CHAPTER 22
I looked at the face of the person in the photograph. His face… no… his face and his posture, did not look happy. He was looking into the camera but he wasn’t smiling the way you’re supposed to smile when someone’s taking your picture. It was the last picture taken during our trip to Gainesville and Cheryl had snapped it while I was waiting to catch the bus back north. Maybe I was sad that we were separating. Maybe I was sad that I had no home to go to other than my apartment off campus. Maybe it was something else.
John Kennedy had been taken from me, from everyone but from me personally, just before Thanksgiving recess my first semester at Monmouth. Kennedy was my president. I never had a president before him nor would I ever have one after. I felt like those bullets had gone through me but, like Fearless Fosdick, the hapless cartoon detective who looked like Swiss cheese after the bad guys shot him up, I kept going. I spoke to Congressman Howard when he visited the campus in the spring of ‘64 and he told me, “He was one-of-a-kind. We were lucky to have known someone like him in our lifetime. We owe it to his memory to keep on going.” Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered about a month after the congressman and I spoke. I kept going.
My first trip into the Deep South had made real the things which, up until then had only been words and ideas: the Busy Bee luncheonette, the absence of black tourists, the mannequins in blackface about to be executed. There was no big incident that I witnessed, no Negro being lynched. I didn’t even see a “White Only” sign. What I experienced was more subtle than that. There was simply an unspoken understanding of what was and what was not acceptable behavior. How much different was that from what I knew to be the case in the north? Perhaps it was a question of degree rather than kind.
In August of ’65, around the time Cheryl and I were in Gainesville, a black section of Los Angeles known as Watts erupted into six nights of violence, vandalism and looting over the beating of a resident named Marquette Frye. Happily, I didn’t witness that either but Life magazine published some disturbing photographs of what took place. Other disturbing photographs of the pushback by white Southerners against the desegregation movement were making it into the Northern newspapers. I identified with the non-violent civil rights workers. I didn’t react to what I was seeing and hearing as if it were happening to them. For reasons which I did not understand at the time, and of which I would not become aware for many years, I felt like it was happening to us. My sense of what the black man was experiencing was acute enough to allow me to have empathy, rather than sympathy. I felt with him, not for him. I had to do something. But what?
Strike City in Tribbett, Mississippi was a collection of army surplus tents set up on a few acres of flat ground that had been purchased by several families and individuals. After 100 years they had had enough of working other peoples’ land and wanted to try farming on their own. That act of independence, that “strike,” did not sit well with the local landowners. The strikers were threatened and harassed. Somebody decided “Strike City” was too militant and so the name was changed to “Tent City” but I always thought of it by its former name.
I started corresponding with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee abbreviated SNCC and pronounced “snick” soon after returning from Florida. One of their office staff in Atlanta had identified several projects that needed assistance and Strike City was the one I chose. The strikers needed supplies: food, clothing, furnishings but had little money to purchase them and were discouraged from doing so by an unofficial blockade. If you got caught running goods to the strikers they would be confiscated and you would be dealt with, shall we say, harshly. There were a lot of local growers who wanted the strike to fail and would do what was necessary to ensure that it did. I decided to gather supplies and run the blockade.
Two of my roommates expressed interest but neither proved to be up to the task. Both were living away from home for the first time and were experiencing the stress attendant to being on one’s own. Neither had the resources to see a project like this through to completion. Both returned home a few weeks after the semester started. My third roommate remained but had no interest in civil rights or anything other than self-gratification. Word of the project got around campus and one afternoon I was visited by a tall, well built, good-looking young man dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and tie. He carried a large, traditional briefcase rather than the trendy attaché case that most of us used to carry our text books and papers. He introduced himself as Jeremiah Harmon and said that he wanted to participate in the project. I was delighted, not only because I had someone to help but, because he was black. There were several black students on campus but so far none had volunteered. Jeremiah and I gave interviews to the local papers and I was delighted with the amount of coverage they gave us. “Christmas project ‘65” was getting to be known and a number of students expressed interest in helping.
Jeremiah brought his brother to meet me. Elliott did not appear to be a blood relation to Jeremiah. He was shorter, slightly built and never wore a suit and tie. Jeremiah described himself as a student but I never knew him to attend class. Elliott, on the other hand, was enrolled in some courses and supported himself by working in the college cafeteria kitchen. Elliott asked if he could room with me. His reason was not because the apartment was a hotbed of civil rights activity. He made it clear that between school and work he would have little time for the cause. He wanted to live there because it was close to the campus and to his job which started early in the morning. Jeremiah lived in Asbury Park about five miles from campus but the distance presented no problem because he made his own schedule for his convenience.
