American Experience (1988) s26e11 Episode Script

1
WOMAN:
Hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
Hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
Well, hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
KARIN KUNSTLER:
Spending a summer in Mississippi
taught me a lot
about this country.
My high school
social studies teacher
taught me that
we all have rights.
Mississippi summer taught me
that we didn't all have rights.
WOMAN:
They'll be comin'
by the thousands ♪
They'll be comin'
by the thousands ♪
JULIAN BOND:
When we began to go
to Mississippi,
the black people we met there
were not interested
in lunch counters.
They weren't interested in
sitting in the front of the bus.
There were no lunch counters.
There were no buses.
They wanted to vote.
WOMAN:
It'll be carryin'
registered voters ♪
It'll be carryin'
registered voters ♪
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
I just made up my mind
that I was going to be
a registered voter.
I never wanted to be
a politician.
I just wanted the right to vote.
Get on aboard ♪
EUGENE "BULL" CONNOR:
I don't want the niggra
as I have known him
and contacted him
during my lifetime,
to control the making of the law
that controls me,
to control the government
in which I live.
It'll be rollin'
through Mississippi ♪
CHARLIE COBB:
I don't think people understand
how violent Mississippi was.
Terrorism led black people
to the obvious conclusion:
if they try and vote,
they're messing
with white folks' business
and they can get hurt or killed.
MOSES:
We hope to send into Mississippi
this summer
upwards of 1,000 students
from all around the country
who will engage
in what we're calling
freedom schools,
community center programs,
voter registration activity,
and, in general,
a program designed to open up
Mississippi to the country.
REPORTER:
The burned out station wagon
in which the three civil rights
workers were last seen
has been processed by FBI
laboratory investigators
DOROTHY ZELLNER:
I knew it was going to be bad.
I didn't dream for a minute
that people would be killed.
But it was always
in the back of everybody's mind
that something
that things, bad things,
were going to happen.
So it was terrifying.
But if you cared
about this country
and you cared about democracy,
then you had to go down there.
MAN:
I'm goin' down
to Mississippi ♪
Oh, I'm goin' down
a southern road ♪
And if you never
see me again ♪
Remember that I had to go ♪
Remember that I had
to go ♪
REPORTER:
The Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee,
a militant group in the South
with support from other major
civil rights organizations,
is readying a massive program
called the Mississippi
Summer Project,
a campaign that may have
no parallel
since the days
of Reconstruction.
GWENDOLYN SIMMONS:
I'd heard about Mississippi
all of my life growing up.
But nonetheless,
the fact that the people
in Mississippi couldn't vote
was just a shock even to me
there in Memphis.
I thought that
it was very important
to go to Mississippi
and make a statement
about the horrors that
confronted black people there.
REPORTER:
This Ivy League campus
is one of the staging bases
for an invasion of Mississippi
by college students.
The students are being recruited
all over the United States,
from Harvard to Hawaii.
They will go to live
in Mississippi this summer
to fight for the Negroes'
civil rights.
PATTI MILLER:
I first heard
about Freedom Summer
in the spring of 1964.
I saw a brochure on the bulletin
board at Drake University
where I was a student,
which is in Iowa.
And it just caught my eye
immediately.
TRACY SUGARMAN:
I had been making drawings
for corporations and colleges,
and my wife June felt very
deeply about the injustice
in the country, as did I.
So we decided that I would
take my skills as an illustrator
and go to Mississippi.
I was 20 years older
than they were,
but I was part of the group.
ZELLNER:
My job was recruiting.
Students heard about the project
either through me
or the campus newspaper.
Then they contacted us
for an interview
and for an application.
READER:
"I am a junior at
Queens College majoring
"in anthropology.
"My schooling so far has
been oriented toward history
"and I have good knowledge
of current affairs.
"Finally, I have a good deal
of experience
"with racial and religious
prejudices
in the North and South."
Andrew Goodman.
READER:
"I have just returned
from a spring project
"on a voter registration drive
in Raleigh, North Carolina,
"where I was filled
with an overwhelming desire
"to clean the rot
out of America.
"All I can say is that
it’s very important to me
"that I play my role
in Civil Rights for the U.S.
"and most of all for myself.
Linda Wetmore."
ZELLNER:
We were looking for people
who believed that
this was important,
who would be respectful
to the black community,
who were not nutcases,
who were not divas,
and who were not people
who were going down
to show the world
how great they were.
This was a majority black
organization
with black people telling
white people what to do.
Now so let's say
you're in Mississippi
and Bob Moses,
who's director of the project,
comes over to you and says,
"Phil, will you spend
the next four weeks
typing index cards,"
or some other task that you
might not care for very much,
how would you react to that?
I would certainly say yes,
but I would hope that
I do hope that I can participate
more actively in the movement.
If this is where
he wants me to be,
of course that's what I'll do.
ZELLNER:
We turned down people.
There were many more people
who wanted to go.
But from the point of view
of safety for the whole project,
we had to have people who were
as together as you can be
when you're 19 or 20.
When we sure that Freedom Summer
would actually happen,
Jim Forman, the executive
director of SNCC,
sent a number of people
who would be paid field staff
into Mississippi
to help pave the way.
RITA SCHWERNER:
Part of the application process
to be considered
as part of the field staff
was to write a letter
of application.
And this is part of the letter
that I wrote.
"I wish to become
an active participant
"rather than a passive onlooker.
"As my husband and I
are in close agreement
"as to our philosophy
and involvement
"in the civil rights struggle,
I wish to work near him
"in whatever capacity
I may be most useful.
"My hope is to someday pass on
to the children we may have
"a world containing more respect
"for the dignity and worth
of all men
than that world
which was willed to us."
REPORTER:
For these students, it will be
a longer, hotter summer
than for almost anyone else
in this country.
But they believe their project
will be the breakthrough
in the civil rights battle.
Their motto: "Crack Mississippi
and you crack the whole South."
HOLLIS WATKINS:
From an early age on,
I was told as a young black boy,
"If you see white people
walking down the sidewalk,
especially if it's a man,
"you step off to the side
"and drop your head
until he passed by,
"because if you didn't,
"he might consider that
to be disrespectful
"and he might hit you,
he might kick you,
he might beat you."
ANTHONY HARRIS:
My grandfather,
he would take me with him
to downtown Hattiesburg
to pay bills.
And I remember my grandfather
wore a straw hat
with this colorful blue band
around the hat.
And as a white person
approached us
on the sidewalk or crosswalk,
he would tip his hat
in what I would call
an extra show of deference.
And by the time my grandfather
and I reached back to his house,
we had bowed so many times
to white people.
They taught young kids
like myself
how to play the role
of that second-class citizen.
WALLY BUTTERWORTH:
There are a lot of phonies
who will stand up
and tell you that,
"Oh, well, all are equal
in the eyes of God."
How silly can you get?
Christ himself was the greatest
teacher of segregation.
BRUCE WATSON:
Mississippi really stood like
an island of resistance.
There were only 6.7% of blacks
who were registered to vote
prior to Freedom Summer
compared to 50%, 60% or 70%
in other southern states.
Most of the rest of America
didn't seem to care,
and that's what Freedom Summer
was about.
"If we bring white students
and black students
"from all over the country,
"then everyone will pay
attention to Mississippi.
"We'll bring America
to Mississippi
because America is not paying
attention to Mississippi."
WILLIAM WINTER:
In the '50s and '60s,
particularly in the old
plantation agricultural areas
of the state,
African Americans made up
at least half,
and in some cases
70% or 80% of the population.
And, in some counties,
of course,
there was a realistic
understanding
that if black people voted,
they probably would be electing
black officials.
A lot of white people
thought that African Americans
in the South
would literally take over
and white people
would have to move,
they would have to get
out of the state.
WILLIAM SIMMONS:
I was born in Mississippi
and I am the product of the
society in which I was raised,
and I have a vested interest
in that society,
and I, along with a million
other white Mississippians,
will do everything in our power
to protect that vested interest.
WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH:
There was no Ku Klux Klan
in Mississippi
during this early period.
There wasn't any need for one.
The Citizens' Council
was doing everything
that the Ku Klux Klan
would have done.
There were a lot of prominent
people who were members
Businessmen, bankers,
lawyers, politicians.
I joined it because I believed
in what they were doing
and I believed in trying
to preserve the society
in which we lived.
(fanfare playing)
ANNOUNCER:
This is the Citizens'
Council Forum,
the American viewpoint
with a Southern accent.
JOHN DITTMER:
The Citizens' Council
was really running
the state of Mississippi.
It was part
of the whole apparatus
of a white supremacist society
that you had the local police,
you had the registrar,
you had everyone involved
in the Citizens' Council.
