Coming of Age in Mississippi (39 page)

In July, CORE opened up an office in Canton, Mississippi, to start a voter registration campaign in Madison County. By this time, I was so fed up with the fighting and bickering among the organizations in Jackson, I was ready to go almost anywhere, even Madison County, where Negroes frequently turned up dead. Shortly before Christmas a man’s headless corpse had been found on the road between Canton and Tougaloo with the genitals cut off and with K’s cut into the flesh all over his body. Around the time the body was found, Tougaloo College had received a lot of threats, so an inventory was made of all the males on campus to see if any were missing.

When Reverend King discovered that I had agreed to work with CORE in the area, he was very much concerned. He discussed Canton with me, telling me he thought the place was too rough for girls. Some of my girlfriends also begged me not to go. But I just had to. I don’t know why I felt that way, but I did.

Because I had come from Wilkinson County, I just didn’t think Madison could be any worse. Things might even be a little better, I thought, since in Madison there were three Negroes to every white. I remembered that in Jackson there
had been one point when I could see the white folks actually tremble with fear. At times when we were having mass demonstrations we had them so confused they didn’t know what to do. Whenever I could detect the least amount of fear in any white Mississippian, I felt good. I also felt there was a chance of winning the battle regardless of how costly it turned out to be.

Disregarding all acts of violence, Madison County was considered a place with a possible future for Negroes. In addition to the fact that our records showed that there was a population of twenty-nine thousand Negroes as against nine thousand whites, Negroes owned over 40 percent of the land in the county. However, there were only about one hundred and fifty to two hundred registered to vote, and these had registered as a result of a campaign conducted by a few local citizens a couple of years earlier. Of this number, less than half were actually voting.

I arrived in Canton with Dave Dennis one Friday evening, and was taken straight to the CORE office, a small room adjoining a Negro café. The café was owned by C. O. Chinn and his wife, a well-established Negro family. It was located on Franklin Street in the center of one of Canton’s Negro sections. Dave and I were just in time to have supper there with George Raymond, the project director, and Bettye Poole, my old Tougaloo buddy.

Dave introduced me to Mrs. Chinn. She was a stout lady with a warm and friendly smile. I liked her right away. I spent the entire evening sitting around the office talking to her and George Raymond about Madison County.

The office had been open only a few weeks, and in that time, Mrs. Chinn had already had her liquor license taken away. The place had been broken into twice, and many Negroes had been physically threatened. George reported that so far mostly teen-agers were involved in the Movement. He said that about fifty dedicated teen-age canvassers showed up each day. They were sent out daily, but had little
success. Most of the Negroes just didn’t want to be bothered, Mrs. Chinn told me. “That’s the way it is all over,” I thought. “Most Negroes have been thoroughly brainwashed. If they aren’t brainwashed, they are too insecure—either they work for Miss Ann or they live on Mr. Charlie’s place.”

I just didn’t see how the Negroes in Madison County could be so badly off. They should have had everything going for them—out-numbering the whites three to one and owning just about as much land as they did. When I discussed this point with Mrs. Chinn, I discovered that, although they did own the land, they were allowed to farm only so much of it. Cotton is the main crop in Mississippi, and, as Mrs. Chinn explained that night, the federal government controls cotton by giving each state a certain allotment. Each state decides how much each county gets and each county distributes the allotments to the farmers. “It always ends up with the white people getting most of the allotments,” Mrs. Chinn said. “The Negroes aren’t able to get more, regardless of how much land they have.” Most of the farmers in Madison County were barely living off what they made from their land. Besides, they were never clear from debt. The independent farmers were practically like sharecroppers, because they always had their crop pledged in advance. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the federal government was directly or indirectly responsible for most of the segregation, discrimination, and poverty in the South.

Later, I was taken to the Freedom House, which had been provided by Mrs. Chinn’s brother, Sonny. The house was newly built and very nice. There were three bedrooms, a living room, dining room, and kitchen. Sonny was a young man who had recently separated from his wife. Since his brother Robert lived with him now, we kind of crowded them, forcing them to share a bed. But they didn’t seem to mind. The more I saw of the Chinns, the more I began to like and respect them. They were the one Negro family in Canton who had put their necks on the chopping block. “If a couple of other
families made similar commitments,” I thought, “we might just get this place moving.”

