Coming of Age in Mississippi (52 page)

I got up about 4:20, put on my cap and gown, and went running outside to go to the graduation ceremony. When I got to the door, I discovered it was pouring down rain. “Just my luck,” I thought. “Here I am late and don’t even have an umbrella.” It seemed as though I was the only person left in the dormitory. Any other time it was raining, a couple of dozen people would be walking out of this dorm, I thought. I stood there looking at the rain for about ten minutes. Then I realized I would have to get wet. I just walked out and headed for the gym. I found the rest of the students lined up there ready to march. “Moody, you’re gonna be sick,” a couple of them said as I passed them in line. My face was dripping with water, and I was glad that it was. Because of that, they couldn’t tell that I was crying.

When I found my place, Memphis Norman and Joan Trumpauer, my Woolworth’s sit-in buddies, came up to me.

“There you are,” Memphis said. “We been looking for you ever since the baccalaureate sermon. What happen to you?”

“I went to bed. I didn’t feel very well,” I said.

“Did your parents come?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, whatta you know,” Joan said sadly. “The three Woolworth’s orphans.”

“Reverend King would like to adopt us this evening and take us out to dinner,” said Memphis.

The line started moving and they ran to get in their places.

When I walked in chapel, I almost fainted it was so hot. It seemed as though everyone in the chapel was fanning with hand fans. The electric fan in the chapel only circulated hot air, and the open windows brought in the warm dampness from the rain.

I felt so bad sitting there. I was dripping with water, and my hair was as nappy as it could possibly get. I was completely soaked from my head to my waist. After a while I started sneezing and couldn’t stop. The guy sitting next to me gave me his handkerchief. I was embarrassed. All of the other students were constantly turning and looking at me. Some looked mad and some of them thought it was funny. The worst moment in the whole episode came when my name was called to receive my diploma. I walked up to the platform and just as I was about to change my tassel from one side to the other, and at the same time take the diploma, I sneezed three or four times. I stood there sneezing with both hands up to my face as President Beittel stood waiting. The graduates laughed for about five minutes. Instead of showing my discomfort, I smiled slightly, bowed my head to the audience, turned up my lips, and walked off the platform. The students really roared after this.

By the time the commencement exercises were over, it had stopped raining. I went to the dorm, changed clothes, and then went over to the Kings’. Joan and Memphis were already there. I was still sneezing when I walked in and everyone broke up. Mrs. King gave me a hot cup of tea and a couple of aspirins before we left. Then Reverend King carried us to Steven’s Kitchenette and ordered five of the biggest steaks in the house.

As we were all sitting there eating, I looked at Reverend King. And silently, I asked him to forgive—forgive me for doubting him when he first came to Tougaloo. I think because
he was a white native Mississippian almost every student at Tougaloo doubted him at that time. We had never before had a white Southerner on the faculty. His wife, Jeanette, was from Jackson. I remember, I used to look at her going in and out of the chapel after visiting Reverend King there and just hate the thought of a white Southern minister and his wife taking over the most beautiful and cherished building on campus. Now sitting across the table from them I realized I had more respect for them than any of the white Northern teachers on campus. And for that matter, any white persons I had ever known.

The next day Joan and I were, as usual, the only students left on campus with nowhere in particular to go, but the matron of Galloway Hall asked us to leave the dorm by noon. We headed to the Kings’ again, this time to see if they would put us up for a few days. Joan’s train fare hadn’t come and I didn’t have any coming. I thought of borrowing my fare from Reverend King, but I would have felt bad asking him for the money, although I was sure he would have given it to me. My intention was to go into Jackson on Tuesday and see if I could bum a ride to New Orleans. When Joan and I got to the Kings’, we found Ed and Jeanette packing to go to the Gulf Coast for a week. They said we could stay in their house while they were gone if we liked, and eat all the food in the refrigerator too, before it spoiled. So were were set up for a week.

The next day, Joan and I caught a ride into Jackson with one of the teachers that was on campus for the summer. We went straight to the COFO headquarters on Lynch Street. When we walked in, I was again overwhelmed by all the excitement going on in the office. There were now about thirty white students standing around who had just arrived for the Summer Project. Joan and I walked around and talked with a
few of the students for a while. Then the two of us had a conference—we decided that instead of sticking around for a week we would both go home immediately and come back within two weeks to work on the Summer Project.

It seemed as though I had become a professional bum. Before I left the office, I had found a ride all the way to New Orleans the very next morning with Richard Haley, the new CORE Southern Project Director who was in Jackson to see Dave Dennis.

It was about five-thirty the following afternoon when Richard Haley stopped in front of my house. Adline was just getting off work when I got out of the car. She came running down the sidewalk to greet me and peep in at Richard Haley. “Where did you find him?” she asked teasingly. “So I see why you didn’t come back on Sunday night. Where is your diploma?” I looked at her and wondered what she was happy about. She had lied and said that she would come to the graduation on Sunday. Now she was asking me for my diploma as if she doubted that I really had one. I didn’t answer her, I just walked up the steps and opened the door.