They succeeded in preventing
almost all blacks
who attempted to register
from registering to vote.
CHARLIE COBB:
Political participation
was something
reserved for whites.
And if blacks sought it,
they could get hurt
in lots of different ways,
ranging from economic reprisals,
loss of jobs,
or if you had a business,
restrictions are being placed
on your business,
or if you had a loan,
your loan being called in.
JULIAN BOND:
The common theory
about Mississippi was
that you could not attack
Mississippi from the inside.
It had to be attacked
from the outside.
You had to stand away and say,
"This is an awful place
and it ought to fix itself."
But Bob Moses
and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee said,
"No, that's not true;
we can do it ourselves."
WATSON:
Bob Moses was a high school
teacher in New York City.
He went south in 1960,
originally just feeling he had
to go, had to get involved.
SNCC sent him to Mississippi.
He started going around
on his own in the rural areas
where people simply didn't go
and challenge the status quo.
ELEANOR NORTON:
What made him stand out
was not only his sheer courage,
but his calm courage.
I can't tell you that
Bob Moses was afraid,
'cause he never showed it.
He just went about his work
and there was this calm sense
of mission.
IVANHOE DONALDSON:
Bob went over there by himself
in 1961,
and by the end of '61,
maybe there were five or six
SNCC people in the state.
In '62, maybe there were 18, 19.
And in '63,
maybe there were 23, 24.
And we'd have a staff meeting,
we all could fit
in one little room.
BOB MOSES:
Young people working
with the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee,
or SNCC as we call it,
are characterized
by restless energy.
They seek radical change in race
relations in the United States.
Their world is upset,
and they feel that if they are
ever going to get it straight,
they must upset it more.
NORTON:
I don't want anybody to think
that we were a bunch
of really brave Negroes
running around Mississippi.
That's not what we were.
The reason that SNCC,
as it were, opened up the Delta
is we were young and foolish.
We didn't have the very
complete understanding
of what that risk was.
But what impressed me was that
there were black Mississippians
who did know
how dangerous it was.
BOND:
We met this cadre of older
people who had been fighting.
They were eager for our help
and glad we were there.
MOSES:
They knew that the key
to unlocking Mississippi
revolved around the vote.
And the access for black people
to power at that time
has got to be through the vote.
What was useful was that
I was open
and accustomed to listening.
COBB:
What we were trying to do
was to organize
these communities to take
possession of their own lives.
For the last hundred years,
the ability of black people
to control their own destiny
had been taken away from them.
Hi.
Hey, how are you?
All right.
I'm Idel Crest and I'm working
for the board of registration
WATKINS:
When I got hooked up
with Bob Moses,
it was very simple:
go out through the community,
you knock on doors,
talk to people.
The only way to better your life
and better the lives
of your children
is to go down
and register to vote.
If you're not
a registered voter,
you're not a first-class
citizen.
CHARLES McLAURlN:
We would tell them
that if they registered
and voted, they could
elect the sheriff,
and that the intimidation
on the part of the sheriff's
office and his deputies,
they could change that.
One of the things
that I always tell them
is that we could stop
Mr. Charlie from lynching us.
COBB:
You're sitting on front porches
or you're walking out
into a cotton field,
or maybe you're at the juke
joint having a beer.
What we were doing was embedding
ourselves in these communities.
You have your certificate
showing that you are
a registered voter?
They haven't given it to me yet.
Well, you aren't a registered
voter, mister.
We want you to come down
to the courthouse tomorrow.
COBB:
Immediately what you found out
you were dealing with was fear.
WOMAN:
So why not go tomorrow?
We will furnish
your transportation,
so that's no excuse.
COBB:
They would say,
"You're right, boy.
"We should be registered
to vote.
But I ain't going down there
to mess with them white people."
Would you like to go
to both of these polling places?
No.
COBB:
We did not get
a large number of people
to try and register to vote.
And then within that
small group of people
who did try
and register to vote,
very few of them actually
got registered to vote.
Other people are standing
in the courthouse.
We can't see why we have
to stand out here in the rain
in order to register to vote.
It's a denial of our
constitutional right.
CLERK:
Your section
of the constitution
that I choose for you
is number 48.
DITTMER:
The registrar had total control
over who was accepted
and who wasn't.
The voting form
was one of the most complicated
you would ever, ever have.
And as part of that, each
person would have to interpret
a section of the state
constitution.
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
We had people who taught
in colleges.
We had people with the Ph.D.s,
master's degrees,
and they couldn't pass it.
You had to be white.
CLERK:
No, Jennings,
you didn't pass it.
You see there?
You didn't fill out the
you just filled out that part
and look, you didn't
write anything in there.
You didn't pass it.
ED KING:
Sometimes, the sheriff would
walk into the room
while they were taking
the voting test and say,
"Annie Mae, don't you work
for my mother-in-law?
"My mother-in-law would be
horrified
"if she knew you were
taking this test.
"Now, Annie Mae, I'll tell you,
"if you'll just
put that paper down,
I'll tear it up and I won't tell
my mother-in-law."
DITTMER:
In some counties,
when people went in to register,
why, their names would appear
in the newspaper the next day.
That could have recriminations
for all members of their family.
It could mean
they would lose their job.
There were real consequences
to taking this risk.
It wasn't simply that you would
go down and get turned away.
McLAURlN:
On August 31, 1962,
we had 18 people to register.
Everybody went
into the registrar's office,
took the literacy test,
came out,
and as we were leaving the city,
the bus was stopped
by the police
and the driver was arrested.
Everybody on the bus was afraid.
And then after a while,
there was a little smooth song,
you know,
Paul and Silas bound in jail ♪
Had no money for
to go their bail. ♪
And somebody said,
"That's Fannie Lou Hamer."
FANNIE LOU HAMER:
I went down the 31st of August
to try to register.
And after I had
gotten back home,
Mr. Marlo told me that
I would have to go down
and withdraw my registration
or leave,
because they wasn't ready
for that in Mississippi.
And I said, "Mr. Marlo,
I'm trying to register
for myself."
So I had to leave
that same night.
MOSES:
She has this confrontation,
then leaves the plantation
and comes into Ruleville
and eventually becomes someone
who is a SNCC field secretary.
One of the important things
about recruiting
Fannie Lou Hamer
was her ability to move people.
Fannie Lou Hamer brought
a new kind of spirit
into the movement.
And I think she
it kind of rejuvenated
all of us.
FANNIE LOU HAMER:
I've been tired a long time
in the state of Mississippi.
Living in the county with
James O. Eastland, the Senator,
Senator Stennis
to go to Washington
and tell the people that
the people of Mississippi,
the Negroes, are getting along
good and we're satisfied.
But I want him to know this,
both of them:
we're not satisfied
and we haven't been satisfied
a long time.
HARRIS:
We'd been accustomed to men
standing up
and challenging the movement,
but here is a woman,
a black woman.
And her message to us was,
"Don't give up.
"Freedom is not free.
"Keep fighting, keep fighting,
keep fighting."
DONALDSON:
As SNCC became more active
in the Delta,
the Mississippi Delta
where Greenwood is,
in the heart of Leflore County,
we started to create visibility
around voter registration
and people started
going to the courthouse.
If people tried to vote, they
would push them off the land
so they had no place to live.
They took away their homes.
African American people there
who had small businesses,
the banks called their notes.
COBB:
Even though there were
very few people
being brought down
to try and register to vote,
the white power engaged
in an act of reprisal
directed at the entire
black community.
What they did was shut down
the commodities program.
What it was
was government surplus food
that was sent
to poor rural areas.
The county said, "Well, no,
we're not gonna have that,"
which is essentially
put black people and poor people
in a position where they could
starve during the winter.
And this was
an especially bad winter.
AMZIE MOORE:
I just keep wondering
how they're going
to eat and what they're going to
wear because they have no money,
they have no food,
and they have no clothing.
They have no way
to buy food and clothing.
We've appealed to people
all over the United States
to send food and clothing in.
COBB:
What would happen next
would eventually reshape
the direction of the movement
in Mississippi.
Dick Gregory was then
a big-time comedian,
flies into Greenwood,
Mississippi,
in his own chartered airplane
full of food to meet the need
as a result of this cut-off
of commodities.
REPORTER:
Dick, how much food did you
bring with you on this trip?
We brought something like
14,000 pounds on this trip here.
Canned food, milk,
baby food, cereal,
wheat, flour, sugar, potatoes
DITTMER:
You had the news media
coming in,
and soon these pictures were
going out all over the world
of what was happening
in Greenwood, Mississippi,
where several months before
it had been very much
of a small operation
with little visibility at all.
