Down on the picket line, I could see the familiar form of Mrs. Hamer, moving along with her characteristic limp, holding a sign, her face wet with the rain and turned upwards, crying out her song against the sky: "Which Side Are You On?" A little later I took her picket sign from her and walked while she rested on the steps. At five the line disbanded, gathered briefly on the courthouse steps to bow in prayer, and marched back to headquarters. The policemen ended their vigil.
There was one more piece of news: Oscar Chase had been taken off to jail. His car had bumped a parked truck that morning, doing no damage, but a policeman had noted what happened, and about 4:00 P.M. he had been hustled into a police car and carted away. The charge: "Leaving the scene of an accident."
It had been a day of surprises. The picketing went on all day with no mass arrests. Perhaps this was due to the desire of the newly-elected Governor Paul Johnson to play the race issue slow; perhaps it was due to the presence of clergymen, TV cameras, newspapermen; or perhaps it was simply a tribute to the tirelessness of SNCC in putting people out in the streets again and again, until police and politicians got weary of trundling them off to jail. At any rate, over a hundred Negro men and women had come to register, though few got through the courthouse door, and only a handful were eventually declared to have passed the test
So, Freedom Day passed as a kind of quiet victory and everyone was commenting on how well things had gone. Nobody was aware, of course, that about six o'clock that evening, in his cell downtown, Oscar Chase, the SNCC man fresh out of Yale Law School, was being beaten bloody and unconscious by a fellow prisoner while policemen stood by watching.
No one knew until the next morning. I awoke at six on the narrow cot in the back of the Freedom House. Everyone around me was still asleep. Through the wall I could hear the faint sound of a typewriter and wondered who the heck was typing at six in the morning. I dressed and went into the next room. A Negro kid, about fifteen years old, was sitting at a typewriter, pecking slowly at the keys. He looked at me apologetically, seeing he had roused me: "Writing a letter to my sister."
I walked into the big front room, where in the darkness I could make out the forms of sleeping youngsters. One fellow was stretched out on a wooden table, one on the counter where the signs had been lettered, one on three chairs, using his jacket as a pillow, one leaning back in a chair, his head against the wall. Around a desk sat three teen-agers, as if holding a conference sound asleep in their chairs. The first rays of sunlight were coming in through the windows.
I walked outside to get some breakfast, and SNCC field secretary Milton Hancock joined me at a little cafe across the street. We sat at a table, ate and talked, and watched through a window as a man on the sidewalk unloaded a batch of fresh-caught sheepshead fish from a truck, just up from the gulf. Then someone came along to say that Oscar Chase had phoned in to headquarters that he had been beaten the night before, and he wanted to be bonded out. Two of the visiting ministers were going down to fetch him, and I went along.
The police dogs in their kennels were growling and barking as we entered the jailhouse. It was a few minutes before 8:00 A.M. The bond money was turned over. A moment later, Oscar came down the corridor, unescorted, not a soul around. A few moments before, the corridor had been full of policemen; it seemed now as if no one wanted to be around to look at him. Even the dogs had stopped growling. He was still wearing his badly worn corduroy pants, and his old boots, caked with mud. His blue workshirt was splattered with blood, and under it his T-shirt was very bloody. The right side of his face— his lips, his nose, his cheek— was swollen. His nose looked as if it were broken. Blood was caked over his eye.
We called for the police chief: "We want you to look at this man as he comes out of your jail, chief." The chief looked surprised, even concerned. He turned to Oscar, put his face close to his, "Tell them, tell them, didn't I take that fellow out of your cell when he was threatening you?" Oscar nodded. He told us the story.
The chief had removed one of the three prisoners in the cell early in the evening, when Oscar complained that he was being threatened. But shortly afterward they put in another prisoner, of even uglier disposition. And this was the one who a few hours later kicked and beat Oscar into insensibility in the presence of several policemen. He was not as drunk as the man who'd been taken out. But he was in a state of great agitation. He announced, first, that he could lick any man in the cell; there were Oscar and another prisoner. "He was very upset about the demonstration—wanted to know why the jail wasn't 'full of niggers." He had been a paratrooper in World War II, and told Oscar he "would rather kill a nigger lover than a Nazi or a Jap."