Some of the local churches began collecting supplies from the members of their congregations and one volunteered its community room as a work area. Jeremiah and I attended services at several of the local black churches where we made appeals for funds. These were poor people themselves and yet they shared what little they had with people hundreds of miles away who they did not know and probably never would. We were getting a good deal of publicity and I had developed a personal relationship with reporters from two of the local papers. Things were moving along well and then something happened that cast a cloud over the enterprise.
Jeremiah had rented a storefront in Asbury Park, furnished it with a lectern and some steel folding chairs and named it the House of the Rising Sun which he thought symbolized striving for black progress. (Apparently he was unaware of the song by the same name which described a New Orleans brothel.) He was entitled to pursue his project but when he linked it to Christmas Project ‘65 it became my business. Jeremiah issued a press release suggesting that the relief project was his idea and was being managed by his organization. Fortunately, the editors of the shore area papers were wary of legitimizing his assertions in print. One of them called to let me know what he was up to.
I called a meeting of the coordinating committee and explained what he had done in front of him. Jeremiah tried to explain it away as a misunderstanding. There was no misunderstanding. He had tried to identify his project with mine and give himself the credit. He was admonished to make no statements about the relief project to the press but the committee decided that he should continue establishing contacts with black churches and businesses. After that Jeremiah became “The man of 1,000 ideas.” They rolled off his lips continually: “Let’s do this... What about...” Not one was realized because he never followed through on the details. He was fond of mentioning Scripture and scholars. He dropped the name of Montesquieu, the 18th-century French political philosopher, frequently but I never heard him discuss any of his ideas.
Local leaders of national civil rights organizations took an interest in what we were doing and I hosted some lively meetings where the militancy of the Congress of Racial Equality’s (CORE) clashed with the gradualism of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) During one of those meetings I met a fellow who was older than most of us but who would prove to be a loyal and valuable participant in the project. Bruce Kohl had served in World War II and had ministered to members of the Armed Forces in the Korean War and presently in the Vietnam War as a Red Cross worker. He was gentle and soft-spoken but committed to the issues of peace and freedom. He was a Jew who encouraged his temple to support our efforts. In time Bruce, Jeremiah and I became a recognizable face of Christmas Project ‘65.
Because of the efforts of many Monmouth students, the donated clothes were being sorted by type, size and sex. They, along with personal items and home furnishings, were boxed, labeled and made ready for the trip south. There were several high school students who joined in and proved to be real assets. Some people, mostly adults, donated money. I opened a bank account in the name of the project and kept a record of income and disbursements. One cold, windy night the three of us were hunting for boxes behind a departmental store when a cop pulled up on a motorcycle. No one needed to tell us that our lives were in danger. Fortunately, Bruce knew the cop by sight and called him by name while identifying himself. The cop helped us load the empty boxes into Bruce’s car and wished us well. We were hungry but didn’t have enough money among us to get large pizza and I was not about to use money from the project to feed my face. As we were commiserating over our sorry state a twenty dollar bill blew into Bruce’s hand. We were living in that kind of time.
Things were more down to earth back on campus. I was not doing well in any of my classes and I was failing first year French. I accepted that as one of the consequences of my present actions. My love life was not doing any better. Cheryl was talking about dating “other people.” As far as I knew she was not bisexual so the only other people were men: med students, interns and residents. There was no vow between us; we weren’t engaged. We weren’t even going steady. I wished her well. By Thanksgiving the project was coming together. Dozens of boxes were piled up in the basement of the church ready for transport. Several students put together a benefit concert which did well so we had the money to finance the trip. All we needed was a truck to haul the cargo. Renting one that was big enough to haul everything was not an option because of the cost. We made inquiries but no one was willing to risk their commercial vehicle. You couldn’t blame them. Pictures of the bombed-out, burned-out bus, a casualty of the freedom riders, were widely circulated. The local papers did us a service by publicizing our need and about a week before we were scheduled to leave we had our truck.