REPORTER:
City officials deny
the winter long cut-off
of food allotments
was retaliation
for the Negro voting drive.
But the sharecropper
who tries to register to vote
often faces the threat
of losing his job
and being
put off the plantation.
Bob Clark, ABC,
Greenwood, Mississippi.
COBB:
It shows us that it's possible
to make the country
pay attention to Mississippi.
Gregory's action indicates
to Mississippians
that they didn't have
to be alone.
DONALDSON:
The American people only see
what's on television
at night on the evening news.
So where Dick Gregory
created a lot of drama
and the cameras were there
and then it went away,
we wanted to figure out how
to do that for the entire summer
to invite the children
of America into Mississippi
so that they'd pay attention
to what was going on
in Mississippi.
And from that, Mississippi
Summer Project evolved.
COBB:
Most of the organizers
in Mississippi
were opposed to the idea of the
Mississippi Summer Project,
which meant essentially
bringing down
I think the number
we were talking about
was roughly 1,000 students.
I was one the people who was
opposed to Freedom Summer.
KING:
People in the movement were
willing to die,
but we didn't want
to die in obscurity.
So if we brought in students,
their colleges, their parents
would focus on Mississippi.
I supported bringing
the volunteers in.
COBB:
The experience of people
like Mrs. Hamer
was that people coming from
the outside was a good thing.
Mrs. Hamer backed me up
into a corner and said,
"Well, Charlie,
I'm glad you came.
"What's the problem with having
more people come?
How can you be opposed?"
And eventually we decided to go
ahead with Freedom Summer.
Once the decision was made
to have a summer project,
there's a series of meetings
and discussions going on then
about what the summer project
is going to do.
REPORTER:
The Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee,
a militant group in the South
Well, there were three
components of Freedom Summer.
One was voter registration,
which would be going
door-to-door,
knocking on doors
and asking people
if they were willing
to go down to the courthouse
to register to vote.
The second and very important
component of Freedom Summer
were the freedom schools.
They would teach things
that were not taught
in black schools in Mississippi.
Black schools in Mississippi
couldn't teach
about black history.
They couldn't teach
about black literature.
So freedom schools were set up
to do exactly that.
And finally there was
the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party.
It was a parallel political
party which basically said that,
"We will send our own delegates
to the Democratic National
Convention in Atlantic City
"at the end of August,
and we will challenge
"the all-white delegation
to see who would represent
the state of Mississippi
at the convention."
White Mississippians
believed that
what was going to happen
in the summer of '64
was something that
not only they had to be
psychologically prepared for,
they had to be militarily
prepared for it as well.
It shows you the hysteria
that was evident
in much of white Mississippi.
REPORTER:
In Jackson, Mississippi,
a city of 100,000 whites,
50,000 Negroes,
the mayor has prepared
for this summer's activity
by increasing the police forces,
by passing new ordinances
against demonstrations,
and by purchasing
a steel-plated vehicle,
a riot control car known
locally as Thompson's Tank,
named for Mayor Allen Thompson.
We are prepared to take care
of any law violations
to keep down violence.
REPORTER:
In addition to Thompson's Tank,
armor plated and equipped
with nine machine gun positions,
the arsenal includes cage trucks
for transporting masses
of arrested violators,
search light trucks,
each of which can light
three city blocks
in case of night riots
(gunfire)
The Citizens' Council
had convinced people
that the Klan wasn't necessary,
that it was bad publicity,
and that they could keep schools
from being desegregated,
they could keep lunch counters
from being integrated.
But by 1964, when they see the
volunteers for Freedom Summer,
it was clear that they couldn't,
and that's when the Klan
starts to ride.
WATSON:
The Klan rose up as one
in Mississippi.
One night in April of 1964,
crosses were burned
all over Mississippi.
They claimed that
they had 90,000 members,
and they were going to resist
what the Klan called
the "Nigger-Communist Invasion
of Mississippi."
So Mississippi,
on the eve of Freedom Summer,
was on a hair trigger.
SCHWERNER:
There was very much
a recognition
and a debate about,
is it responsible to bring
all those kids into the state,
most of whom are probably
far too naive
to understand what they
were getting into
in terms of the violent nature
of the place?
Are you doing this
to use people as fodder?
The thought was,
"Well, you know,
"we'll do this orientation
at Oxford, Ohio,
"and we'll try and tell these
kids what they're getting into
and make it clear that they
really don't have to go."
But you know, I don't know that
that really could begin
to prepare people.
SIMMONS:
My grandmother said,
"We've heard that you're
planning on doing something
"really crazy
"going to Mississippi
with those SNCC folk
And I'm never gonna permit it."
LINDA WETMORE HALPERN:
We went to Oxford.
A group of us from Massachusetts
met in Boston.
We drove across, sharing driving
for different hours.
We drove straight through,
people sleeping.
I know I drove very fast.
Several of us drove up to Oxford
in the blue station wagon
that we used in Meridian.
SIMMONS:
With my grandmother,
my mom and dad pleading,
threatening, I just said,
"I'm leaving."
A girlfriend drove me
to the bus station,
and my grandmother's
parting words were,
"If you leave,
don't ever come back."
SUSAN BROWNMILLER:
I remember one young woman
saying,
"We're gonna settle this problem
and then it's on to the Indians
and we're gonna
settle that, too."
I mean, there was that
kind of unbelievable idealism.
SIMMONS:
I can remember people saying,
"Well, how bad can it be?"
You know,
because they had no idea.
And even I didn't think that
they might be beaten or killed.
And, in fact,
that was one of the ways
that I sort of calmed my fears.
I thought that their presence
would be a mediating factor.
MOSES:
The SNCC field secretaries
arrive in Ohio
and, in some senses,
it's oil and water.
So it erupts, you know,
one-on-one
in different kinds
of interactions
between the students
and the field secretaries.
COBB:
The need for the volunteers
and the presence
for the volunteers
represented our inability,
after three years,
to make significant inroads
into changing Mississippi.
So we had to reach out
to this larger group,
which was predominantly white.
And many of us were still not
entirely comfortable with it.
CHRIS WILLIAMS:
The tension between
the volunteers
and the SNCC staff,
who was almost entirely black,
became evident right away.
They were like,
"We're going to take these
greenhorns back to Mississippi
and be the tip of the spear
of the civil rights movement,"
and these people are likely
to get us killed
because they don't know
where they're about to do.
And they're saying,
"These people look like
they're just about beyond hope."
SNCC WORKER:
The police are going
to harass you.
They're going to pick you up
on the road,
they're gonna put
trumped-up charges on you
and you're gonna
wind up in jail.
I suggest we be a little more
serious about this thing.
SIMMONS:
One of the things that was done
at the orientation
was to instruct
the white students particularly
that you're going
into a situation
where you will have to follow
the directions of black people.
You will be living
in black homes.
You will have to live
according to the way they live.
Your life will depend upon you
following directions,
and, of course,
these white students
had never been
in a situation like this.
(fanfare playing)
BOND:
In order to orientate
the Freedom Summer workers,
we showed them this movie.
It featured Theron Lynd,
who is the registrar
in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
REPORTER:
Theron C. Lynd,
circuit clerk
and voting registrar
of Forest County, Mississippi,
is one of the most powerful men
in America.
He and the 81 other county
registrars in Mississippi
have the power under state law
to decide who can
and who cannot vote.
Theron Lynd is your
stereotypical racist bad guy
A big, burly, cigar-chomping,
tobacco-chewing,
aggressively racist white man.
THERON LYND:
That's right, that's a section
of the constitution of the state
of Mississippi.
Then when you get over here
and answer the question 19
COBB:
And the summer volunteers
see him and start to laugh.
People coming up
from Mississippi
were tired, exhausted,
suspicious of the summer
project.
So the reaction to that laughter
was hostile.
"You're not taking
Mississippi seriously.
"You think this is
something funny,
"something to be laughed at.
No, what you're looking at
has cost people their lives."
SUGARMAN:
When the lights came up,
the young SNCC leaders said,
"We have to know you,
we have to love you,
but we don't understand you."
They really were furious,
and went on
at great length to say,
"You're coming out
of a different place.
I don't know if you should be
going with us."
These white kids
were unsteady vessels.
They weren't at all sure
that these were the allies
they wanted.
WATSON:
They stayed in the auditorium
for a few hours
talking and arguing,
and they really went at it,
but I think it really
broke the tension.
It brought out these
underlying resentments.
It brought out the differences
between the two
and it highlighted them.
And, above all,
it brought out the fact that
they were all in this together.
And from then on,
a lot of the tension was broken
and they realized that
they were really one in this
and that they were going to go
down and do this together.
