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Bob Moses

Liberty and McComb, Mississippi

September–November 1961

1

One Sunday in late September, John Doar came to McComb to see for himself what the situation was in southwestern Mississippi. In the week following my beating at the hands of Billy Jack Caston, several other SNCC workers had been beaten, including John Hardy, who was pistol-whipped by the registrar of Walthall County when he was inside the courthouse! That was so blatant a violation that Doar, on behalf of the federal government, had brought a suit, which, in spite of Judge Harold Cox’s obstructionism, was making its way through the courts.

At first Doar couldn’t take his eyes off the stitches in my scalp.

“The FBI report didn’t say anything about cuts and abrasions,” he said with genuine concern. “I didn’t realize it was so serious.”

“It could have been worse,” I said.

We drove to Steptoe’s farm, so that he could hear firsthand, in Steptoe’s deliberate way, about the pattern of violence in Amite County.

“Have you ever tried to register yourself?” Doar asked.

“Oh, yes, several times,” Steptoe said, “but they never let me fill out the form.”

Steptoe told him that the only registered Negro in the county had a master’s degree.

“You know, it isn’t possible for all Negroes in this county to have master’s degrees,” Steptoe said. “I only know but one who has a master’s degree, and that is my son. If it takes a master’s degree to pass this test, he’ll be the only Negro to redish in this county. The last time I tried to get Negroes to redish I had lots of trouble,” he added.

“What kind of trouble?” Doar asked.

“Such as threats, such as jail, such as beatings.”

“Have there been killings?”

“Oh, yes, they used to whup Negroes around here all the time,” Steptoe said, his voice becoming slower, deeper, and more grieved. “They’d whup ’em most to death. Some they’d hang up in trees here; the bugs would get ’em. All’s we found was bones.”

“When was this?” Doar looked grim.

“Well, you know, that was five hundred years ago,” Steptoe drawled. “That was way back there.”

Doar stared in bafflement, unsure where the irony was.

“What about the people who are attending the voter registration school?” Doar asked. “Has anyone tried to intimidate them?”

“Oh, yes, there are always threats.” Steptoe was as matter-of-fact as if he were merely stating that dogs bark at night. “E. H. Hurst told some people that if me and Herbert Lee didn’t quit messin’ with this civil rights business, he would kill us hisself.”

I was startled to hear this; apparently Steptoe took the dangers so much for granted he hadn’t bothered to tell me what Hurst had said. I had grown fond of Herbert Lee, a very quiet man who was always ready to drive me around the dusty back roads of the county to talk to people about registering. One evening he had me over to his home for supper to meet his wife and children. Apparently his kindness to me had not gone unnoticed.

“Who’s this Hurst?” Doar asked.

“He lives across the road there,” Steptoe said.

“He’s a Mississippi state representative,” I said. “He’s also the father-in-law of Billy Jack Caston, the sheriff’s cousin, the guy who hit me.”

“Quite a cozy little town you have here,” Doar remarked dryly.

“I’ve known those Hursts all my life,” Steptoe continued. “They’re all a mean piece of work. I once saw E. H.’s daddy knock a colored boy down, step on his head, and rub it in the dirt. Just because the kid was thirsty and cryin’ for water. I whupped him once.”

“E. H.?” I asked.

“No, his daddy.”

“You did!” Steptoe’s courage amazed me.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I was young then and feelin’ my man, and he ordered me and my brother to head his cattle into the pens. Well, we was already tired from doin’ our own, so we didn’t do it. He jumps off his horse and comes at my brother and says, ‘Nigger, next time I tell you to do something, you’re gonna do it,’ and he raises his cattle whip to strike him. But I steps between and says, ‘Don’t hit him, hit me, he’s too small.’ Well, he come at my head with the whip, but I took it away from him and he got whipped instead—maybe a little worse, ’cause as I was comin’ down on his head I remembered what I saw him do to that little Negro child who just wanted a drink of water.”

“Didn’t anything happen to you?” Doar asked.

