Coming of Age in Mississippi (41 page)

“Man, what’s wrong with you?” George finally asked.

“Uh … uh …” Robert began. “Man, y’all better get outta Canton
tonight!
I got a funny feelin’ when I was walkin’ aroun’ in town tonight so I went over to that Black Tom’s café to see what people were talkin’ ’bout. Sho’ nuff, one o’ them drunk bastards sittin’ up there sayin’ they gonna kill all them damn freedom workers tonight.”

“What?
Who
said that?” Jerome Smith yelled. “You got more sense, Robert, than to go believe what you hear some drunkard sayin’ in a café.”

“Man, lissen, lissen, you don’t believe me, go ask Joe Lee.
He was sittin’ there a
long
time. He said he was just about to come over and tell y’all. They really gonna do it, they really gonna do it tonight! Did Dave go to Jackson yet? Man, y’all better get outta Canton!”

“What do you mean, Robert?” I asked. “How did that guy find out? Them whites probably spread that shit just so it’ll get back to us. If they were really gonna kill us, wouldn’t any nigger in town know anything about it till it was all over with.”

“Moody, that man work for Howard, who’s behind
all
this shit here in Canton, and if he say he heard somethin’, he
heard
it.”

“That’s what I just said, it was intended for him to hear,” I said.

“George, y’all can sit here and listen to Annie Moody if you want to, but I swear to God, you betta get outta here! You think that fuckin’ nigger woulda said anything if he
hadn’ta
been drunk?”

It was hard for us to believe what Robert was saying; however, none of us had ever seen him this nervous before. Finally George and Jerome decided that they would go into town to see if they could find out anything. By the time they got back it was pitch black outside. As soon as Jerome burst in the door we could all see that Robert had been right.

“Them white folks in town’s
together
, man, and we better do something but quick,” he said, almost out of breath.

I knew we were in bad shape. Dave had taken the car into Jackson for the weekend and the only people in town that would put us up were C.O. and Minnie Lou and they weren’t home. So we just sat there until after eleven, trying to figure out a way to get out of Canton. We couldn’t walk because there was only one way in and one way out, and we knew they could just as well mow us down on the highway.

“We are just wastin’ time sittin’ here bullshittin’ like this. I ain’t about to go down that dark-ass road. And I ain’t about to stay in this damn house either,” Flukie said.

“Y’all can sit here and talk
all night
if you want to,” Bettye
said, suddenly appearing in the door with a blanket in her arms. “But I’m gonna take my ass out back in that tall grass and worry about gettin’ outta here tomorrow.”

Since Sonny’s house was new, he hadn’t cultivated a garden yet, so the space behind the house where the garden would have been had grown wild with tall weeds. Sonny them just mowed the back lawn right up to the weeds and let them grow like hedges.

It didn’t take us long to agree that the weeds were our only way out. Even so, we knew that there was still a good chance that we would be discovered back there, but we had no other choice. So we pulled open the curtains and left the lamps on dim so that anyone could see that the house was empty. We also removed the sheets and blankets and left the spreads so the beds looked made. We waited until about twelve-thirty when all the lights in the neighborhood had been turned out. Then we sneaked out back with blankets and sheets clutched in our arms. The nine of us spaced ourselves so that from a distance no one patch of grass would look mashed down. The five guys made us girls stay behind them. We agreed not to do anything but look and listen without saying a word to each other.

I was wrapped in one of the spreads and after lying still for what seemed like hours, I began to get very cold and stiff. I couldn’t hear a sound not even a cricket and I began to feel like I was all alone out there. I listened for Bettye’s breathing, but I heard nothing. I wondered if the others were feeling as alone and scared as I was. I could feel the grass getting wet with dew and I began to get colder and colder. I kept thinking about what might happen to us if they found us out there. I tried hard not to think about it. But I couldn’t help it. I could see them stomping us in the face and shooting us. I also kept thinking about the house and whether we had left some clue that we were out back. Suddenly I heard a noise and I could almost feel everyone jump with me.

“Don’t get scared, it’s that damn dog next door. Just be quiet and he’ll shut up,” one of the guys whispered.

