"I went down to the Crossroads"

David James here
Wednesday, May 14, Day 4

That's me at "The Crossroads," the subject of the Robert Johnson song, in which he allegedly went to the intersection (now numbered) of US Hwy 49 and MS HWY 161 and sold his soul to the devil in return for blues prowess. He did get blues prowess in his short (26 year old) life. You can see me calling, but I don't think he answered.

Margaret Block and Charles McLaurin spent the whole day with us. To have them for the whole day was most fortunate; we had them for eleven power-house hours of knowledge, stories, songs, poems, inspirational conversation and fun. We started in Indianola with “Mac,” leaving our motel for downtown, and an imposing courthouse where Fannie Lou Hamer first tried to register to vote. McLaurin knew everybody in town, and the theme of his presentation was the words of Medgar Evers, who predicted that with enough of the right work the public officials could not just be fought, but be replaced with the people’s choices—the people this time around being the whole body politic. And there they were, Black police chief and Black woman assistant chief, black mayor and alder persons, the same situation repeated in many Black-majority political entities in the Delta. He listed, I think, six Black women mayors of Delta towns. Indianola, for the uninitiated, is also home to B. B. King, who has a club there—in addition to his place in Memphis—and there is the beginning of a B. B King museum. His face is all over town.
We visited Amzie Moore’s home in Cleveland, a place described by both as the first place everyone went when they came into the Delta. He was, in Charles McLaurin’s words, “the Czar.” He knew everyone, he was everywhere from the ‘50s, when he was president of the local branch of the NAACP, to the ‘60’s, when he often housed as many as 12 SNCC organizers in his very small, one-storey house. When Bob Moses came to the Delta, Amzie took him in and the waves of SNCC workers who followed. Moore died in 1982. Charles McLaurin was proud of the new historical marker in front of the house, and the effort to have it declared a landmark, restored and renewed.
We visited the site of the drugstore of the “Czar” of Clarksdale (a large town), Aaron Henry, known as the “Grand Old Man” of civil rights. Henry it was who ran for governor of Mississippi in the 1963 “Freedom Vote” mock election, and was active in the reform of the Democratic Party. While in Clarksdale we visited “Ground Zero,” the home of the Blues Museum, and Tony the Driver stopped so I could get a picture of “The Crossroads” where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil for the blues prowess.

We visited Mound Bayou, and an old cemetery filled with the graves of former slaves. Drew, where a friendly town worker opened the door of the tiny jail, about the size of my motel room where McLaurin and 14 others were incarcerated for a night by Sunflower (!) county cops. We were through Marks, Tutwiler, Sumner, Webb, Parchman, home of the famous Parchman Farm, now Mississippi State Penitentiary. We stopped at Dockery’s Plantation, on the very muddy Sunflower River outside Cleveland before Ruleville, where Charlie Patton and many others including Robert Johnson, “Pop” Staples, Howling Wolf and others worked from time to time.
Of course I took many photographs at each location. These will be posted in one form or another soon.
The most important stop for me was in Ruleville, at the burial site and memorial to Fannie Lou Hamer and her husband Perry “Pap” Hamer. She was one of the greatest of the Movement singing and speaking voices in addition to leading a life of total dedication to others and to the Movement’s goals. It was hard to hold back emotions there. I led us in “We’ve Been ‘Buked.”

We've been 'buked and we've been scorned,
We've been talked about sure's you're born
But we'll never turn back
No, we'll never turn back

We have walked through the shadows of death
We had to walk all by ourselves
But we'll never turn back
No, we'll never turn back

We have served our time in jail
With no money for to go our bail
But we'll never turn back
No, we'll never turn back

We have hung our heads and cried
Cried for those like Lee who died
Died for you, and died for me
Died for the cause of equality
But we'll never turn back
No, we'll never turn back
Until we've all been freed
and we have equality
No, we’ll never turn back.
by Bertha Gober

This the freedom song that has my vote far and away for the “most moving.” This song is like “We Shall Overcome” in its ability to embody the goals and sorrows of the civil rights movement. Sometimes, I’m the luckiest person on earth, to be singing that song in the company of Margaret Block and Charles McLaurin, not to mention the entire Freedom Summer 08 class.
All along the route it was stories, stories, stories. I have many of them recorded. Margaret led us in many songs and recited about half a dozen of her poems on the themes of freedom politics and the hypocrisies of life. Charles McLaurin’s stories were tragically comic, but illustrated the troubles that the civil rights workers landed in, their courage, their defiance of the White Citizen’s Council’s terrorisms, their determination to see a new day in Mississippi. I’ll not forget his many imitations of “Mr. Charlie,” the personification of the white racist to whom even a Black person holding a pencil was a mortal threat to the “Southern Way of Life.” Ferchrissake!
Finally, passed Ruleville we visited the Sunflower County Freedom Project, spending an inspirational evening among high school students of the program who put on a play that involved us, and fed us some great grub.
What a day! Photos and sound bites at the earliest opportunity.