Under Mississippi law the maximum penalty was death, yet the presiding judge, W.H. Watkins, gave the defendants suspended sentences and immediately released them on probation. In justifying his leniency, Judge Watkins stated that the men had been "unduly provoked" by civil rights workers, some of whom "are people of low morality and unhygienic." The bombers, on the other hand, were from "good families..." That afternoon, thirteen COFO staff members were jailed on charges of operating a food-handling establishment (the freedom house, where they lived) without a permit. On the same day federal judge Sidney Mize rejected Willie Dillon's appeal to have his trial removed to federal court. Judge Mize ruled as he did because "there is no hostility among the general public in Pike County to the Negro race."

Despite "punishments" that don't even amount to the mildest slap on the wrist, the sudden arrest of the Klansmen does accomplish three things. First, it proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the authorities knew who the bombers were all along and could have stopped them at any time. Second, it puts the Klan on notice that the white power-structure wants the bombings to stop — and it does. The dynamiting of Black homes, churches, and businesses comes to an abrupt halt. Third, talk of martial law in McComb ceases. The press trumpets a great victory over the KKK.

But segregation, denial of voting rights, poverty, exploitation, and virulent racism still persist in McComb and Pike County and the Freedom Movement carries on. Dynamite has failed to break it, arrests haven't halted it. The struggle for justice in "Klan nation" continues. In November, McComb Blacks participate in another mock Freedom Vote to protest denial of voting rights and lay the foundation for a MFDP Congressional Challenge (McComb 58-66).


Works cited:

“Direct Action and the Civil Rights Act.” Mississippi Sumer Project. Civil Rights Movement History: Mississippi Freedom Summer Events. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm...

“McComb — Breaking the Klan Siege (July '64-March '65).” Mississippi Sumer Project. Civil Rights Movement History: Mississippi Freedom Summer Events. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm...

“The McGhees of Greenwood (July-Aug).” Mississippi Sumer Project. Civil Rights Movement History: Mississippi Freedom Summer Events. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm...

“Washington Does Nothing.” Mississippi Sumer Project. Civil Rights Movement History: Mississippi Freedom Summer Events. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm...