Better Police Protection Called Most Important Gain in Summer Of Rights Work in Mississippi

Better Police Protection Called Most Important Gain in Summer Of Rights Work in Mississippi

New Political Party, Special Schools Also Cited by Robert P. Moses, Pioneer in Movement in State

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
August 3, 1964

The Freedom Summer of 1964 was a pivotal campaign to register African American voters in the South. It was led by a determined former schoolteacher named Bob Moses and supported by thousands of college students, many of them whites from the North. Organizers focused on Mississippi, where only 6.7 percent of eligible black voters were registered -- the most dismal percentage in the country. In this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, Moses (referred to here by his full name) discusses the summer's gains and the ongoing obstacles to civil rights in the South.

By James Millstone

JACKSON, Miss., Aug. 13 -- A summer of intense civil rights work in Mississippi has brought significant breakthroughs, Robert F. Moses, a pioneer in the movement, said today.

The most important gain, he said, is an improvement in police protection of civil rights workers in most urban sections of the state. Others include the Negro community's opening its doors to white volunteers, organization of a political party for Negroes and the success of special schools set up to supplement public school education for Negroes.

Despite the advances, Moses said, it will take a clamor from the rest of the nation to change the Mississippi Negroes' lot physically.

"We can organize the people and present a challenge, but we can't cause visible change," he said. "Somebody else has to make the decision to get the Negro on the voter registration books. We can take him to the courthouse and stand in line with him, but that is as far as we can go.

"The rest depends on the build-up of pressure from around the country until it is strong enough to force the Federal Government to act."

Former Teacher

Moses, a Negro, is a soft-spoken former New York mathematics teacher. He entered Mississippi on civil rights work briefly in 1960 and came to stay in 1961.He has played an important role in developing the comprehensive campaign under way in the state. This campaign has been dramatized by the participation of about 650 out-of-state college students. He serves as over-all director of the program.Those close to Moses regard him with something approaching adulation. Quiet, unassuming methodical, he chooses his words carefully and speaks with a slight New York accent.

The breakthrough in police protection was vital, he said, because "it broke the pattern of arrests and harassment of civil rights workers and citizens of communities where they were active.""Until the change," he said, "police generally made things difficult for anyone connected with civil rights. When police couldn't arrest us, the mob was turned loose.

"Now, except for some rural areas and the southwest, there is less harassment of workers by police and very little by local people. We interpret that as meaning that police put out the word to the local citizens."

Reason for Change

The change, he said, came about as a result of the murder of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., and from the pressure for protection from influential parents of student volunteers working in this state.Most of the volunteers are living with Negro families, a fact that Moses considers "a huge step" and extremely important to the cause."Negroes taking in whites have given us a way of funneling in resources to the community," Moses said. "We can't do it through the white community."There are sections of the state where the movement has had difficulty finding locations for white workers. At least part of the reason, Moses said, is that Negroes fear economic reprisals or physical harm for displeasing white residents of the area. Even in these sections, however, housing eventually has been found with Negro families.

The volunteers generally eat with Negro families or at Negro restaurants and shun white eating establishments.

Organization of Party

Moses said that organization of the Freedom Democratic political party in recent weeks was important because it proved to the Negro that he had the ability to participate in politics.

"This is crucial to the Mississippi Negro," Moses said. "This is saying to him, in essence, that he is ready to take his affairs into his own hands. The experience proves that he can find the time for political activity and that he really is interested in it."

"One important reason that the party has been a great success," Moses said, "is that it helps overcome the feeling of isolation of Negroes. The people feel stronger when they have a lot of others working with them."

The freedom schools represent a breakthrough, Moses said, because more than 2200 children showed up voluntarily, a response much beyond the expectations of the project's staff.

"This involves a decision on the part of the parent who risks pressure from whites if his child wants to attend freedom schools," Moses explained.

"And the school itself opens up a new possibility for education, provides a vehicle which a child can use to come to grips for the first time with the society in which he lives, and opportunity for real discussion of matters that affect his life."In Moses's opinion, the Negro youth of Mississippi will demand a different life than that of their parents and grandparents.

"This new generation is not willing to live in the old way," he said.

Upheaval in His Life

The civil rights movement has brought an upheaval in Moses's life. The son of a Harlem laborer, he earned a bachelor's degree from Hamilton College near Clinton, N. Y., and a master of philosophy from Harvard University, where he began work on a doctorate. After teaching junior high and high school in New York for two years, he went to Atlanta in the summer of 1960 to take part in sit-in demonstrations.He became connected with the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee and traveled through several Southern states, including Mississippi, on their behalf. What he saw that summer convinced him that his future was there. Another year of teaching fulfilled his New York contract and Moses returned to Mississippi in the summer of 1961.

That year he was beaten by a white youth in Liberty when taking two Negroes to the courthouse to try to register.

"I wasn't too badly hurt," he said. "Eight stitches. But a lot went on inside me."

A few months later Moses was arrested in McComb with a group of student demonstrators. When behind bars, he was subjected to about two hours of what he recalled as "intense personal hatred, a form of violence really," by local white citizens who filed past his cell to jeer at him.

Incident of Violence

In February 1963, he and two other civil rights workers were riding in an automobile near Greenwood when three white men in another car pulled alongside. Someone fired a burst from a submachine gun and the men drove away.

Moses was unhurt, but one of his companions was hit in the shoulder and head. He recovered. Thirteen bullet holes were made in the side of the car. Three men were arrested later, but have yet to be brought to trial.

Reflecting on the violence that has characterized the civil rights activity in Mississippi, Moses said:

"The country has never been able to come to grips with organized terror in the South. People prefer to treat it as the work of red-necked, highly individualized misfits.

"But the fact is that people sit down and plan together. Then they move out and they kill.

"The lie is that as soon as there was a whisper of a terrorist group in Harlem planning to kill white people, it was screaming front page headlines all over the country."

Moses, 29 years old, has been in Jackson since late last year. Last December, he married Dona Richards, who heads the movement's voter registration project.