The third man in the cell proceeded to tell the former paratrooper that Oscar was an integrationist. Now he began a series of threatening moves. He pushed a cigarette near Oscar's face and said he would burn his eyes out. He said that first he would knock him unconscious and while he was out he would use a lighted cigarette on his eyes. Oscar called for the jailer. The jailer came. Oscar asked to be removed from the cell. The jailer didn't respond. The ex-paratrooper asked the jailer if Oscar was "one of them nigger-lovers." The jailer nodded.
What Oscar Chase remembers after that is that the prisoner said something close to "Now I know why I'm in this jail." Then:
The next thing I can remember was lying on the floor, looking up. I could see the jailer and some other policemen looking at me and smiling, I could also see the other prisoner standing over me, kicking me. I began to get up, was knocked down again, and then heard the door of the cell open. The cops pulled me out and brought me into another cell, where I remained by myself for the rest of the night...I was still bleeding a couple of hours after the incident. Watching from the door of my new cell, I saw the trusty put a pack of cigarettes and some matches under the door of my attacker's cell. Later I heard the police come in and let him out. I could hear them laughing...
We went from the jailhouse to the home of one of the two Negro doctors in town and agreed to meet him at his clinic in a little while. Then we took Oscar to SNCC headquarters. Mrs. Wood kept pressing her hands together, in great distress. "Oh, my poor boy!" Jim Forman came out of his room sleepily, waking up quickly as he saw Oscar. He shook his head: "Jesus Christ!" The lawyers were summoned, and we prepared to go to the FBI.
There was one moment of sick humor as the incident came to a close. Four of us waited in the FBI office in Hattiesburg for the interrogating agent to come in to get the facts from Oscar Chase about his beating. John Pratt, attorney with the National Council of Churches, tall, blond, slender, was impeccably dressed in a dark suit with faint stripes. Robert Lunney, of the Lawyer's Committee on Civil Rights (set up as a volunteer group to aid in civil rights cases), dark-haired and clean-cut, was attired as befit an attorney with a leading Wall Street firm. I did not quite come up to their standards because I had left without my coat and tie, and my pants had lost their press from the rain the day before; but I was clean-shaven, and not too disreputable looking. Oscar sat in a corner, looking exactly as he had a few hours before when I saw him come down the corridor from his cell, his face swollen, his clothes bloody. The FBI agent came out from the inner office and closed the door behind him. He surveyed the four of us with a quick professional eye and then asked, "Who was it got the beating?"
At four that afternoon, the Hattiesburg Municipal Court convened to hear the case of Robert Moses, on trial for obstructing traffic by standing on the sidewalk and refusing to move on when ordered to by a policeman. Many of the white ministers went to the trial, and we had agreed that we would sit in the Negro section; so far, any attempt made in Mississippi to sit integrated in a local courtroom had ended in arrest. I entered the courtroom, sat down on the 'colored' side of the aisle, and noted that there were about ten white people on that side, and an equal number of Negroes on the "white" side. Nine marshals stood against the wall. The judge entered the chamber and everyone rose. To our surprise, it was a woman, Judge Mildred W. Norris, an at
tractive, gracious lady who smiled and posed for the photographers as she approached the bench, then nodded for everyone to be seated. She smiled pleasantly at the spectators, paused a moment, then said sweetly, "Will the marshals please segregate the courtroom?" Everything was quiet.
