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

7. Freedom Summer

SEVEN FREEDOM SUMMER T he Freedom Vote in the fall of 1963 was one victory for Robert Moses and his co-workers. The movement needed whatever victories it could get. Registration of blacks by mid-1963 was about three percent of all voters in the state; of all eligible blacks, only six percent were registered.1 The state was intransigent, the federal presence negligible. Nationally visible figures like Martin Luther King were not at the Mississippi battlefront to lend voice and publicity. lilt was clear," Moses has remarked, "that the NAACP and SCLC and CORE, none of them were really willing to put a major drive into Mississippi.... They called for working in other parts of the South first.... And NAACP's whole policy was work all around the state."2 SNCC's customary methods were not cracking Mississippi . In November 1963 VEP director Wiley Branton had cut off funds to COFO's operation in Mississippi, 133 134 FREEDOM SUMMER announcing that the organization would continue to offer minimal support for the Greenwood office from December through March and explaining that the funds already allocated to Mississippi exceeded those given to any other state. In a letter sent jointly to Henry and Moses, he added: IIOf almost equal importance to our decision is the fact that the Justice Department has failed to get any meaningful decrees from any of the voter registration suits which have been filed.... We are also very concerned about the failure of the federal government to protect the people who have sought to register and vote or who are working actively in getting others to register." 3 The historian Clayborne Carson describes the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project as an II expression of SNCC's increasing militancy" to force a confrontation between Washington and the state.4 Acknowledging the possible dangers in mounting a large-scale summer event, in January 1964 Moses declared, liThe Federal Government must take action even if it means the imposition of federal troops or the occupation of a town or particular locality." 5 SNCC was growing combative toward the federal government. It was a paradoxical radicalism, an angry desire for the established institutions to be more visibly present. And SNCC's method of baiting the government was to pursue the eminently respectable activity of registering citizens for the vote. The enlistment that summer of about one thousand Northern white volunteers, and SNCC's cooperation with more mainstream rights groups under COFO, put the organization more into line with coalition liberalism than had its previous efforts to build FREEDOM SUMMER 135 indigenous movements of blacks within small communities . Yet the COFO group still was led by a small group of dedicated SNCC workers. At a convention held in early February, Moses outlined in detail the various programs planned for the summer project. The Freedom Registration plan was discussed in detail, and debate ensued over whether people should be required to sign their own names, because reprisal was possible should the registrants' names fall into the wrong hands. Typically , a vote was taken among the nearly one hundred people attending. At this session Al Lowenstein spoke of the philosophy behind a massive summer project and noted that the goals were to help the black community, not simply to cause trouble, and to convince local whites that change was inevitable.6 The spring of 1964 was spent publicizing and building support for the summer project among sympathetic Northern liberals in the Democratic party. A SNCC news release on March 20 following a COFO conference in Atlanta outlined a plan to bring two thousand civil rights workers to Mississippi to Itconduct voter registration and political education programs." Prominently featured were the candidacies of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Reverend John Cameron for the congressional seats of incumbents.7 The Student Voice announced a Itpeace Corps type operation for Mississippi" to aid in the voter registration campaign along with programs that would foster research projects, establish freedom schools, and develop community centers.8 Moses wrote a memorandum to "Friends of Freedom in Mississippi," enlisting their help in securing a hearing with the presi- 136 FREEDOM SUMMER dent before the onset of the summer project. He urged them to send a letter to Johnson asking for a meeting with the group and gave instructions for publicizing the event, if held. Among the recipients were Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, Dick Gregory, and Marlon Brando, and the...