Struggle Over Tactics 2009

Mississippi and Alabama (1960-66)
The Struggle over Strategy

Supplemental Reading for August 2, 2008
Excerpts (mostly) from Bay Area Civil Rights Vets website

edited by Bruce Hartford
http://www.crmvet.org/tim
(boldface in TOC refers to movie highlights)
Freedom Rides....................................................................................................................................................1
The First Ride..................................................................................................................................................1
Anniston & Birmingham AL......................................................................................................................2
SNCC Students Resume the Freedom Ride....................................................................................................2
Mobs in Montgomery AL...........................................................................................................................2
Arrests in Jackson.......................................................................................................................................3
Freedom Rides Roll Across the South........................................................................................................4
A New Generation of Leaders.........................................................................................................................4
Freedom Rides — Important Points................................................................................................................5
Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm...................................................................................................................6
Voter Education Project (1961-1968).............................................................................................................7
Direct-Action or Voter Registration? (Summer, 1960)...................................................................................8
Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct, 1961)..........................................................9
The McComb Project..................................................................................................................................9
Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Formed in Mississippi-1962.................................................11
1963 -- Greenwood (Leflore County) and the Freedom Ballot.....................................................................12
Mississippi Freedom Summer --1964...............................................................................................................15
ALABAMA 1965.............................................................................................................................................16
From Mississippi to Alabama.......................................................................................................................16
Demanding the Right to Vote.......................................................................................................................17
The Murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson..........................................................................................................18
SNCC and SCLC in Selma.......................................................................................................................18
Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery (Jan-Mar - 1965)..............................................19
Turn-Around Tuesday...................................................................................................................................20
Freedom Rides
The First Ride
In December of 1960, the Supreme Court rules against segregation in inter-state travel (in Boynton v.
Virginia). Separate white and colored dining rooms and toilets for inter-state travelers are clearly illegal, and
travelers have the right to use whatever facilities they choose. By early 1961, the Rock Hill SC sit-in
movement has run into a stonewall of racist resistance, and CORE activist Tom Gaither proposes a
"Freedom Ride" through Rock Hill and elsewhere in the deep south to test and implement the Boynton
decision. On May 4, CORE Director James Farmer leads 13 Freedom Riders (7 Black, 6 white) out of
Washington on Greyhound and Trailways buses. The plan is to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi. Their final destination is New Orleans Louisiana. Most of the Riders are from
CORE, two are from SNCC, and many are in their 40s and 50s. Little trouble is encountered as they travel
through Virginia and North Carolina, but John Lewis is attacked in Rock Hill and some of the Riders are
San Francisco Freedom School http://educationanddemocracy.org/ED_SFFS.html
San Francisco Freedom School 8/2/08 http://educationanddemocracy.org/ED_SFFS.html Page 2
arrested in Charlotte NC, and Winnsboro SC.
Anniston & Birmingham AL

With the cooperation of the cops, a Klan mob of more than 100 ambush the Riders in Anniston AL, on
Mothers Day, May 15. The Riders are brutally beaten and the Greyhound bus is set on fire. The mob holds
the door shut to burn them alive. The Alabama Highway Patrol has an undercover cop on board. He pulls his
gun to force the mob back, and the passengers tumble off the bus — barely escaping with their lives — just
as the gas tanks are exploding.
When the Trailways bus reaches Anniston, the mob boards the bus and beats the Riders with fists and clubs.
The bus manages to reach Birmingham where Commissioner of Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull"
Connor encourages another KKK mob to savagely attack the Riders again, leaving them bloody and battered.
At the hospital, Jim Peck of CORE requires 53 stitches to close his wounds. The FBI knows in advance that
the busses are going to be attacked in Anniston and Birmingham, but they do nothing to prevent the violence,
do nothing to protect the Riders from assault, do nothing to enforce the Supreme Court ruling. Rev. Fred
Shuttlesworth and activists from the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) defy the
mobs to rescue the Riders. Shuttlesworth is arrested twice on various trumped up charges.
Photos and news reports of the mob violence and burning bus flash around the nation, and around
world, to the great embarassment of the Kennedys. Attorney General Robert Kennedy calls for a
"cooling off period." He blames "extremists on both sides" for the violence. Freedom Movement activists
are both dumbfounded and outraged. . . . The following day, the company drivers refuse to work any bus
carrying Freedom Riders. Unable to proceed to Montgomery, the CORE Riders decide to fly to New
Orleans to attend a previously scheduled rally at which they are the main speakers. Bomb threats prevent the
plane from taking off and they are harassed by the mob as they wait hour after hour at the airport. Finally,
under pressure from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the airline manages to get a flight off the ground in
the dead of night, and the CORE Riders reach New Orleans.
SNCC Students Resume the Freedom Ride

Though they know they are putting their young lives in deadly peril, activists from the SNCC-affiliated
Nashville Student Movement (NSM) won't allow the KKK to defeat the Ride. Student leader Diane Nash
tells Rev. Shuttlesworth: "The students have decided that we can't let violence overcome. We are coming
into Birmingham to continue the Freedom Ride." Their elders — teachers, community leaders, pastors — are
certain they will be killed and try to dissuade them. The students are not deterred.
Ten Riders (8 Black, 2 white) — including John Lewis and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of
the original Ride — take bus from Nashville to Birmingham on May 17. When they arrive, they are arrested
by "Bull" Connor who transports them in the middle of the night to the Tennessee border and dumps them by
the side of the road. They manage to make their way back to Birmingham where more Riders, including
Ruby Doris Smith from SNCC in Atlanta, reinforce them.
Now 19 strong (16 Black, 3 white) they return to the Greyhound terminal. Again, the drivers refuse to carry
them — "I have only one life to give, and I'm not going to give it to NAACP or CORE," says one driver. All
night — hour after hour — the Riders wait for a bus while constantly harassed and besieged by a racist mob
led by Robert Shelton, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
Mobs in Montgomery AL
Under intense public pressure, the Kennedy administration extracts a promise from a reluctant Alabama
Governor Patterson to protect the Freedom Riders on their journey from Birmingham to Montgomery.
Greyhound is forced to provide a driver. On the morning of May 20, the Freedom Ride resumes. Afraid
of a Klan ambush, the bus streaks south towards Montgomery at 90 miles an hour escorted by Alabama
Highway Patrol cars, their sirens screaming.
But when the bus reaches the Montgomery city limits the Highway Patrol suddenly disappears. Just before
the bus arrives, all the cops who had been guarding the Greyhound terminal also disappear. When the
Freedom Riders step off the bus, hundreds of Klansmen swarm over them. Screaming "Get the niggers!"
They attack with baseball bats, broken bottles, and lead pipes. Reporters are beaten and their cameras
smashed (which is why no photographs exist of this murderous attack).
Jim Zwerg is beaten to bloody unconsciousness, his teeth knocked out. John Lewis is felled by a wooden
crate to the head. When Justice Department official John Seigenthaler tries to rescue two of the women
Riders, he too is beaten unconscious and left bloody on the pavement. Acting against orders, Alabama Public
Safety Director Floyd Mann pulls his revolver and stops the Klansmen who are kicking and stomping Zwerg,
Lewis, and William Barbee, probably saving their lives. (When Governor George Wallace takes office in
1963 he immediately fires Mann, and replaces him with the staunch segregationist, Al Lingo.)
After allowing the Klan its reign of terror, the police finally show up. The mob, now grown to over 1,000,
expands outward from the Greyhound terminal attacking Blacks on the street, setting one teenage boy on
fire, and burning the Riders' luggage in a bonfire. The cops make no arrests, instead they serve the Freedom
Riders with injunctions blaming them for the violence.
Under the segregation laws, Black cab drivers cannot take white Freedom Riders to the hospital, and white
drivers won't. Only the Catholic St. Jude's hospital will treat wounded Riders of any color. From his hospital
bed, William Barbee tells reporters: "As soon as we've recovered from this, we'll start again." And from the
white side of the segregated hospital, Zwerg agrees, saying: "We are prepared to die." In Washington,
pressure intensifies on the Kennedys. JFK issues a tepid "statement of concern," and Robert Kennedy orders
Federal marshals to Alabama to protect interstate commerce. Meanwhile, James Farmer of CORE begins
recruiting more Riders to head south.
The following night, Sunday May 21st, more than 1200 people pack Reverend Abernathy's 1st Baptist
church to honor the Freedom Riders. Dr. King speaks in their support. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000
whites heckle and harass Blacks and the handful of Federal marshals protecting the church. No city or state
cops are in sight. Shuttlesworth, down from Birmingham, braves the mob that now completely surrounds the
church to escort in James Farmer. The mob overturns a car and sets it ablaze. The marshals desperately try to
protect the church from assault and fire bombs. Inside, the people of Montgomery sing hymns and freedom
songs in defiance. As rocks shatter the windows and tear gas seeps in, the children are sent to the basement
for protection. Black men draw hidden pistols from their pockets and prepare to defend their families if the
mob manages to break down the doors.
Slowly, reluctantly, President Kennedy moves towards committing federal troops, but Governor Patterson
forestalls him by declaring martial law and sending in the cops and Alabama National Guard to disperse the
mob. With the mob now gone, people try to leave church, but the Alabama National Guard — the "Dixie"
Division with the Confederate flag as its shoulder patch — forces them at bayonet point to remain inside the
sweltering, tear gas filled building for the entire night.
Arrests in Jackson
The next day more Freedom Riders from CORE and SNCC arrive in Montgomery. Behind their backs and
hidden from public view, the Kennedys cut a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi. The state
police and National Guard will protect the Riders from mob violence — thereby ending media coverage of
bloody lawlessness which is humiliating JFK at home and embarrassing the U.S. around the globe. In return,
the Federal government will look the other away and allow the two states to illegally — and
unconstitutionally — arrest the Freedom Riders even though they are engaged in inter-state commerce
protected by the Boynton decision.
On Wednesday morning, May 24, a dozen Freedom Riders board a Trailways bus for the 250 mile
journey to Jackson MS. Surrounded by Highway Patrol and National Guard, the bus heads west on
Highway 80 in a caravan of more than 40 vehicles. They pass through Selma at top speed without stopping
— there will be no bus-depot rest stops until Jackson seven hours from Montgomery. Meanwhile, back in
Montgomery, 14 more Riders board the mid-day Greyhound for Jackson. When the weary Riders arrive in
Jackson and attempt to use "white only" restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for
Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett in defense of
segregation: "The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him."
From lockup, the Riders announce "Jail No Bail" — they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and
illegal convictions — and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39
days, the maximum time they can serve without loosing their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their
arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond. Back in Montgomery, a
Greyhound from the east arrives with yet another team of Riders including Charles Jones of SNCC and Yale
University Chaplin William Sloan Coffin. The Alabama Guardsmen are unable to prevent the mob from
attacking with thrown rocks and bottles. When SCLC leaders Rev. Shuttlesworth, Rev. Abernathy, Wyatt
Tee Walker, and Bernard Lee join them at the bus terminal's "white only" lunch counter, they are all arrested.
Freedom Rides Roll Across the South

