in the last five months. I may be killed; you may be killed; the whole staff may go.
“We cried over you in the staff meeting because we love you and are afraid for you. We are grown men and women who have been beaten and shot at, and we cried for you. We want you to understand exactly what you are getting into. But one thing is sure: If anything happens to you, it will also happen to us. If you get beaten up, I’ll be standing right behind you. We are going to be there with you, and you know we’ll never turn back.”
Then Bob Moses asked if any of us had read The Lord of the Rings.
“The hero, Frodo, obtains a powerful ring, which he knows he must destroy, yet as he carries it, he becomes corrupted by it, so that he is in danger of destroying not the ring but what is best in himself. When you spend your time fighting evil, you become preoccupied by it. It consumes your energy; you become part of the evil, and terribly weary. . . .”
He stared at the floor a long moment, and then, in a voice so soft he seemed to be whispering to himself: “The kids are dead.”
He paused while the truth I knew but hated to admit sank in. He said he had known since Monday, but he had remained silent out of respect for Rita. He even said he hoped they found the bodies soon so that we would realize the danger we faced. I expected my heart at that moment to break into a thundering gallop, but I stayed surprisingly calm. Maybe I was better prepared to go to Mississippi than I realized.
“The responsibility for sending you into dangerous situations is mine,” Moses continued. “I justify myself because I am taking the same risks; I ask no one to do what I would not do. Negroes who tried to gain their rights, nameless men, have already been killed in Mississippi. Herbert Lee, Louis Allen—people who trusted me—have already died. We want each one of you to stop and think, to face head-on the question: Are you willing to risk your life or not? Do you know what’s important, really important, and are you ready to stand up for it? If the answer is no, we can say, ‘Later, later, it’s too dangerous now.’”
Could we? Could I? I believed that I had the courage to risk my life, and I knew for sure that I did not want to die. An undertone of pain in Moses’s voice and a hint of inward agony in his eyes suggested that he almost wished we would say, “No, let’s call it off; we don’t want to go.”
“Don’t come to Mississippi this summer if you think you are bringing sweetness and light to the Negro. Only come if you understand, really understand, that his freedom and yours are one. All our strength comes from the local people. If they want sewing clubs or cooking classes, that’s what we’ll help them organize. It’s their decision, not ours. Because they’re the ones who will still be living there after we’ve gone.
“Now I want to say a few words to the Freedom School teachers: Please be patient with your students. Don’t expect too much. Break off a little chunk of love and follow it. If you do nothing more than be friendly, if you don’t teach them anything at all, that will still be something. When we bring people to register, they take a long time studying the test. And if they fail it, they take this to mean they should study it harder. They don’t see it as a trick to steal their rights. Many of your students will be like that. But you must remember there is a difference between being slow and being stupid. The people you’ll be working with aren’t stupid. But they’re slow. So very slow.”
He stood lost in meditation, deliberating whether he had left something unsaid. Finally he mentioned that he wanted to meet with the volunteers assigned to the McComb and Natchez projects in the lounge, then he walked out the door. For a minute or two we sat in total silence; by now we knew enough not to clap. At last a lovely soprano voice lifted us all into song:
“They say that freedom is a constant struggle,
They say that freedom is a constant struggle,
They say that freedom is a constant struggle,
Oh, Lord, we’ve struggled so long,
We must be free, we must be free.”
I stood with my arms around Lenny and Esther and sang about how freedom was a constant crying, a constant dying, a struggle that had to go on. Next, as slow as a funeral dirge, came Bob Moses’s favorite song:
“We are soldiers, in the Army,
We have to fight, although we have to die,
We’ve got to hold up the freedom banner,
We’ve got to hold it up until we die.”
Then I went to meet with Moses.
“We sat up through the night,” Moses said as soon as we were assembled, “wondering what we should say to you volunteers. We wanted you to be scared—but not too scared. When no one had dropped out by Wednesday, I was worried. Now a few have left, but the rest of you have resolved to stick it out.
“As you know, the southwestern part of Mississippi is very dangerous. Already some homes have been bombed; vigilantes are drilling; automatic weapons and hand grenades have been stolen from an arms depot near Natchez. We have made a vow that we would not abandon the hardest areas, and so some SNCC field secretaries and a few volunteers will go to McComb and Natchez, but I have decided that the situation right now is simply too dangerous for the rest of you at this time. If a lot of people went now, they would face a high probability of being killed. Therefore, you will be dispersed to projects in the Delta where I think you will be safer. We will wait and see how the other volunteers are received. If conditions improve, you will be sent to your original assignments later in the summer.”
As Moses read out our new destinations, some lines from Three-Penny Opera raced through my head: “Re-priev-ed, Re-priev-ed, As the need is sorest, So the answer comes soonest.” I always thought they were purely ironic lines, but now I was taking them seriously. I felt a tremendous sense of relief, as if this last-minute reprieve were a confirmation of my heartfelt wish that I would not be harmed. My new project was in Tallahatchie, a relatively safe town in the heart of the Delta; Lenny would be in Greenville, the most liberal place in Mississippi. Of our group, only Esther was still going to McComb—no doubt at Feelgood’s insistence. I told myself that if she stuck to teaching Freedom School and stayed within the black community, she would be safe too. But in spite of my fear, I still wished to be where she was.
“You spoke tonight of sacrifice,” I said with surprise at the sound of my own words. “We are willing to go wherever you send us, no matter what the risks.”
Esther glanced my way with what I took to be admiration.
“We understand that some of us may have to die,” another volunteer added with passionate sincerity.
“Yes,” Moses said softly, “people will always be expended.” He looked at me, his eyes betrayed tremendous strain. “The question is . . . Are they ever expendable?”
After that we all walked outside where a group of volunteers were doing the hora. I watched Moses set the sheaf of papers he was carrying on the grass and, with solemn joy, join the circle of the dance.
Bob Moses
Liberty and McComb, Mississippi
September–November 1961
1
One Sunday in late September, John Doar came to McComb to see for himself what the situation was in southwestern Mississippi.