“Oh, yes,” Steptoe said, “they tried. They sent and told my father to come on over to their place, but I told him, ‘Dad, don’t go over there; that’s a trap he got set for you.’ So my Dad didn’t go. A few days later he come see my Dad and made ‘tend he was sorry and said he was wrong.”

“Are you taking any special precautions now?” Doar asked anxiously. Being Steptoe was a risky business.

“I maybe ought not to say this,” Steptoe said. “If they get me I don’t care, but we have our guns loaded, and they know this.”

Steptoe lifted up a couch pillow to reveal a concealed pistol. Then he showed Doar a shotgun he kept behind the door.

“The sheriff has been up here,” Steptoe added. “I asked him what he want at my place. ‘Just checkin’,’ he says. ‘Just checkin’.’ But I know he was checkin’ whether he could hide hisself and find a way to bump me off, or kill someone else, whatnot.”

“The sheriff?” Doar looked troubled.

“Oh, yes, here in this county every time a white man beats a Negro or kills a Negro, he gets promoted to higher office. Here in Amite County you don’t know what might happen; you don’t know what might take place. And you want somebody with you who is not afraid to tell what happened to you, if something happen to you. Because here in Amite County they’re afraid to tell who did it; afraid to tell how it happened; ’cause they’re afraid the same thing will happen to them.”

After we left Steptoe’s farm, Doar and I drove over to Herbert Lee’s place to take an affidavit from him. The children were out back by the barn playing hide-and-seek. They cried, “Bob, Bob,” when they saw us and ran up to see the new car Doar had rented in New Orleans. Their father wasn’t home.

On the drive back to McComb, we were both deep in thought. Finally, Doar broke the silence.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, his voice wavering, “that this is America.”

2

A few days later I was in the Masonic Hall when the phone rang. It was Doc Anderson at the Negro funeral home in McComb.

“There’s a body down here,” he said somberly. “We’d like you to come over and see if you can identify it.”

My heart sank with apprehension.

“It’s a Negro male,” he continued, “short, about fifty. Shot in the head.”

“Where was he killed?” I asked, fearing that I already knew the answer.

“In Liberty.”

The body, still in farm clothes, was stretched out on a cold metal table; a small dark hole was visible above the left ear.

It was Herbert Lee.

Lee had been shot at A. B. Westbrook’s cotton gin early that morning. The body had been left uncovered where it fell. No one, black or white, in Liberty would touch it. Finally a hearse was summoned from McComb. The few blacks at the scene were too frightened to even say the dead man’s name.

“Was it Hurst?”

“Why, yes!” Doc Anderson looked at me with perplexity and surprise. “It was self-defense. Seems Lee went berserk and attacked Hurst with a tire iron.”

“Says who?”

“There’s no point getting upset. Five people witnessed it. Three of them were Negroes. They all told the same story. Seems Lee owed Hurst some money. A coroner’s jury has already acquitted him.”

“Naturally.”

I waited for nightfall, and then Curtis Bryant and I drove the pitch-black back roads of Amite County until I found someone brave enough to talk. Louis Allen, one of the three Negroes who had seen Hurst shoot Lee, was willing to tell the truth:

“I’d been haulin’ logs in my truck that morning,” Allen said, “but it broke down, so I was walkin’ into town to get a fan belt when I come by the gin. I saw Herbert Lee drive in with a truck-load of cotton. He was waitin’ in line when Mr. Hurst nosed up behind him in an empty pickup, the blue one that belongs to Billy Jack Caston. I heard some yellin’, an’ I knew I ought to keep walkin’, but I turned my head an’ saw Mr. Hurst shoutin’ at Herbert Lee. I was standin’ off to the side by a telephone pole. I didn’t think they could see me, but I could see them. I knew I shoulda kept goin’, but I couldn’t move. I saw it all.

“Hurst come over to Lee’s truck, on the driver’s side, an’ was shoutin’ about somethin’. He waved his arms in the air; then he pulled a pistol from his belt—I think it was a .38—an’ pointed it at Lee.