The Kennedys call for a "cooling off period" and condemn the Rides as unpatriotic because they embarrass
the nation on the world stage. Attorney General Robert Kennedy — the chief law enforcement officer of the
land — is quoted as saying that he "does not feel that the Department of Justice can side with one group or
the other in disputes over Constitutional rights." Defying the Kennedys, CORE, SNCC, and SCLC reject any
"cooling off period" and form a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the Rides rolling. June —
July — August — more than 60 Freedom Rides criss-cross the South, most of them converging on
Jackson where every Rider is arrested. By the end of the summer, more than 300 have been jailed,
including 41 local Jacksonians busted for joining the Riders at segregated lunch counters.
A New Generation of Leaders

Many of the Freedom Riders are moved to Parchman Penitentiary, the Mississippi prison farm notorious
for its brutal treatment of inmates — where prison life is described as "worse than slavery." Murders and
rapes are common, and the guards use shotguns and leather whips to enforce absolute rule. Mississippi
intends to halt the growing Freedom Movement by breaking the Riders' spirit. When the Riders won't stop
singing freedom songs their mattresses are removed, forcing them to sleep on hard concrete and steel.
It's summer in the Delta, the windows are closed and the fans stopped to create sweltering, suffocating heat.
The riders must endure poisonous hatred, inedible food, and vicious beatings. Fire hoses are used to smash
bodies against the steel bars, and the prisoners are tortured with agonizing electric cattle prods. Kwame
Ture (Stokley Carmichael) later recalled: "When [the prod] touched your skin, the pain was sharp and
excruciating, at once a jolting shock and a burn. You could actually see (puffs of smoke) and smell (the odor
of roasting flesh) your skin burning."
Mississippi fails to break the Riders. They emerge from prison — Parchman and Hinds County Jail —
stronger and more committed than before. And for many of them, what began as a simple protest has
been forged into a vocation, a vocation for freedom and justice that shapes the rest of their lives. Finally, the
Kennedy administration has the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) issue another desegregation order.
When the new ICC rule takes effect on November 1st, passengers are permitted to sit wherever they please
on the bus, "white" and "colored" signs come down in the terminals, separate drinking fountains, toilets, and
waiting rooms are consolidated, and the lunch counters begin serving people regardless of skin color. In
Alabama and Mississippi a crack has appeared in the solid wall of segregation.
Freedom Rides — Important Points

As Movement veterans, we note the following about the Freedom Rides:
* When the going gets tough, don't retreat — escalate. By the winter of 1960, the student sit-ins are
flagging. Victories have been won in some mid and upper-south college-towns, but in the deep South little
progress has been made. Rather then retreat, the Movement escalates the confrontation. The Freedom
Rides directly and publicly challenge segregation in the segregation strongholds of Alabama, Mississippi,
Georgia and Louisiana. The Freedom Riders up the stakes by defying the Klan, the Citizens Councils, mob
violence, and Parchman Prison.
* Young people seize the initiative. At the crucial moment when violence halts the Rides in Birmingham
and the adults of CORE falter, it is the young, SNCC-affiliated students in Nashville who pick up the torch
and carry the Rides forward against the advice of Dr. King and all other adult leaders who fear (with good
reason) that they will be killed. Says beloved Nashville leader Rev. Kelly Miller Smith: "They've all grown
up. One day they're children, nervous about going to jail for the first time in Nashville, and the next day
they're going off to Birmingham, and Jackson Mississippi. I've watched them for a year, and they've grown
up in front of me." The young, now-former students, intuitively grasp what is to become a cornerstone of
SNCC philosophy — that only through crossing the line into danger can change be made, and the greater the
risk the greater the change. The time for caution and safety has passed, it's time now to put your body on the
line.
* The Rides inspire the Black population. If segregation is a frozen iceberg in the deep South, the
Freedom Rides are a blow from an ice-pick cracking the block. The Riders defy the worst that the Councils,
the Klan, and the cops can do — deadly violence & hard prison — and they emerge undaunted. Poor Blacks
have no money for lunch counters, but Blacks from all walks of life ride the buses. And when the media
begins to expose for the first time the true depths of southern racism it advances the long, slow process of
breaking down the isolation and fear that have kept people in political and economic bondage for
generations. Hattye Gatson, a resident of rural Pickens, Mississippi (Holmes County), tells an interviewer: "I
was working at a private home during the time and would turn on the TV and see all the riots, and I just
couldn't wait to get involved. And I was glad when they came through, because that's what I wanted to
do. And that's what I said I wanted to be: a Freedom Rider." She becomes a voting-rights activist in
the Mississippi Delta.
* Politicians and power-elites foment the racism and violence. The Riders encounter no violence or
arrests at Georgia bus stops in Augusta, Athens, and Atlanta because the Georgia power structure chooses
not to whip up hate and fear. The violence and arrests occur in South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi
where powerful politicians such as Senator Strom Thurmond and Governors Patterson and Barnett seek
political advantage by fanning the flames of racism. The White Citizens Council and Ku Klux Klan are just
as strong in Georgia as in the other deep South states, but absent encouragement from the power-elites
they do not mobilize mobs. And absent Council and Klan demagoguery and threats, ordinary white citizens
do not spontaneously erupt into violence because Blacks and whites sit together on a bus or at a lunch
counter.
* Courage and determination trump violence. After the Rides, it becomes a bedrock principle of the
Freedom Movement that violence and repression cannot — must not ever — be allowed to deter an action or
suppress a struggle. That the response to violent repression has to be determination to continue
regardless. Even when Movement supporters disagree with the original action, they rally in support if it
encounters violent repression. In 1966, for example, all Movement organizations and leaders oppose the
Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear. But when James Meredith is gunned down on the highway south
of Memphis, every organization and leader mobilizes to continue his march to Jackson.
* The Rides expose the hollowness of JFK's "freedom" rhetoric. Just weeks before the Rides begin,
President Kennedy proclaims his commitment to justice for American Blacks. But the truth is that he is
mainly interested in foreign affairs, particularly the Cold War against Communism. Media stories of racial
strife in the South embarrass him before other world leaders and undercut America's posture as leader of the
"free world." In Africa and Asia, the U.S. is competing with the Soviet Union for the allegiance of the new
nations emerging out of anti-colonial struggles, and TV images of racism and repression in the South put the
lie to Washington's "freedom" sales pitch. Domestically, segregationist Southern Democrats control
Congress, and Kennedy fears that if he antagonizes the South they will cripple his legislative agenda and
thwart his plans to double the size of the U.S. military. He also believes that he cannot be re-elected in 1964
without support from the white-only Democratic Party in the South. As far as JFK is concerned, the Freedom
Rides are, in his words: "A pain in the ass." And to the growing Freedom Movement, the Kennedys'
opposition, and their refusal to enforce Federal law and Constitutional protections, is a betrayal — the
Kennedys are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
* Emergence of the big-three. The Freedom Rides brings to public prominence the "big-three,"
organizations that will shape the Movement in the years to come: CORE, SCLC, and SNCC. They are
grouped together as the direct-action and community-organizing wing of the Movement in comparison to the
litigation & legislation wing led by the NAACP.
* Effect on CORE. Little known before the Freedom Rides, CORE and its leader James Farmer are
propelled into the public spotlight. CORE quickly becomes the largest and most important direct-action civil
rights organization outside the South, with active chapters in almost every major Northern city. And in the
South, new CORE chapters are formed in the Carolinas, Florida, and Louisiana.
* Effect on SNCC. Before the Freedom Rides, SNCC as an organization is little known outside
Movement circles. The public and press are aware of the various student sit-in movements, but not of SNCC
as an organization. Clayborne Carson, writes: "At the end of 1960 SNCC was still a loosely organized
committee of part-time student activists, uncertain of their roles in the southern struggle and generally
conventional in their political orientations. Yet within months, SNCC became a cadre of full-time organizers
and protesters. Its militant identity was forged during the 'freedom rides,' a series of assaults on southern
segregation that for the first time brought student protesters into conflict with the Kennedy administration."
Or, as one Movement veteran succinctly put it: "S.N.C.C. became SNICK!"
* A new direction for SNCC. The combined results of the sit-ins and Freedom Rides convince some in
SNCC that a strategy of voter registration and community organization is needed. They conclude that
breaking the power of the all-white Democratic Party of the southern states is central to ending segregation
and creating equal opportunity. Many important Black community leaders also believe that voter registration
is a key to freedom, and their arguments are central to many SNCC activists. Others in SNCC are committed
to continuing direct-action as SNCC's primary strategy. As discussed below in "Direct-Action or Voter
Registration?" SNCC resolves to do both.
* A new generation of leaders emerge from jail. As the searing, white-heat of forge-fire hardens iron
into steel, so does the gut-wrenching courage it takes to willingly face mob violence harden college students
into life-long social activists like Diane Nash. And serving time in Mississippi's worst prisons forges
bonds of commitment and shared determination that can never be broken. Out of Parchman and Hinds
County Jails step young men and women whose names will become Movement legend in the coming years
of struggle: Zev Aelony, James Bevel, Travis Britt, Paul Brooks, Catherine Burks, Stokely Carmichael,
Doris Castle, Dave Dennis, Dion Diamond, Jim Farmer, Mimi Feingold, Jim Forman, Genevieve Hughes,
Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis, Charles Jones, Bill Mahoney, Landy McNair, Cordell Reagan, Charles
Sherrod, Jerome Smith, Ruby Doris Smith, Joan Trumpaur, Hank Thomas, the Thompson sisters (Alice,
Jean, & Shirley), C.T. Vivian, and many others.
Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm

