Читать книгу Stranger at the Gates - Tracy Sugarman - Страница 6

Ninety percent of the Negro people in Mississippi have gone to church all their lives. They have lived with the hope that if they kept “standing up” in a Christian manner, things would change. After we found out that Christian love alone wouldn’t cure the sickness in Mississippi, then we knew we had other things to do.

There was no real Civil Rights Movement in the Negro community in Mississippi before the 1964 Summer Project. There were people that wanted change, but they hadn’t dared to come out and try to do something, to try to change the way things were. But after the 1964 project when all of the young people came down for the summer—an exciting and remarkable summer—Negro people in the Delta began moving. People who had never before tried, though they had always been anxious to do something, began moving. Now, in 1966, even Negroes who live on the plantations slip off the plantations and go to civil rights meetings. “We wanted to do this so long,” they say. When some of us get up and blast out at the meetings, these women go back home—these men go back home—and in the next day or two the kids come. They say, “My mother told us what you talked about last night.” That’s great! To see kids, to see these people—to see how far they’ve come since 1964! To me it’s one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi. And it’s a direct result of the Summer Project in 1964.

I believe in Christianity. To me, the 1964 Summer Project was the beginning of a New Kingdom right here on earth. The kinds of people who came down from the North—from all over—who didn’t know anything about us—were like the Good Samaritan. In that Bible story, the people had passed by the wounded man—like the church has passed the Negroes in Mississippi—and never taken the time to see what was going on. But these people who came to Mississippi that summer— although they were strangers—walked up to our door. They started something that no one could ever stop. These people were willing to move in a nonviolent way to bring a change in the South. Although they were strangers, they were the best friends we ever met. This was the beginning of the New Kingdom in Mississippi. To me, if I had to choose today between the church and these young people—and I was brought up in the church and I’m not against the church—I’d choose these young people. They did something in Mississippi that gave us the hope that we had prayed for for so many years. We had wondered if there was anybody human enough to see us as human beings instead of animals.

These young people were so Christlike! James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner gave their lives that one day we would be free. If Christ were here today, He would be just like these young people who the southerners called radicals and beatniks. Christ was called a Beelzebub, called so many names. But He was Christ. I can hardly express what those students and that summer meant to me—what it meant to the people who didn’t dare say anything. Because when they would get a chance, they would express how they felt. As a result of that summer, we Negroes are working—slow—but we’re moving. Not only did it have an effect on the black people of Mississippi but it touched some of the white people who don’t yet dare speak out. This is important.

My family was like thousands of other families in Mississippi. My grandmother was a slave. My mother passed away in 1961. She was ninety-eight years old. We were taught something in Mississippi I’m not ashamed of today. We were taught to love. We were taught to not hate. And we were taught to stand on principle, stand on what we believe. I often remember my mother telling me, “If you respect yourself, one day somebody else will respect you.”

The reason that we Negroes in Mississippi are not bitter is because most of us were brought up in church from an early age. A child has to be taught to hate. We were taught to love and to have faith. My father used to read a scripture from the Bible: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” We Negroes had hoped and we had faith to hope, though we didn’t know what we had hoped for. When the people came to Mississippi in 1964, to us it was the result of all our faith—all we had always hoped for. Our prayers and all we had lived for day after day hadn’t been in vain. In 1964 the faith that we had hoped for started to be translated into action. Now we have action, and we’re doing something that will not only free the black man in Mississippi but hopefully will free the white one as well. No man is an island to himself.

I used to say when I was working so hard in the fields, if I could go to Washington—to the Justice Department—to the FBI—get close enough to let them know what was going on in Mississippi, I was sure that things would change in a week. Now that I have traveled across America, been to the Congress, to the Justice Department, to the FBI, I am faced with things I’m not too sure I wanted to find out. The sickness in Mississippi is not a Mississippi sickness. This is America’s sickness. We talk about democracy, we talk about the land of the free, but it’s not true. We talk about freedom of speech, but in every corner of this United States men who try to speak the truth are crushed. The crisis in Mississippi made young people who are going to the college campuses all across the United States start to question: “What is going on around here?” Now, because of these young people, we have a chance to make democracy a reality. We often talk about it. We often express it. But you can go to the slums in Harlem, the slums in Chicago, the slums in California, the slums in Pennsylvania, the slums in Washington, D.C., and you’ll find the race problem no different in kind from the problem in Mississippi. We don’t have democracy now. But the great part about the young people in this country is that they want to change things. They want to make democracy a reality in the whole country—if it is not already too late.

Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer

Ruleville, Mississippi, 1966