SCHWERNER:
At the end of the first week,
we got a call in Oxford.
People at the Mount Zion Church
had been beaten up badly
and the church was burned.
My husband Mickey and James
Chaney decided
that they needed to go
right away
to see how people were
and to provide whatever support
they could.
Andy Goodman was going to be one
of the volunteers
working
out of the Meridian office,
so they decided that all three
of them would go.
We were in the dorm room
that we had been assigned
and Mickey kissed me goodbye
and said, "I'll see you at
the end of the week," and left.
And they drove down
in the blue station wagon.
READER:
"Dear Mom and Dad,
"I have arrived safely
in Meridian, Mississippi.
"This is a wonderful town
and the weather is fine.
"I wish you were here.
"The people in the city
are wonderful,
"and our reception was
very good.
All my love, Andy."
It was close
to around 6:00 or 7:00,
around 6:00 or 7:00
in the evening.
And a call came in from the
Meridian people wanting
They had not heard from Mickey
and James Chaney.
I just knew that something
had to be wrong.
SCHWERNER:
It was early Monday morning
around 1:00 or 2:00
in the morning
when someone came to the dorm
room that I was using
and woke me to say that the men
had not returned,
and that was how
I first heard of it.
SIMMONS:
Everybody was to come into
the auditorium for this session.
They had this extremely solemn
look on their faces.
And then they told us that
three workers
who had been at the orientation
and had left early,
they had disappeared.
SCHWERNER:
I urged people
to contact their families
and have their families contact
their congressional people
to indicate that we believed
that there certainly was
a possibility,
given the fact that so many
hours had gone by and
that they couldn't be located,
that they might
have been killed.
NEWSCASTER (on TV):
The three civil rights workers
who disappeared in Mississippi
last Sunday night
still have not been heard from.
A search has thus far produced
only one clue,
the burned-out station wagon
in which the three
were last seen riding.
Andrew Goodman,
a 20-year-old college student
from New York
SIMMONS:
Learning that three
of our members,
two of whom were white,
had disappeared,
really blew away all my ideas
that possibly we would have
protection from the fact
that the majority of the summer
volunteers were white.
I knew now
that that was not the case,
that everybody was
in grave danger
and that these Mississippians
would kill all of us,
white and black.
WETMORE:
Bob said that,
"There is no guarantee
"that you will get out of this
summer alive, so just know that.
It's up to you if you want
to continue on."
So he left us all to the phones,
and we all went.
We were told to call home.
REPORTER:
Did you talk this over
with your parents
before you made the decision?
Yes, I discussed it with them.
They felt, of course,
what I feel,
and that is fear of what might
happen there.
My mother and father did not ask
me to come home.
They asked me to do
what I thought was right.
So I boarded the buses.
WOMAN:
I'm goin' down
to Mississippi ♪
I'm goin' down
a Southern road ♪
And if you never
see me again ♪
Remember that I had to go ♪
Remember that I had
to go ♪
It's a long road
down the Mississippi ♪
It's a short road
back the other way ♪
If the cops pull you over ♪
WILLIAMS:
We came down the interstate
from Memphis into Mississippi.
It must have been about 4:00
in the morning.
There was a billboard right
at the state line that said,
"Welcome to Mississippi,
the Magnolia State."
And of course there was a little
bit of dread in seeing that,
but what was more significant
was that there were two
Mississippi highway patrol cars
parked under the sign,
and as the buses came by they
pulled out and followed us.
So at some level they knew
exactly when we were coming.
WOMAN:
For an out-of-state car ♪
And he thinks he's fightin'
for his land ♪
MOSES:
What really is important
is that they get down
and kind of just melt away
into the black population.
If we could just get everybody
through the entry point
and into the community,
the black community will house
them and also harbor them.
BOND:
The genius of the Freedom Summer
is that these volunteers
were spread all over the state.
The Freedom Summer workers
are everywhere.
They are in almost every little
big town.
Almost every place where you can
go, they are there.
REPORTER:
Yesterday the first 200 civil
rights workers
arrived in Mississippi and
fanned out over the state.
Another 800 will follow.
The students were assigned
living quarters in Negro homes
from a central office.
When Charles and Doug came by
the house and told us
that they need some homes
for the civil rights workers
to live,
I said, "Well, I don't have
much room,
but yeah, we'll be happy
to do it, you know,"
and then I told my husband
about it.
He said,
"Yeah, they can stay here."
I felt the time had come to help
make a change.
I had three sons and I didn't
want them to go through
what I had gone through
and what I had seen.
So I was determined
to help make a change.
Say, "Well, they'll have to take
the twin beds
and the boys have to double up."
They were happy to know that
somebody was coming from
All we have to do is say,
"from the North."
(laughs)
HARRIS:
We were now going to have
a white person
living in our house.
So it was a special time,
it was an exciting time.
We weren't sure what they were
going to be like
because even though we had seen
white people on television
and in person,
but to actually have someone
living in our home,
to spend time with us,
to share meals together,
that was a much different type
of relationship
than what we had been
accustomed to.
ROSCOE JONES:
They became a part
of the black community.
I don't know of any place
that they could run
into a white neighborhood
and be accepted
because they were outsiders.
They became the closest thing
to being a part
of the black community
as anybody can be
because they had no choice.
REPORTER:
Walt Kaufman,
you're from California.
What's it like to come into a
situation such as exists here
in Neshoba County,
and as a white man come to work
for the project?
Well, what I'm most impressed
with is the response
of the people here who have been
intimidated and terrorized
for years and who know that our
presence here probably poses
some danger for them
and yet they've shown
tremendous courage
and amazing hospitality to us.
They've helped to feed us,
they've encouraged us,
they've warmed us with their
just friendship and smiles.
And it's an extremely impressive
experience to me.
SUGARMAN:
Everybody knew that we were
going home
at the end of the summer.
The people that took us in
were going to stay.
So they were there for the
reprisals, for the anger
that the white community had
all the power
to bring to bear on them.
And they did it because they
really believed
that we were there to help,
and they'd never seen white
people who had come to help
in their whole lives.
SIMMONS:
One of the most wonderful things
about 1964 Mississippi Summer
were the freedom schools.
COBB:
The state of Mississippi
deliberately and systematically
kept black people uneducated
and ignorant,
and then turned around and made
education a requirement
in order to participate
in the political process.
We were able to do the freedom
schools in the summer of 1964
because we had almost 1,000
students coming
to the state of Mississippi,
thus the human resources
to actually, you know,
conduct classes.
MALE VOLUNTEER:
We hope to find and develop
and mold local leadership
among the young people.
We also hope to promote
a better self-image
among the local Negroes.
JONES:
We would send out mass flyers
and everything
to the churches,
telling people
about the freedom school,
what the freedom school was
going to entail,
the courses, the activities.
We got the preachers involved,
we got the kids involved.
McLAURlN:
Black people couldn't go
to the library.
It was for whites only,
and so here they are,
got their own library now.
They would come excited
to be exposed
to the teaching
and to browse the books.
HARRIS:
In the public schools
where I was in school,
I had never heard of Dr. Seuss.
It was at freedom school where
we actually not only read
the story of The Cat in the Hat,
but we acted it out.
Having our lives enriched
by these activities
really made a huge difference
in my life.
SIMMONS:
We taught African-American
history, civics,
African culture, African dance.
They were learning black history
that they were reading books
that had been written by blacks
that they'd never heard of.
How were slaves first introduced
in America?
MALE VOLUNTEER:
As we saw back on this world map
over here,
America started picking up
slaves along here
and then bringing them back.
CHRIS HEXTER:
What we were trying to do
that summer
is get people to talk
about their own lives,
talk about good and bad,
and talk about ways
in which you could bring about
change.
I think that was very much
the drive of the program.
FEMALE VOLUNTEER:
They had a sense of being needed
by something much bigger
than themselves
and a sense of being able
to handle the problems
that they were needed for.
They did it by asking questions
and by being encouraged to feel
free to ask questions.
HEXTER:
They were rarin' to go.
We were just kind of like
the catalyst.
We were agents of information
and agents of a different world,
so I mean just the very fact
that we were talking
about a world
that they didn't know,
or didn't have
much experience with
was exciting to them
and also to us.
McLAURlN:
We set them up
for the little children to come,
and every day we'd have
classrooms of adults,
people 50, 60 and 70
years of age.
The adults came to the freedom
school to learn
just like the little children.
HARRIS:
Being in freedom school planted
a seed in my mind
that things are going to change,
things are going
to be different.
And Freedom Summer helped
to give us that courage,
it helped to give us that hope,
it helped to give us
the reason to believe that it
was going to be different.