It is a true-ism of the era that as you travel from the north to the south in 1961 the deeper grows the racism,
the worse the poverty, and the more brutal the repression. . . . Duing the post-Depression decades of the
1940s and 1950s, most of the South experiences enormous economic changes. "King Cotton" declines as
agriculture diversifies and mechanizes. In 1920, almost a 1,000,000 southern Blacks work in agriculture, by
1960 that number has declined by 75% to around 250,000 — resulting in a huge migration off the land into
the cities both North and South. By 1960, almost 60% of southern Blacks live in urban areas (compared to
roughly 30% in 1930). But those economic changes come slowly, if at all, to Mississippi (and, to some
extent, the Black Belt areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana). In 1960, almost 70% of Mississippi Blacks
still live in rural areas, and more than a third (twice the percentage in the rest of the South) work the land as
sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and farm laborers. Mississippi is still dominated — economically and
politically — by less than 100 plantation barons who lord it over vast cotton fields worked by Black hand-
labor using hoes and fingers the way it was done in slavery times. And they are determined to keep that labor
cheap and docile.
The arch-racist Senator James Eastland provides a clear example of the economic riches that underlie
racism in Mississippi. In 1961, his huge plantation in Sunflower County produces 5,394 bales of cotton. He
sells this cotton for around $890,000 (equivalent to about $5,850,000 in 2006 dollars). It costs Eastland about
$566,000 to produce that cotton for a profit of $324,000 (equal to $2,130,000 in 2006). This represents
profit of 57% (for comparison, a modern corporation is doing very well if it returns 10-15% profit). The
Black men, women, and children who labor in his fields under the blazing sun — plowing, planting, hoeing,
and picking — are paid no more than 30 cents an hour (equal to $1.97/hour in 2006). That's $3.00 for a 10
hour day, $18.00 for a six-day week.
In 1960, the median income for Blacks in Mississippi is just $1,444 (equal to $9,600 in 2006), the median
income for Mississippi whites is three times higher. More than 85% of Mississippi Blacks live below the
official Federal poverty line. Segregated education for Blacks is severely limited, the average funding for
Black schools is less than a quarter of that spent to educate white students, and in rural areas the ratio is even
more skewed, Pike County, for example, expends $30.89 to educate each white student and only $0.76 cents
per Black pupil. It is no surprise then that only 7% of Mississippi Blacks finish high school, and in the rural
areas where children are sent to the fields early in life, functional illiteracy is widespread.
This system of agricultural feudalism is maintained by Jim Crow laws, state repression, white
terrorism, and the systematic disenfranchisement of Blacks. While whites outnumber Blacks in
Mississippi overall, the ratio of Blacks to whites is higher than in any other state in the union. And in a
number of rural counties Blacks outnumber whites, in some cases by large majorities. Given these
demographic realities, the power elites know that to maintain white supremecy they have to prevent Blacks
from voting, and they are ruthless in doing so — using rigged literacy tests, poll taxes, white-only primaries,
arrests, economic retaliation, Klan violence, and assasinations (on average seven Blacks have been lynched
or assasinated each year in Mississippi since the 1880s). In 1961, less than 7% of Mississippi Blacks are
registered to vote — in many Black-majority counties not a single Black citizen is registered — and across
the state of those few on the voter rolls, only a handful dare to actually cast a ballot.
Voter Education Project (1961-1968)

By June of '61, Freedom Rides are rolling across the South and news stories documenting southern racism
and student courage are blazing around the globe — humiliating President Kennedy, the self-declared leader
of the "Free World." The Movement rejects the administration's call for a "cooling off" period and the rides
continue. JFK thinks that if the students turn to voter registration rather than sit-ins and Freedom Rides there
will be an end to white opposition, racist violence, and embarrasing media attention. Behind the scenes, he
arranges for financial grants from the Field, New World, Stern Family, and Taconic foundations for voter
registration, and he promises that the Federal government will provide protection and legal support for
Blacks engaged in registering voters if the students will just stop protesting.
Under the auspices of the non-profit Southern Regional Council (SRC), the Voter Education Project (VEP) is
established by the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC to receive the foundation money and disperse it to the
organizations doing the work on the ground. Directed by Wiley Branton, the VEP begins operations in early
1962. Between April of '62 and the end of '64 almost $900,000 (equal to $5,700,000 in 2006 dollars) is
distributed to Movement organizations across the south. Under subsequent directors Randolph Blackwell,
Vernon Jordon, and John Lewis, the VEP continues until 1968.
With the state of Tennessee on the verge of shutting down the Highlander Center as a "subversive
organization," a home has to be found for the Citizenship Schools project led by Septima Clarke. Using VEP
money, SCLC agrees to incorporate and expand the program, adding Dorothy Cotton and Andrew Young to
the leadership team and moving the location from Highlander to Dorchester Center in Georgia. SCLC also
sets up a seven-state voter registration program under Jack O'Dell.
SNCC is initially divided over the question of voter registration versus direct-action. But by 1962, it
has active voter-registration projects underway in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Other
Movement organizations also begin devoting more attention to voter registration. Registering voters
was always an NAACP focus, but in the deep South little progress had been made against the
entrenched opposition of the white power-structure. Now the availability of foundation money
combined with the increasing activity — and increasing militancy — of NAACP youth groups opens
new opportunities. CORE too, is interested in adding registration to its programs, and they use VEP
funds to begin building up a Southern field staff in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and the Carolinas.
In its first two and a half years (mid-1962 through the end of 1964) VEP funded projects manage to register
large numbers of Blacks in the upper and mid-southern states. But little progress is made in the five deep
south states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. It is only after passage of the
Voting Rights Act in August of 1965 that significant numbers are registered in those states.
Kennedy's plan to tame the Movement shatters on the rock of racist intransigence. To his
astonishment, he discovers that the southern white power structure is even more furiously — and
violently — opposed to Blacks gaining the right to vote than they were to desegregating lunch counters
and bus stations. Instead of diminishing, news stories of brutality, bombings, and murders increase as the
Klan and White Citizen Councils use every form of terrorism and economic retaliation to prevent Blacks
from voting.
And administration promises that the federal government will provide legal support, and protect Blacks who
try to register, are not kept. The Department of Justice and FBI do almost nothing as a reign of terror —
arrests and other forms of police harassment, shootings, assaults, fire bombings, murder, and economic
warfare — is unleashed against Blacks across the South.
Direct-Action or Voter Registration? (Summer, 1960)

Back in the summer of 1960, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, and other local Black leaders in Mississippi
told Bob Moses that they needed help with voter registration more than demonstrations against
segregation. He promised he would return in the summer of '61, and in July he begins voter registration
work in McComb. Staunch, long- time, Movement supporters such as Harry Belafonte and many of SNCC's
student leaders also believe that SNCC should focus on voter registration rather than direct-action such as
sit-ins and Freedom Rides. They argue that poor, rural Blacks have no money for lunch counters or other
public facilities and what they need most is political power that in Mississippi has to begin with
winning the right to vote.
Other SNCC leaders — many just released from Parchman Prison and Hinds County Jail — argue
that the Freedom Rides and other forms of direct-action must continue. The protests are gaining
momentum and bringing the Movement into the darkest corners of the deep south, raising awareness,
building courage, and inspiring young and old. They are deeply suspicious of Kennedy's demand that
they switch from demonstrations to voter registration, and they are unwilling to abandon the tactics
that have brought the Movement so far in so short a time.
In August, the issue comes to a head when SNCC meets at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. After three
days of passionate debate, SNCC is split right down the middle — half favor continuing direct-action, the
other half favor switching to voter registration. Ella Baker proposes a compromise — do both. Her
suggestion is adopted. Diane Nash is chosen to head direct-action efforts and Charles Jones is chosen to head
voter registration activity. Both groups send activists to join Bob Moses in McComb.
Almost unnoticed in the fires of the Freedom Rides and the heat of debate, SNCC as an organization is
rapidly evolving away from its campus/student roots. More and more SNCC activists — on both sides of the
issue — are leaving school to become full-time freedom fighters. With money raised by Belafonte, first
Charles Sherrod, then Bob Moses, then others are hired as SNCC staff devoting their lives to the struggle in
the rural areas and small towns of the south. In September, James Forman becomes SNCC's Executive
Director to coordinate and lead far-flung projects and a growing field staff. Increasingly, it will be the SNCC
field staff from projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and Maryland who will shape
and lead SNCC in the years to come.
And as it so often turns out to be the case when committed activists passionately disagree
over strategy, both sides are proven correct. Both direct-action and voter registration are
needed. Each supports and strengthens the other. The determination and courage of student protesters
inspires and encourages their elders, and the growing political power of adults organized around the right to
vote supports and sustains the young demonstrators.
An important point. As Movement veterans, we look back today and recall that SNCC was torn between
direct-action and voter registration. But instead of splitting the organization apart into two rival groups, they
forged a unifying compromise. By respecting that fellow activists could passionately disagree over
strategy and tactics — yet remain allies — they strengthened SNCC and the Movement as a whole.
Unfortunately, in later years, some radicals and leftists in the North all too often adopted the opposite
approach, treating anyone who disagreed with them as enemies — thereby splitting organizations and
undermining their effectiveness.
Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct, 1961)