The owner of the truck was Ralph Hall. “Ralfy,” as he was known was an odd jobber. I don’t know if he graduated high school but he sure had a good grasp of history: “It’s a crying shame. The colored people fight and die for this country just like the rest of us but they always get the shitty end of the stick.” Thank you Mr. Hall and welcome to the movement. The truck needed some mending before it would be ready for the long trip. First, we needed to dump the last load of household debris that Ralfy had removed from someone’s attic. (He couldn’t afford the tipping fee at the dump so he left the refuse in the truck.) The truck had failed inspection but that was easily overcome by the purchase of a new right front tire. Ralfy changed the oil and added grease to the transmission gear case. The heater worked but not the blower. I solved that one by reconnecting the switch and the power wires under the dash. A new set of wiper blades and we were in business.
Loading the truck was not as much of a chore as it could have been because we had the manpower. Let’s call it “People Power.” Bruce supervised the loading. He lashed the boxes to the cleats on the inside walls and to each other leaving a space just big enough for one man to get some sleep while the other two were in the cab. He also demonstrated his artistic talents by hand painting “CHRISTMAS PROJECT ‘65” on the doors. That concerned me because it identified us as a target. (The wire services had picked up the story so there was a good chance the road blockers in Mississippi knew we were coming.) But pride overcame prudence and we went with it. I was also concerned about the reliability of the old truck on such a long trip so I went back to Rahway and paid a visit to JJ’s younger brother.
I borrowed back the tool chest that I had given him at the time I signed over ownership of the Ford in the summer of ‘63. I had gotten only a couple letters from JJ since he left for Hawaii at the end of the summer in ‘64 and they were not very informative. I surmised that he had dropped out after the first semester but he didn’t say why. He was working but he didn’t say at what. The letters sometimes contained photographs: one of him with a motorcycle, another of him with the sun rising (or was it setting?) between his spread legs. His brother could add little to what I knew but did say that the family was disappointed – and worried. I put the tool box in the trunk of my borrowed car and headed back to Monmouth County.
The final preparations were made during the coming days and then it was time to leave. There was a small crowd of supporters and well-wishers to see us off and several photographers to record the event. The plan was to drive straight through (the way college boys do to get to Daytona Beach for spring break.) If we averaged 50 miles an hour we could cover the thousand plus miles in about twenty-four hours. None of us appreciated how far a thousand miles is. I’m not sure any of us brought a change of clothes or a toothbrush. Things went smoothly for the first few hundred miles. We stopped at a mall in Virginia and I did a tune-up in the parking lot while the guys chowed down on some mall food. The truck seemed to run better with new plugs, points, rotor and condenser but perhaps that was just my expectation. We started to head west and the forecast was for snow and hazardous driving conditions in Tennessee. We decided to stay in a motel till the storm passed. I checked us in, made friendly with the desk clerk then said, “By the way we got a black man with us. That’s not a problem is it?” He looked at me as if he didn’t understand then came back, “No. If you can stand him I can stand him.” There were only two beds: a single and a double. There was no question that Bruce, the senior man, got the single. Jeremiah and I bedded down in the double. The lights were turned off, there was silence and then Jeremiah piped up, “Funny Tuna, you and me ending up like this.” (Jeremiah called me “Tuna” because he had heard my roommate, the self-indulgent one, do so after he heard the guys from Kraft refer to me as “Star Kist” during a visit.)
The storm was not as bad as predicted and the roads were passable by the time we resumed our journey the next morning. We continued in a south-westerly direction through Tennessee and were just north of Memphis by afternoon. I was sleeping in the back when the side doors opened and I saw Bruce back-lighted against the low angled sun: “We got trouble.” The hood was up. There was water under, around and in the engine compartment. The cap was off the radiator and then I saw what I hoped not to see: water seeping out of an almost invisible crack in the block a couple of inches above the oil pan. Seeing the final line of the story I knew how the earlier chapters read. The engine overheated in the balmy southern Tennessee air while the truck was going up a shallow but long stretch of incline. The guys stopped when they saw the steam and made the mistake of removing the radiator cap (there was no pressure release valve) which sent a geyser into the air and under the hood. They then went to a nearby farmhouse and got a bucket of water which they poured into the radiator before the block had a chance to cool. Cold water, hot engine, something had to give: in this case the thinnest and weakest part of the block.
