Mississippi burning and me.

[zeemike]

In a post here….http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8941572 It was suggested by Eferrari and ConsAreLiers that I recount my experiences during the summer of 1964 in Mississippi when LBJ sent some 400 US Navy sailors into Mississippi to look for the three lost civil rights workers who were murdered there. I was one of those sailors and this is what I remember.

I had just checked in to my duty station at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Florida when LBJ announced that he was sending in the Navy to help hunt for the lost civil rights workers and sense I was the new guy I got selected to go on TAD (temporary assigned duty) to the naval air station in Meridian Mississippi.
After we arrived and checked in to the base we mustered together and was addressed by the commanding officer of our group who was a Lieutenant Commander…a mid level officer, which showed that this was taken somewhat seriously…if they had not it would have been a low ranking officer.
And the Lieutenant Commander made us understand that this was serious….he explained to us the situation and what our mission was and told us the situation in the community surrounding the base. The KKK was having rallies only a short distance from the base and he delivered a stern warning to us….If he caught any one of us going to those rallies or aiding the Klan in any way, he would personally see that we spent the rest of our tour of duty in the brig at Fort Leavenworth. And I think we all got the message….at least I know I did…he made it as if we were a military operation against the enemy….the Klan… and so then, we dare not take their side.

We were then loaded on to two 48 passenger Navy gray busses and a stake bed truck and joined up with a State police car and one from the county sheriff, and a government car with the FBI agents., and drove out to the rural community. They would drop us off in gropes of 5 or 6 at the intersection of a dirt road and we would walk to where it ended then the buss would pick us up and take us to another dirt road. So what we were doing was systematically walking every road in the countryside.
But they did not push us hard, and in fact was generous with our break time and plenty of water breaks and in reality it was somewhat pleasant walking through the woods on a summer day. And the FBI agent was pretty friendly and candid and spent a lot of time talking with us in small groups…and he told us strait up that he did not expect that we would find the bodies by walking the roads and doing what we were doing, but that we had another role to play and it was important to them.
So what it boiled down to is the FBI was using us to intimidate the locals. Not so much that the presents of federal troops were going all over the place, but the fact that we were systematically walking every back road in the county. This actually created economic problems for some of them, because some of them made their money from moonshine and the last thing they wanted is to see some young sailors walking up on them as they cook their mash….they were using us to stir the pot, to beat the bushes, to fuck with them a little. All of a sudden there were a lot of people looking into the hidden parts of their little empire and it had to make them a little nervous.

And I would see what a corrupt little empire it was too. One night one of the sailors in my barracks who was permanently stationed their asked if I wanted to go into town and get drunk….I asked how he would do that in a dry country….it was illegal to have liquor in that country….and he just laughed it off….so we jumped in my car and he directed me down an ally and there was a lighted drive up window….I almost slammed on the breaks when I turned into the ally because at the drive up window was a cop car. He said not to worry , that the cop was just their to get his….and an arm come out of the window with a brown paper bag which the cop took and drove off. So we got a pint of Old Granddad to drink on our way to a road house on the outskirts of town. And it had everything a sailor on liberty needed…whores, gambling and beer.
The hypocrisy of this was not lost on me….it was said that the Baptist and the bootleggers always voted to keep the country dry , and why not, the bootleggers supported the Baptist and so why screw up a good thing….to your face these people were good Christians and full of all kinds of morality, but underneath that sheep clothing they were ravenous wolves, capable of probably anything.

But they did try to gain our sympathy in a bizarre sort of way….I remember standing on the porch of a small country store drinking an Orange Crush when this old guy….well old to me at the time probably 50 or so….came up to me to talk….he started by asking me If we were “out looking for that nigger and those Jew boys”.
I did not say anything and he went on as if I had answered his question…”Well you won’t find them around here….they are probably up there in New Your city laying in bed together laughing at you boys out here in the hot sun looking for em”…he went on…”we don’t have any problems with the niggers here….it is all those white agitators coming from up north stirring up things and trying to tell us how to live”….and he ended it with “A nigger will lie to ya”
And there was propaganda too….one of my room mates had a pamphlet passed out from the Klan and he showed it to me….it was so ridiculous I did not see at the time of what value it would have…it had cartoon caricatures of black people that were simply ridiculous…..like the one I remember…..a cartoon character of a black person with an enormous ass the stuck out with a diner plate sitting on it…..the caption is that this was a class of black people they called Plate Assed Niggers because there ass stuck out so much you could sit a diner plate on it and it would not fall off.
To them I suppose, it was humor but to me It reveled something much different, something much more evil.