There was a rally that night at the CORE office. Mrs. Chinn was the only adult there among about twenty teenagers. We sang freedom songs for about two hours. After that, George gave a brief talk, and introduced me, saying, “I want you people to meet one of my co-workers. She is going to spend some time with us here in and around Madison County. She is a real soul sister. Why don’t you stand, Anne?”

As I rose, one of the boys in the back gave a wolf whistle. “I don’t mean that kind of soul sister, Esco,” George said. “What I mean is, she is dedicated, man. She has been beaten and kicked all over Jackson. Remember that bloody sit-in, and the other demonstrations? She was in all of them. She has been in jail four or five times, and as a result, she can’t even go home again. She is all right and don’t you guys go getting any notions. Anne, why don’t you say a few words?”

I felt I had to say something real serious after those remarks. “Anyway,” I thought, “I better take advantage of such an introduction to put those teen-age boys in their place from the get-go. If not, I might have a little trouble on my hands later.” Therefore, I decided to pull the religious bit. Now that I was facing the street, I saw that outside the cops were on the ball. There they were, two carloads of them. They were taking it all in. “The watchdogs of the Klan. They wouldn’t miss a meeting for anything.” I was beginning to hate them with a passion. “I just might try and give them something to think about, too,” I thought.

“It seems as though a few of us have the spirit tonight,” I started.

“Yes, we got it all right,” one of the boys said, somewhat freshly.

“A few is not enough,” I continued. “If a change is gonna take place in Canton, as we just said in one of the songs, then it’s gonna take more than a few believers. Where are the rest of the adults besides Mrs. Chinn? Where are your parents,
sisters and brothers and your other friends? We sit back and say that we want Freedom. We believe that all men are created equal. Some of us even believe we are free just because our constitution guarantees us certain ‘inalienable’ rights. There are the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments that make us citizens and give us the right to vote. If you are depending on the writing on the wall to free you, you better forget it, it’s been there a long time. We’ve gotta be the ones to give it meaning. Some of us believe that once we get enough nerve, all we gotta do is walk up to Mr. Charlie and say, ‘Man, I want my freedom.’ Do you think that Mr. Charlie is going to dish it out to you on a silver platter?”

“No, he’ll tell me that I am already free,” one of the boys said.

“If he is that bold and thinks you are that crazy, then you should be bold and crazy enough to ask him a few more questions,” I said.

“Questions like what?” he said.

“Like ‘what am I free to do?’ ” I said. “Then name a few things you can’t do if he continues. In fact, if you ever get enough nerve to do it, let me know what happens.”

“I probably won’t live to tell you about it,” the boy said.

“So you see, it’s not that simple, and all of you know that,” I said. “Now that we know that we are not free and realize what’s involved in freeing ourselves, we have to take certain positive actions to work on the problem. First of all, we have got to get together. I was told that it’s twenty-nine thousand Negroes in this county to nine thousand whites. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you realize what you have going for you?” When I said this, those overseers outside began to pace nervously. I had touched a nerve in them and I felt good, but I decided to stop before I overdid it. I ended by saying, “I am looking forward to the work ahead of me. I will certainly do my best to help you get the message across to Mr. Charlie.” Then I took a seat.

George got up and said, “See, I told you she was all right.
Now let’s sing a few more songs. Then go home and see what we can come up with to start on Mr. Charlie.
All right
, soul brothers and sisters.”

“All right,” Mrs. Chinn said. “We are going to get that freedom yet, ain’t we?”

A few shouts of Amen and Sho-nuff came from the teenagers. We sang three songs, ending with “We Shall Overcome,” and everyone went home. All that night I kept thinking about that pitiful meeting. We just had to get some more adults involved somehow.

The next day, Saturday, I went to the office to check over some of the reports by previous canvassing teams. I had been working for a few hours when George came in. “Come outside. I want to show you something,” he said.

I ran into the street thinking someone was being beaten by the cops or there was some other kind of Saturday night happening out there.