The McComb Project
In July, 1961NAACP leader Reverend C.C. Bryant invites Bob Moses to begin a voter registration
project in McComb, the main town of Pike County. Moses is soon joined by SNCC members John Hardy
and Reginald Robinson. Rev. Bryant introduces Moses to NAACP leader E.W. Steptoe, and the project
spreads to cover adjacent Amite and Walthall Counties. Before begining work, Bob Moses writes to the U.S.
Department of Justice (DoJ) asking what the Federal response will be if Blacks are prevented from
registering. In line with the Kennedy administration's promise to defend voting rights if the students
will turn away from direct-action, the DoJ replies that it will "vigorously enforce" Federal statutes
forbidding the use of intimidation, threats, and coercion against voter aspirants.
In August, SNCC workers in McComb begin teaching Blacks the complexities of the voter registration
process. All 21 questions on the form have to be studied and understood, and all 285 sections of the
Mississippi constitution have to be mastered. After attending the class, 16 local Blacks journey through a
century of fear to the Pike County courthouse in Magnolia. Six manage to pass the test and be registered.
More SNCC workers arrive in McComb direct from the Highlander meeting: Ruby Doris Smith,
Marion Barry, Charles Jones, and others. In late August, after training in the tactics of Nonviolent
Resistance by the SNCC direct-action veterans, two local teenagers — Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes
(Muhammad), both of whom go on to become SNCC field secretaries of renown — sit-in at the local
Woolworth's lunch counter.
On the last day of August, Bob Moses takes two Blacks to the Amite County courthouse in Liberty
Mississippi. He is brutally beaten in the street by Bill Caston, cousin to the sheriff and son-in-law of E. H.
Hurst the State Representative. That night, more than 200 Blacks attend the first Civil Rights Movement
mass meeting in McComb history to protest the arrest of the students and the beating of Moses. They vow to
continue the struggle. Brenda Travis, a 16 year old high school student in McComb, canvasses the streets
with the SNCC voter registration workers. To awaken and inspire the adults, she leads two other students on
a sit-in. For the crime of ordering a hamburger, she is sentenced to a year in the state juvenile prison and
expelled from school.
Moses files charges against Caston who is quickly found innocent by an all-white jury. But this is the first
time since Reconstruction that a Black man has filed charges against a white for racial violence in Amite
County. SNCC workers John Hardy and Travis Britt are beaten by whites and arrested on trumped up
charges when they bring Blacks to the courthouse to register in Walthall and Amite counties. In Amite
County, Herbert Lee is one of those working with Moses. In late September, he is murdered by State
Representative E. H. Hurst. In early October, more than 100 Black high-school students march in
McComb to protest Lee's killing and the expulsion of Brenda Travis. When they kneel in prayer, they
are arrested, as are the SNCC staff who are with them. Bob Moses, Chuck McDew, and Bob Zellner
(SNCC's first white field secretary) are beaten. The SNCC workers are charged with "Contributing to the
delinquency of minors," a serious felony.
More than 100 students boycott the Black high-school rather than sign a mandatory pledge that they will not
participate in civil rights activity. SNCC sets up "Nonviolent High" for the boycotting students with
Moses teaching math, Dion Diamond teaching science, and Chuck McDew teaching history. This
becomes the forerunner of the "Freedom Schools" that in years to come spread across the state. Late in
October, an all-white jury convicts the SNCC members on the "Contributing" charge. Their attorneys appeal,
but bail is set at $14,000 (equal to $92,000 in 2006 dollars). Unable to raise that huge amount, they languish
in prison. With their SNCC teachers in jail, Nonviolent High cannot continue, and the boycotting
students are accepted by Campbell Junior College in Jackson.
Meanwhile, arrests, beatings, and shootings continue. CORE Freedom Riders are brutally attacked by a
white mob when they try to integrate the McComb Greyhound station. Paul Potter and Tom Hayden of
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) are dragged from their car and beaten in the street when they come
to McComb to show support for the Movement. Shotgun blasts from a Klan nightrider almost kill Dion
Diamond and John Hardy. Despite the many promises of protection for voter registration by Kennedy
and the Justice Department, the FBI does nothing, and the DoJ's legal efforts are feeble and
ineffective. The arrests, the reign of terror, and the brazen murder of Herbert Lee by a state official,
all take their toll. The McComb-area voter registration drive is suppressed — for the moment.
In November, Bob Moses manages to slip a message from prison to SNCC headquarters in Atlanta:
We are smuggling this note from the drunk tank of the county jail in Magnolia, Mississippi. Twelve
of us are here, sprawled out along the concrete bunker; Curtis Hayes, Hollis Watkins, Ike Lewis and
Robert Talbert, four veterans of the bunker, are sitting up talking — mostly about girls; Charles
McDew ("Tell the story") is curled into the concrete and the wall; Harold Robinson, Stephen Ashley,
James Wells, Lee Chester Vick, Leotus Eubanks, and Ivory Diggs lay cramped on the cold bunks; I'm
sitting with smuggled pen and paper, thinking a little, writing a little; Myrtis Bennett and Janie
Campbell are across the way wedded to a different icy cubicle.
Later on, Hollis will lead out with a clear tenor into a freedom song, Talbert and Lewis will
supply jokes, and McDew will discourse on the history of the Black man and the Jew. McDew — a
black by birth, a Jew by choice, and a revolutionary by necessity — has taken on the deep hates and
deep loves which America and the world reserve for those who dare to stand in a strong sun and cast a
sharp shadow. ...
This is Mississippi, the middle of the iceberg. Hollis is leading off with his tenor, "Michael row
the boat ashore, Alleluia; Christian brothers don't be slow, Alleluia; Mississippi's next to go, Alleluia."
There is a tremor in the middle of the iceberg — from a stone that the builders rejected.
Finally, in December, SNCC manages to raise the bail money and the jailed SNCC staff are released on
appeal. They are not deterred. Building on the lessons learned in McComb they plan to move the voter
registration campaign into the Delta — the toughest, most segregated corner of Mississippi.
Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Formed in Mississippi-1962

