“That’s more like it,” Mrs. Hamer said, her perspiration-drenched face breaking out in a smile. “Let’s sing it again.”
“Who’s that yonder dressed in black?
Let my people go.
Must be the hypocrites turning back . . .”
The second time around, she improvised a few lines:
“Who’s that yonder dressed in red?
Let my people go.
Look like the children Bob Moses led.
Let my people go.
Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere,
Go tell it on the mountain, to let my people go.”
I felt proud to be one of the people who knew who Bob Moses was.
At dinner Lenny and I took a table near the end of the cafeteria line. I wanted to inspect the troops one by one, trying to guess by their looks and dress their politics and where they were from. At first glance they seemed to break down into bearded beatniks and sandaled radicals from both coasts and wholesome homebaked liberals from the Midwest. On closer scrutiny and after a few conversations, my off-the-cuff categories didn’t always fit. One storm-the-Bastille type, with the black-blended eyebrows of a satyr, itching, no doubt, to regurgitate half-chewed hunks of dialectic, proved to be a swimming instructor from Muncie, Indiana. And a sandy-haired kid with an ear-to-ear, What, me worry? grin was a community organizer from Newark, New Jersey, who had already been arrested five times. And what, for example, to make of me, with my butch-waxed flattop and Rod Laver tennis shoes, my brand new blue jeans and freshly washed Maynard G. Krebs sweatshirt, hacked off at the elbows and honeycombed with holes? Actually, most of the guys were clean-cut, wearing sports shirts and pressed chinos. The Dean’s List, Who’s-Who-on-Campus set.
“I don’t see as many weirdos as I thought I would,” Lenny observed.
“You could be lonely.”
“Up yours. What do you think of the chicks?”
“I’m still looking.”
There were a lot of pert pretty types, all bounce and curls, whose exuberance gave them an inner glow. Equally prevalent were thin, spiritual girls with circles under their eyes and prim, pinched mouths that looked as if they were tasting one of life’s bitter pills. Several had tense, fervid faces and spoke with shrill petulance. Here and there I spotted someone special—a tall blonde with a majorette’s muscle tone and a jaunty stride; her sandals and sack dress in their simplicity stressing her lean legs and high breasts; long wisps of crispy hair half-hid her face.
“She looks like Connie Stevens.”
“Everybody prefers blondes,” Lenny said. “Look for somebody who couldn’t be from Poland, Ohio.”
“How about that one over there?”
I nodded toward a shapely girl with a glorious mass of thick dark curls that fell halfway down her back. She was wearing hoop earrings, an embroidered Mexican blouse, a thin skirt that clung to her hips, and clogs. Her black, lustrous eyes had an intense expectant look, while her lips held a moody pout that seemed to be the prelude to a smile.
“She looks Mediterranean,” Lenny said. “Probably Jewish.”
“That body could sure set Solomon to singing.”
“You’re not the only one who thinks so. Don’t turn around right away.”
I slowly shifted in my chair and glanced back. I had been so busy ogling the student volunteers I had forgotten all about the SNCC staff. Several of the men were clustered at the table behind us, looking stern and formidable in their blue denim jackets and black boots. One, with the chipped-flint face of an Iroquois warrior and the wide go-to-hell mouth of a hipster, began to whisper heavily: “Oh, baby, if you were mine, I’d stroke you like velvet and sip you like wine!”
That brought a general chuckle, but also a warning from somebody at the table to drop the subject.
“Where have they been hiding?”
“They’ve been here all along,” Lenny said. “You just haven’t been noticing.”
“Invisible men, right?”
“Check out where they’re sitting?”
“Over in the corner. So what?”
Alexander Dining Hall, Lenny pointed out, was actually circular. There weren’t any true corners. “Look again,” he insisted.
“They’re over against the wall. I don’t get it.”
“This room is almost all windows,” Lenny explained. “That’s the only place where they can cover their flanks and keep an eye on the door.”
“But that’s paranoid; this is Ohio.”
“There’s nothing paranoid about thinking people are trying to kill you when people really are trying to kill you.”
What must it be like, I wondered, to live every day on the razor’s edge?
At seven-thirty that evening in Leonard Hall there was an “optional” session addressing the question “Why go to Mississippi?” The three-hundred-seat auditorium—which had no air-conditioning—was packed with sweating volunteers who didn’t let the heat stifle their enthusiasm. Bruce Hanson of the National Council of Churches opened the meeting with a refrain we would hear all week: “If anybody doesn’t want to go to Mississippi, they are free to leave.” He went on to announce that the first contingent of volunteers, who left Oxford the day before, had reached Mississippi without incident.
Then Vincent Harding, a stocky, bespectacled black man who was both a scholar and a Mennonite missionary, came forward to lead the discussion. He spoke with thoughtful compassion, instantly establishing a tone that made it clear he considered us neither heroes nor fools, but serious people engaged in serious business that required total honesty, discipline, and commitment on our part.
“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