We were at least two hundred miles from our destination. There was no way the truck was going to make it. We would be lucky just to get it off the highway. Bruce drove and we all anxiously watched the temperature gauge rise with each mile. I spotted a plant nursery with a big gravel parking area and for no rational reason of which I was aware said, “Let’s pull in there.” A man dressed in a khaki shirt and pants and wearing a straw hat came out as soon as we stopped: “I’m Mr. Liberty. Can I help you?” I thought to myself, “Liberty? You got to be kidding!” But I kept my composure and explained, “Were transporting a load down to Greenville and the engine block cracked. We’ve got to transfer the load to a rental before we can continue.” “Greenville? Mississippi?” “Yes, sir.” Mr. Liberty looked at Bruce’s lettering on the truck door then at us: “Carl Carlson in Memphis will rent you a truck. It’s just a few miles down the road. They’ll want to know where you’re going but don’t tell them why. Folks is kind of radical down here.” “Radical? You mean reactionary,” I thought – but I didn’t correct him. I just said, “Yes sir. Thank you sir.” Mr. Liberty continued, “You can pull round the back to make your transfer. It will be too late and you’ll be too tired to get back on the road when you finish. Better to get some sleep first. I’ll clear some tables in the potting shed. You can lay down there.”
We limped into Memphis and rented a large box truck from the Carlson agency, got some take out to eat and drove back to Mr. Liberty’s greenhouse to make the transfer. What was done quickly by a dozen well-rested people back in New Jersey had to be undone and redone by three tired individuals over many hours. Mr. Liberty was right. By the time we finished it was too late and we were too exhausted to resume our journey without sleeping first. Everybody had been handling the stress well considering that we were spending a second night on the road and were still about five hours away from our destination. We had lost our truck but our goods were now in a new and better vehicle. We had eaten. We had a place to spend the night. We were alive. The last circumstance I did not take for granted. Merger Evers had been murdered in Mississippi in June of ‘63. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had been murdered in Mississippi one year later to the month. Viola Liuzzo and James Reeb had been murdered in separate incidents just across the border in Alabama nine months ago. No, I didn’t take being alive for granted at all. Apparently, neither did Jeremiah. I suspect that like his sixth century BC namesake, he foresaw death and destruction but unlike the profit he envisioned it coming down on him personally.
He sat up quickly the way zombies do in horror movies and began to talk incoherently. He wasn’t talking to us. Even in the dim light I could see that he was staring straight ahead. Bruce, who was sleeping on the table next to him, eased him back down with soothing words the way a parent might do with a child who has had a bad dream. Jeremiah was silent, motionless for several minutes and then he was up again. This continued throughout the night. It was like he was operating on some internal program and we were not even present. Light finally came. We got up and made ready to go. Jeremiah seemed better but he was far from well. He would not allow our eyes to meet, he would not converse with me and he kept mumbling to himself. All this and we hadn’t crossed into Mississippi.
Mississippi was no place for a man who did not have his wits about him. As Mr. Liberty reminded us there were a lot of “radicals” down there. Those radicals had killed several people that we knew of (and as would be discovered later many more that we did not know about.) In order to survive you had to be able to see danger coming before it caught up with you. In his present state Jeremiah could not do that. He could get himself in trouble and compromise our mission. I bought him a bus ticket back north and left him at the terminal. He did not argue with my decision. Once back in the truck Bruce and I both felt a sense of relief. As we headed south it dawned on me that what happened to our truck may have been fortuitous – “a blessing in disguise” so to speak. The men who were enforcing the blockade were looking for a black truck with New Jersey plates and “Christmas project ‘65” painted on the doors. What would pass them on the two-lane blacktop that augered deep into the delta was a green and yellow truck with Tennessee plates and a Carl Carlson logo on the sides. The sense of relief was growing by the minute.
We arrived at Strike City Christmas morning. There was no cheering, no celebration, just some weary looking families with shoulders hunched against the mild but persistent wind. The unloading began immediately. These were focused, determined people who did not indulge in exchanging pleasantries. Bruce and I were shown around the grounds and given a status report by a white man about my age who introduced himself as “Tom” and who I later learned had quit Harvard to work along with the strikers. We were there about two hours when a car with “United Press International” on the door pulled into the compound. The driver was a middle-aged white man with a 35mm camera around his neck. The other man was – Jeremiah.
Jeremiah had recovered from whatever was troubling him the night before in Mr. Liberty’s greenhouse. He exchanged the ticket I had purchased for him for one to Jackson, Mississippi. He went to the UPI office and told them he was an organizer of the Christmas Project who gotten separated from his companions when we split up to avoid the Klan. What to do? Should I contradict Jeremiah’s version to the reporter and sully the image of the project or should I back his story with my own lie? I punted. “The last time I saw Jeremiah was in the Memphis bus station. I don’t know what happened after that.” The reporter looked dubious but bought the story enough so he did not ask further questions. Jeremiah was back in the fold, not welcomed back, but back nevertheless.
