Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote

5. Preparing for Trial

Z 39 Z chapter 5 PreParIng fOr TrIaL In July 1961, I was twentyZseven, a year out of New York University Law School, married, with a oneZyearZold daughter. I was an active Democrat, back in Boston in private practice. My wife, Stephanie, and I had enthusiasZ tically supported John F. Kennedy’s nomination and election. We took ConZ stance, not yet three months old, to the polls with us, wearing her “Youth for Kennedy” pin. With each passing month, I was more eager to be part of this new adZ ministration, of the energy that had replaced the lethargy of the Eisenhower years. President Kennedy had urged the nation: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” What could I do for my country? That July the Department of Justice filed its first voting rights cases against Mississippi counties where witnesses had been found to document the denial of the right to vote to black citizens. That same month I was inZ terviewed by the leaders of Robert Kennedy’s Civil Rights Division, Burke Marshall and John Doar, for a position on the small trial staff that would prosecute these cases.1 By midZfall, the FBI had determined that I was neither a communist nor any other kind of security risk, and the IRS had confirmed that I paid my taxes. Stephanie, Constance, and I moved to a new apartment building on Naylor Road in southeast Washington, with a handy bus stop for travel to the department when I was in the District. On November 13, 1961, I was sworn in. By February 1962, I was in Mississippi to help prepare for trial the govZ ernment’s case for injunctive relief against Theron Lynd, the man in charge of preserving Forrest County’s virtually allZwhite electorate. In 1962 and 1963 I also worked on various matters in fortyZfour of Mississippi’s eightyZ two counties. Emmett Till, a visiting black Chicago fourteenZyearZold, had been murZ dered in the “wolf whistle” case in the Delta nearly a decade before. It was Preparing for Trial Z 40 Z still two years before Freedom Summer workers Michael Schwerner, AnZ drew Goodman, and James Chaney would be killed after being “released” from custody by Neshoba County deputy sheriff Cecil Price, part of a plot with Sam Bowers, imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and his henchman, “Kleagle” Edgar Ray Killen, who would be conZ victed in 2005.2 One summer Friday in 1963, before Neshoba County became known for the brutal lawZenforcementZaided terrorism that occurred there, I was the first Justice Department attorney to investigate that county in the heart of central Mississippi’s “Bible Belt.” An intern and I developed black contacts for future followZup. Black ministers and undertakers, both independent of the white community, were likely prospects. Catholics at that time were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays. At lunchZ time I scrutinized the menu of a small restaurant in Philadelphia, the counZ ty seat, looking for some nonmeat dish. Finally I asked the waitress, who smiled at me and said: “Why, you must be a Catholic.” I ate quickly and left, regretting having called attention to myself. In 1963 I had a brief change from voting rights cases. I was the only JusZ tice Department lawyer assigned to a small Department of Defense team investigating onZbase discrimination against black servicemen and their dependents on southern air bases, including Columbus, Greenville, and Biloxi, Mississippi. In Washington, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that President KenZ nedy had inherited and mistakenly authorized had proved a disaster, but he was still popular in the country at large, if not with Congress. At the Justice Department, Attorney General Robert Kennedy continued to purZ sue Jimmy Hoffa and labor racketeering, as he had done while staffing the McClellan Committee in the Senate in the 1950s, but the Kennedy Justice Department had a major civil rights goal, too: delivering the right to vote to disfranchised black Americans in the Deep South. Senator Eastland had been gently told that Mississippi would no longer be exempt from civil rights actions.3 In the fall of 1962, Governor Ross Barnett was preparing to defend the pride of Mississippi higher education, “Ole Miss.” The Fifth Circuit had ordered integration in the person of African American air force veteran James Meredith. Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson, Jr., meant to run to succeed Barnett as governor in 1963. Each...