Freedom Comin' and It Won't Be Long

Sunday, May 18
David James here

Here is a link to my Freedom Summer '08 Resource Page, entitled Freedom Summer 08 Miscellany, where I hope to put lots more stuff. But for now, on the page are MP3s of Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round, Ain't Scared of Nobody 'Cause I Want My Freedom, Freedom Calypso Chant, and Been Down Into the South.

Also on the site is the sheet music for Been Down Into the South, Freedom, Freedom Rider, I'm Gonna Do What the Spirit Says Do, and Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom.

This is what I've been doing instead of going to church in Selma this morning. Doing this for my friends is my way of "going to church."
Yesterday we marched the path of the 1965 March 7 "Bloody Sunday" March, from Brown Chapel to over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the marchers under the leadership of John Lewis and Hosea Williams got the hell beat out of them by Alabama troopers and "posse." The day started out with the successful acquisition of a digital recorder to replace my mini-disc machine that started skipping while playing back material I had recorded. I'll attend to that when I get back to South Bend, and try to rescue the material off the discs. There was a Radio Shack (Black owned, and she knew her stuff) right by the Pettus Bridge; couldn't be beat. While there I got some blank CDs to surprise everyone today with a recording of the four Freedom Songs that you who are not on this trip can hear on the Resource Page (link above).
The real phenomenon of the day was the Selma tour with civil rights Veteran Joanne Bland. She was eight years old when she went on the first '65 march, and has been "in it" ever since. She it was who started the National Voting Rights Museum on Water Ave. in sight of the bridge.
Thanks Les Lamon and Monica Tetzlaf for connecting us with this astounding person. She took us through the "projects," where she was iving then, virtually unchanged since '65; she talked to us on the steps of the Brown Chapel, conducted us through the Voting Rights Museum, and sent us two-by-two over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, singing all the way over. You know, every time I write on this blasted blog about a person whom we've met, I describe one or another amazing person we have met. This is not starry-eyed idealism, children, I am sixty-one years old and I hope able to spot a winner when I meet one. These people are winners. They won their fights by being the people they are, and doing things the right way. I see no monument to "Bull" Connor or Sheriff Clark, but there's one to Amelia Boynton, whom he beat nearly to death; there's one to John Lewis, and there's one to Hosea Williams. Joanne Bland is a walking monument. You'll be lucky to meet her and hear her talk. try and listen to the audio files that will be at the IUSB Civil Rights Heritage Center. She's "dead on."
There was one particularly interesting project of the Voting Rights Museum that I must comment on. To pariphrase our guide, the place was dedicated to remembering and gathering the histories of the "forgotton people" of the Selma movement--the ordinary people who marched, cooked for and sheltered the marchers, made signs gave medical treatment--were "there" in one way or another. There's a whole wall of messages from some of these people, and I'll try to put up a photograph of a couple of these messages for you maybe this evening. This kind of thing is what I'd love to see happen to the Natatorium project in South Bend.
Five of us got a glimpse of what it was like to be captured and sent into slavery from Africa, down the street from the Voting Rights Museum at the Civil War and Slavery Museum. Along with some older tourists, we were made to hang our heads and blindly obey, as we were herded into a boat for our journey to the south and terrorized by slave masters. These friends were very theatrical and dramatic, and have clearly accomplished a lot with a very low budget. It was a real "experience."
All right, enough for now. We will soon shove off for Montgomery and, I am sure, some more amazing experiences. Lemme try and get a photo or two up, one of us at the Brown Chapel, and maybe one of the messages on the wall of the remembrance in the VRM. If you see them at the top of this post, you'll know I've been successfully
Yours Truly, still in the fight
David James

More Selma Pics

What would the Movement be without love?

Many of the veterans in the Civil Rights Movement adopted non-violence as a strategy in the battle for voting rights and desegration. Those who were most affected by the non-violent Movement, such as John Lewis, for example, described non-violence as a way of life, beyond any mere strategy to win the attention of a sympathetic audience. Lewis built the rest of his life around the principles of non-violence; Satyagraha is one of those principles--steadfastness of truth--and redemptive suffering, the idea that we are made pure through pain. Possibly the most affective principle is that of agape love, which Dr. T spoke of a couple of posts ago.



Unconditional love. A love that continues no matter how much a person is hurt by another. The veterans of the Civil Rights Movement who adopted the principles of non-violence as a life style understood that love would be the catalyst for change. Love for our enemies is a great sacrifice in that we must be willing to sacrifice some of our own pride for the sake of unity. Unconditional love seems impractical in this day when too many of us must do what we have to do to "get ours."