We enjoyed a Christmas dinner of fried chicken, a variety of vegetables and plenty of Pepsi. We talked. We sang folk songs, real ones, not political ballots, with the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. We sang some religious songs but we didn’t sing “We Shall Overcome.” Toward evening we were shown to our quarters: a 12 x 12 surplus tent with three metal bunks made up with clean white sheets and handmade patch quilts. We, Jeremiah especially, slept soundly that night.
In the morning we were introduced to a man named Isaac who lived in town but who acted as an advisor to the strikers. He recounted the events that led up to the founding of Strike City. The walkout had started over a wage dispute but the more Isaac talked the more it became obvious that the farm workers’ grievances were multifaceted and long-standing. What it came down to was the desire to be recognized and treated like human beings. But there was a contemporary element as well. “In a couple, well maybe a few, years the hourly wage for the strikers won’t matter because there won’t be any jobs. They’re going to be replaced by machines that will cultivate the rows and harvest the cotton.” So that was it: the workers needed to find another way of making a living after centuries of chopping cotton. I suspect many of the fifty-odd residents of Strike City were not aware that the loss of traditional jobs was among the hardships they faced down the road.
Isaac left and after lunch I noticed a white-haired white man dressed in a white shirt and tan pants taking pictures from just outside the five acres occupied by Strike City. The residents ignored him but I walked over and started to talk to him. The man explained that he was “documenting...the communist infiltration” in the state of his birth and intended to send the photographic proof to his representatives in Washington, “... so that something can be done before it’s too late.” My mind had to replay what I had just heard to grasp the meaning of his words: “Communist... too late... something needs to be done.” Even after I repeated them to myself I had trouble reconciling what he had said with what I had seen and heard in the short time I had been here. I fought the impulse to launch into a litany of denials: “they’re not... it’s not...” Instead I asked a question:
“What makes you think they’re communists?”
“Got to be. No loyal American would leave his employer and go off on his own like that. It’s un-American – and ungrateful.”
“How do you figure it’s ungrateful? They say they’re not being paid a living wage?”
“Nonsense! Wages is only part of what they get. We rent them the cabins they live in for practically nothing and we give them the propane for cooking for free. We give them credit when they can’t pay. You can’t get a better deal anywhere else.”
Earlier I had heard about the wages for cotton pickers not only from Isaac but from several of the strikers: three dollars, not for an hour’s work but for a day that began at sunrise and ended at sunset. The propane was included with the rental of the cabin but there was no electricity or running water. Credit was extended cheerfully – and expected to be paid back with double and, in some cases, triple interest: I could have responded with all that but why confuse the discussion with facts? So I countered with a statement about personal freedom or some such abstract concept and we continued our dialogue for several more minutes never really arguing but not communicating either. I think we were both glad when we called it to a halt. The gentleman took one more picture and we parted company.
The next morning we said our goodbyes to the people who had been our hosts. I walked to the general store which served as a meeting place for local blacks who were politically minded. It was furnished with a rocker and three straight back chairs placed around a kerosene stove. There was a counter made of rough-sawn boards. The shelves behind it held three cartons of cigarettes, some canned goods and a few assorted dry goods. The jukebox was broken but the pinball machine worked. I felt like I was on hallowed ground. The first meeting of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union had taken place here. The store had the only phone within miles and I used it to make a call back home. The project workers had been taking turns monitoring the phone in our apartment twenty-four hours a day. Elliott has been the most diligent and I had kept him informed of our progress. I told him about Jeremiah’s crackup and his miraculous recovery. Elliott didn’t seem upset or even surprised: “That boy sure is resourceful.
Our truck was still behind Mr. Liberty’s greenhouse and I decided to donate it to the people of Strike City. I reached out to Ralfy and he agreed to sign it over for the very reasonable sum of $150 to be paid with Christmas project funds. We drove the rental to Memphis and paid the charges. After a good meal in a “black only” restaurant and another night on the potting tables in Mr. Liberty’s greenhouse he drove us to the bus station. There was not a lot of conversation on the ride back home. Jeremiah was subdued and self-absorbed. All of us slept a good deal of the time. We arrived in Newark around dark on the second day and changed buses for the trip back to Monmouth County. We were met at the bus stop by one of the reporters who insisted on my writing an account of my conversation with the gentleman with the camera. It appeared in print the next day. We had been gone six days on a trip that we expected to take two or three at the most. But it didn’t matter because we had accomplished what we set out to do and we were still alive.