This time in Part 8 of my Journal I start by mentioning our failure to draw students for a Freedom School–not everthing was successful– and then move on to describe our meeting with the most striking person that I have ever met, Fanny Lou Hamer. It was at a Freedom Rally in Cleveland, the county seat about 10 miles north of our HQ in Shaw:
There was a great deal of cheering & clapping at this, along with the usual interjections throughout the short speech. The crowd was well prepared now to hear Mrs. Hamer. Fannie Lou Hamer is a short, dumpy woman with graying hair. She is an animated speaker using many gestures, when her hands are not resting on the table before her. Her voice carries well, even above the “Amens” & “that’s right” of a worked-up crowd. She begins very simply and yet often bursts into great eloquence, even though it’s an ungrammatical eloquence. Her speech, apparently a standard one used when she visits groups she hasn’t met before, is simply a recital of the events in her life that led her take a stand.
She told us that one night her minister urged his people to register to vote so they could be first class citizens. In Aug. of 1962 she and 17 others traveled in a hired bus to Indianola where they registered. A large group of policemen, uniformed & plain clothes, both city & state, were gathered at the entrance way. “Any man in Miss. who can carry a gun & wear kakhi pants & is white can be a policeman.”
The group left the city but was stopped by city & state policemen. They were ordered off the bus. then back on. The bus went back to Indianola where the driver was arrested & charged with driving a bus of he wrong color! He had been driving it for many years, but now all of a sudden its color was illegal! He was first fined $100, far more than the group had with them. This was reduced to $50, then to $30 which they paid.
The Hamers worked on Mr. Marlowe’s plantation. When he found out that she had registered, he came and commanded her to go back and withdraw her name from the rolls. “Mr. Marlowe, I didn’t go to register for you but for myself,” she answered. She and her husband were fired & ordered to leave. Most of their possessions were stolen and their car damaged. They moved to Ruleville & stayed with Mrs. Tucker for a time, during which 16 bullets were fired into the house. One night two girls were wounded. Mrs. Hamer also reported that when she went to pay her water bill she had been charged with 9000 gal Ions. She told them she had been out of town, that she had not tub or shower & so could not possibly have used so much. “I just want you to know that I know!”
During the next months Mr. Hamer was fired several times. “But if God is for you,” she exclaimed, “who can be against you?!” Loud Amens and clapping.
She attended a voter registration conference in South Carolina. On the way back the bus stopped at, Miss. Five of the Negro women got off the bus to use the bathroom facilities. Mrs. Hamer, sitting on the bus, saw the women come running out of the station. They told her there were highway policemen in the restrooms. The patrolmen came out and started to put the women into their cars. Mrs. Hamer got off the bus to see what was happening. One of the women called, “Get back on the bus, Mrs. Hamer.” One of the men shouted, “Get that one, too.” Mrs. Hamer was also taken into custody then, and the group taken to jail and put into cells.
Mrs. Hamer reported that she could hear the sounds of a woman taking “her licks” and falling down a great deal. A loud voice said, “Can’t you say ‘yes sir,’ nigger?” “Yes I can, but I don’t know you well enough.” Sometime later she passed Mrs. Hamer’s cell. Her clothes had been torn off and she had to lean against the wall for support in order to stand. The men came to her cell next. “Where you from,
fatso?” “Ruleville.” “We’re going to check on that.”
Later the same ones returned. “You’re right. You’ ll wish you were back there!” She was led into another cell where two Negroes forced her to lie face down on a bunk. They were ordered to beat her and warned of what would happen to them if they didn’t. Each one beat her until he was too tired to continue. She tried to place her arms & hands behind her to absorb some of the force of the blows & cover her feet which were becoming stiff. One of the policemen watching the proceedings told one of the Negro prisoners to sit on her feet. As the beating continued she tried to blot out the sound by putting her hands over her ears. She doesn’t know how long the beating lasted; she believes that she lost consciousness. Finally the blows stopped & she was ordered to stand up & go back to her cell. She doesn’t know just how she found the strength, but she was able to make her way back.
They were aroused at night & told to get out of this mess. “I was born into this mess. I have to work myself out of it!” (Cheers) ” We been praying about it for years, going to church, hoping God would change things.” “If you’ve been born in America with a black face, you’re born in America!” (Cheers) “You can’t separate Christ from freedom!” “Now God wants us to stand up.”
She referred very movingly to the 5th Ch. of Matthew. “Christ called his disciples and taught them the same things we’ve been doing for years …
”Blessed are those who mourn.”
“Blessed are the meek – There ain’t no one more meek than the Negro!” (Applause)
“If you see a preacher not standing up, there’s something wrong with him, if he isn’t helping his people, There’s something wrong with teachers who don’t teach citizenship and what it means. There’s something wrong about not knowing about the history of Negroes!”
There’s more, but you can use the link below to read it.
Part 9 of the Journal is taken up by an account of 2 meetings–first of parents at Shaw convened to discuss the boycott initiated by their high school students; and second, of students wanting to see more action than just getting adults register to vote. They wanted to desegregate several facilities. In both cases, I am including just a portion of the journal entry:
In the evening the parents met to discuss the school boycott. It began like a prayer meeting – prayers, Scripture reading & singing. The meeting itself began with Mr. Flakes presiding. He stated that they were there to draw up a petition to present to Mr. Thorn, the county superintendent of schools. It was soon obvious that the parents were 100 behind their children (many of whom were there and took part in the discussion).