REPORTER:
This is backwoods Mississippi
and its 2.5 million acres
of swamp.
Damp and clammy country,
as hostile as the attitude
of its white people
to civil rights.
The green slime that sprawls
for miles may hide forever
what's happened to Chaney,
Goodman and Schwerner.
As the search for the men
intensifies in the swamps,
there are those in Mississippi
who do not seem disposed
to see this
as a personal tragedy.
One of them is Mississippi's
former governor Ross Barnett.
We will treat anyone with great
respect here in Mississippi,
anyone who comes here, as long
as they do not disobey our laws,
but we will treat the people who
come here, these children,
like any other backward
children.
MAN:
Go, Mississippi ♪
Keep rolling along ♪
Go, Mississippi ♪
You cannot be wrong ♪
WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH:
They're outsiders
coming down here
trying to change the world and
there's natural resentment.
I mean, that's common sense.
MAN:
M-I-S-S-I-S ♪
S-I-P ♪
SCARBOROUGH:
We didn't think
those people understood
what kind of society
we had here.
You know, these college students
would sit up there at Oberlin
and there'd be a articulate,
well-groomed black person
sitting next to them,
and they assumed all blacks were
like that and they weren't.
They're coming for the purpose
of registering blacks to vote.
And since this state had the
highest percentage of blacks
of any state
in the United States,
that poses a real threat
politically.
There was a siege mentality,
us against them,
and I hated them.
MAN:
M-I-S-S-I-S ♪
S-I-P-P-I ♪
(song ends)
WILLIAM WINTER:
Let me state as clearly as I can
what the mindset of the state
of Mississippi was,
encouraged and emboldened by the
utterances of its politicians.
If the white people
of Mississippi
will just stay together,
will just stick together,
there is no force
in this country
that will cause segregation
to be ended.
That was the mindset.
BARNETT:
We face absolute extinction
of all we hold dear,
unless we are victorious!
We can win, my friends,
if we are organized
in every community
in Mississippi
and all over this nation
of ours!
We must be stronger
than the enemy!
We must be strong enough
to crush the enemy!
(applause)
MOSES:
They're caught in a circle
which, if there are people
who want to break out,
they don't know how.
They don't have a chance.
They just white people are
probably more oppressed or
in terms of their ability
to speak than Negroes.
BARBARA JAN NAVE:
In the South, you were expected
to live a certain way.
You just didn't step
outside the bubble.
In August of 1963, I was crowned
Miss Mississippi
and would spend the next year
representing Mississippi
all over.
WATSON:
Red Heffner and his wife were
loyal Mississippians.
Their daughter was
Miss Mississippi,
and they really believed
that if they just invited
a couple of white volunteers
over to their house
in McComb, just for dinner,
just to find out
what was going on,
nothing, nothing would happen,
nobody would object,
but they miscalculated badly.
NAVE:
The whole purpose was just
to keep the peace,
to try not to have any more
bombings,
try not to have any more
killings.
They came over just to have tea
or whatever, or coffee.
MRS. HEFFNER:
Then shortly after that,
a man called,
a neighbor, that we didn't know
very well,
and he lives a good distance
from us,
and said that the neighbors were
upset about this car
that was in front of our house
and who did it belong to.
About ten minutes later, Red
Heffner opened his front door
and there were all these
headlights glaring at him,
like something out of
a bad movie,
and people started shouting
things,
and they just barely got
the people out of there,
and from then on,
the Heffners' life
in Mississippi was pure hell.
I went downtown one day,
and friends that I had known
for ten years would turn
and walk away from me,
or hang their heads.
Some would speak and walk on
as if I had leprosy
or something.
NAVE:
My father was asked
to move out of his office.
So he lost his business.
Our, you know, our little dog
was killed.
I came home to visit
because I was still traveling
as Miss Mississippi
and the FBI wouldn't
let me go home.
I had to stay in the Holiday Inn
because they had heard that the
house was going to be bombed.
It's just gotten too low.
To the point that we couldn't
take it any longer.
WINTER:
It's a mark of the obsession
that so many white people had in
this state at that time
with maintaining segregation
that made them turn on their
neighbors, on their friends.
The Heffners were ostracized
socially
and finally had to leave
the state.
NAVE:
They left everything
they'd ever had behind.
When all your roots are in one
place, it breaks your heart.
WETMORE:
I saw in Mississippi
a white population
that I had never
even imagined existed.
The vile, the absolute hatred
that was in their eyes
when they saw us coming,
was it-it scared me.
FEMALE READER:
"It's night, it's hot.
"Violence hangs overhead
like dead air.
It hangs there, and maybe it
will fall, and maybe it won't."
FEMALE READER:
"Although I was extremely tired,
"every shadow, every noise,
the bark of a dog,
"the sound of a car, in my fear
and exhaustion
I turned into a terrorist
approach, and I believe"
MALE READER:
"I wake up in the morning
sighing with relief
"that I was not bombed
"because I know that they know
where I live, and I think,
"'Well, I got through
that night,
'and I have to get through this
day, ' and it goes on and on."
There were always moments
when I just wondered
if I could make it through that
day to the next one,
and then to the next one.
Just always questioning,
always wondering.
Every time I walked out
on the street
I, in my mind, I expected
a bullet to hit me.
FEMALE VOLUNTEER:
They threw a stick of dynamite
where, now?
Now, what damage did it do?
DITTMER:
Freedom Summer was one
of the most violent periods
in Mississippi history since
the end of Reconstruction.
There were over
a thousand arrests made.
REPORTER:
The explosive, nobody knows
what kind or how much,
was apparently placed
up against the house or rolled
up against the house.
DITTMER:
65 buildings were either bombed
or burned,
including 35 churches.
There were a hundred or so
beatings.
I mean, this was going on
all over the state.
SIMMONS:
And then there was
the whole issue
of white women
living in black homes.
I mean,
that just infuriated them.
Take these, uh, white women
that've been imported in here.
They call 'em white women,
I could call 'em
a light colored rat.
They stay and sleep in the same
damn house
that the niggras do.
And then tellin', tellin' me
that they,
that they're not sexual
relations at.
Why, that is, that is,
for the for the birds.
Even walking down the street
in an interracial group
was kind of a no-no.
I remember being arrested and
being asked a lot of questions.
And the sheriff wanted me
to describe
the size of black men's penises.
They were obsessed with sex.
I don't think we were obsessed
with sex.
But it was a clear message
that that's all they thought
we were doing.
BOND:
If you got in any kind
of trouble at all
or anybody was threatening
to you,
there was nobody you could go to
and say, "Help me."
You couldn't go to the police,
you couldn't go to the sheriff,
you couldn't go
to the state officials.
All of these people are hostile
and probably the people who are
threatening you themselves.
So there is nobody
you can appeal to.
WETMORE:
I was walking along a road.
We were told never to leave
the place we were staying
by ourselves.
They jumped out of the car.
They started calling me,
"Hey, nigger lover!
"We got you, we finally got you.
"We ain't killed ourselves
a white girl yet.
You're gonna be the first."
They get this lynch rope.
It really was a noose
like you see,
like I had seen in the pictures
of the hangings, right.
They put this noose
over my head.
And it's attached
to a long rope.
They jump back into the car,
and I just saw myself being
dragged to death.
I'm walking like this.
And they're laughing and calling
me all kinds of names.
And then they moved along,
slowly,
a little bit faster.
I'm walking faster.
And it was like,
okay, this is it.
And then they dropped the rope.
And I just stood there.
Of course we had to wear skirts.
We weren't allowed to wear pants
in those days,
so we all had our little shifts
on and everything.
I peed all over myself.
Just stood on the
and just peed.
RUBIN:
"The day-to-day work
was canvassing.
"The work itself is as simple
as it is tedious.
"We walk down these dusty red
country roads
"in the Negro sections,
"go from tumbledown house
to tumbledown house,
"and if they come out
to the porch or let us in,
"we talk to the people.
"That's it.
"That's what we do.
That's what the segregationists
are trying to stop."
SUGARMAN:
My motivation for drawing
was I wanted to make sure that I
was capturing
the flavor a moment,
the intensity of a moment.
And you are in that situation,
everything becomes memorable.
The intensity of those
situations become indelible.
That happened to me twice
in my life.
One was on D-Day,
and the other time was
in Mississippi.
KUNSTLER:
The work was frustrating.
There was a very small return
for the number of doors
we knocked on.
You could see in people's faces
the struggle they were
going through.
Many really wanted to register
but were fearful.
"I'm not going to register
to vote because I work
for a white family and I think
they might fire me."
Or "I've heard that houses get
burned down
when people go to register
to vote."