While it seems that unconditional love is an impossibility at times, imagine what the non-violent brothers and sisters must have experienced as they faced their enemies and they were beaten repeatedly by the very same people the veterans intended to win over with love. Yet they deliberately and intentionally met their attackers as they knew it was necessary for the nation to see the reality of racism and to turn their attackers into brothers.



This must have taken unbelievable strength. It is impossible in the minds of many of us today to imagine the kind of courage it takes to achieve this kind of love for those who hate us. It is hard enough for many us to love one another. It seems that it only takes one moment of weakness to destroy a friendship. Without the possibility of forgiveness, especially when it is sought by the offending party, then the relationship is superficial. Each person would not willing to be themselves, for fear that the friendship would end in the wake of an exhorting word or angry look or even a difference in opinion. The relationship would exist only on a superficial level and very little or no growth would result between its members.



The movement would have been impossible if the veterans were only willing to hold superficial relationships. The threat of death would easily crumble the fight for justice and reduce the battlecry for freedom to a barely audible whisper. If those who worked in the Movement were not willing to be real in the relationships they had with each other, why in the world would the rest of America care about the ideals they were risking their lives for?



"That's all I have to say about that..."

Selma, AL

43 years ago, on March 7, marchers began the day preparing to travel by foot to Montgomery, the Capitol, to protest the killing of Jimmy Lee Jackson and to demand voting rights. Sheriff Jim Clark and his posse awaited them at the foot of the Emund Pettus Bridge--on the only route out of Selma. As the marchers, led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, crested the bridge, the first image they saw was that of State Troopers, many on horseback, who formed a wide crescent at the foot of the bridge. The horror that the marchers felt at the moment of attack by the troopers is unimaginable. Even as Ms. Joanne Bland described her experience as a 12 year old, we could feel the pain and the fear she experienced. No one can take that away from her, it is hers forever, and she must deal with it every day as Selma is her home where the Edmund Pettus Bridge looms over the center of this small town.

The Freedom Summer 08 class marched over this bride as part of her tour. The tension and emotion universally affected the students as they reached they themselves crested the Bridge and peared over to the foot of the Bridge where Clark's posse met the original marchers. This experience is one I am sure they will never forget as I have not been able to myself.

Selma

Joanne Bland and the women of Selma are on my mind today. We had a wonderful tour from Ms. Bland, who had a story at every corner during our walking tour. Kris is featured in two photos. One is a serious photo at the marker for Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister who was killed while supporting the movement. I send this out to our friend Dale Gibson, also a Unitarian, who spoke to us about the South Bend movement before we left. We remembered him and also Jimmy Lee Jackson, who was killed at a voting rights march in Marion, Alabama, which we passed on the way to Selma yesterday. The other photo of Kris shows him hamming it up in the Towns family restaurant with great graffiti style art on the wall.

We visited the Voting Rights Museum and walked over the Edmund Pettus bridge, hand in hand. Ms. Bland, who walked over the bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965, chose Dane to be John Lewis and Shenaa to be Hosea Williams. We often hear about them, but not so often the women of the movement. Today we were privileged to hear from Ms. Bland, who told us of her grandmother who took her to civil rights meetings in the 1960s. I'm also remembering Amelia Boynton, a voting rights activist who was active with her husband, Samuel Boynton in the 1930s right through the 1960s and beyond. There is a room in the Voting Rights Museum set aside for the women, black and white, who fought for their voting rights. Cassandra posed for a beautiful photo there. Another woman of Freedom Summer 2008, Liz stood next to the window in the museum that looks out onto the Edmund Pettus bridge.

Couple More...

Faith in the Photos

Here are some pictures...finally

Memphis is now a cherished memory for us, this picture is fun as it features the people I am growing to love and respect deeply.







Today, in Jackson, we visited the office of NAACP
Field Secretary and martyr, Medgar Evers. Just
a poignant reminder that 45 years ago today,
Medgar Evers went to work, not knowing that
he had a mere 27 days left to live on this earth.









There is so much fun in this group but the most enjoyment I
get (and will never forget) is the joy on their faces as they are
affected by courageous veterans such as Hollis Watkins.

Been Down into the South

Friday, May 16, 08
David James here

Photograph by Sara Jane Lowe, of the crowd of us singing in Hollis Watkins's office. See below to listen to the song.

When I was growing up, and in the '60s, or on through my activist life, I'm not sure I would ever have said I miss Mississippi. The place held for me the image of too much fear, too much baggage of murder, racism, and you-name-it all around hell for progressive Blacks and whites. This evening, in Selma, Alabama, I can honestly say I ALREADY MISS MISSISSIPPI!