“‘I’m not foolin’ with you this time,’ Hurst yelled. ‘I mean business.’

“‘Put that gun down,’ Herbert say, ‘or I ain’t talkin.’

“Hurst stuck that pistol back in his belt under his coat, an’ Lee slid across the front seat an’ got out on the passenger side. I think he wanted to keep somethin’ solid between them an’ talk to Hurst over the hood of his truck. But Hurst, he run ‘round the front, out come that pistol again, an’ he shoots Lee right in the head from a few feet away.

“I hurried on away from there as fast as I could, hopin’ nobody seen me. But they come for me at the garage an’ taken me to the courthouse. They had them a roomful of armed men, an’ the Deputy Sheriff, Daniel Jones, he tole me that what they had was a clear case of self-defense. He said they found a weapon under Lee’s body. ‘If you just say that Herbert Lee had him a tire tool,’ he said, ‘there won’t be no trouble.’”

To protect his family, Allen lied to the coroner’s jury. He said that Lee had swung at Hurst with a tire iron and that the gun had gone off accidentally as Hurst was whacking Lee on the head. The jury decided it was a case of justifiable homicide, declaring that Hurst acted “in defense of his person while being attacked by the deceased with a deadly weapon . . . known as a tire tool.”

“I didn’t run,” I saw Hurst boast to reporters, who must have noted that he was nearly a foot taller and at least fifty pounds heavier than the man who allegedly attacked him. “I got no rabbit in me.” Hurst had known Lee since they were boys; he claimed that the dispute had nothing to do with civil rights but was over five hundred dollars. “That son of a bitch owed me,” he said.

I called John Doar and told him what I had learned.

“Doc Anderson didn’t find any powder burns,” I reported.

“I’ll have the FBI photograph the body and examine the entry wound,” Doar replied. “If there were no powder burns, and this eyewitness you’ve found will change his testimony, we might have a case against Hurst.”

The next day at the funeral, Mrs. Lee, shaking from grief and with reproach in her eyes, confronted me. “You killed my husband!” she wailed. “You killed my husband!” Her words cut me to the quick, but even harder to take was the fact that none of her nine children, lined up in the front row, would look me in the face. Even though Herbert Lee was my friend, and I had wanted only the best, I felt the sting of complicity in his death. I knew that martyrs in the Movement were inevitable, but why did it have to be this good man?

Several weeks later Louis Allen came to see Steptoe and told him, “My first testimony is worryin’ me. Mr. Lee’s dead. What should I do?”

“Well,” Steptoe said, “you can tell Mr. Doar what you told Bob.”

“I am,” Allen said. “I’m gonna tell the truth.”

“That’s good. I believe you should.”

I arranged for Allen to meet me in McComb.

“If I can be protected,” he told me, “I’ll let the hide fall with the hair an’ tell what I saw.”

I called John Doar. He said he didn’t think they could guarantee protection or a conviction if Allen changed his testimony.

“What about the FBI investigation?”

“They botched it, Bob,” Doar said with disgust. “By the time the Bureau in Washington had contacted the office in New Orleans and they reached their agent in Natchez, the body was already in the ground. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

When a grand jury was convened to look into the case, I had to advise Allen, for his own safety, to lie again. But the case still troubled him, and several months later he asked to talk to me a third time. We drove down to the FBI office in New Orleans, and he signed an affidavit that Hurst killed Lee “without provocation.” The FBI didn’t do anything about the murder of Herbert Lee, but somehow word reached Deputy Sheriff Jones about Allen’s second thoughts and small rebellion. He was now a marked man in Liberty.

I was wracked with guilt over the death of Herbert Lee. If I had never come to Amite County, he would still be alive to enjoy his wife and children. Now black people in Liberty were afraid to even leave town, let alone confront the sheriff and the registrar at the courthouse. No one would come to the citizenship school. Steptoe was cleaning his guns in anticipation of an ambush. No Negro felt free in Liberty.