Or "I'm worried about my kids."
We were doing something
very positive
but also in the backs
of our minds was the negative
that could befall someone
we were talking to.
Because the danger was real.
It was absolutely real.
REPORTER:
Late this afternoon,
the search for Chaney, Goodman
and Schwerner shifted
to the Pearl River near
Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Boats carrying game wardens
and FBI agents
are now dragging the river.
REPORTER:
Have you seen the spot
down here, sir?
MAN:
That's right.
REPORTER:
What do you think of this?
I believe them jokers planned it
and sitting off up there
in New York,
laughing at us Mississippi folk.
REPORTER:
Can you tell me what you think
of this whole thing?
WOMAN:
Well, I believe
it's a big publicity hoax,
but if they're dead I feel like
they asked for it.
KUNSTLER:
It was always on our minds,
and we were constantly aware
that they had not been found.
There was a pall over the whole
project because of that.
REPORTER:
In Meridian,
the wife of missing Mickey
Schwerner, Rita Schwerner,
flew from Oxford.
BOND:
Rita Schwerner plays
an important role here.
This is her husband, after all,
who is the leader
of the three missing men.
And she puts a face on them
and she plays an enormous role
in making this seem like
these are real people
and we need to pay attention
to these real people
who something terrible has
happened to.
RITA SCHWERNER:
They're being held somewhere,
or something happened, and I am
going to find the answer.
If this means driving every
back road, every dirt road,
every alley in the county
of Neshoba, I will do it.
DOROTHY ZELLNER:
The press swarmed all over her,
and I think they wanted her
to cry,
and they wanted her to be
a new widow,
that they would catch her
at the moment of her widowhood,
and she wouldn't play.
I personally suspect
that if Mr. Chaney,
who is a native
Mississippian Negro,
had been along at the time
of the disappearance,
that this case, like so many
others that have come before,
would have gone completely
unnoticed.
SCHWERNER:
I did have some sense
that if the story was allowed
to deteriorate into,
"Oh, this poor
little white girl,"
that, um
it would, um
it would be offensive
to everyone concerned.
WATSON:
Rita went on to the White House
and she met Lyndon Johnson,
and he welcomed her
to the White House
and she said very bluntly,
she said,
"Mr. President, this is not
a social call.
I've come to find out
where my husband is."
And she got chewed out by the
press secretary, who said,
"You don't talk to the president
of the United States like that."
Rita simply said, "We do."
REPORTER:
On Thursday, President
Johnson ordered sailors
from Meridian Naval Air Station
to augment state
and federal law officers
who were conducting the search.
There have been reports that
they were seen in other states.
None of these reports
proved out,
and so far neither
has the search.
JONES:
On August 4, 1964,
at the Mt. Olive Missionary
Baptist Church
in Meridian, Mississippi,
Pete Seeger gave a concert.
You know, we were all into
James Brown and all that
and here, you know, we got a guy
who's a folk legend
that comes to Meridian
and we were told
that he's going to do
this concert.
PETE SEEGER:
It was a small church,
so there were
about 200 people there,
and I had been singing
to them, I guess,
on a slight raised platform,
probably near the pulpit.
And I had gotten them
singing with me.
JONES:
And, all of a sudden,
in the middle of a song
that he was singing,
someone came over
and whispered into his ear.
He stopped and he got up
and made an announcement.
SEEGER:
"The bodies of Schwerner,
Goodman and Chaney
"have just been discovered.
They were buried deep
in the earth."
There wasn't any shouting.
There's just silence.
I saw lips moving
as though they were in prayer.
He asked us to join hands
and sing,
We shall overcome, my Lord ♪
We shall overcome someday ♪
We shall overcome
someday ♪
(crowd singing
"We Shall Overcome")
Deep in my heart ♪
Know that I do believe ♪
Oh, we shall overcome
someday. ♪
SCHWERNER:
I got a call
late in the evening.
At least this
this nightmare of unknowing,
or at least not officially
knowing, was over.
WATSON:
The bodies of Andrew Goodman
and Michael Schwerner
were flown to New York.
They had a separate funeral
there.
Fannie Lee Chaney flew to New
York to be at that funeral.
The families by then were
so together,
even though they had never
met before.
The mothers locked arms
and walked out of the church
together.
CROWD:
Oh, we shall overcome
someday. ♪
WATSON:
In Mississippi,
a memorial service was held
for James Chaney.
DENNIS:
The decision had been made
by family members and
local leaders and others
that they wanted to keep
this very quiet
and then low key, rather.
I did their eulogy.
DENNIS:
I want to talk about
is really
what I really grieve about.
I don't grieve for Chaney
because of the fact
I feel that he lived
a fuller life
than many of us will ever live.
I feel that he's got his freedom
and we're still fighting for it.
WATSON:
Dave Dennis's speech was
a turning point in the summer
because everybody wanted him
to say the usual things
that you would say at a funeral.
And Dave Dennis
just couldn't do it.
He challenged the people
at the memorial
and he challenged
the whole movement.
You see, we all tired.
You see, I know what's gonna
happen.
I feel it deep in my heart
when they find the people
who killed those guys
in Neshoba County
All the different emotions
of things we'd been
going through
leading up
to this particular moment
began to come out, boil up
in me, you might call this.
And then looking out there
and seeing Ben Chaney,
James Chaney's little brother,
I lost it.
I totally just lost it.
Don't bow down anymore!
Hold your heads up!
We want our freedom now!
(voice breaking):
I don't want to have to go
to another memorial.
I'm tired of funerals.
Tired of it!
We've got to stand up!
CROWD:
Oh, oh, oh, deep in my heart ♪
WATSON:
I think a lot of people
in Mississippi,
white people, thought,
"If we could just repel them
with the violence,
they'll go away."
But the beauty of Freedom Summer
was the tenacity
shown by the local people
and the volunteers
by staying on and on despite
the violence,
despite the threats,
despite the three bodies.
That created a momentum that,
as it went on into August,
you did begin to see more people
showing up at mass meetings,
more people showing up
at church.
WOMAN:
This little light of mine ♪
CROWD:
I'm gonna let it shine. ♪
WATSON:
Churches that had originally
had maybe
ten or 12 people
for an evening meeting,
and there were evening meetings
almost every night,
now you got 20, 30, 40, 50
people showing up.
The churches are filled
in the evening.
Just being there in Mississippi
is making a difference.
CROWD: Let it shine, let it
shine, let it shine ♪
WOMAN:
Tell Governor Wallace ♪
HARRIS:
The mass meeting was called
by the community.
That was the purpose
of the mass meeting,
to bring people up to date,
don't have any fear.
Try to stick to your grounds
and you are eligible
to become a registered voter.
Don't have any fear.
It made us stronger.
As the time grew, then the
crowds started getting larger.
(crowd singing)
HARRIS:
My friends and I, my brothers,
we would sit on the front pew
at a meeting.
And our role as young people was
to stand up in front
of the congregation
and begin singing freedom songs,
all a cappella,
clapping our hands.
And the congregation would be
on its feet
and they're swaying
from side to side,
and we're singing
these songs like
"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me
'Round, Oh Freedom."
JONES:
They would break out and sing,
This little light of mine ♪
I'm gonna let it shine ♪
CROWD:
I'm gonna let it shine ♪
WATKINS:
On my project, the volunteers,
all of them,
had to go to the mass meetings.
CROWD:
I'm gonna let it shine,
let it shine, let it shine ♪
SIMMONS:
It played for them, I think,
the same role that it played
for black people.
Because it was infectious.
It galvanized you.
It fortified you.
It enabled you to go on.
(crowd singing enthusiastically)
MILLER:
When you're in a situation
with that much fear
and every day not knowing
what's going to happen,
when you're in a mass meeting
you feel there's a feeling
of safety,
there's a feeling of strength.
Everyone was there
to change things.
And so when you're
in those mass meetings,
you really believe you can.
(crowd continues singing)
GRAY:
We've organized
into the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party.
We're holding a Freedom
Registration drive
throughout the state,
encouraging every Negro
and white
who wants a stake
in his political future
to prove it by getting his name
on a Freedom Registration book.
CHRIS WILLIAMS:
The word came down from
the office in Jackson that,
"All right, this has gotta be
the priority."
Bob Moses said, "We gotta really
concentrate on this,
"we've got to sign people up
for the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party."
We were going to go
to Atlantic City
with a delegation
of black Mississippians
to challenge
the white delegation
at the Democratic
National Convention.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON:
Our case was pure
and unadulterated exclusion
and discrimination.
We regarded the delegation sent
from Mississippi,
an all-white delegation,
as illegitimate under the rules
of the Democratic Party,
and we argued that
our integrated delegation
from all of the counties
in the state
should be seated instead.
