Bruce Watson - Freedom Summer

Table of Contents

ALSO BY BRUCE WATSON

Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind

Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream

The Man Who Changed How Boys and Toys Were Made

William Faulkner, An Odor of Verbena

Richard Wright, Black Boy

In the fall of 1963, America was suffused with an unbearable whiteness of being. Confident and assertive, the nation rode an unprecedented wave of prosperity. The engines of the American economy were at full bore; the young, handsome president was well liked and respected. The enemy was unmistakablea mushroom cloud, a bald bully banging his shoe at the United Nations, a worldwide threat that had to be contained. Americans drove two-thirds of the worlds cars and held half the worlds wealth. Cars were big and beefy, with fins, flamboyant taillights, and loud engines under expansive hoods. Jars of Miracle Whip and loaves of Wonder Bread were in most kitchens; Marlboros and Kents were advertised on TV, and half of all adults smoked a pack or more a day. Only one or two cities had enclosed malls. Ninety-nine percent of homes had TVsalmost all black and whiteyet none received more than seven channels. These featured a vast wasteland of Westerns, medical shows, and silly sitcoms. Not a single program showed a dark face in any but the most subservient role. In the halls of Congress and in city halls across the nation, all but a few politicians were as white as the ballots that elected them. Yet from this ivory tower, the future could be spotted.

That fall in Southeast Asia, American advisers sent back discouraging reports, causing President Kennedy to consider ending involvement in Vietnam. College students strummed folk songs, their younger siblings danced to syrupy pop music, but off in England a shaggy-haired rock band was riding a wave of frenzy that would soon sweep across the Atlantic and sweep away old mores. Across the South, blacks were marching into police dogs and fire hoses, demanding decency and human rights. But the most significant signpost in the autumn of 1963 arose in the nations poorest state. There, on a November weekend shortly before events in Dallas began to change everything, thousands of bone-poor citizens gave America a long-overdue lesson in democracy.

Mississippis official ballot listed Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. Yet in a southern state still voting as if Lincoln headed the GOP, the election was never in doubt. Everyone knew Democrat Paul B. Johnson, following in his fathers footsteps, would be the next governor. White voters admired how, as lieutenant governor, Paul Stood Tall Last Fall, blocking a black mans entry to the state university. White voters relished Johnsons sneers at the most hated politicians in Mississippi, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, whose federal troops, so the story went, had incited the integration riots at Ole Miss. White voters sniggered at Johnsons joke that NAACP stood for Niggers, Alligators, Apes, Coons, and Possums. And on November 5, white voters comfortably elected Tall Paul. But that Tuesday, whites were not the only voters in Mississippi.

From the buff sands of the Gulf Coast to the cotton fields of the Delta, a parallel election was held, a black election, a Freedom Election. In little wooden churches with majestic names, whole congregations rose from the pews. While gospel choirs chantedWe-ee shall not, we shall not be movedmen and women slipped Freedom Ballots into wooden boxes. In cafs sweetened by the smell of cornbread, withered hands marked Xs beside Aaron HenryGovernor and Reverend Edwin KingLt. Governor. On teetering porches, black men in overalls and black women in gingham spoke with students from Yale and Stanford recruited for this prelude to Freedom Summer. Nodding politely, calling their clean-cut guests sir, lifelong sharecroppers learned that voting did not have to remain white folks business. And thousands, forging raw democracy out of Mississippis red clay, cast Freedom Votes in beauty parlors and grocery stores, in barbershops and pool halls. Yet thousands more were far too terrified to risk anything so dangerous as voting.