For me, the murder of Herbert Lee stood for all the indignities and atrocities unsung black people had suffered in the South for centuries. I vowed that his death would not be forgotten: by me, by SNCC, or by anyone else in the Movement. I also reluctantly decided to withdraw from Amite County for a time, but I made a promise to Steptoe before I left: “I’ll be back.”

3

During the weeks I spent in Liberty, SNCC workers had been arriving in McComb to initiate “direct action” (as if the response to voter registration wasn’t direct enough!). The McComb high school students were eager to start sitting-in and picketing. Too young to register, they were frustrated and liked the idea of confrontation. Many of their parents, however, strongly disapproved of this new turn of events, especially when at the end of August three students—Isaac Lewis, Robert Talbert, and Brenda Travis—were arrested at the Greyhound bus terminal. Robert pleaded guilty and was fined two hundred dollars and given a suspended sentence. Isaac and Brenda, who said they weren’t guilty, were fined four hundred dollars and were sent to the Magnolia Jail for eight months. The harsh penalties outraged the black community. They were particularly upset that alert, vivacious Brenda Travis, who was only fifteen and very well liked, should receive such punishment. Some people were angry that the judge would send a young girl to prison; others blamed SNCC for getting their children in trouble. Curtis Bryant held me personally responsible.

“The agreement was for three weeks,” he told me, his already high-pitched voice rising higher as he became more upset, “and you were only to do voter registration. I cannot condone the use of children. That is contrary to NAACP guidelines.”

“It’s out of my hands,” I said. “McComb is where the action is and SNCC wants to be here. Besides, the students want to protest and will, whether we’re here or not.”

“Can’t you order them not to?”

“No. That’s not the way SNCC operates. It’s not my decision to make. In SNCC we ‘go where the spirit say go, and do what the spirit say do.’ Nobody gives orders to anybody.”

“Well, that’s no way to run an organization,” Bryant said, shaking his head. “You’ve got to have procedure, guidelines, rules. In the NAACP we file vouchers for all money received and turn in detailed reports. Whenever we go into anything, we have our legal office tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do. This use of students is clearly beyond the boundary line. I’m afraid we’ll have to disassociate ourselves to protect the integrity of our organization.”

“We can’t stop now,” I pleaded. “This is no time for hesitation. We have to go ahead.”

Seeing a chance to exploit our differences, Police Chief George Guy chose this moment to arrest Curtis Bryant—even though he had consistently opposed the demonstrations—for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Ironically, this attempt to sabotage us failed. When Bryant got out on bail, he declared himself unequivocally on our side. “Where the students lead, we will follow,” he told an NAACP rally.

The police also tried to entrap me on a trumped-up charge. I was down at South of the Border, a black restaurant in Burgland where the SNCC workers hung out. Alyene Quin, the manager, sensed trouble when she saw a patrol car pull up. She planted herself at the front door to stall them while I slipped out the back and ran up the alley to Nobles Brothers Cleaners. Ernest Nobles, quickly sizing up the situation, took my arm and stood me up inside a rack of hanging clothes where I couldn’t be seen. When the police car came tearing after me, Ernest ran out and shouted to them, “He went out the front door, heading that way,” and they sped off in the wrong direction. Once they were gone, he parked his pickup truck in the alley, hid me under a tarpaulin in back, and drove to Steptoe’s farm where I would be safe.

After serving a month in jail, Brenda Travis was placed on probation and Ike Lewis was paroled. They asked Commodore Dewey Higgins, the conservative black principal who lorded it over Burgland High School, to be readmitted. He stated that because of their sit-in activities, they were expelled for the year. When the other students heard about this autocratic action, they stood up at midday chapel service and demanded an explanation; the principal refused to discuss the issue. A few students then took over the stage, fired up the others with freedom songs, and called upon everyone to walk out in protest. About a hundred of them left school and marched down to the SNCC office. We heard them singing “Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom” as they came. They carried banners and signs and were ready to demonstrate downtown.

