Working

by Robert A. Caro

When I asked David Frost if he himself had ever attempted to register he said he had, some years before—and had in fact succeeded. But, he said, that had not turned out to be a happy experience for him. Previously, he said, white people in Eufala had always been friendly to him, had called him “David” or “Boy.” But after he registered, they called him “Nigger,” a word, he said, “I just hated, hated.” And when whites heard that he was planning to actually cast a ballot on Election Day, he said, a car had pulled up in front of his house, and the men in it had shot out the lights on his porch. He had thought of calling the police, but as the car drove away, he saw that it was a police car.

Unbelieveable. Just for wanting to vote.

“We Shall Overcome” began to be sung a lot more at the beginning of the Sixties because in a way “We Shall Overcome” is the 1960s. 1960 was, as I wrote, “the year of the first sit-ins to desegregate department store lunch counters in Southern cities. The young, neatly dressed blacks, sworn to nonviolence, sitting on the counter stools were taunted in attempts to make them relinquish their seats….Police arrived, arrested them and flung them into paddy wagons. But they got their breath back, and as the wagons drove off, from their barred windows could be heard: ‘Deep in my heart / I do believe / We shall overcome some day.’ ”

Non violent protesting that lead to change.