Now I knew we were in for it. That damn dog kept on whimpering. I could see the neighbor coming out and discovering us just when the Klan drove up. But finally the dog was quiet again.

I must have begun to doze off when I heard a car door slam.

“Quiet! Quiet! They’re here,” Flukie whispered as someone moved in the grass.

I couldn’t even breathe. My whole chest began to hurt as I heard the mumbling voices toward the front of the house. When the mumbling got louder I knew that they were in the back. But I still couldn’t make out what they were saying. As I heard them moving around in the backyard, I had a horrible feeling that they could see us as plain as daylight and I just trembled all over. But in a few minutes I heard the car door slam again and they were gone.

We lay quietly in case they had pulled a trick. Finally Jerome whispered loudly, “They think we’re at C.O.’s. They’ll probably be back.”

Soon the roosters were crowing and it began to get light. Sure enough they drove up again but this time they must have just taken a quick look, because they were gone almost immediately. We knew they wouldn’t be back because it was too light. So we sneaked back in the house before the neighbors got up.

George, who had been in a position to see and hear them, told us what happened. He said that there was a pickup truck with about eight men who had obviously been drinking. They had all sorts of weapons. They discussed burning the house down, but decided that they would come back and get us another night.

After this incident, Robert and a group of men all in their middle or late twenties formed a group to protect us. Three or four of them had already lost their jobs because they tried to
register. They couldn’t find other jobs so they followed us around everywhere we went, walking with us as if they were bulletproof. They also spread rumors that the Freedom House was protected by armed men. We were all still a little up tight and afraid to sleep at night, but after a while, when the whites didn’t come back, we figured the rumors worked. The threats didn’t bother me as much now. I began to feel almost safe with those men around all the time. Their interest, courage, and concern gave all of us that extra lift we needed.

Now every Negro church in the county was opened for workshops. The nine of us split into groups of three. Almost every night we had workshops in different churches, sometimes sixteen to thirty miles out of town.

One or two of our protective guys had cars. They were usually sent along with the girls out in the country. It was dark and dangerous driving down those long country rock roads, but now that we always had two or three of the guys riding with us, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, once we got to the churches, everything was fine. Listening to those old Negroes sing freedom songs was like listening to music from heaven. They sang them as though they were singing away the chains of slavery. Sometimes I just looked at the expressions on their faces as they sang and cold chills would run down my back. Whenever God was mentioned in a song, I could tell by the way they said the word that most of them had given up here on earth. They seemed to be waiting just for God to call them home and end all the suffering.

The nightly church workshops were beginning to be the big thing going for us at this point in the campaign. However, the white folks found out about this and tried to put a stop to it. One night out in the country three carloads of whites chased George and a group of the guys all the way to Canton. George said they were shooting at them like crazy. Since George thought the whites could have killed them if they had wanted to, we took it as a warning. We were extra careful after that.

The luckiest thing that happened to us was that we had succeeded in getting C. O. Chinn to work with us. He was a powerful man, known as “bad-ass C. O. Chinn” to the Negroes and whites alike. All of the Negroes respected him for standing up and being a man. Most of the whites feared him. He was the type of person that didn’t take shit from anyone. If he was with you he was all for you. If he didn’t like you that was it—in that case he just didn’t have anything to do with you. Because he was respected by most of the local Negroes, he was our most effective speaker in the churches. He was in a position to speak his mind and what he said was taken without offense to anyone in particular.

Just as Mr. Chinn opened up full force, the whites cut in on him. Within a week he was forced to close his place and he began moving out most of his things. This still wasn’t enough to satisfy the whites. One evening, when he was taking home the .45 he had kept around for protection, he was stopped and arrested by those damn cops that hung around the office all the time. He was immediately taken to jail and charged with carrying a concealed weapon—actually he had placed the gun on the seat beside him. His bail was set at five hundred dollars. He was in jail for a week before his family could find anyone to post a property bond. Most of the local Negroes had borrowed money on their property, which meant that it couldn’t be used for bail purposes.