At first Chuck McDew and I tried to discourage them, but their spirit was so strong and contagious that we decided to join them. Bob Zellner, the only white SNCC worker in McComb, was determined to come too. We marched down Summit, through the heart of Burgland, and then took the viaduct under the railroad tracks to reach the white side of McComb. As we came up Main Street, an angry crowd began to gather, singling out Zellner for special abuse. Before long we were surrounded by a mob; they were in an ugly mood.

To show our peaceful intentions, the students knelt down one by one to pray on the steps of city hall. This was seen as an intolerable provocation; the police blew their whistles and began to arrest us. At the same time, the mob attacked, zeroing in on Zellner. A man in a sleeveless T-shirt went for his throat and another slugged him in the face. McDew and I threw our arms around him, trying to shield him with our bodies. To keep from being trampled to the ground, Zellner was hanging on to the iron railing for dear life. They pulled on his belt and beat on his hands in their effort to drag him out into the street. I saw one man grab him by the ears and try to gouge his eyes out with his thumbs. When Zellner threw up his hands to protect his face, he was immediately knocked down and kicked in the head until he lost consciousness. Only then did the police intervene, dragging us up the steps into city hall.

One hundred and nineteen of us were herded into the city jail. The mob gathered outside, milling around and shouting threats. When word of what had happened spread, the police began conducting guided tours for the curious “good citizens” of McComb. A contingent would enter the cell block, and invariably they would ask, “Where’s Moses? Where’s Moses?” until a student would point me out. They stared; I stared back—the Fiend at Bay.

“You don’t believe in Jesus Christ, do you, you sonofabitch?” a man who said he was a minister snapped at me. “I’m going to personally see to it that you’re in hell real soon.”

“Say something in communist,” a prim little blond said to McDew.

“Shiksa schlepp mensch shtick,” he replied, looking completely serious.

We were brought upstairs one by one for a kind of kangaroo court. I warned the students to say they were under eighteen. If they could convince the court they were minors, they would probably be released. When my turn came, the air was thick with tension. To avoid having to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” I answered every question with a complete sentence. Fifteen of us were charged with breach of the peace and contributing to the delinquency of minors and taken to the Amite County Jail in Liberty.

“Why didn’t you take us to the Pike County Jail in Magnolia?” I asked.

“This is a better place for y’all to think about what happened to Herbert Lee,” the deputy said.

We were placed in the drunk tank, a solid concrete room, cold and damp, with nothing to sit or lie on but more concrete. In spite of the lack of heat, bad food, and no showers, spirits remained high in the cell; we sang freedom songs and told jokes. I made chess pieces out of matchsticks, with a cigarette butt as the queen and taught my cellmates how to play. Whoever captured the queen got to smoke the butt. After three days we were released on bond.

When the 114 students who had taken part in the march tried to return to school, the principal, under pressure from the white superintendent, refused to admit them unless they signed an agreement not to stage any more protests. The students refused, and walked out. This procedure went on for the next week. Each day the students would come to school; each day they would be ordered to sign the agreement; each day those who refused would walk out. The parents, meanwhile, were deeply divided on the issue: some whipped their children and told them to stay away from that mess; others resented the agreement, but wanted their children back in school; a few were urging their sons and daughters to keep up the pressure and shut the school down if necessary. Even the teachers, usually an impossibly conservative group, became involved. “I wish I was a student,” one said, “I’d walk out too.”

I was pleased to see the spirit of democracy spread as the students learned to stand up for their rights. They drafted a petition for fair treatment that urged “all our fellowmen to love rather than hate, to build rather than tear down, to bind our nation with love and justice without regard to race, color, and creed.” Finally, the principal set a deadline of October 16 at three o’clock: any student who hadn’t signed the agreement by then would be expelled. Fifty signed; sixty-four refused. That was the end of the McComb Walkout.