After being released from jail in December of 1961, Bob Moses and the other SNCC organizers analyze the
successes and failures of the McComb voter registration campaign. It is clear that racist opposition to Black
voting rights in Mississippi is so ferocious, so violent, so widespread, that only by uniting all of the state's
civil rights organizations into a coordinated effort is there any chance of success.
Moses and Tom Gaither of CORE circulate a memo proposing formation of a Freedom Movement coalition.
They are determined not to repeat in Mississippi the unproductive conflicts between national civil
rights organizations that have often occurred elsewhere. Statewide NAACP Chairman Aaron Henry
agrees with them. In February, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP, along with local
community leaders, create the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to be a vehicle in which civil
rights organizations working in Mississippi can work together. The name is taken from an earlier coalition
effort to support the Freedom Riders. A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is
submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP). The national leaders of the different organizations
initially oppose the idea out of fear that they will lose visibility within it, with consequent loss of
northern funds. But the local activists and leaders on the ground in Mississippi, those who are closest to the
suffering of the people and the necessities of the struggle in that state, insist that success — indeed, survival
— require organizational cooperation rather than rivalry.
In August, a meeting is held in Clarksdale to formalize COFO. Attending are Moses, Jim Forman and a
dozen other SNCC workers, Dave Dennis of CORE, James Bevel of SCLC, and others. NAACP leader
Aaron Henry is elected President, Rev. R.L.T. Smith is named Treasurer, attorney Carsie Hall becomes
Secretary, and Bob Moses is appointed the COFO state-wide Project Director. An agreement is made that
CORE will focus its registration efforts in the Mississippi's 4th Congressional District centered around
Meridian and SNCC will work the other four districts including the Delta region around Greenwood and the
Pearl River area around McComb, while SCLC will concentrate on its Citizenship school program
throughout the state and the NAACP on the judicial aspects of the struggle. In September, VEP funds COFO
organizing projects in the Mississippi Delta counties of Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, and Sunflower where
SNCC field secretaries are already working. Over the following year VEP gives more than $50,000 (equal to
$340,000 in 2007) to a number of voter registration projects in Mississippi. But against the ferocious
resistance of the white power structure little progress is made — less than 4,000 Blacks are added to
the Mississippi voter rolls. In mid-1963, VEP stops funding Mississippi projects in favor of states
where there is greater potential of success..
1963 -- Greenwood (Leflore County) and the Freedom Ballot
By late February, some 600 people are lining up to receive food and clothing distributed by SNCC field
secretaries Sam Block and Wazir Peacock. An anonymous caller warns that the new office that SNCC was
finally able to rent is going to be destroyed. Four adjacent Black businesses are burnt in a bungled arson
attempt, but they miss the SNCC office. When Sam describes the fire as arson at a mass meeting he is
arrested for "statements calculated to breach the peace." It is his 7th Movement arrest in Greenwood. More
than one hundred Black protesters show up at City Hall on the day of Sam's trial — the first mass protest by
Greenwood Blacks in living memory. Sam is sentenced to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. The Judge offers
to suspend the sentence if Sam agrees to leave town and halt efforts to register Black voters. Replies Sam:
"Judge, I ain't gonna do that." He is released on bond pending appeal, and that night addresses a mass
meeting of 250 people — the largest mass meeting to date.
On Tuesday, February 26, more than 200 Blacks line up at the Courthouse to register to vote. They know
they will not be allowed to register, but attempting to do so is a symbol of pride and defiance, and the white
power structure recognizes it as such. The police order them to disperse. They hold their ground, remaining
in line. The Registrar delays and evades, admitting only a few to fill out the application and take the so-
called "literacy test," and those few are rejected. But fear is losing its grip. That night, KKK nightriders
ambush a SNCC car on the road, firing 13 rounds from a .45 caliber machine gun at Jimmy Travis, Bob
Moses, and VEP Field Director Randolph Blackwell. Jimmy is hit twice, in the neck and shoulder, and has to
be rushed to the nearest hospital willing to treat Black freedom fighters. Protests and demands for protection
and enforcement of Federal voting-rights laws are sent to Washington. The Kennedy administration takes no
noticeable action.
COFO calls on all voter-registration workers in Mississippi to concentrate on Greenwood to show that
Klan terror cannot halt the growing freedom movement. By early March, dozens of SNCC organizers,
plus some CORE field secretaries and SCLC staff members are working out of the Greenwood SNCC/COFO
office in defiance of Klan terror, police repression, and Citizen Council economic retaliation. Whites fire a
shotgun at a car containing Sam, Wazir, and local students working with the movement. Though he
knows full well who is responsible, Greenwood mayor Charles Sampson denies that white racists are the
perpetrators. He falsely accuses SNCC of faking the attack to garner support. . . . .
. . . .The Greenwood Movement is not intimidated by dogs or cops or arrests. [On the morning of March 28]
there are 50 Blacks lined up at the courthouse to register, by noon more than 100. A small army of helmeted
police confront them. Again they attack with dogs and clubs. SNCC field secretary Charlie Cobb reports:
With the events of the morning of the 28th, the issues in Greenwood broadened beyond voter
registration and became more basic. The issue now was, Did people have a right to walk the streets
which they had paid for, with whomever they please, as long as they are orderly and obey all traffic
laws? The city's answer was, Not if you're a nigger! There was a very direct link between this issue
and voter registration, because for years attempting to register to vote for Negroes meant
preparing alone to suffer physical assault while making the attempt, economic reprisals after the
attempt, and sometimes death. To go with friends and neighbors made the attempt less frightening
and reduced the chances of physical assault at the courthouse, since cowards don't like to openly attack
numbers. It also reduced the chance of economic reprisal, since the firing of one hundred Negro maids
would put the good white housewives of Greenwood in a bind ('tis a grim life for Miss Ann without
Mary, Sally, or Sam).
. . . Moses and the others arrested on the 27th are convicted of "disorderly conduct" and given the maximum
sentence, four months in prison and a $200 fine. Hoping to force the Department of Justice to file suit against
the county's interference with the right to vote, they refuse to pay the fine or pay bail while the case is
appealed. But the Department of Justice under Attorney General Robert Kennedy cuts a deal with
Greenwood instead. The Feds agree not to file a voting rights suit against local officials, and in return the
Greenwood power structure agrees to release Moses and the others without bond while their case is appealed,
and to stop using police brutality against Blacks trying to register. The county also agrees to resume food
distribution so long as it is paid for by the Federal government (in other words, the Feds supply not only the
food, but also pick up the distribution costs which everywhere else in the nation are carried by the county).
This allows Leflore politicians to assure their segregationist supporters that local taxes are not being used to
"reward uppity Blacks" with free food.. . .. But the deal only halts police repression. The KKK continues to
threaten Black voters with terrorist violence and the Citizens Council continues to coerce Blacks with
economic terror, firing and evicting those who try to register. And without Federal voting-rights
enforcement, the Registrar is free to continue rigging the application and "literacy test" to prevent most
Blacks from actually registering. In the following months, 1500 Blacks risk life and economic survival by
journeying to the courthouse, but only a handful are added to the voting rolls. By the end of 1963 there are
only 268 Black voters in Leflore County compared to 10,000 white voters, even though 60% of the
population is Black.. . .
The Movement persists, and people of courage respond. In Sunflower County, Fannie Lou Hamer, 46 years
old, mother of two children, a sharecropper and plantation worker all her life, steps up to register after
talking to SNCC organizers and attending a voter registration mass meeting. She and almost 20 others go
down to the courthouse in Indianola. The cops stop the old bus they are using, and arrest the driver because
the bus is "the wrong color." When Mrs. Hamer returns home she is fired from her job and evicted from her
home of 18 years. Klan marauders shoot up the house of a friend who gives her shelter. Fannie Lou Hamer is
not intimidated, she commits her life and soul to the Freedom Movement.. . . .
Mississippi holds elections in 1963 for state offices such as Governor. . . . .To dramatize denial of voting
rights, SNCC organizes Blacks to show up at the polls on August 6th, the day of the primary. There is
an old Reconstruction Era law — originally passed to let former Confederate soldiers vote — that says
people who claim they have been illegally prevented from registering can cast provisional ballots that are set
aside pending appeal of their exclusion. Almost 1,000 courageous Blacks across the state defy cops, Klan,
and Citizens Council to cast their protest votes under the old law. Democratic Party officials later reject their
claims of illegal exclusion, and none of their ballots are counted. Under the deal cut between the Kennedys
and Greenwood's white power structure earlier in the year, the police promised that they would no longer
harass, attack, or arrest Blacks trying to exercise their voting rights. As a result, more than 400 Blacks in
Leflore County try to vote in the primary. So many that some polling places are flooded and dozens are
unable to get in before the polls close. . . .
Month by month, white resistance to Black voter registration efforts in Mississippi intensifies — bombings,
arrests, beatings, shootings, firings, evictions, and other forms of retaliation. Few Blacks dare defy this white
terror by trying to register, and only a handful of those that do make the attempt are added to the voter rolls.
The NAACP files lawsuits which are often eventually won, but county Voter Registrars find ever more
devious methods of circumventing court rulings to deny even the most "qualified" applicants. . .
.Federal efforts to enforce voting rights are reluctant and ineffectual. . . . In response to these realities,
SNCC takes a radical step, it decides to challenge the entire concept of voter "qualification." Voting is
about political power, not academic achievement, and all citizens have a right to vote regardless of
their education — a position they sum up in the slogan: "One Man, One Vote," and illustrate with a
poster of an old sharecropper.
The November general election pits the segregationist Democrat Paul Johnson against the equally
segregationist Republican Rubel Phillips. With Blacks prevented from voting — and having little interest in
supporting either candidate even if they could vote — COFO decides to hold an unofficial "Freedom Ballot"
(or "Freedom Vote") to dramatize and protest the denial of voting rights. Based on the "One Man, One Vote"
principle — all adult citizens are eligible to vote regardless of whether they are registered or not — the
Freedom Ballot is designed to show that Blacks in large numbers want to vote, but are denied the right
to do so. The Freedom Ballot campaign begins on October 6 with a state-wide convention at the Masonic
Temple in Jackson where an interracial slate of candidates is nominated to appear on the Freedom Ballot
along with the Democrats and Republicans. Heading the Freedom ticket is NAACP leader Aaron Henry of
Clarksdale for Governor, and Movement activist Rev. Ed King of Tougaloo College for Lt. Governor. A
state campaign office is set up in Jackson, more SNCC and CORE organizers are added to the COFO staff,
and SCLC's Citizenship Schools program is increased.
SNCC member Mike Miller recalls:

