Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

The next night, in Ruleville, Mississippi, night riders fired shots into two of the three homes providing shelter for volunteers in the SNCC registration campaign. Herman and Hattie Sisson were talking with their granddaughter and a friend, who were spending the night there on their way back to college, when a series of popping noises startled them. “That sounded like a rifle to me,” Sisson observed calmly, but in the next instant both college girls tumbled from the couch to the floor, writhing. As Mrs. Sisson described it later, everyone in the house fell to the floor and began hollering, as other shots came spitting though the walls. By the time the two girls went to the hospital—one wounded critically in the neck and head, the other in the leg and arm—there were large pools of blood on the floor and Mayor Dorrough of Ruleville had arrived and was pacing about, clearly upset, talking incessantly. He ordered his men to take Mrs. Sisson to the hospital for treatment of glass cuts, then looked at the bullet holes. “I’m so glad Hattie didn’t get shot,” he said. Then, calling the sheriff of Sunflower County, the mayor said, “Bob Moses is the cause of all of it. I knowed something like this was going to happen. That’s how come I been riding day and night.” One of SNCC’s summer volunteers rushed in, made a hysterical phone call to Moses in Jackson, and then composed himself enough to make notes and talk to people, as Moses had instructed. His presence so annoyed Mayor Dorrough ...