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
Those students helped us
get people registered.
We registered thousands of them.
I guess people were just fed up.
People were hunting you
to register to vote.
You didn't have to just go
to their house.
They wanted to put
their name on.
WILLIAMS:
Any place people congregated,
we're there with our forms.
It wasn't complicated
like the official
voter registration form,
and it was confidential.
It wasn't going to pass
through the hands
of the white people
down at the courthouse.
We have scheduled precinct
meetings and district caucuses,
and on August 6 here in Jackson,
we will hold our
state convention.
At that time, we will elect
a slate of delegates
to the national convention
in Atlantic City.
(lively jazz playing)
ED KING:
The delegates came
from all over the state.
Most of the delegates
had never taken part
in anything like this
in their lifetime.
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
I was happy really, really,
because I did not think
I would be a delegate.
I didn't.
And I was one of the first ones
that they selected.
(cheering)
SIMMONS:
It was a wonderful experience
to see these people
who had been oppressed
and killed
for trying to register to vote
taking over their own destiny.
For the first time,
doing something that I think
they'd never imagined
being able to do.
(banging gavel)
Will the delegates
please be seated.
The state convention
for the Freedom Democratic Party
is now in session.
KING:
Out of 68 people in the
delegation, four were white.
The regular delegation
was all white, had no blacks.
So we are integrated
at that point and they are not.
BRUCE WATSON:
Joseph Rauh agrees
to be the chief counsel
for the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party.
Rauh is a Washington insider
from way back in the '40s
and he had worked
with all sorts of liberal causes
and politicians.
He was a lawyer for United Auto
Workers and very powerful,
and that's a great person
to have on your side.
REPORTER:
Mr. Rauh, what is your dispute
with the regular Mississippi
Democratic delegation?
Very simple.
They are disloyal
to the national party.
They exclude Negroes
who would help the national
party from their roles.
They have engaged
in the terroristic activities
in Mississippi
JOHN DITTMER:
The people in Mississippi didn't
know how national politics work.
They didn't know
how conventions work.
Rauh did, and he was the one
who said that,
"I think we can do this."
SHERWIN MARKMAN:
I can't overstate how seriously
Johnson took this whole thing.
He believed that Bobby Kennedy,
who was then attorney general,
was going to use any disruption
at the convention
as a vehicle to displace him
as the nominee.
The second thing
he was concerned about is
he wanted to keep the regular
Southern wing of the party
in the party,
that that the whole battle would
cause a split within the party,
which would drive out
the regular Southern states.
And he believed that
without the South's support,
he would lose the election.
So I was designated to go
to the convention as a delegate
to make sure
that did not happen.
CHARLES McLAURlN:
We had Democratic congressmen
from Illinois
and from other states.
The Democratic Party was the
party of Adam Clayton Powell,
so we felt we had
an inroad there.
If they let us state our case,
we would be seated.
Get on board! ♪
Children, children,
get on board ♪
Children, children,
let's fight for human rights ♪
I hear those mobs a-howling
and coming 'round the square ♪
Trying to catch
those freedom fighters ♪
But we're gonna
meet you there ♪
Get on board,
children, children ♪
Get on board, children,
children ♪
Get on board,
children, children ♪
Let's fight
for human rights ♪
McLAURlN:
I think that trip must have
taken I guess, 20 hours.
I'm not sure;
it was a long trip.
But the mood on the bus
was upbeat.
Here we are
going to Atlantic City
to unseat the people who had
denied us the right to vote.
So it was really
a jubilant time to me.
We stepped out into a new world.
(band playing marching tune)
REPORTER:
On Monday, the 1964
Democratic National Convention
will open here in Atlantic City,
a resort 100 miles south
of New York.
The job will be to nominate
President Lyndon B. Johnson
as the man to take on
Senator Barry Goldwater
in the presidential election
battle in November.
Known as Convention City
and home of the Miss America
contest,
Atlantic City can now
claim the honor
of a national
political convention.
WILLIAMS:
These people were beauticians
and farmers and mechanics
and they had kind of baggy,
worn suits
and funny looking dresses
in some cases.
They weren't slick like
the rest of the delegates were,
so people weren't quite sure
what to make of these people.
FANNIE LOU HAMER:
We believe that we will
be seated in this convention
because it is right.
When you tell the truth, you
don't have anything to hide.
KING:
Outside the convention hall,
we had a vigil, went on 24 hours
every day that the convention
was in session.
KARIN KUNSTLER:
It was, you know, great for us
who had spent time
in Mississippi to see
not only people
from Mississippi there
and not only volunteers there,
but larger groups of people
who came from all over
to support the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party.
I know the Boardwalk
was covered with people.
I think it was hard
to walk down the Boardwalk
because there was so many of us.
Go tell it on the mountain,
over the hills and everywhere ♪
Go tell it on the mountain
to let my people go ♪
RITA SCHWERNER:
The whole notion
of the demonstration
out on the Boardwalk
and the MFDP challenge
was all by way
of trying to use the attention
that would be focused
on the convention
to say to the country,
"Look at Mississippi.
"Look at what is going on there.
You cannot allow this
to continue."
Go tell it on the mountain
to let my people go. ♪
NORTON:
We had to go to the delegations
from the various states
to make a case that had
never been made before:
that an official delegation
that came from a state
should not be recognized,
and an entire
challenge delegation
should be recognized
in its place.
MARKMAN:
They were very confident
coming to the convention.
They had every reason
to be confident.
The Mississippi Freedom Party
had morality on their side,
which is a powerful force
in politics.
So this was a revolution
that they were starting
within the Democratic Party.
REPORTER:
Mr. Rauh, when will
the fight come, and how?
Well, the fight comes this way.
On Saturday afternoon,
there will be a hearing
before the credentials
committee,
and we will present our case.
DITTMER:
This was before the convention
actually formally met.
These 108 people would listen
to the Freedom Democrats,
then if 11, only 11 members
of that committee
would file a minority report,
that would mean that it would go
to the convention floor.
In front of a national
television audience,
why, the Freedom
Democrats would win
because their case,
of course, was so strong.
REPORTER:
Are you hoping that
President Johnson
will come out on the side
of your party?
RAUH:
No, I think that'd be a mistake.
I think it would be a mistake
for the president to take sides,
even our side.
All we ask for
is benevolent neutrality,
by which I mean real,
honest-to-goodness neutrality.
TAYLOR BRANCH:
Lyndon Johnson literally
was so fearful
that the convention
was going to blow up
that he essentially went to bed
for two or three days
and had what amounted
to a nervous breakdown.
He told his closest advisors
and his closest friends
that he was going to quit, that
he couldn't take the pressure.
DITTMER:
The testimony before
the credentials committee,
the FDP had a lineup
of very different people.
They had Rita Schwerner,
the widow of Mickey,
who had been killed
in Neshoba County.
They had Martin Luther King.
Everybody knew King.
The seating of the delegation
from the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party
has political
and moral significance
far beyond the borders
of Mississippi,
of the halls of this convention.
DITTMER:
But the highlight
of the testimony
was that of Fannie Lou Hamer,
the sharecropper who had been
evicted from her plantation
and had come to symbolize
the Mississippi movement.
HAMER:
Mr. Chairman, and to
the credentials committee.
It was the 31st
of August in 1962
that 18 of us traveled 26 miles
to the county courthouse
in Indianola
to try to register to become
first-class citizens.
We was met in Indianola
by policemen
BOB MOSES:
The president, Lyndon Johnson,
he's not afraid of Martin
Luther King's testimony.
He's afraid of Fannie
Lou Hamer's testimony.
And so he decides
that the country
should not see her testify live.
BRANCH:
Johnson is in the White House
and he convened an impromptu
press conference.
We will return to this scene
in Atlantic City,
but now we switch to the White
House and NBC's Robert Goralski.
Now, ladies and gentleman, the
president of the United States.
On this day nine months ago
BRANCH:
He did it knowing that
they would break away,
thinking he might announce
who his choice of vice president
was going to be.
Instead he gets up there
and he announces
Get this he announces that
it's nine months to the day
since Governor Connally,
who was there, was shot
along with President Kennedy.
So he announced
a nine-month anniversary.
Everybody's scratching
their heads.
Thank you very much.
BRANCH:
And then he leaves.
By that time, Fannie Lou Hamer's
testimony was over.
(applause)
However, it backfired on Johnson
because it became a story
that she had been
taken off television.
And in the news that night
and for days afterwards,
they replayed her testimony.
HAMER:
I was carried to the county jail
and put in the booking room.
They left some of the people
in the booking room
and began to place us in cells.