[Though this] was obviously not the "legal ballot," everybody realized that it was a test of whether
we can really get people to put their bodies on the line for the right to vote, because they would have
to show up in a public place and check a ballot. And nobody really knew what was going to be the
turnout for this thing. It was a very precarious place for the Movement to be, to face a test like
this, which was very different from militant students or young people doing direct-action.
More than one-third of SNCC's 130 staff members are concentrated in Mississippi, and along with activists
from CORE and SCLC, and local volunteers (mostly young), they fan out across the state to organize the
Freedom Ballot. The going is tough. Terror lies heavy on the land, people are afraid, Black churches,
organizations, and businesses fear they will bombed or evicted if they allow Freedom Balloting on their
premises, and any kind of voting on the part of Blacks — even in an unofficial mock election — risks
vicious retaliation from the white power-structure. And there are some counties, such as Issaquena, Amite,
and Neshoba, that are simply too dangerous to enter, the risk of local supporters being murdered just too
high. . . .
In late October, almost 100 students from Yale, Stanford, and other schools — most of them white —
are recruited by National Student Association and Democratic Party activist Allard Lowenstein to
come work as volunteers on the Freedom Ballot campaign. They represent the first large influx of
northern whites into the Mississippi Freedom Movement which is 99% Black. They share the work and the
danger that Blacks have endured for years, some are arrested, some are beaten, but overall violence across
the state drops noticeably during the two weeks they are in Mississippi. The white students also draw
expanded coverage from the press, and with it increased political pressure on the Kennedy
administration. Federal presence suddenly increases (temporarily). As Lawrence Guyot put it: "Wherever
those white volunteers went FBI agents followed. It was really a problem to count the number of FBI agents
who were there to protect the [white] students. It was just that gross." But the white students also bring
culture clashes and ingrained assumptions that spark racial tensions between Blacks and whites within
the Movement.
. . . More than 80,000 people — four times the total number Blacks registered to vote — defy the cops, the
Klan, and the Citizens Council to mark Freedom Ballots. There is significant coverage in the national and
northern press and increased demands that the Kennedy administration do more to defend Black voting
rights. The Freedom Ballot is a pilot program for future Movement political organization in
Mississippi. It lays the foundation of a powerful, Black-led, state-wide, political organization that soon
evolves into the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and it lays the groundwork for the 1964
MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Ultimately, it leads to the established of
what is now one of the strongest Black political expressions in the nation. Today, Black legislators and
officials in Mississippi exercise considerable power and influence on both the state and local levels.
Mississippi Freedom Summer --1964
From: http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/missippi.html
After the success of the Freedom Vote, SNCC decided to send volunteers into Mississippi during the summer
of 1964, a presidential election year, for a voter registration drive. It became known as Freedom Summer.
Bob Moses outlined the goals of Freedom Summer to prospective volunteers at Stanford University:
1. to expand black voter registration in the state

2. to organize a legally constituted "Freedom Democratic Party" that would challenge the whites-
only Mississippi Democratic party
3. to establish "freedom schools" to teach reading and math to black children
4. to open community centers where indigent blacks could obtain legal and medical assistance
800 students gathered for a week-long orientation session at Western College for Women in Oxford,
Ohio, that June. They were mostly white and young, with an average age of 21. They were also from well-
to-do families, as the volunteers had to bring $500 for bail as well as money for living expenses, medical
bills, and transportation home. SNCC's James Forman told them to be prepared for death. "I may be killed.
You may be killed. The whole staff may go." He also told them to go quietly to jail if arrested, because
"Mississippi is not the place to start conducting constitutional law classes for the policemen, many of whom
don't have a fifth-grade education."
On June 21, the day after the first 200 recruits left for Mississippi from Ohio, three workers, including
one volunteer, disappeared. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had been taken to
jail for speeding charges but were later released. What happened next is not known. Local police were called
when the men failed to perform a required check-in with Freedom Summer headquarters, but Sheriff
Lawrence Rainey was convinced the men were hiding to gain publicity. The FBI did not get involved for a
full day. During the search for the missing workers, the FBI uncovered the bodies of three lynched blacks
who had been missing for some time. The black community noted wryly that these murders received
nowhere near the same nationwide media attention as the murders of the three workers, two of whom were
white.
Meanwhile, Freedom Summer went on. Only a handful of recruits left the orientation session in Ohio. The
volunteers helped provide basic services to blacks in the South. "Freedom clinics" provided health care;
Northern lawyers worked in legal clinics to secure basic constitutional rights; "freedom schools," though
illegal, taught blacks of all ages traditional subjects as well as black history.
One of Freedom Summer's most important projects was the establishment of the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white regular Democratic party in the state. This project
actually started before Freedom Summer did, when MFDP won crucial support from the California
Democratic Council, a liberal subsection of the state's Democratic party, and Joseph Rauh, head of the DC
Democratic Party, vice president of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and general counsel to the
United Auto Workers. President Johnson, however, backed the regular Democratic party because he could
not afford to lose their political support.
In June, the names of four MFDP candidates were on the Democratic primary ballot as delegates to be sent
to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, but all four lost. Later that month, the regular
Democratic party adopted a platform that explicitly rejected the national party platform in the area of civil
rights. This put President Johnson in a difficult position. The national Democratic organization required all
delegates to make a pledge of party loyalty, but Johnson had to allow the Mississippi Democrats to be seated
because otherwise delegates from five other states would walk out. The Mississippi issue was turning what
should have been a quiet, routine convention into a racial battleground.
On August 4, the bodies of the three civil rights workers were found in a dam on a farm near
Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had all been shot and the one black, James Chaney, had been brutally beaten.
The discovery shifted media attention back to Mississippi just 18 days before the start of the Democratic
National Convention. Two days later, the MFDP held a convention and selected a 68-person delegation,
which included four whites, to go to the national convention. By now, the party had the support of
ADA, delegates from nine states, and 25 congressmen. The delegates wanted to be seated instead of the
regular delegates at the convention. To do so, they had to persuade eleven of the more than 100 members
of the Credentials Committee to vote in their favor. They decided to provide testimony detailing how
difficult it was for blacks to vote in Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer, one of twenty children of Mississippi
sharecroppers, gave an impassioned speech to the Committee:
If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America? The land
of the free and the home of the brave? Where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook,
because our lives be threatened daily?
President Johnson quickly called a press conference to turn news cameras away from Atlantic City, but the
evening news that night showed portions of Hamer's testimony. Her emotional statement moved people
around the nation. Senator Hubert Humphrey offered a compromise, with the blessing of the president.
The white delegates would be seated if they pledged loyalty to the party platform. Two MFDP delegates,
Aaron Henry and Ed King would also be seated, but as at-large delegates, not Mississippi delegates. Neither
side liked the agreement, but in the end, both sides accepted. [This is a whitewash of what happened--KE].
The trouble, however, was not over. When all but three of the Mississippi delegates refused to pledge
allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats
vacated by the Mississippi delegates until they were thrown out. The next day, they returned. The empty
seats had been removed, so the delegates just stood and sang freedom songs.
In the end, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, like the Freedom Riders, did not fully accomplish its
goals. The MFDP, however, was far from a failure. It showed blacks that they could have political power. It
ensured that, in the words of Joe Rauh of ADA, "there will never be a lily-white [delegation] again." It raised
the important issue of voting rights, reminding America that the recently-passed Civil Rights Act, which
disappointed black leaders because it did not address the right to vote, was not enough. It also helped blacks
and other minorities gain more representation in the Democratic party. Freedom Summer, too, was an overall
success. Clayborne Carson wrote:
When freedom school students from across the state gathered for a convention early in August, their
increased confidence and political awareness were manifest in their approval of resolutions asking for
enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, . . . elimination of the poll tax, and many other reforms.
There is no denying the effect that Freedom Summer had on Mississippi's blacks. In 1964, 6.7% of
Mississippi's voting-age blacks were registered to vote, 16.3% below the national average. By 1969, that
number had leaped to 66.5%, 5.5% above the national average.
ALABAMA 1965
From Mississippi to Alabama
Wazir: MFDP ended up in Atlantic City, — that was the big climax. After that we rode the buses and
whatever mode of transportation back from Atlantic City to Mississippi. And it became a question of, "What
now?" What to do with all these organizers? These organizers had expended their wad, you know. Of
getting all of that together from beginning in the Spring of '63 up until this [the challenge at the Democratic
convention] was pulled off.
Mike: As to why SNCC had such a big presence in Alabama, it was in part because the people who were
from Mississippi felt that it was very hard to have space to do anything in Mississippi [after Freedom
Summer] because on the one hand you had this huge number of whites who were remaining, and on the
other hand you had Guyot and Aaron Henry coming back even after the defeat [of the MFDP
challenge in Atlantic City] saying now we've got to mobilize the vote for Lyndon Johnson. And so
there was a push factor, pushing people out, and there was a pull factor, pulling people in to Alabama.
Wazir: Whatever I was doing in the 2nd Congressional District of Mississippi, after the summer project of
'64, I just didn't see any place where I could plug in and begin to pull that work back together. Mississippi
wasn't exactly happening any more and the only active, really new frontier where people could get
back to doing what they had been accustomed to doing, — that's organizing, — would be Alabama.
Alabama became the most obvious place to go. And the place to first get your footing in Alabama would be
Selma because we already had people who had done some ground work there.
[For myself] I thought about what I could do. I went to graduate school at Tuskegee, because they had a
strong science base and had the veterinary medicine school and I could take some courses there and get
myself back up to speed to perhaps go on and finish medical school.
And lo and behold, the Movement found me. By the time I got there, Jean and all these people were there,
she was [faculty] advisor to TIAL (Tuskegee Institute Advancement League) and the next thing I know I was
back in the mix. At first I wasn't, but SNCC people kept coming to the campus. And the TIAL group, some
of them [would] wise ass, "So you were one of them?" You know I kind of got pulled in. I wasn't going to
Alabama to do any organizing, that's what I'm trying to say, but it just ended up happening.
Tuskegee was on the road going to Atlanta. People in Mississippi like [Laurence] Guyot and all of them
people, they knew I was at Tuskegee so they would stop by the campus and see me. So the next thing I know
I was spending weekends in Selma. And I began to take a few students down there, Sammy Younge, George
Parish, Wendell Parish, Simuel Schutz, and all of those other people, — and I was back in it.
Mike: From what I knew of Mississippi people, when Guyot was in charge of MFDP he was really still
moving as the Lyndon Johnson Democratic Party. And the people who didn't want to do that either had to
dig deep into very local stuff in their own county, or go to Alabama. Because there wasn't all that much you
could do then in Mississippi.
Wazir: Yeah, I'd like to speak to that just a little bit. The truth was out by then, — that Aaron Henry had been
down on LBJ's ranch a week or two before the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Because he
immediately come up with this position, that in so many ways kind of denigrated and belittled the party
[MFDP] that he had been a part of for not being so political astute, you know. So, the ones who left
Mississippi was highly pissed off and felt sold out. If they were going to stay [in Mississippi] then there was
going to be a split working against what Guyot and Aaron Henry and so forth had accepted and were going
to sell the rest of the leadership of MFDP.. . . .
Demanding the Right to Vote