The marshals moved towards us. The lady judge said: "I will ask you to please move to the side of the courtroom where you belong, or leave. If you do not, you will be held in contempt of court and placed under arrest." No one moved. The marshals came up closer. As one approached me, I raised my hand. He stopped, and said, rather uncertainly, "Do you wish to make a statement?" I replied, "Yes." The judge said, "You may make a statement." I got to my feet and said, "Your Honor, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that segregated seating in a courtroom is unconstitutional. Will you please abide by that ruling?" The courtroom buzzed. The judge hesitated. John Pratt, who with Bob Lunney was acting as counsel for Moses, spoke up and asked for a recess of a few minutes, and the judge granted it. The courtroom became alive with conversation again.
During the recess, no one changed seats. The judge reconvened the court, and the room was absolutely silent. She said: "We here in Mississippi have had our way of life for hundreds of years, and I obey the laws of Mississippi. I have asked that you sit segregated or leave, or be placed under arrest. We would have appreciated your complying." She paused. "But since you do not, we will allow you to remain as you are, provided you do not create a disturbance." We sat there, astonished, but silent. And the court session began.
"Defendant Robert Moses, come right up." Bob Moses stood before the bench, in his blue overall jacket, corduroy pants, white shirt with open collar, while the charge was read: ."..with intent to provoke a breach of peace, did congregate on the sidewalk and did interfere with the passage of pedestrians and refused to move on when ordered to do so..." He pleaded not guilty.
Three policemen took the stand, the first one named John Quincy Adams. He testified that Moses had obstructed pedestrian traffic by standing on the sidewalk. The courtroom was hot, and the judge, smiling slightly, picked up a cardboard sign near her and began fanning herself with it. It was one of the exhibits, a picket sign with large letters: "FREEDOM Now!" It showed a picture of two small Negro boys, and said "give Them A Future In Mississippi." The judge continued to fan herself with the sign.
Cross-examined by Bob Lunney, Patrolman John Quincy Adams admitted no other pedestrians had complained about the sidewalk being obstructed, and that he did not see anyone who did not have free access. The second policeman was shown a picket sign by the city attorney which said, "JOIN THE FREEDOM SITE." The attorney asked, "Do you understand what a fight is?" "Yes," the patrolman replied.
At about 7:00 P.M. Bob Moses took the stand, the only witness in his defense. After a series of questions by Robert Lunney, he was turned over for cross-examination to the attorney for the city, Francis Zachary, a large man with iron grey hair, a black suit, and horn-rimmed glasses. Zachary kept Moses on the stand for over an hour in the most fierce, pounding cross-examination I had ever seen. Zachary's voice was filled alternately with anger, contempt, disgust. He walked back and forth in front of the witness, using his voice like a whip, shaking papers in front of Moses' face, and moving up close and pointing his finger, the combination of voice and gestures and incessant pointless questions adding up to an assault on the senses, an attempt to break down the witness through emotional exhaustion. Through it all, Moses, a little tired from his day in jail, sat there on the witness stand, answering in the same quiet, even voice, pointing out patiently again and again where the prosecutor had misunderstood his reply, occasionally blinking his eyes under the glare of the lights in the courtroom, looking steadily, seriously at his questioner.
Zachary: Let me ask you this: You knew there were 150 of you outsiders in this community demonstrating, didn't you?
Moses: No, that is not true.
Zachary: That is not true?
Moses: That is not true.
Zachary: (angrily): At the time you were arrested, there wasn't 150 of you walking around in front of the Court House?
Moses: You said "outsiders." There were not 150 outsiders walking around the Court House.
Or again:
Zachary: Where would this democracy be if everybody obeyed officers like you did?
Moses: I think that it would be in very good shape. I... Zachary: Good, now, you've answered it, now let's move on...
Zachary held up a list of the ministers who had come down for Freedom Day and waved it in Moses' face. He went down the list, asking about the ministers and the organizations on it.
Zachary: The (he paused, and stumbled over the word "Rabbinical") Rabbin-in-ical Assembly of America. Are you a member of that organization?
Moses: (gently correcting him): Rabbinical Assembly. No. I am not.
At one point, the prosecutor, trying to hold in his rage against the quiet calm of the witness, broke out: "Moses! Let me tell you something..."