MOSES:
She had Mississippi
in her bones.
Martin Luther King
or the SNCC field secretaries,
they couldn't do
what Fannie Lou Hamer did.
They couldn't be a sharecropper
and express
what it meant, right?
And that's what
Fannie Lou Hamer did.
HAMER:
And it wasn't too long before
three white men came to my cell.
One of these men was
a state highway patrolman.
He said, "We going to make you
wish you was dead."
I was carried out
LARRY RUBIN:
I was in Mississippi
watching it on television
with local people.
This was a transformative moment
for the folks in that room.
This was the first time
that they ever had seen
one of their own,
a black Mississippian
who they all knew,
first of all, on television,
secondly, standing up
for their rights.
I began to scream,
and one white man got up
and began to beat me in my head
and tell me to hush.
CHARLIE COBB:
You listen to Mrs. Hamer
and you're absolutely convinced
that there's absolutely
no justification
for seating this
all-white delegation.
HAMER:
And 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 of the hook
because our lives
be threatened daily.
Because we want to live as
decent human beings in America.
Thank you.
(applause)
REPORTER:
That testimony, offered
in public session last Saturday,
we are told had
the greatest impact
on the women members
of the credentials committee
and it is from among them
that a sufficient number
has been found
to make a minority report
possible.
EDITH GREEN:
The Freedom Democratic Party
has done everything
in its power,
as I listen to the testimony,
to abide by the laws and rules
of Mississippi.
I think they ought to be seated
in this convention.
I think they represent
about 50% of the population
of Mississippi,
all the Negroes in Mississippi
who are excluded from voting
and participation
in the regular Democratic Party.
And I think certainly, they're
entitled to representation.
COBB:
There was a lot of sympathy
for seating this Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party.
But once you see
that Lyndon Johnson
has shut down Mrs. Hamer
during her live testimony,
you can't help but wonder,
"What else is he going to do?
"And how are these delegates
going to respond
when there's real pressure
placed on them?"
DITTMER:
People who were
on the credentials committee
who were listed
as being supportive
of the challenge found that
In one case, a woman said,
"Well, your husband isn't
going to get that judgeship."
There was other pressure
applied throughout.
So what had appeared
to be a certainty
became less and less certain.
WATSON:
Johnson was using everything
he possibly could
to keep this challenge at bay.
Hubert Humphrey,
he was slated to be
the vice-presidential nominee
and yet Johnson told him,
"You will not be
the vice-presidential nominee
if you can't fix
this Mississippi problem."
He called Walter Reuther,
his old friend with the United
Auto Workers,
and Joe Rauh, his old friend,
sent him to Atlantic City
on a red-eye flight to work,
and they began to manipulate
and pull strings.
WATSON:
Walter Reuther was the chairman
of the United Auto Workers,
at that time certainly
one of the most powerful unions
in America.
He was Joe Rauh's boss,
and Joe Rauh was the counsel
for the United Auto Workers.
MARKMAN:
Reuther came to Rauh
and made this threat:
"You either buy this compromise
or you're no longer
counsel of the UAW."
And it worked.
REPORTER:
Late this afternoon,
a compromise offer came
or the compromise
announcement came
in a special meeting
of the credentials committee
here in the auditorium.
Walter Mondale, who's chairman
of the subcommittee
that drew it up,
gave the details.
We recommend that the convention
instruct the Democratic
National Committee
MARKMAN:
The compromise that was
ultimately reached was
we would give them two seats
and the official
Mississippi delegation
would keep its 68 seats.
Someone came in and said,
"They have offered us
a compromise."
And at that point,
some of us that was there
jumped up and said,
"Oh, hell no."
McLAURlN:
We didn't come all the way here
to Atlantic City for two seats.
We came to unseat them,
to come back to Mississippi
representing
the Democratic Party.
REPORTER:
Last night,
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell
of New York City
came by our CBS News studios,
and I talked with him.
You would recommend that
they accept that compromise?
Oh yes, very definitely.
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
Adam Clayton Powell,
he came and telling us that,
"You all got to do this.
"This is politics.
You give and you take
and you compromise."
The black establishment
just couldn't comprehend
that this group of people
These sharecroppers, these
maids, these small farmers,
these people from Mississippi
backcountry
Would walk away from what these
generous white people offered.
They couldn't understand that.
PEGGY JEAN CONNOR:
Adam Clayton Powell
didn't know Fannie Lou.
And he walked up to her
and he said,
"You don't know
who I am, do you?"
And she just reared back
in her seat and said,
"Yeah, I know who you are.
You are Adam Clayton Powell."
She said, "But how many bales
of cotton have you picked?
How many beatings
have you taken?"
He couldn't say nothing.
Well, here's a piece of tape
made a minute or two ago
at the Union Baptist Temple
in Atlantic City,
a meeting of the Freedom
Democrat Party
to consider this compromise.
AARON HENRY:
The delegates of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party
has just voted unanimously
to reject the proposal
that has been offered
by the credentials committee.
DENNIS:
We missed a golden opportunity,
this country did,
to come out and show the world
what a democracy
really should look like
and how this country would
stand for and protect people
who were fighting
for the Constitution
of the United States of America.
They walked us right up
to the doorsteps
and then slammed the door.
(crowd cheering)
The Honorable Lyndon B. Johnson
is nominated by acclimation
as our candidate
for the office of president
of the United States.
(cheering)
The convention went
as Johnson wanted.
He appeared in the great cheers
and hurrahs
and standing ovations,
and he was a happy president
of the United States.
Hubert Humphrey got rewarded,
he was selected as vice
president, and that was that.
McLAURlN:
I felt bad that
we had not unseated
the Mississippi delegation.
But Fannie Lou and I came home
with the feeling that our
mission had not ended.
We were coming home to continue
to fight for the right to vote.
We were charged because
we had stuff back here to do.
Under this act, if any county
anywhere in this nation
does not want
federal intervention,
it need only open its polling
places to all of its people.
WATSON:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
actually got its birth
during Freedom Summer.
It was signed in August of 1965,
and one of the most
important things it did
was it abolished literacy tests,
and it put voting
in seven Southern states
under federal supervision.
And that above all else,
the legacy of Freedom Summer
really, really changed
American politics.
By the end of 1965,
60% of blacks in Mississippi
were registered to vote.
JULIAN BOND:
There's this great pressure
within the movement,
people saying,
"Well, we did our best.
"We did the right thing
and it didn't work out.
"You know, when we were
organizers, that was okay.
"But when we tried
to have power,
the power rose up
and knocked us down."
After the convention,
the movement changes.
There's this movement
toward Black Nationalism
which grows in SNNC.
There is just an idea
of thinking about
what we've been doing
and doing something else,
something different.
We want black power!
CROWD:
Black power!
We want black power!
CROWD:
Black power!
We want black power!
CROWD:
Black power!
We want black power!
CROWD:
Black power!
We want black power!
MILLER:
When I was leaving Mississippi,
I did not want to go.
You know, you fall in love
with the people.
You fall in love
with that community,
that wholeness that you have
when you're working
as a part of something
that's meaningful.
To know that you're
just going back
to a pretty staid life
was very, very hard.
WILLIAMS:
I hope, sincerely hope
that I made some
small difference
in moving the movement forward
in rural Mississippi,
of lifting the oppression
off the necks of people
who lived there.
But I don't have any doubt
all these years later
that the person
who benefitted the most
from my being in Mississippi
was me.
I have an experience that's
unique among white Americans
of an understanding of race
that is impossible to get
hardly any other way.
HARRIS:
The system, the Jim Crow system,
had told me to stay in my place.
It had told me that,
"You have a role to play
in Jim Crow society.
Play it well."
And I had played it well,
so did many other black people,
but now Freedom Summer
was telling us,
"You don't have to play
that role anymore, folks.
"You are now on the path.
"It's going to be
a tough struggle
"for children, for adults,
"for everybody
involved in the movement,
"it's going to be tough.
But that train has left
the station, y'all."
WOMAN:
Hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
Hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
Well, hear that freedom train
a-comin' ♪
Oh, get on board,
get on board ♪
Well, they'll be comin',
comin' by the thousands ♪
They'll be comin'
by the thousands ♪
Well, they'll be comin'
by the thousands ♪
Oh, get on board,
get on board ♪
It'll be carryin'
registered voters ♪
It'll be
carryin' registered voters ♪
Well, it'll be carryin'
registered voters ♪
Get on board,
get on board ♪
Well, it'll be rollin'
through Mississippi ♪
It'll be rollin',
rollin' through Mississippi ♪
Well, it'll be rollin'
through Mississippi ♪
Oh, get on board,
get on board. ♪