And Gently He Shall Lead Them: Robert Parris Moses and Civil Rights in Mississippi

5. "One Man-One Vote"

FIVE "ONE MANONE VOTE" T he plodding zigzag efforts of the Justice Department frustrated and discouraged SNCC workers. This contributed to a heightened radicalism within the growing group. On January 1, 1963-with the support of both Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Gandhi Society -Moses filed suit against the department and the FBI. The suit named Attorney General Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover in an attempt to force them to perform their legal duties.1 Specifically, the plaintiffs wanted the court to enforce six sections of the federal code that forbade the harassment or intimidation of anyone attempting to vote.2 The suit also stated that it was not indicting the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, where John Doar worked. But that disclaimer did not mollify the Kennedy administration, which SllC89 90 " ONE MAN-ONE VOTE" cessfully blocked the action. The government, Moses has explained, It didn't want a case moving through the courts that opened up the issue of the federal government protecting voter registration workers and black people attempting to register." 3 As he came to appreciate those Justice Department lawyers, such as Doar, who sought to work within Kennedy administration politics, he increasingly despaired of the policies of the FBI, which maintained its distance and investigated only after events. From his experiences during 1961 and 1962 Moses would move toward more assertive action in an attempt to garner national publicity and participation . Accompanying the increasing disillusionment with federal cooperation was swelling factionalism within SNCC itself. Not all of SNCC's difficulties came from its implacable foes and its dubious friends. At the end of 1962 SNCC was suffering from a disorganization rooted in its aversion to hierarchy. Shunning the need to raise money as at best a hindrance to its work and at worst a compromise with a corrupt society, it lacked the resources to finance critical strategies. SNCC members usually lived very modestly. In a memorandum to the COFO executive committee in 1963, Moses noted that the monthly budget for the entire project was about $5,000 and the expense for each staff member Itroughly $23 per week." Such specificity indicates that Moses was well aware at this point of the daily operations and management of COFO-not an idealist removed from daily, tangible business.4 The sparseness of resources often showed up in the sparseness of results. Organizers considered a turnout of twenty sharecroppers for voter education meetings a success. New black voters registered in preceding months had numbered t 'ONE MAN-ONE VOTE" 91 only in the dozens. Yet by 1963 Moses and SNCC were incrementally succeeding in doing what Martin Luther King, Jr., had already achieved by calculated design. Moses was seeking, like Camus, to find a balance between pragmatism and purity. And in doing so he was also coming to represent, not only in manner but in action and goal, a concept of the struggle quite different from that of the great ministerial orator. King was much too pragmatic and accommodating for Moses' taste. King concentrated on the national consciousness with showy efforts that could be abandoned if unsuccessful . Moses looked to local programs to awaken the docile spirits of Mississippi's blacks. He would have liked to register blacks in small-scale local projects across the state. Seeking to draw out potential black voters, Moses planned for a literacy program. The idea belongs in the lineage of Highlander, the voter registration schools, and Nonviolent High. To learn and to come together for learning meant defiance, solidarity, self-awareness, and a capacity for further action. To this end, Moses began in early 1963 an extensive correspondence with a former Hamilton College philosophy teacher, John Blyth, a pioneer in programmed learning who at this time was director of the Programmed Learning Department for The Diebold Group, management consultants. Their aim was to devise programmed learning for illiterate people and to secure foundation grants to support it. By mid-February Blyth reported to Moses that he had written to a variety of foundations and set up appointments with representatives ; among the foundations he was seeking out were the Field, Taconic, and Carnegie. On February 24 Moses 92 " ONE MAN-ONE VOTE" wrote Blyth: III am looking for a place to rent here in Greenville [the major Delta city in Washington County] which may be used as a center, not only for the reading, but for other kinds of...