“Take a good look at that,” George said. “Just about every Negro in Madison County for miles around.”

It wasn’t hard for me to believe what I was seeing. I had seen it too many times before. In Centreville, my home-town, the same thing took place. Saturday night was known as Nigger Night. That’s how the whites put it.

“Come on,” George said, “let’s walk out on Pear Street” (the main street in Canton). As we walked there, we had to push our way through crowds of Negroes. On Pear Street itself, everything was at a standstill. There were so many Negroes, and they were packed so closely together, they could barely move.

“Look over there,” I said to George.

“Where?” he asked.

“At the two white cops standing on that corner,” I said.

“They look pretty lonely and stupid, huh?”

“They sure do,” I said. “Look just like they are in a completely black town at this moment.”

“Most whites don’t even bother to come in on Saturdays, I’ve noticed,” George said.

I stood there looking and thinking. Yes, Saturday night is Nigger Night all over Mississippi. I remembered in Centreville, when it was too cold for anyone to walk the streets, Negroes would come to town and sit in each other’s cars and talk. Those that didn’t believe in sitting around or hanging out in bars, like my mother, just sat or moved from car to car for four or five hours. Teen-agers who were not allowed in cafés went to a movie and watched the picture three or four times while they smooched. There was a special “lovers” section in the movie house on Saturday nights. Often you saw more stirring and arousing scenes in the lovers’ section than on the screen. Some Negroes would come to town on Saturday night just to pick a fight with another Negro. Once the fight was over, they were satisfied. They beat their frustrations and discontent out on each other. I had often thought that if some of that Saturday night energy was used constructively or even directed at the right objects, it would make a tremendous difference in the life of Negroes in Mississippi.

The next week or so, things went along fairly well. Within a few days, I had gotten to know most of the canvassers. They were more energetic than any bunch of teen-agers I had known or worked with before. There were about forty or fifty that reported daily. We kept running into problems. I found it necessary to keep dividing them into smaller teams. First I divided them into two teams, one for the mornings and one for the afternoons. Most of the eligible voters worked during the day, so a third team was organized for the evenings. Some of the teen-agers were so energetic that they often went out with all the teams. I usually canvassed with the last team for a couple of hours, then rushed to the Freedom House to cook.

It didn’t take me long to find out that the Negroes in Madison County were the same as those in most of the other counties. They were just as apathetic or indifferent about voting. Nevertheless, we had begun to get a few more adults out to rallies at night. Pretty soon the whites saw fit to move in. They wanted to make sure that more adults would not get involved. Since our recruitment and canvassing was done mostly by the teen-agers, they decided to scare the teen-agers away. One night after a rally, George, Bettye, and I had just walked back to the Freedom House when C. O. Chinn came rushing in after us. He kept repeating over and over again, “Five kids were just shot. Five kids were just shot.” We stood there motionless, not wanting to believe what we had just heard, afraid to ask any questions. Were they seriously hurt? Was anyone dead?

Before any of us said a word, Mr. Chinn was saying, “They are at the hospital now, George, let’s go over and see how they are.” George got his cap and headed for the door, with Bettye and me right behind him.

As we were all getting into Mr. Chinn’s car, Mr. Chinn said, “I’m going to leave you girls by my house with Minnie Lou. Anne, you and Bettye can’t go to the hospital. How do you know they weren’t trying to kill one of you? Maybe one of the girls was taken for you or Bettye.”

As we approached his house, we saw Mrs. Chinn standing in the doorway as if she was about to leave.

“Where do you think you’re going, Minnie Lou? You’re goin’ to stay right here with Anne and Bettye,” Mr. Chinn said.

Mrs. Chinn didn’t answer—the voice of authority had spoken. Mrs. Chinn, Bettye, and I simply did as we were told. We sat around the house talking until about 4 A.M., and then we all tried to get some sleep. I didn’t sleep at all. I kept thinking of what might possibly happen. This was probably just a warning. Something else was coming on. I could feel it. Finally, it was daylight and Mr. Chinn and George still hadn’t
returned. Maybe they didn’t want to face us and say So-and-so died.