The SNCC staff set up a makeshift school for the expelled students: Nonviolent High. I taught math and English; Chuck McDew, history; and Dion Diamond, chemistry and physics. We met in the sanctuary of Saint Paul’s Methodist Church and began each morning with freedom songs. The students were enthusiastic about learning—McDew, in particular, told them things about their country they never would have heard at Burgland High. They were also determined to continue direct action. We had long discussions about how to get their parents more involved. They even began an underground paper, The Informer, which called for a boycott of downtown stores. After a couple of weeks, an arrangement was made to transfer fifteen of the students to Campbell College in Jackson. That seemed to be a satisfactory solution at the time, but later I learned that several of the girls, away from home for the first time, became pregnant.

Brenda Travis was never readmitted to Burgland High or permitted to go to Campbell College. The judge declared her a delinquent for taking part in our demonstrations and sentenced her to the Oakley Training School at Raymond. One day we all piled into cars and tried to go visit her, but we were turned away at the gate by a squad of officers armed to the teeth.

On October 31, the fifteen of us who could be sentenced as adults were brought to trial. Judge Brumfield accused me of making “a clear, cold, calculated” attempt to violate the laws of Mississippi.

“You are bringing racial strife and rioting to a place that has only known racial harmony,” he said.

“Kneeling on the steps of city hall is not my definition of insurrection.”

“Robert,” the judge replied, “haven’t some of the people from your school been able to go down and register without violence in Pike County?”

“One of my ‘people’ is dead,” I said, thinking that southerners are most exposed when they boast. “Others have been threatened, shot at, and beaten.”

The judge sentenced eleven of us to four months in jail each. Bobby Talbert, Ike Lewis, Hollis Watkins, and Curtis Hayes, who had been arrested during the sit-ins, were given six months.

“Some of you are local residents,” the judge said. “Some of you are outsiders. Those of you who are local residents are like sheep being led to the slaughter. If you continue to follow the advice of outside agitators, you will be like sheep and will be slaughtered.”

We spent the next thirty-seven days at the Pike County Jail in Magnolia. We weren’t allowed to work with the other prisoners for fear we would contaminate them. At first, visitors were permitted. The black community responded by bringing fried chicken and freshly baked pies. Then the visits were restricted to once a week, and the showers to twice a week. The meals were always the same: cold grits, sticky rice, watery gravy, dry bread, a congealed egg, and a slice of big town cake. We ate everything with a spoon and drank directly from a faucet, which drained down a hole in the cement floor.

By now we were pretty good at fighting boredom. Chuck McDew lectured on the history of black people in America. “If you think this jail is bad,” McDew would say, “let me tell you about the slave ships.” I gave the students pep talks based on Camus’s philosophy of engagement. “Accept your personal freedom,” I would say. “Dare to stand in a strong sun and cast a sharp shadow. Commit yourself to changing what needs to be changed so that this earth can be a satisfactory place for all people.” Other times I would seek out a solitary corner and try to solve math problems in my head. Day by day we swapped stories, sang songs, and learned to support each other as a band of brothers.

All that November in jail I brooded about the Liberty and McComb campaign and what should be done next. With many of the most active students away in Jackson and with the black community divided and the white community hostile, we would have to move our base of operations. But where and how to begin?

I arrived at several conclusions: The established blacks—ministers, teachers, small businessmen—could not be counted on—they were too dependent on white favor and the status quo. Only those outside the power structure—small farmers, shop owners, but especially students—could be the seeds of change. I recalled what Amzie Moore and Steptoe had told me about how important the younger generation was as a vanguard to build a better world. The problem was that the teenagers, who lacked education and organizational skills, would have to be trained from scratch to attain the confidence and competence they needed to be effective.

In a letter smuggled out of jail I formulated a strategy:

“You dig yourself in and prepare to wage psychological warfare; you combat your own fears about beatings, shootings, and possible mob violence; you stymie by your own physical presence the anxious fear of the Negro community . . . that maybe you did come only to boil and bubble and burst out of sight and sound. You organize, pound by pound, small bands of people who gradually focus in the eyes of Negroes and whites as people tied up in that mess; you create a small striking force capable of moving out when the time comes, which it must, whether we help it or not.” We in SNCC would be a small tremor in the center of the iceberg that was Mississippi—from a stone that the builders rejected.