list, and frightened people so much that even Steptoe’s friends turned their backs on him.
“You’re goin’ too fast,” one said. “Why don’t you quit that mess?”
“Ah, we are one hundred years too slow now,” Steptoe replied.
“But you’re just gonna go get yourself killed.”
“I know my life is at stake,” he said. “I know they wants me dead. But if they kill me, I would hate to know nobody else was workin’ for the young peoples, for the unborn generation, but me.”
Steptoe made an immediate and lasting impression on me. Sometimes he spoke so slowly it seemed it would take him all day to finish one sentence, but I always felt sure it would be worth the wait. No one convinced me more that the common man knew through hard-earned experience truths that few politicians heeded.
“I spent years tryin’ to win the friendship of white folks,” Steptoe told me. “I drove them places and waited hours until they was finished; I swam in creeks to rescue their cattle; I chopped wood for an old widow woman. Anything folks wanted done, I done it. I didn’t ask for no money; all I wanted was thanks and appreciation. But folks just took advantage. The more I helped them, the more they hated me.
“These people here don’t have no conscience. The only thing they wants is to keep the Negro down. I come to the conclusion that it wasn’t no friendship that you could gain from the white people by tryin’ to do what they say, or tryin’ to obey their laws, and rules, or whatnot; one day I said, ‘Now, look, Steptoe, you must take a stand and try to gain the vote, that seems to be the importantest thing that you can do.’”
“Do you think these people will work with me?” I asked Steptoe. “Do you think they really want to register?”
“Oh, yes, they wants to redish. I know that they are very anxious to redish so they can vote.”
“Okay then, if you think we’ll be successful, I’ll come back tomorrow at ten o’clock and go to church with you.”
“Good. I’ll be expectin’ you.”
Sunday morning we drove down to a small church where several of Steptoe’s cousins were deacons. It was an old clapboard church with gingerbread trim and wooden benches for pews. The people clapped and A-mened and shouted “Yes, Jesus!” and “Praise the Lord!” to everything the preacher said. He got so pleased with himself he began to dance in place, the signal for everyone to stand up and dance and sing and make some glorious noise. After the service, Steptoe asked to speak; the preacher looked doubtful. Finally they let him make a plea for the voter registration school starting seven-thirty Monday morning at the Mount Pilgrim Church. I stood by the door and distributed leaflets as people left. Many had fear in their eyes, but still they reached out with eager hands.
The next morning we woke with the dawn and walked over to Mount Pilgrim, a tiny pine-board place that from the road probably looked like a chicken coop with a cross on the roof. I was filled with apprehension. What if nobody showed up? The appointed time came and went. Finally, around eight, the first car arrived, bringing five people. Then a few more cars, until the little church was filled. What a relief! They, too, were willing to take a stand.
I introduced myself, explained the purpose of the school, and for the rest of the morning, we worked on how to fill out the forms and answer questions about the state constitution. The class went well, I thought, but afterward Steptoe looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Didn’t you like the class?”
“It was lovely,” he said. “It ain’t that. Whilst you was teachin’, the sheriff was watchin’ from across the road. I saw him, but I didn’t say nothin’.”
“They would have been frightened.”
“That’s right. He was lookin’ at tags, people’s cars.”
“How did he know we were here?”
“Someone from church.”
“But they’re your friends.”
“There is always a Judas,” Steptoe said sadly.
The next day the people came back, and the day after that, until we decided that three—an old man from the Tangipahoa community, Ernest Isaac, and two middle-aged women, Bertie Lee Hughes and Matilda Schoby—were ready to register to vote.
3
Liberty, the county seat of Amite, was a back-road farming community of about six hundred. The tree-shaded town square was distinguished by a white-brick courthouse from the 1820s with four massive square columns in front supporting a double-tiered set of porches and a small-windowed octagonal cupola on its shingled roof. Whoever built the courthouse had big plans. But even though Liberty was the home of Borden’s Condensed Milk and Tichenor’s Antiseptic and had been important enough to merit a raid during the Civil War, the town clearly had not prospered. In spite of its name, Liberty was a stringent, oppressive place whose spirit was epitomized by a remark that Tichenor, a Civil War doctor, made about his famous antiseptic: “All you need for our boys,” he said, “but not one drop for the damn Yankees!”
Early the next morning, we set out for the courthouse. Mr. Isaac and the ladies were dressed in their Sunday best. The night before it had rained; misty haze hung over the House of Justice. A plaque on the front door proclaimed the town’s motto: Liberty . . . it works.
It almost didn’t work for us.
When we presented ourselves to the registrar, he looked up, stunned; then his face reddened.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
I stood aside, waiting for someone to speak, but all three were frozen with fear.
Finally, I broke the long silence.
“They would like to register.”
“Who the Sam Hill are you?”
“My name is Bob Moses.”
“Are you here to register too?”
“No. I am here to assist these people who would like to fill out registration forms.”
“Is that right? Well, you’ll have to wait.”
He nodded toward a bench on the far wall, gave a sickly grin to someone standing in the doorway, then turned his back on us.
All day we waited. The sheriff, his deputies, people coming for tax assessments or driver’s licenses, the whole town it seemed, gawked and gave us hate stares and muttered remarks. Not until late afternoon were the three, who hadn’t had anything to eat all day, allowed to fill out the forms. As they struggled with the questionnaire, a highway patrolman entered, leaned back in a chair, and watched them go through the whole painstaking process. They smiled with satisfaction when they finished, but weren’t surprised when the registrar, after a cursory glance at their answers, announced the results.
“None of you passed,” he said. “The law says you gotta wait at least six months if you want to try again.”
When we left the courthouse, the patrolman and one of the Liberty deputies followed. As