Mr. Flakes stated that they would compose the text that night and that anyone who had anything to say should speak up. Plenty did. This was without doubt the most democratic meeting I’d ever seen for such a large group -(about120). The old New England town meetings must have been something like this. Everyone that wanted to had his say. Some of the impromptu speeches were very effective – and fiery.
…
In the face of so much democracy it took a while to draft the petition, but this was at last finished. They adopted the four resolutions of the students and added some of their own. They are incensed over the inferior quality of the teaching and of the disregard for their opinions or wishes. We talked with a number of the people after the meeting who came over to shake our hands. Several thanked us for coming and stated that they were so happy to see us and that our presence meant so much to them. They were very anxious about our leaving. Mr. Flakes bought us a coke after which we went home to bed.
The meeting of the Student Union about desegregting Shaw facilities, as you’ll see, worried the SNNC leaders because they were under orders from COFO not to engage in any confrontational activities. COFO was concentrating on voter registration, and thus wanted to avoid any face to face meetings with business owner and police. These almost always ended with violence.
Monday night the Student Union of Shaw met and decided upon a further course of action. They wanted to desegregate the movie theater, the public library and to boycott the white merchants. They decided to begin the next day with the library, it being open only on Tuesday afternoons. Thus they gathered at the center and asked if we could go with them.
Tuesday, August 11
We called John Bradford (County SNNC chair) who asked us to come up right away to discuss it. I drove five or six of the students up to Winstonville. We must have shook up John B. quite a bit. He gave us cake, cokes. ice cream, and those who wanted it, chicken: he also told us that we were invited later on to a chicken dinner at the Marshalls. I don’t know whether he thought that he might not be able to stop the kids & that this would slow them down, or what. We had a good discussion of the pros and cons of the move. John explained COFO’s decision not to engage in noisy demonstrations or picketing, but he pointed out that this was policy for COFO Volunteers, & that he could not order them around.
He was somewhat relieved to learn that they were not intending to make a big production of the desegregation move, just to go in quietly by 2’s or 3’s, asked to be served, & leave. He agreed that it was a good idea which could produce valuable results. He just wanted to make sure that they had prepared. As it turned out they were not as prepared as they’d thought. They hadn’t discussed thoroughly what they would do if arrested nor arranged for bail money. John called Jackson and arranged for a lawyer to come up the next day to meet with us.
John also thought that the movie theater desegregation and store boycott were great ideas. He especially recommended the economic boycott. He suggested that certain stores that had been especially contemptuous of Negroes be selected, and that we appoint a negotiating committee to present our stated objectives to the merchants & deal with them.
The kids were a little chagrined at first at being slowed down in their plans, but they came to see the value in John’s suggestions. It’s really something though – here we were, not having to stir up the youth, but instead finding it necessary to calm and channel their enthusiasm!
In Part 10 I begin with an account of a run-in out in the country with a man who told us to leave or else. When my teenagers got out of my car to catch his license number as he drove away, he spotted them, stopped, and tried to turn around so he could return. He got stuck, the kids laughed but quickly jumped back into the car so I could drive off before he could catch us:
The kids, of course, thought this was quite exciting, though I think all of us knew that if he’d had his gun along it might not have been so amusing. It’s not too pleasant being cussed out & hated so, but we’d been prepared for this, so it was hardly as devastating to my morale as he’d hoped. If anything it had just the opposite effect – though this is as close as I care to come to violence.
Then I write of our meeting about the students wanting to desegregate Shaw. This involved two lawyers and SNCC coordinator John Bradford up in Winstonville:
Two lawyers came representing the (COFO Office) in Jackson. Like the ministers they were donating their time, usually for a two-week period. The one lawyer was about to leave and so his replacement came along also. The “veteran” filled us in on the legal background of the project. The proposed library and theater integration is definitely legal, coming under interstate commerce.
They warned the youth of the possible consequences—of arrest and jail. There is no current fund to provide bail, so they would have to arrange this for themselves. They stressed that at this moment the students were more valuable out of jail than in because of the work in registration that was going on. They never spoke of if you’re convicted, but rather of when you’re convicted. They were convinced that the court system of Mississippi is the most corrupt that the world had ever seen. Justice cannot be found in a local or state court, and even Judge Cox of the U.S. District Court in Miss. is a segregationist who is hardly impartial. They felt–and they affirmed–that this was the opinion of all the lawyers who had come to Miss. this summer – that only federal intervention could clean up the state.
…
They thought that the idea of a boycott is a good one, just so nothing is printed and distributed, as this is illegal. They spoke of a supermarket in Jackson that had fired a Negro & refused to hire more. Negroes stopped buying in the store, leaving it almost empty. Within a day the management was negotiating with the leaders and an agreement was reached.
Other than more about volunteer lawyers and their participation, the ntry ends with a brief desription of Fanny Lou Hamer’s visit to Shaw and our taking her home to Ruleville.
You searched for Miss. Summer Freedom Project (Part 8) • Visual Parables (readthespirit.com)
https://readthespirit.com/visual-parables/mississippi-summer-freedom-project-part-9/
Next time is the limited view of the students integrating the Shaw Library, plus, I will include also links to a film.
