“You can consider what you are doing in two ways,” he said. “You can see yourselves as an ‘in group’ trying to help an ‘out group’ enjoy the dubious pleasures of middle-class life, or you can see yourselves as outsiders, seeking the basic restructuring of society. Are we Ins or Outs? Do we want liberal reforms or basic change?”
Several volunteers took this as in invitation to stand up and testify.
“I can’t sit idly by,” one said, “knowing that injustice exists. I cannot merely be concerned; I must also be effective. Empathy without action is impotent.”
Then the striking Jewish girl I’d noticed at dinner spoke out: “There’s not enough justice and not enough liberty. There’s not enough truth and not enough beauty. Who will work for these things? It’s everybody’s job.”
“The fight for civil rights is our fight,” a well-tanned guy in a flowered shirt said. “We must combat racism as our parents combated Hitler. There is a moral wave building for this generation, and I mean to catch it.”
“Very well-spoken,” Harding interjected. “We were wondering what kind of kooks would be crazy enough to spend a summer in Mississippi, but you appear to be people of sensitivity and intelligence.”
We volunteers, who obviously thrived on praise, beamed.
“But I wonder,” Harding added, “whether your big words and fine sentiments will be enough. How will you enter into humanizing relationship with the people of Mississippi? It is hard sometimes for those of us who have had an education, who believe in education, to realize that education might not do it.”
“That’s right,” a goateed volunteer asserted. “Schools aren’t the answer. This is a political question. The whole damn country has gone to hell, and we’ve got to overthrow the system to save it.”
ling, we haven’t much time,’ or words to that effect, and bingo, I was home free. I could stand a crisis like that every weekend.”
“You’re so cynical; I don’t understand why you’re here.”
I looked over. It was the same sepulchral beanpole who had given us a homily earlier in the afternoon.
“My palm reader told me I was going to live a long and purposeless life,” Lenny drawled out of the corner of his mouth. “I want to prove her wrong.”
As if to clear the air of Lenny’s sarcasm, people began making self-righteous statements about why they were going to Mississippi. Everybody was spouting position papers and reciting received ideas as if this were a senior seminar. I think we assumed in our well-intentioned souls that our erudition and idealism would somehow save us when we went South: we were too good to kill.
2
A light-brown man of medium height in a dazzlingly white T-shirt and freshly pressed bib overalls walked slowly to the front and mounted the stage. This could only be Bob Moses. He spoke in a voice soft as mist. “Mississippi is unreal when you’re not there.” He paused a long while before he added, “And when you’re there, the rest of the world is unreal.”
He took a piece of chalk and drew a crude map of Mississippi on the blackboard, adding a crescent line to mark off the northwest corner.
“This is the Delta,” he said. “And here is Mrs. Hamer’s Sunflower County, which is also the home of Senator Eastland and the place where the White Citizen’s Council originated.”
Moses marked the spot in the center of the Delta with a square. Then he added a dot and labeled it “Greenwood.”
To the right of the Delta, in the northeastern part of the state, Moses indicated there were fewer Negroes, little industry, the moderating influence of the TVA, and, therefore, less threat. The most dangerous area was the southwestern part of the state. In contrast to the Delta, with its plantations and last vestiges of aristocracy, the Klan ruled supreme in the hill country.
Moses chalked a large-lettered “KKK” in the lower-left corner of his map and made dots for Liberty and McComb. Since the March on Washington, he said, this area had been undergoing a reign of terror.
“The situation there,” he stated solemnly, “is one of guerrilla warfare. If the country realizes that fact, then the federal government has to act. We have to make this nation face up to the reality that the struggle going on there is pressing and crucial. When we tried to speak to President Johnson about Mississippi, we were told he was busy with Vietnam.”
While Moses was speaking with calm deliberation, I took advantage of my front-row seat to scrutinize him closely. He was lean and muscular, by no means frail, and he stood up straight, shoulders back, so that he looked taller than he was. At first I found his heavy, black farmer’s boots and bib overalls incongruous with his horn-rimmed glasses and scholarly air, but the thoughtful assurance of his voice and the forthright dignity of his presence made everything fit. His face was a study in contrasts. He had a strong jaw, not protruding, but firm and defined; a well-shaped, sensuous mouth; and thick, dark eyebrows—all suggestive of a down-to-earth, realistic stance. On the other hand, his large, tranquil eyes seemed to see beyond, into the far distance. His high forehead and elongated skull, slightly tapered at the top, conveyed something mystical and otherworldly. When he spoke, he drew up from a deep inner well the distillate of his thought, uttering each carefully considered word as if it were a separate decision. His prophetic aura held me in thrall. And yet there was a sad beauty in his face that was almost childlike, reminding me of a bright, sensitive kid who is lost.
“When you come South,” Moses said, “you bring the rest of the country with you. You bring their concern, which usually doesn’t extend to Negroes. To accomplish something very real, we are going to try to do something very limited. Don’t expect big results. If we all go and come back alive, that will be an important accomplishment. If we can simply talk to Negroes and stay in their homes, that will be a huge job. We won’t engage in direct action—no sit-ins—nor will we encourage local people to do so. There’s no point in integrating a lunch counter if you can’t afford a hamburger. But we are willing to risk our lives so that Negroes can receive a better education and participate in free elections. Mississippi has been called a closed society. It is more than that; it is a padlocked police state. We think the key to opening it is the vote.”
As Moses laid down the basic ground rules for the summer, I scanned the faces of my fellow volunteers until I saw the dark-haired girl who caught my eye the day before. When she saw me look her way, I tried out my best trouble-is-my-business smile, but I don’t think she bought it.
“We will not allow any staff members or volunteers to carry a weapon,” Moses stressed. “This is absolutely bedrock. If the police thought we were armed, they would simply use that as an excuse to murder us.”
He gave us a hypothetical case:
“What would you do if you were in a farmhouse under attack and the owner, firing back in self-defense, had been shot, and his children were crying for help? You can’t walk away, say ‘I’m nonviolent,’ and find out what happened the next morning. You have to be a part of it. You’d have to make an on-the-spot decision. Should you pick up the gun? If you do, you violate our commitment to nonviolence; if you don’t, you leave yourself and the children exposed. What should you do? I can’t answer that. There is no clear answer. What I can say is be cautious, avoid arrest. The work we’re doing can’t be done in jail—or in the grave.”
I tried to picture what I would do in those circumstances. It was all too easy for me to simulate the fear I would feel, but what decisions would I make? How would I act? Would I meet the test?
“I see an analogy in Camus’s The Plague to what is happening in this country,” Moses continued. “The sickness pervades the whole society, but nobody will admit it. We are all victims of the plague of prejudice, but we refuse to diagnose our symptoms because recognition would make action necessary. Unless we have the courage and lucidity to face facts and openly and honestly discuss our own racism, the Summer Project could blow up in our faces. And