When we got in the apartment, I went to the refrigerator for some water, and Adline went to the bedroom. When I came out of the little kitchenette, she was standing in the living room with a box in her hands. “Here, it’s for you,” she said. I took the box and opened it. Inside was a green two-piece dress—one of the prettiest dresses I had laid my eyes on. I just stood there holding it against me, with my mouth wide open not knowing what to say. “I decided I wouldn’t come to the graduation but use the money to get you something real nice,” she said. “Now can I see your diploma?” I opened the suitcase and gave it to her. She stood there a long time just looking at it. And I knew exactly what she was thinking, because at that moment, I thought it too. Here I was, the first
person in my entire family to graduate from college. “It’s just like high school diplomas,” Adline said. “Did you expect it to be any different?” I asked. “No, it’s just that I was thinking one day I may get mine since it looks just like a high school one,” she said and smiled.

I didn’t stay long in New Orleans—just a couple of days—because I realized I had no way of making any money during the next two weeks. I was a little sorry I had quit my job at the restaurant so soon. The evening after I got back, Tim and Carol, a white married couple from California working with New Orleans CORE, stopped by the apartment and asked if I wanted to ride into Mississippi with them the following morning. They were going to visit a friend of theirs who had been arrested in the Canton Freedom Day march. I just couldn’t resist that free ride to Mississippi.

The following morning I was back in Canton, ready to start work on the Summer Project. As soon as I had left my suitcase at the Freedom House, I went to see Mrs. Chinn. I found her looking terribly depressed.

“Anne,” she said, “if I were you and didn’t have no ties to Canton, I wouldn’t waste no time here. Looka here, alla that work we put into that march and McKinley almost beaten to death and things are even worse than they were before. These niggers done went into hiding again, scared to stick their heads outta the door. C.O.’s in jail, them goddamn cops coming by
my house every night, just about to drive me crazy. This ain’t the way, Anne. This just ain’t the way. We ain’t big enough to do it by ourselves.”

I had never seen Mrs. Chinn that depressed. What she said got me to thinking real hard. I walked around Canton for hours looking at the familiar streets. There were hardly any Negroes to be seen. The whole place looked dead. Walking past the jail, I saw C.O. Chinn coming in with the chain gang. They had been out digging ditches all day and he was filthy from head to toe. When he saw me, he waved trying to look happy. I couldn’t hardly bring myself to wave back. I walked away as quickly as I could. I couldn’t get that picture of C.O. out of my mind. A year ago when I first came to Canton, C.O. was a big man in town, one of Canton’s wealthiest Negroes. He had opened up Canton for the Movement. He had sacrificed and lost all he had trying to get the Negroes moving. Now he was trying to look happy on a chain gang!

I felt worse about everything than I had ever felt before. Mrs. Chinn’s words kept pounding through my head: “We ain’t big enough to do it by ourselves.” My head began to ache. I found myself running. I was trying to get away. I felt like the walls of Mississippi were closing in on me and Mrs. Chinn and C.O. and all the other Negroes in the state, crushing us. I had to get out and let the world know what was happening to us. I ran faster, and faster. I soon got back to the Freedom House out of breath, just in time to stumble into Dave Dennis’ car and head for Jackson. About twenty minutes later, Dave was parking in front of the COFO headquarters on Lynch Street. Parked right in front of us was a Greyhound bus. The motor was running and smoke was shooting out of its exhaust pipe. It looked and sounded like it was about to pull off. Getting out of the car, I saw Bob Moses holding the door open waving good-bye to the people inside. I ran up to him and asked:

“Hey Bob, where’s this bus going?”

“Oh! Moody, I’m glad you came. Can you go? We need you to testify,” he said.

“Testify? What do you …?”

“Hey Moody! C’mon get on, we’re going to Washington!” It was little twelve-year-old Gene Young, leaning his head out of the window. As the bus began to pull out, Bob grabbed the door and held it for me. I just managed to squeeze in. The bus was packed. To avoid the staring, smiling faces I knew, I just bopped down between Gene and his friend. As soon as the bus was really moving, everybody began singing “We Shall Overcome.” I closed my eyes and leaned back in the seat listening to them.

“C’mon, Annie Moody, wake up! Get the Spirit on!” little Gene yelled right in my ear. I opened my eyes and looked at him.

“We’re gonna go up there to Washington and we’re gonna
tell
’em somethin’ at those COFO hearings. We’re gonna tell ’em what Mississippi is all
about
,” Gene said excitedly, joining in the singing. His eyes were gleaming with life and he clapped his hands in time with the song. Watching him, I felt very old.

Suddenly he looked at me again and saw that I still wasn’t singing.

“Moody, what’s wrong? What’s the matter with you? You cracking up or something?” he asked, looking worried for the first time. When I didn’t answer, he gave me a puzzled look and joined the singing again, but this time he was not so lively.

I sat there listening to “We Shall Overcome,” looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape. Images of all that had happened kept crossing my mind: the Taplin burning, the Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers’ murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley’s head, and all the other murders. I saw the face of Mrs. Chinn as she said, “We ain’t big enough to do it by ourselves,” C.O.’s face when he gave me that pitiful wave from the chain gang. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

“Moody …” it was little Gene again interrupting his singing. “Moody, we’re gonna git things straight in Washington, huh?”

I didn’t answer him. I knew I didn’t have to. He looked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“I wonder. I wonder.”

I
WONDER
. I really
WONDER
.

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