"Indeed, the organizing efforts in Southwest Mississippi confirmed what Ella Baker and Amzie Moore had already stressed in their conversations with [Robert] Moses and SNCC: that there were people in rural communities, like Steptoe, who had been waiting for --even expecting--them. The nature of the relationship, however, was 'totally unexpected,' Moses recalled:
"'I had become part of something else besides a civil rights organization in Mississippi. Everywhere we went I and other civil rights workers were adopted and nurtured, even protected as though we were family. We were the community's children, and that closeness rendered moot the label of 'outside agitator'...Importantly, as is always true in close families, our young generation was dynamically linked to a rooted older generation who passed on wisdom, encouragement and concrete aid when possible. This was empowering, enabling SNCC and CORE field secretaries to move from county to county across a network that provided different levels of support. A network made up of people offering whatever they could within their means."
P. 174. THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb , Jr. (2016)
[Reading this, I was reminded of similar experiences that we faced in Alabama and in Mississippi in 1970 and 1971, when bands of 86 and 90 students, respectively, traveled from Howard University in Washington, D.C., on busses to campaign for Dr. John Cashen who ran for Alabama governor against George Wallace; and who poll-watched for Charles Evers, Medgar Evers' brother, in his Mississippi gubernatorial race. We received much of the same love, as described above, from the black community, wherever we went, be it in Birmingham restaurants or in a Mississippi cotton fields, where a farmer and his son, kindly showed me how to pick cotton with their long sack. [I lasted about 3 feet!] But, I was then 'grounded with my brothers,' as Walter Rodney wrote!
More ominously, however, I was also pushed in the chest by a two-gun toting, big hat-wearing, short white sheriff in Itta Bena, Mississippi (who had pushed Stokely Carmichael down in the street in 1966). The sheriff had falsely accused me of "standing too close" to white women as I was poll-watching. He knew he was lying. I knew it. The white women knew it too. So, when I responded by stepping back up to him , while citing the relevant Mississippi constitutional provisions as mixed in with bits of profound profanity, he left as abruptly as he had come. I stayed. And continued poll-watch.
Later that night in the office of a Money, Mississippi, cotton gin, then still poll-watching, now with a very good friend from Howard, who is also now an attorney, we heard a truck pull up outside and heard feet hitting the ground. Then, a shotgun-wielding white man entered the office and stood on one side of the door ; soon another knife-wielding white man entered and stood on the opposite side of the door. Lastly, about 20 brothers trooped in to the voting table (there was no voting booths), marked their ballots and exited. Then , the two armed white men respectively turned and walked out. Not a single word was spoken during this entire drama. I looked at Bill Lightfoot. He looked at me, and we both booked! We left the place where legendary Emmett Till was killed, glad to be alive ourselves! In fact, the very next day, still reeling from prior experiences with poll-watching, I caught a bus south to Madison County, Mississippi, my birth place, to visit my maternal grandmother in Canton, and to visit my paternal grandfather, in Pickens, for some peace , love, familial rejuvenation!]
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU ... EXCERPT
"Indeed, the organizing efforts in Southwest Mississippi confirmed what Ella Baker and Amzie Moore had already stressed in their conversations with [Robert] Moses and SNCC: that there were people in rural communities, like Steptoe, who had been waiting for --even expecting--them. The nature of the relationship, however, was 'totally unexpected,' Moses recalled:
"'I had become part of something else besides a civil rights organization in Mississippi. Everywhere we went I and other civil rights workers were adopted and nurtured, even protected as though we were family. We were the community's children, and that closeness rendered moot the label of 'outside agitator'...Importantly, as is always true in close families, our young generation was dynamically linked to a rooted older generation who passed on wisdom, encouragement and concrete aid when possible. This was empowering, enabling SNCC and CORE field secretaries to move from county to county across a network that provided different levels of support. A network made up of people offering whatever they could within their means."
P. 174. THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb , Jr. (2016)
[Reading this, I was reminded of similar experiences that we faced in Alabama and in Mississippi in 1970 and 1971, when bands of 86 and 90 students, respectively, traveled from Howard University in Washington, D.C., on busses to campaign for Dr. John Cashen who ran for Alabama governor against George Wallace; and who poll-watched for Charles Evers, Medgar Evers' brother, in his Mississippi gubernatorial race. We received much of the same love, as described above, from the black community, wherever we went, be it in Birmingham restaurants or in a Mississippi cotton fields, where a farmer and his son, kindly showed me how to pick cotton with their long sack. [I lasted about 3 feet!] But, I was then 'grounded with my brothers,' as Walter Rodney wrote!
More ominously, however, I was also pushed in the chest by a two-gun toting, big hat-wearing, short white sheriff in Itta Bena, Mississippi (who had pushed Stokely Carmichael down in the street in 1966). The sheriff had falsely accused me of "standing too close" to white women as I was poll-watching. He knew he was lying. I knew it. The white women knew it too. So, when I responded by stepping back up to him , while citing the relevant Mississippi constitutional provisions as mixed in with bits of profound profanity, he left as abruptly as he had come. I stayed. And continued poll-watch.
Later that night in the office of a Money, Mississippi, cotton gin, then still poll-watching, now with a very good friend from Howard, who is also now an attorney, we heard a truck pull up outside and heard feet hitting the ground. Then, a shotgun-wielding white man entered the office and stood on one side of the door ; soon another knife-wielding white man entered and stood on the opposite side of the door. Lastly, about 20 brothers trooped in to the voting table (there was no voting booths), marked their ballots and exited. Then , the two armed white men respectively turned and walked out. Not a single word was spoken during this entire drama. I looked at Bill Lightfoot. He looked at me, and we both booked! We left the place where legendary Emmett Till was killed, glad to be alive ourselves! In fact, the very next day, still reeling from prior experiences with poll-watching, I caught a bus south to Madison County, Mississippi, my birth place, to visit my maternal grandmother in Canton, and to visit my paternal grandfather, in Pickens, for some peace , love, familial rejuvenation!]