I think this was the beginning of C. O.’s realization of what had happened to him. Not only had he lost everything he had, he was sitting in jail with no one to go his bail. Instead of this putting the damper on his activities as the whites had expected, it increased them. He began hitting harder than ever. Often when he was speaking, he would say, “Take me, for example, they have completely put me out of business. I have lost practically everything I have. These young workers are here starving to death trying to help you people. And for what? A lot of you ain’t worth it!” Not one of us working for CORE could have talked to the local people like that.

It was the middle of August now, and we had been working in the county for two months. Up until this time, not one of the ministers in Canton had committed himself to helping us. When they did give us a chance to speak in their churches, it was only for two or three minutes during the announcements. The biggest Negro church in Canton was pastored by Canton’s biggest “Tom.” Most of his congregation were middle-class bourgeois Negroes. We all knew that if we could somehow force him to move, every other large church in Canton would open its doors to us.

We set up a meeting and invited all the ministers, but since the number one minister didn’t show up, all the others did was mumble to each other and tell us, “We can’t do anything until Reverend Tucker says so.” After that we decided to forget the ministers and go to work on their congregations. At this point the ministers started coming around. In fact, they called a meeting to talk things over with us. But the talk was fruitless. The ministers tried to play the same game the Southern white people played when things got too hot for them. That is, to find out what you are thinking and try and get you to hold off long enough for them to come up with some new strategy to use on you. Those Toms weren’t as dumb as they appeared, I thought. They had learned to play Mr. Charlie’s game pretty well.

We had a surprise for them, though. We had made headway with several of their most influential members, and they put us right where we wanted to go—behind the pulpits for more than five minutes. Now we could hit the Canton churches hard.

For a little while that good old Movement spirit was on the surge again. Everyone began to feel it. We still were not getting any money, but for the most part we didn’t need any. The Canton Negroes began to take good care of us, and we were never hungry. A Negro service station owner even let us have gas on credit. What pleased me most was that many of our teen-agers had come back. I had really missed them.

Toward the end of August, it suddenly seemed as if everyone in our group was leaving. The Jackson high school students went back to school, one girl left for New York to get married, and one guy went to California. Soon George and I were the only ones left. To make things worse, the high schools in the Canton area were opening in a week. Dave promised to bring in a couple of more people, but meanwhile it seemed as though George and I would have to do all the work ourselves. We also had to find a new place to stay, since Sonny and his wife went back together. This was a problem because people just didn’t want to risk letting us live with them. Within a week, however, we found a place which was ideal—a two-apartment house. One apartment for the girls and one for the boys. “Great,” I thought, “just when everyone’s leaving.”

I was so busy moving into the new place, that I completely forgot that the August 28 March on Washington was only a few days off. I had been planning to go ever since it was announced. Suddenly it was August 26 and I didn’t even have a ride lined up. There had been no room for me and other staff
people on the bus, since there were so many local Negroes who wanted to make the trip.

Reverend King and his wife were driving up and offered to take me, though they warned me it would be quite risky driving through most of the Southern states in an integrated car. I told them I was willing to take the chance if they were.

On August 27 at 6 A.M., we headed for Washington. There were five of us, three whites (Reverend King, his wife, and Joan Trumpauer), and two Negroes (Bob, a student returning to Harvard, and myself). In the beginning, we were all a little uneasy, but somehow we made it through the Southern states without incident.

After driving all day and night, we arrived at the grounds of the Washington Monument just in time for the march, and joined the section of Southern delegates. Up on a podium near our section, various celebrities—Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary—were singing. During a break in the entertainment the Mississippi delegates were asked to come to the podium and sing freedom songs. I got up and followed the others to the platform reluctantly. I think I was the only girl from Mississippi with a dress on. All the others were wearing denim skirts and jeans. We sang a couple of songs and shortly after, it was announced that the march to the Lincoln Memorial was about to start. Thousands of people just took off, leaving most of their leaders on the podium. It was kind of funny to watch the leaders run to overtake the march. The way some of them had been leading the people in the past, perhaps the people were better off leading themselves, I thought.