It has wormed its way into my heart. I love the people we met. I love the friends we made. I'd love to go back again. Today, former Governor William Winter said it was a new day in Mississippi, and he was proud of the race relations, proud of how much the political system in Mississippi has opened up and become more reflective of the racial and class population demographics. Of course the state is still dreadfully poor, but at least you've a start when people of the quality of those we have met are holding office and planning for the state's future.

This morning we covered a march route followed by Jackson State University students and others after the June ’63 murder of Medgar Evers. We spent some time at the Masonic Temple/NAACP office just beyond the university, where Medgar worked and where his funeral was held, then marched—or more properly put for our group—strode, strung-straggled toward the State Capitol, passing by the very important COFO—Council of Federated Organizations—office on Lynch Street.

We drove—or rather Tony drove and we rode—to the Southern Echo office, where two—at least—very skilled activists from the SNCC/CORE days are still at work doing leadership training for indigenous activists, and other great work in Mississippi. Their home page is: http://www.southernecho.org/
check 'em out.

Hero #1: Jimmy Travis: Has transformed his activities from the civil rights movement to the human rights movement and HIV-AIDS education.

Hero #2: Hollis Watkins – Says, communicate with people, if it’s about sharing it’s about life experience – cause a positive experience to make the person you’re communicating with take one step beyond where they are to make the world a better place. In order to do that we have to share our life experiences.

In answer to Dane’s “most important issue question” [Dane has been asking everyone we have interviewed what he or she thought were the most important issues in which the young people of today should be involved] – Watkins answer was the issue they [the activists of today] define for themselves. Determine what you (they) want to start with – find someone else who’s interested and move the process. See how it has the interconnections with the other important issues.

Jimmy Travis’s answer – come back to Mississippi in march to the conference, last one was Mar. 27-29, 2008 – they will have the DVDs of presentations and workshops of this last one available through Hollis Watkins and Southern Echo.

Then the fun began in earnest. Mr. Watkins feels the singing is very important to the movement, so we sang, as an opener, Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round. He came back with the SNCC adaptation of Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song, Freedom Coming and It Won’t Be Long. Then he taught us one I have not heard before, Been Down Into the South. I had the good fortune of recording it (and having no glitches) so HERE it is if you are interested, right from the conference room of Southern Echo! Hollis Watkins, Jimmy Travis and the Freedom Summer 08 Singing Chorus (that is, all of us). That's what we're doing in the

We left the Southern Echo office and drove to Schimmel’s Restaurant in Jackson where we had a wonderful lunch (best coffee—besides mine—that I’ve had in a long time) and an encounter with former Governor of Mississippi, William Winter.

The Measure of our Days: Writings of William F. Winter. Ed. by Andrew P. Mullins, Jr.

The Governor lists among his most important accomplishments that he worked for a strong bi-racial coalition from '65 forward until '79 when he gained the governorship. He is proudest of his work for education – he established full day kindergarten in Mississippi. “Break the cycle of cultural deprivation . . . get the children prepared intellectually and physically . . . to absorb the knowledge. We have to attract more of our best and brightest to the classroom and give them support in the classroom to transform the social background of the children.”

The Governor described his political career in the Mississippi legislature as a “moderate” who managed to avoid being run out of the state during the civil rights era, and later during his tenure as governor founded an institute for racial reconciliation. The bus has been buzzing with controversy since, over whether he should be judged for not speaking out unequivocally during that time. But he maintained that he swallowed a lot in order to retain his political career and eventually become able to do what he wanted, what he thought was right. He described a process whereby the virulent racists would box he and other moderates in a corner where they were forced to support segregationist programs or expose themselves, and be run out of office.

He said, of those who fled the cities and established private schools, “People remove themselves from the opportunity to associate with people who are different from them.” Nicely put. “If Obama can be elected it will change the whole paradigm of race relations in the United States.”

"Well, have you been to the jail?"

Well, have you been to the jail?

Certainly, Lord,

Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!

These are the words to a Freedom Song and we have now seen several jail cells on this trip. Mohatma Gandhi's strategy was to fill the jail cells of India with those who had committed civil disobedience to show their dissatisfaction with the colonial system. The civil rights movement sought to fill the jails too, with those who violated segregation laws and orders not to peacefully assemble, etc. Every civil rights movement leader is proud of his or her time in jail during the movement. As Hollis Watkins said today, he was "blessed with the opportunity to go to jail" during the time of the sit-ins in Jackson, Mississippi. We have seen a jail and a prison on this trip and replicas of jail cells in civil rights museums. We were also invited by an African American sheriff to tour the Indianola police station and the white deputy took our picture. Dane playfully took my mug shot inside the station. A lot has changed in Mississippi. I was not blessed with the opportunity to go to jail for obeying a higher law as Martin Luther King did in Birmingham and as Hollis Watkins did in Jackson. But I was blessed with being able to meet Hollis Watkins, now for the third time, and to bring a wonderful group of IU South Bend students to him. Been down into the South? Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord.