Then one day we loaded up in the busses and instead of going out walking roads we went to a state park…The FBI agent promptly organized a baseball game and some one fired up the grill and started grilling hot dogs and setting the pick neck tables with goodies….we knew something was up and by the end of our party they told us they had found the bodies, we would be ending this.
All of this was transformational for me….I was given a look into something very dark that I had no idea even existed.
But I know it now and I see it even today forty some years later….it is slicker now and not spoken of in polite societies but it is that same dark hatred that gripped the south in the 60s….perhaps all of us of my age will have to die before it completely ends.

[LWolf]

1. I was only 4 years old in 1964.

I lived in Kansas City. I remember my mom being afraid for my grandparents, who were doing something...I don't know what. I remember my grandparents being scared for their black friends, Molly and Bill, who were active as well.

Nobody talked about what they were doing. At least, not in front of me. I remember tension and fear.

Your story brings it all back. That dark ugliness under the surface. I was too little to know what was going on, but I felt it anyway.

[zeemike]

2. You probably felt it more because you were only 4

It seems as we grow older we lose are feelings more to our intellect.

[LWolf]

8. Children ARE sensitive to the underlying mood around them.

I know I didn't understand it, and it made me uneasy, too.

[zeemike]

9. Did you ever find out what your grand parents were doing?

They may have had some interesting stories to tell.

[LWolf]

10. Unfortunately, no.

My grandpa died when I was 5. My mom moved me to CA when I was 7, and we kept in touch with my grandma by writing letters. I only got to see her once, for a short visit, before her death.

I asked my mom once. She was vague; said they, and she, were involved in local actions, but didn't say what those actions were. She did, though, take me to hear Angela Davis speak at a women's center in Los Angeles when I was 12. I guess she thought I was old enough to begin understanding the events happening during my childhood.

[Scruffy1]

3. One great post.

Thank you for this one. I remember that summer so well even though I've forgotten a lot in between.
Ever time I here one of those Southern or Northern politicians stirring the race kettle I think of the bodies that were found by accident while the search was on. I believe it was seven bodies besides Cheney, Goodman and Schermer. I just got back from Mississippi and even though things have much improved these assholes still control the state government.

[zeemike]

4. I am sad to here that.

But It does not surprise me too much....these assholes have been controlling things for years.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Here's the BBC archived news from 4th August 1964

1964: Three civil rights activists found dead

The bodies of three civil rights workers missing for six weeks have been found buried in a partially constructed dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation found the three young men - two white and one black man - about six miles from the town in a wooded area near where they were last seen on the night of 21 June.

They were Michael Schwerner, aged 24, Andrew Goodman, 20, both from New York and James Chaney, 22, from Meridian, Mississippi. All were members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) dedicated to non-violent direct action against racial discrimination.

As soon as the men were reported missing, the case was made top priority and codenamed Miburn (Mississippi burning). FBI agents headed by Major Case Inspector Joseph Sullivan were sent down to Mississippi to investigate the matter.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/4/newsid_2962000/2962638.stm

I think the line you quoted above "If we were “out looking for that nigger and those Jew boys” will now stay with me forever.

[zeemike]

6. And I remember it exactly as it was said

For the same reason it sticks with you.
There is a lot I don't remember but I will always remember that.

[zeemike]

7. Dup....n/t

[Fly by night]

11. As an eighth generation Mississippean, I want to thank you for your service, ...

... to my state, to my nation and to justice. Those were definitely tense times in my home state, demanding that all of us (from within the state and without) decide what we stood for, and then stood up.

Here is a DU thread I posted a while back that describes how one brave Mississippi matron (my second mother) responded in the summer of '64:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8201082

Here's an excerpt from that thread:

"Back in the mid 60s, when I first met Miz Lilla's son Bill (who would become one of my best friends), I was invited to eat lunch at their mansion, a very formal affair with a butler bringing each course. During lunch, Miz Lilla called her house staff (all Black) into the dining room and asked them, one by one, whether they were registered to vote yet in the upcoming election. There were several who said (timidly) that they had not yet registered, which (in retrospect) should have not been surprising given the risk to employment, life and limb that greeted most Black folks who tried to vote in those Mississippi burning days.

"So, after lunch, Miz Lilla walked the few blocks to the courthouse with those house staff who were not yet registered and stood beside each one of them as they completed the paperwork necessary to exercise their franchise. Through her silent, unyielding (and very Southern aristocratic) presence, Miz Lilla was determined to prevent any barriers to full participation in the democratic process being imposed on people who she knew and cared for, some of whom from families that had served her own family for generations. As a result, neither she nor her Black house staff got so much as a peep out of the local election registrar that day. A few weeks later, I believe she also accompanied her staff as they went to vote, most for the first time in their lives.

