something in communist,” a prim little blond said to McDew.
“Shiksa schlepp mensch shtick,” he replied, looking completely serious.
We were brought upstairs one by one for a kind of kangaroo court. I warned the students to say they were under eighteen. If they could convince the court they were minors, they would probably be released. When my turn came, the air was thick with tension. To avoid having to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” I answered every question with a complete sentence. Fifteen of us were charged with breach of the peace and contributing to the delinquency of minors and taken to the Amite County Jail in Liberty.
“Why didn’t you take us to the Pike County Jail in Magnolia?” I asked.
“This is a better place for y’all to think about what happened to Herbert Lee,” the deputy said.
We were placed in the drunk tank, a solid concrete room, cold and damp, with nothing to sit or lie on but more concrete. In spite of the lack of heat, bad food, and no showers, spirits remained high in the cell; we sang freedom songs and told jokes. I made chess pieces out of matchsticks, with a cigarette butt as the queen and taught my cellmates how to play. Whoever captured the queen got to smoke the butt. After three days we were released on bond.
When the 114 students who had taken part in the march tried to return to school, the principal, under pressure from the white superintendent, refused to admit them unless they signed an agreement not to stage any more protests. The students refused, and walked out. This procedure went on for the next week. Each day the students would come to school; each day they would be ordered to sign the agreement; each day those who refused would walk out. The parents, meanwhile, were deeply divided on the issue: some whipped their children and told them to stay away from that mess; others resented the agreement, but wanted their children back in school; a few were urging their sons and daughters to keep up the pressure and shut the school down if necessary. Even the teachers, usually an impossibly conservative group, became involved. “I wish I was a student,” one said, “I’d walk out too.”
I was pleased to see the spirit of democracy spread as the students learned to stand up for their rights. They drafted a petition for fair treatment that urged “all our fellowmen to love rather than hate, to build rather than tear down, to bind our nation with love and justice without regard to race, color, and creed.” Finally, the principal set a deadline of October 16 at three o’clock: any student who hadn’t signed the agreement by then would be expelled. Fifty signed; sixty-four refused. That was the end of the McComb Walkout.
The SNCC staff set up a makeshift school for the expelled students: Nonviolent High. I taught math and English; Chuck McDew, history; and Dion Diamond, chemistry and physics. We met in the sanctuary of Saint Paul’s Methodist Church and began each morning with freedom songs. The students were enthusiastic about learning—McDew, in particular, told them things about their country they never would have heard at Burgland High. They were also determined to continue direct action. We had long discussions about how to get their parents more involved. They even began an underground paper, The Informer, which called for a boycott of downtown stores. After a couple of weeks, an arrangement was made to transfer fifteen of the students to Campbell College in Jackson. That seemed to be a satisfactory solution at the time, but later I learned that several of the girls, away from home for the first time, became pregnant.
Brenda Travis was never readmitted to Burgland High or permitted to go to Campbell College. The judge declared her a delinquent for taking part in our demonstrations and sentenced her to the Oakley Training School at Raymond. One day we all piled into cars and tried to go visit her, but we were turned away at the gate by a squad of officers armed to the teeth.
On October 31, the fifteen of us who could be sentenced as adults were brought to trial. Judge Brumfield accused me of making “a clear, cold, calculated” attempt to violate the laws of Mississippi.
“You are bringing racial strife and rioting to a place that has only known racial harmony,” he said.
“Kneeling on the steps of city hall is not my definition of insurrection.”
“Robert,” the judge replied, “haven’t some of the people from your school been able to go down and register without violence in Pike County?”
“One of my ‘people’ is dead,” I said, thinking that southerners are most exposed when they boast. “Others have been threatened, shot at, and beaten.”
The judge sentenced eleven of us to four months in jail each. Bobby Talbert, Ike Lewis, Hollis Watkins, and Curtis Hayes, who had been arrested during the sit-ins, were given six months.
“Some of you are local residents,” the judge said. “Some of you are outsiders. Those of you who are local residents are like sheep being led to the slaughter. If you continue to follow the advice of outside agitators, you will be like sheep and will be slaughtered.”
We spent the next thirty-seven days at the Pike County Jail in Magnolia. We weren’t allowed to work with the other prisoners for fear we would contaminate them. At first, visitors were permitted. The black community responded by bringing fried chicken and freshly baked pies. Then the visits were restricted to once a week, and the showers to twice a week. The meals were always the same: cold grits, sticky rice, watery gravy, dry bread, a congealed egg, and a slice of big town cake. We ate everything with a spoon and drank directly from a faucet, which drained down a hole in the cement floor.
By now we were pretty good at fighting boredom. Chuck McDew lectured on the history of black people in America. “If you think this jail is bad,” McDew would say, “let me tell you about the slave ships.” I gave the students pep talks based on Camus’s philosophy of engagement. “Accept your personal freedom,” I would say. “Dare to stand in a strong sun and cast a sharp shadow. Commit yourself to changing what needs to be changed so that this earth can be a satisfactory place for all people.” Other times I would seek out a solitary corner and try to solve math problems in my head. Day by day we swapped stories, sang songs, and learned to support each other as a band of brothers.
All that November in jail I brooded about the Liberty and McComb campaign and what should be done next. With many of the most active students away in Jackson and with the black community divided and the white community hostile, we would have to move our base of operations. But where and how to begin?
I arrived at several conclusions: The established blacks—ministers, teachers, small businessmen—could not be counted on—they were too dependent on white favor and the status quo. Only those outside the power structure—small farmers, shop owners, but especially students—could be the seeds of change. I recalled what Amzie Moore and Steptoe had told me about how important the younger generation was as a vanguard to build a better world. The problem was that the teenagers, who lacked education and organizational skills, would have to be trained from scratch to attain the confidence and competence they needed to be effective.
In a letter smuggled out of jail I formulated a strategy:
“You dig yourself in and prepare to wage psychological warfare; you combat your own fears about beatings, shootings, and possible mob violence; you stymie by your own physical presence the anxious fear of the Negro community . . . that maybe you did come only to boil and bubble and burst out of sight and sound. You organize, pound by pound, small bands of people who gradually focus in the eyes of Negroes and whites as people tied up in that mess; you create a small striking force capable of moving out when the time comes, which it must, whether we help it or not.” We in SNCC would be a small tremor in the center of the iceberg that was Mississippi—from a stone that the builders rejected.
Tom Morton: Freedom School
Tallahatchie, Mississippi
June 29–July 24, 1964
1
Every morning at five, a rooster outside my window sounded reveille. The first tortured notes from his raucous trumpet were greeted with howls of delight from the Hound Dog Five sprawled in the backyard. Their hullabaloo puzzled the rooster for a moment—he fretted