Again:
Zachary: Why didn't you mind this officer when he gave you an order?
Moses: I had a right to be there...
Zachary: What law school did you graduate from?
Lunney: Objection.
The Court: I will have to overrule you.
Zachary: (again to Moses): I want to know what you base this right on. Are you a legal student?
Moses: I base the right on the fact of the First Amendment....That is the whole point of democracy, that the citizens know what their rights are, and they don't have to go to law school to know what their rights are.
About 9:15 P.M., with the attorney's closing remarks over, the judge denied Lunney's motion to dismiss, and declared that the court found Robert Moses guilty, sentencing him to a fine of $200 and sixty days in jail. We all filed out of the courtroom into the night, and Patrolman John Quincy Adams took Bob Moses back to his cell.
A few days later Bob Moses was out on bail, once again directing the Mississippi voter registration drive for SNCC. Plans were being made for a big summer, with a thousand students coming into Mississippi for July and August of 1964. And, for the first time since Reconstruction, a group of Mississippi Negroes announced their candidacy for the U.S. Congress: Mrs. Fannie Hamer of Ruleville; Mrs. Victoria Gray of Hattiesburg; the Rev. John Cameron of Hattiesburg. Thus, a new native leadership was taking form, already beginning to unsettle the official hierarchy of the state by its challenge.
SNCC came out of McComb after the summer of 1961 battered and uncertain. It moved on to Greenwood and other towns in the Delta, grew in numbers, gathered thousands of supporters throughout the state. In places like Hattiesburg it took blows, but it left the town transformed, its black people—and possibly some white people—awakened. Most of all, for the Negroes of Mississippi, in the summer of 1964, as college students from all over America began to join them to help bring democracy to Mississippi and the nation, the long silence was over.
8
The Selma to Montgomery March
The summer of 1964 saw a massive effort against racial segregation in Mississippi, when a thousand people from all over the country, mostly white college students, joined local black Mississippians in Freedom Summer. Those weeks were filled with courageous attempts to break down racial barriers in what black people considered the most murderous of states. There were repeated acts of violence against the civil rights workers, culminating in the murder of one black and two white civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Shwerner. Throughout, the federal government played its usual role of observing, but not acting, in effect abnegating its responsibility to enforce constitutional rights everywhere in the nation.
In early 1965, attempts at voter registration in Alabama resulted in repeated acts of violence by local officials against black people who dared to protest. A young black man named Jimmy Lee Jackson was beaten and shot to death by a state trooper. A column of black people, beginning to march from Selma to the state ca
pital in Montgomery, were clubbed and gassed by state troopers. A white minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to protest police brutality, was clubbed on a street and died. Now there were protests and demonstrations world-wide. The federal government, speaking through the Voice of America in thirty-eight languages, broadcast an outrageous falsehood: that 'under the United States Constitution the police powers belong to the states, not to the Federal Government.' In fact, a federal law gave the national government absolute police powers to protect the constitutional rights of citizens whenever a state failed to do so. But the wave of protests had an effect. President Lyndon Johnson now asked for a law to guarantee black people the right to vote, which became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And when a new march from Selma to Montgomery was organized, Johnson ordered several thousand National Guardsmen and U.S. Army troops to protect the marchers. I was traveling through the South to do an article for The Nation called "The South Revisited." and joined the march eighteen miles out of Montgomery.
Montgomery, Alabama, March 20-25, 1965
The march from Selma, a little over halfway along, turned into a field a hundred yards off the main highway to Montgomery, deep in Lowndes County Ca bad county") and settled down for the night. The field was pure mud, so deep one's shoes went into it to the ankles, and to pull out after each step was an effort. A chunk of moon shone, the sky was crowded with stars, and yet the field was enveloped in blackness. Two huge tents went up, one for men, one for women, and inside people spread plastic sheets over the mud, unrolled their sleeping bags, lay down, weary.