[BACKGROUND: In the first days of January, 1965, SCLC and SNCC workers begin going door-to-door
along the unpaved streets of Selma's Black neighborhoods, and the muddy red-dirt lanes of the outlying
counties, organizing ward meetings and committees, and encouraging folk to attend the mass meetings at
First Baptist and Brown Chapel. . . . . Day after day, increasing numbers of Blacks march to the courthouse
to register and Clark jails and harasses them. Even the Black teachers in the segregated school system risked
their jobs and careers by marching to the courthouse to register behind Rev. Frederick Reese, the President of
the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) and himself a teacher at Hudson High School. By the later part of
January the daily marches to the courthouse have become too large for Clark and his posse to control, and
Governor Wallace sends in an army of state troopers to reinforce Clark's defense of segregation.
On the first day of February, — the next "official" registration day, — Dr. King leads 250 men & women
towards the courthouse to register. All are arrested. Shouting "Freedom," Black students pour out of the
schools to protest, and hundreds of them are arrested along with the adults. With the Selma jails full, the
students are taken to "Camp Selma" a state prison farm. Day after day, mass arrests continue as students and
adults march and picket. More than 3000 are arrested in the first week of February. And voter-
registration marches, — and mass arrests, — now begin to occur in the outlying rural counties. Across
Alabama, the jails are filling up as prisoners are shunted from place to place to make room for ever more
arrestees. ]
The Murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson
[BACKGROUND: On the night of February 18, 400 people in Marion, the county seat of rural Perry
County, march out of Zion's Chapel Methodist church to protest the continued denial of voting rights and to
demand their constitutional right of free speech. Suddenly all of the street lights go dark and a swarm of state
troopers and possemen attack the marchers, beating both demonstrators and reporters with clubs, and
shocking them with electric cattle-prods. The marchers try to retreat back to church but many are cut off and
surrounded. When they take shelter in a cafe, the troopers and badge-wearing posse thugs follow them
inside, smashing the lights out, and continuing to savagely whip heads. When 27 year old Jimmy Lee
Jackson, tries to shield his mother and grandfather, a trooper guns him down. Jimmy Lee is a deacon in his
church, and along with his mother and grandfather had been one of the first to try to register to vote. He dies
8 days later, though not before Colonel Al Lingo, — commander of the Alabama State Troopers — serves
him with an arrest warrant for "assault" on a police officer. No one is ever arrested or charged for Jimmy
Lee's murder. ]
….
Wazir: Jimmie was killed . . . and I know from that point, there was no going back. Things got hot. In
Selma, and in outlying collateral areas of Alabama. . . . [Selma] became a hub. I don't know whether
they was trying to follow a script or not, but it was just natural for it to become the hub. [In Selma, SNCC]
had contact with previous organizers being there from Prathia Hall on up through John Love and then Silas
Norman and so on. There were places people could stay. Lots of places, and [we] had a big old house, there
was a big house, that would hold a whole lot of people. And that's where we would stay when we came down
from Tuskegee on the weekends.. . . things just got to rolling and just one thing after the other, one thing
after the other, and we went down to Montgomery, in early Spring. The next thing you know, SCLC and
all were talking about marching to Montgomery already.. . .
Don: And at that point SCLC called for something other than organizing the community, but the big
marches, demonstrations that would attract the cameras and would bring about that kind of attention that
would make up for some of the lag that had been going on. At that point, the question of SNCC joining
with SCLC in march #1 ["Bloody Sunday"] was a big topic.. . . . Nobody seriously expected to get past
the bridge. That surely Clark would block it, but nobody really believing that he would attack. Especially
with all the cameras there. Even Clark. Nobody believed it.
Bruce: Right, everyone expected the marchers would be arrested as had been the case on the previous
marches to the Courthouse.
SNCC and SCLC in Selma
Don: Now I can't make the connection why Dr. King wanted to come here, except Clark and a few other
things. But once Dr. King came in, there was tremendous resentment on the part of SNCC, and part of
the statement was that King is going to do what he always does, he's going to come in, get everybody
involved, get everybody injured, killed, out of work, and then get the publicity and then he'll leave.
Leaving SNCC, . . On the other hand, King was aware, and I don't think anybody knows this for a fact, but
seemingly, Lyndon Johnson had told him that his ability to pass a voting rights act would require something
very dramatic.
Bruce: That's not the way I heard it. As the only SCLC person here my understanding is a bit different. My
understanding is that after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, President Johnson told King that there
had been enough civil rights legislation. No more civil rights legislation could be passed for a couple of
years, things had to be quieted down, particularly because it would affect the campaign against Goldwater.
Remember the phrase "Cooling off period?" So Johnson told King that he was not going to do any more civil
rights acts for the foreseeable future. And the reason King decided to do the Selma campaign was to force
Johnson, — to create such a public pressure and turmoil, — that Johnson would be forced to act. It was not
that Johnson asked him to do it, — it was in opposition to Johnson. And I think that this issue of SNCC
saying King will do what King always does, which is come in, get the publicity and then leave, is partly
true, — but it is also the fundamental difference between SCLC, King's outlook and SNCC's outlook. .
. . SNCC had the community organizing outlook. King's and SCLC's outlook was to get national
legislation passed. We needed a national Civil Rights Act, and that was their goal in Birmingham. We
needed a national Voting Rights Act, and that was their goal in Selma. Not to organize a permanent
community organization in Selma. So King was doing what King normally did. And he was right, —
we did need national legislation, — and the mass actions in Birmingham and Selma was the only way
it was going to happen. What I'm saying is that I don't think SNCC's antagonism to King coming in to
create something that would force through national legislation, — I don't think that SNCC's fury at that is
entirely justified. I think King had a point. I think that without the voting rights act, —
Jean: But he didn't sit down and say, "look you guys in SNCC, you've been working here for years, and
we've got this plan." He didn't do that. . . . .
Bruce: No, I don't agree. I don't think it was out of character for King [to force something on Johnson]. But
let me make one caveat. You guys can all talk about SNCC because you were SNCC. But there were two
different SCLCs. There was the SCLC of the field workers, people like James Orange, Annelle
Ponder, Andrew Marrisett, people like that. And then there was the King, Andy Young, Bevel, Hosea,
Blackwell, level. And unlike SNCC, those of us down on the field level, never really knew exactly what
was going on in that upper level. I can't really speak about what they did. I can only guess about that
level...
Don: And that's the implication of what I've been led to believe. That Johnson was saying certainly not until
after the election, but after the election, you know he wanted a voting rights act.
Bruce: All I'm saying is that the SCLC field staff were told that this [the Selma campaign] was to force
Johnson to do something he did not want to do. That [the Selma campaign] was to force Johnson to pass
voting rights legislation that he did not want to do after the Civil Rights Act of '64.
Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery (Jan-Mar - 1965)