"Back then, my young, naive self thought that Miz Lilla's actions were intrusive or, at the least, patronizing. Of course, as a young White son of another long-time local family, I was pretty clueless then to the real (and too often fatal) risks that Blacks faced trying to vote in my hometown, which was less than an hour away from where Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, three young civil rights workers, had just been murdered, their bodies buried as back-fill in a farm pond dam. Thinking back on it now, I realize that Miz Lilla was placing her own standing (and perhaps her own safety) in the community aside in favor of the greater good. Most folks would not have thought of her as a civil rights activist but, by those actions, Miz Lilla proved to be just the sort of person -- a moral, democratic matriarch -- that our nation had to have in order to break down Jim Crow laws and racist practices in Columbus, MS and throughout the South."

Thanks again for your service. (And thanks again, Miz Lilla, for yours.)

[zeemike]

12. wow what a wonderful story

And I know there are thousands of those stories out there that have yet to be told.
Thanks for that.

[shireen]

13. +1

thanks for sharing that story ... she was a treasure, perhaps one of many thousands who quietly did their part for the civil rights movement.

[EFerrari]

20. That's a great story. She wasn't only putting her standing aside,

she was risking it altogether in the longer term.

[ConsAreLiars]

14. Thanks for this.

You describe the feel and facts of those experiences and encounters very well.

Others who have stared their recollections have also made valuable contributions.

[zeemike]

15. Thank you

And I owe it to you and Efarrie who encouraged me to do that, and I am glad I did.

[EFerrari]

16. Thanks so much, zeemike.

It must have been so strange, to be out walking on a nice day in a beautiful place, looking for bodies.

Do you remember anything about the town's reaction when you all rolled in and out? Or, when the bodies were found?

Did you guys talk about it later?

[zeemike]

17. Some of the groups were heckled by the locals.

But not so much in the group I was in because we were mostly alone out in the woods.
It is when we came to town and stopped at some small store for breaks that they came up to us to talk.
The store owner was all smiles of course because he would suddenly sell out all the soft drinks and snacks that he had.
But when they did approach us it was like the one I posted about....they wanted us to think of them as the victim and it was the communist, socialist, godless, government that was causing all the problems....white agitator was the talking points that I heard over and over.

After the bodies were found they took us back to the base and it was over for us....we all went back to our units which were all over and so I have yet to meet another sailor that was there.
There was talk among us about what they heard others had found....like one group found a grave and dug it up only to find a dead horse....and another that came across a still in the woods...but strangely there was no talk among us that I know of that supported the Klan in any way....that could well have ben because of the stern warning from the CO.
We spent the day the bodies were found playing baseball and grilling hot dogs in a state park....I guess this was provided by the FBI and then we went strait back to base.

[EFerrari]

18. When you all were out there, I was about 8

and my mom had moved us to a white suburb south of San Francisco. Of course, we had no idea it was going to be a white suburb because that wasn't printed on the brochures. But the sales office had all kinds of ways to discourage black and brown couples from viewing the model homes. The local real estate board explicitly told their members not to sell to "color" west of the 101 freeway and there weren't that many apartment buildings in town.

If a vet showed up with a Korean wife or more rarely, a Hawaiian one, no one said anything. I think we were allowed one war bride per block. These women always seemed to be a little quiet and you hardly ever saw them pushing baby strollers around the neighborhood like the other mothers who'd stop to chat with their neighbors who were out working in their little flower gardens.

People joke that the South never stopped fighting the Civil War but even out west where we were, the South was talked about as if it was another country, far away. So in some sense, we hadn't stopped fighting the Civil War, either. I remember my neighbors tut-tutting about how bad "things were" in the South during those years but I was almost sixteen years old before I even knew there was a small Latino community literally over the railroad tracks on the outskirts of the town. We had no black neighbors, my brother and I never played with black or even Latino children -- except when my cousins would come down from the city to see our grandmother on Sundays. And all that whiteness was planned just like the orchard fruit trees were planned to be left, one to a yard, along the streets of our subdivision. There was no sense at all that the struggle going on was our fight in any way or, not a sense that was communicated to us kids. In 1964, everything around us was new. New houses, new schools, the lawns were just going in and the fences between the yards were going up. You could hear the hammering all day.

[zeemike]

19. That is an interesting perspective.

When I first went to the south in 1964 I was totally Innocent in that I had no idea where black people came from and how they were forced to live in the south...I was aware of racism but I, like many people of that time, I thought it was just riding on a buss or sitting at a lunch counter.
When I rolled into Pensacola in 64 I stopped at a gas station to take a piss and went around the back to see two doors....one marked white and the other coulord....the white one was a normal dore and the colored one was just a lean too shack like structure....and that was a shock to me because I thought I was in Florida....land of beaches and sunshine, but in reality it was the deep south...in fact they called the panhandle of Florida Lower Alabama.
And it was not just service stations....downtown at the cort house, and in the parks there was the classic white water fountain and the shitty little black one.
I had barely gotten over that when I was sent to Mississippi and went from the frying pan into the fire.

I was more like the caricature of "BIlly Budd"...I believed in people and could not believe that people could be so evil...but they were and they are, and I have had come to terms with that in my life.