March 7 Sunday.
"Bloody Sunday" march in Selma
SNCC's Mississippi staff comes to Selma
March 8 Monday. Injunction against marching to Montgomery
March 9 Tuesday.
"Turn-Around Tuesday" march in Selma
[see CRMvet discussion below}
Tuskegee students call for "2nd Front"
SNCC vs SCLC Meeting
Ministers beaten, Rev. Reeb hospitalized
March 10 Wednesday.
"Berlin Wall" stops marches in Selma
Tuskegee students & SNCC arrive in Montgomery
Students march on Montgomery Capitol building
March 11 Thursday.
Rev. Reeb dies from the beating on Tuesday
"Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
Confrontation At Dexter Church
March 12 Friday. "Berlin Wall" vigil continues in Selma
March 13 Saturday.
Boycott pickets in Selma
March 14 Sunday.
LBJ's "We Shall Overcome" speech calls for Voting Rights bill
March 15 Monday.
Court overturns "Berlin Wall,"
Reeb memorial mass march in Selma
Student march in Montgomery
March 16 Tuesday.
Student march attacked in Montgomery
Forman's angry speech to mass meeting in Montgomery
March 17 Wednesday.
Mass march to Montgomery courthouse
Student pickets arrested in Montgomery
Injunction against March to Montgomery lifted.
March 18. Thursday.
March to Montgomery organization & preparation
Demonstrations continue in Selma and Montgomery
March 19. Friday.
March 20. Saturday.
March 21-March 24 Sunday-Wednesday. The March to Montgomery
March 25 Thursday.
March and rally at the Alabama Capitol building
Murder of Viola Liuzzo
Turn-Around Tuesday
[Judge Johnson's injunction creates a crises for Dr. King. The Black communities of Selma and the
surrounding counties are ready to march on Tuesday, and thousands of supporters have come to join them.
But Dr. King has never violated a Federal court order, and he fears risking federal support for the
national voting rights legislation that is the ultimate goal of the Selma campaign. Dr. King decides to
hold the march. But under pressure from President Johnson and Attorney General Katzenbach, he agrees
that when police order the march to halt in compliance with the judge's order, he will obey.
Few of the 3,000 thousand or so marchers who fill the street as they march over the bridge know what to
expect. The day before 150 carloads of additional State Troopers, — practically the entire Alabama force, —
had arrived to reinforce the horde that had attacked the march on Bloody Sunday. Again they block the
highway, this time lining both sides of the road to surround the protesters on 3 sides. They order the
marchers to halt and return to Brown Chapel. Dr. King leads the protesters in a brief prayer service, and
then leads them back to the church. Many of those on the march are angry at King's decision to turn
around, others are relieved that there has been no police attack and no one injured.]
Bruce: People call this march, "Turn-Around Tuesday." To distinguish it from "Bloody Sunday."
...
Don: But [King] didn't communicate to anyone [that the march was going to turn around].
Hardy: We didn't know
Jean: That was devastating.
Don: And as a result, all the people marched across the bridge, gearing up for this violent, — maybe you
were going to die situation, but we're willing to sacrifice our lives to do it, not knowing that it was already
prearranged...
Hardy: Right. But it wasn't a complete march all the way across that bridge. I was on that one. We marched
to about I don't know, within a few feet from the end [of the bridge], but we didn't [completely] cross the
bridge.
Bruce: The reason the march stopped where it did, and the reason the Bloody Sunday march was attacked
where it was, is that Selma City had police jurisdiction up to the other side of the Alabama River. And as
soon as you were one step over the Alabama River you were in Dallas County, which is Jim Clark's territory.
And the injunction had something to do with you could march in the city, but you couldn't march on the
county highway, and the moment you crossed over the Alabama River you were out of the city, onto the
highway, and into Clark's jurisdiction.
Hardy: When we walked over that bridge on that day we were getting ready to go, everybody was getting
ready for the fight. We were waiting for the shit to get on. We were ready for the rumble. Somebody walks
up to King, they kneel down at the front of the march on the down- slope of the bridge. They kneel down and
somebody must have whispered in Martin Luther King's ear and they turned around and said we're going to
go back to the church.
Going into a confrontation the second day wouldn't have being nothing new for us in SNCC in Mississippi. It
wouldn't have been a big thing. I mean, because we had gone through that shit all along. We would go and
get beat, and then we would go back. I mean, I got arrested, drug out, a lot of people got arrested and drug
out, and got beat. None of us, including myself, had experience working with King. SCLC wasn't big in
Mississippi, as compared to COFO, and they weren't a big part of COFO, but we knew who they were.
The [people were saying], "Let's go, let's go," and [the leadership] were saying, "No." And then we heard
about that we weren't going [to continue towards Montgomery]. And people were like just standing around.
We were mad, we were all ready to get our ass kicked that afternoon. And we marched back to Brown
Chapel. It was not only SNCC people. There were ministers, some Catholic priests, they were mad because
they thought they were going to be martyrs for the cause that morning.
Don: And they were facing banishment, all of them.
Bruce: All right, I was on that, that was basically the first thing I did for SCLC was to be on that march.
Jean: Did you know that that march wasn't going to happen?
Bruce: No. I did not know that there had been a plan to turn around. And I was furious when we turned
around because I geared up to face..., ,, , We didn't know. And everybody was furious, and the criticism of
King and the top SCLC people for not telling people why this decision had been made in advance is valid
criticism that I completely agree with. But, later on, after talking with SCLC people I understood why they
had made the decision [to turn around]. And I agreed with them, even though at the time I was furious. Yes,
they should have told the people we were going to do that march and turn around and they should have told
them why. But the decision itself to turn around was right.
Chude: Tell the people before hand.
Bruce: Yes, before hand. In the church. The reason as it was explained to me, — and I think it's credible, —
is that from SCLC's point of view, from King's point of view, the whole point of Selma was to get a voting
rights act passed and to get it enforced. And they had counted up the votes in the Senate and without
Republican support, they could not pass it. And the key to Republican support was Senator Dirksen, — I
forget what state he's from, the Republican senator Dirksen...
Hardy: Illinois, I think.
Bruce: Right, without Dirksen from Illinois and other Republican Senators, the bill could not pass.
[BACKGROUND: The rules of the U.S. Senate allow a senator, — or a group of senators, — to talk as long
as they want, about anything they want, at any time they want. So long as a senator holds the floor (talks), no
votes can be taken. So senators can block any piece of legislation from coming to a vote by simply talking
forever. This is known as a "filabuster." Only a "cloture" vote can stop a filabuster. In 1965, it took a two-
thirds vote (66) to pass a cloture vote. (In 1975 that number was reduced to 60 votes.) So at the time of the
Selma voting rights campaign, a minority of 35 of the 100 senators can forever block any civil rights
legislation simply by voting against cloture of the inevitable Southern filabuster against civil rights for
Blacks. This means that a senator does not have to go on record as voting against civil rights to oppose the
bill, he can spin his vote against cloture as a vote for "free-speech" and "open debate." As a practical matter,
the math is daunting. There are 16 Southern states that actively discourage or prevent Blacks from registering
to vote. With Black voters suppressed in those states, it is political suicide for Southern senators to support
civil rights legislation even if they want to, — and few want to because most have been elected on
segregationist platforms. So this "Southern Bloc" has a sure 32 votes against cloture. All they have to do is
find THREE additional votes to oppose cloture, and no civil rights bill can pass. Put another way, those in
favor of the Voting Rights Bill have to win the support of 66 out of the 68 senators who are not part of the
Southern Bloc. . .]
Bruce: SCLC knew they had a majority, in the Senate, but they had to get two-thirds to end the filabuster.
And they knew that to get those 66 votes they had to have Republican support, — particularly Dirksen, a
staunch "law & order" Republican, — which they could not get if they were in a position of violating a
federal injunction and being federal law breakers. It was hard enough to get Dirksen to stomach the fact that
they had violated local Alabama segregation laws, but they [the Republicans] would balk [if King] violated a
federal judge's order.. . . And they knew they could not get a cloture vote to end the filabuster if the southern
white Democrats could portray them as lawless, — violating not just Alabama law, but federal law.
Don: A bona fide law.
Bruce: Second, passing the voting rights act was just the first step because you then had to get it enforced,
and the people who would have to enforce the federal voting rights act were the federal judges. And if you
piss off the federal judges by slapping them in the face by violating their sacred [injunction], — and they're a
bunch of arrogant sons of bitches, — then SCLC was afraid that the voting rights act would just languish like
a lot of other laws that were never enforced. And third, they knew that that injunction [against marching to
Montgomery] was going to be lifted, — that it was a temporary injunction, — and that they would
[eventually] get the permission to march. . . .
So those were SCLC's reasons for doing turning around the march that Tuesday. But they didn't tell anyone.
Wazir: And that was their mistake
Bruce: Not telling people, that was the mistake.
Don: Another thing that's rather significant is Dr. King then had to face contempt charges before Judge
Johnson. The reason there was an injunction against the second march [Turn-Around Tuesday], was that
SCLC had asked for an injunction protecting the marchers [and forcing the police to allow the march to
Montgomery]. Johnson who would always do anything he could to hurt a civil disobedient or militant
movement, turned it around and stopped all activity. [Because of that] when Dr. King did march [on
Tuesday], there was an agreement between him and Justice Dept people that he would march only up to [the
end of the bridge] where he stopped. Nonetheless, the next day [Wednesday], Judge Johnson cited him for
contempt and ordered him to come to a hearing. The reason Johnson did that is he wanted Dr. King to be
forced to go on the record and talk about the arrangement that had been made with the Justice Dept so as to
put a real break between [King] and the other movements. And then once King told Johnson what he already
knew [about the agreement], then Johnson dismissed the charges and declared him not in contempt.
Jean: This was trying to discredit [King].
Don: Yes, discredit him, and also separate him from SNCC and the other groups, knowing the reaction that
did occur would occur because Johnson was politically sophisticated. So Judge Johnson was really the
puppeteer who was calling a great deal of the shots while all this was going on. King & SNCC [had to face
Judge Johnson's] enormous reputation. You talked, Bruce, about the problems of violating a federal
injunction at a time when you're asking the Congress to pass the voting rights act. Dr. King would have had
to violate an injunction, — a federal injunction of Frank Johnson, — and that was a bigger problem because
then you're really dead if you're going against this guy who is the ultimate "good guy." And so [Johnson] set
this trap for Dr. King by kind of nudging him into "There's a way of getting around this, until we have some
time," and then the moment it happened, citing him for contempt so he'd be forced to go public with the very
information that would cause this great split between the movements.
Bruce: Sort of a liberal CoIntelPro.

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Mississippi and Alabama (1960-66)

The Struggle over Strategy

Excerpts (mostly) from Bay Area Civil Rights Vets website

Anniston & Birmingham AL

SNCC Students Resume the Freedom Ride

Freedom Rides Roll Across the South

A New Generation of Leaders

Freedom Rides — Important Points

Mississippi — the Eye of the Storm

Voter Education Project (1961-1968)

Direct-Action or Voter Registration? (Summer, 1960)

Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS (Aug-Oct, 1961)

Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) Formed in Mississippi-1962

SNCC member Mike Miller recalls:

1. to expand black voter registration in the state

Demanding the Right to Vote

Selma Voting Rights Campaign & March to Montgomery (Jan-Mar - 1965)

Don: And they were facing banishment, all of them.

Chude: Tell the people before hand.

Hardy: Illinois, I think.

Don: A bona fide law.

Bruce: Not telling people, that was the mistake.

Jean: This was trying to discredit [King].

Bruce: Sort of a liberal CoIntelPro.

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