Real Love

You give me love, love, love, crazy love. What is love? Diane Nash, former SNCC organizer and civil rights goddess, gave us the word Agape when she described the soul force that powered the Civil Rights movement. I feel that greater love, that love of God that is also love of neighbor (and self) in the Civil Rights Movement veterans we meet. They are powerful. They overcame fear because of anger at injustice, but also for a greater love, and they invite us, by their example, to do the same. Charles McLaurin, Margaret Kibbee, Margaret Block, David Jordan, L.C. Dorsey, Charles Evers, Hollis Watkins, and Jimmy Travis. Thank you. I especially felt this spiritual power today with Hollis Watkins. He overcame fear at Parchman prison and he works today, so many years later, to carry on the legacy of the civil rights movement to us and to young people throughout the South, teaching them the organizing tools to tackle the issues in their communities, issues like lack of investment in education and environmental racism and classism. William Winter is not a Civil Rights Movement veteran, but his Institute for Racial Reconciliation is part of the work of love too, 'cause we can't move on without truth and reconconciliation, otherwise known as forgiveness. His holding up of his grandchildren's integrated public school classroom in present-day Oxford, Mississippi, with quality public education, participated in by all classes and races, is part of Medgar's dream, of King's dream. Keep the faith, brothers and sisters. There is a greater Love.

-Dr. T

Ticking away...SPOONING!

I'm sitting in my hotel room right now in Selma just relaxing. The last two days have been go go go and anytime for rest has been spent exploring. Yesterday we met David Jordan who is a Senator in the state of Mississippi and the Mayor of Greenwood. I wish we could of explored downtown some but we had to head off to Jackson for an appointment with Charles Evers and to go tour the Medgar Evers house. It was soo sad as we were walking down the street we saw a bunch of dogs playing in an what looked to be an abandoned house and one had a broken leg so Dane used my phone to get in touch with animal control and when they got there they told us that the mama dog had had her leg broken for seven years and they call her hop-a-long. Its like WTHeck why can't someone take care of her! I hate animal abuse. Hmmm I guess I should get back to Freedom Summer stuff. Meeting Mr. Evers was a very interesting guy and I thought it was cool he let us say stuff on the air. We were almost late to our dinner place but it turned out okay because our speaker was late too. Once we checked into the hotel for the evening and I unsuccessfully tried to find Grey's, Justine, Calvin and I decided to go to downtown Jackson. Yea its a bit more of a walk than the map lead me to believe. Once we made it back I passed out and woke up in time for us to head out and do a march to the NAACP offices. For once my quirky habit of always having a map came in handy when we started going the wrong direction but we got turned around and made it on time. Afterwards a group of us marched/ran to the old state capitol to complete the original marchers path. That was fun than we went and got to meet/sing with Jimmy Travis and Hollis Watkins. For lunch we had the honor of dining with former Governor Willie Winter who was really fun to talk with. I really wish I could become a politician but too many obstacles for me to overcome. Well I'm really exhausted and need some spoooning so Night!

Katie and Cassandra (aka spoon) here...

We are sitting here waiting here in Selma Mississippi, we are just reflecting on our day, getting ready to get some food. We have been talking about our meeting with the former Governor of MS, while we were in Jackson. He had some inspiring things to say about his racial reconciliation work and civil rights movement teaching. So ya, we are planning a massive spooning party on campus as soon as we get back just to give everyone a heads up!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PEACE....lol......spoon and katie......

Everybody's Got Pictures...

but not me.... For the second time in two years, I have the privilege to talk to my heroes. Real people telling real stories of organizing scared people living in the South to vote. These organizers never left anyone behind; once Charles McLaurin walked into a town for the first time to begin organizing the people there, he was determined to work until the work was done and Medgar Evers' dream was realized. Today his work continues but in a different form. His time is spent talking to students, sharing his life and laying it all down for us to pick up and organize in our communities, working for the change needed today.

The work for the Civil Rights veterans always included, every day--every waking moment, the fear of death. In Mississippi, examples of raw courage are embodied in known figures such as Medgar Evers but also in those organizers and civil rights workers who do not have a street named after them but are every bit the heroes as the martyr from Jackson. We consider the motivation for the actions of those workers, even white students who journeyed away from the comfort of their homes to the gritty South to register voters. We on this trip wonder why the volunteers would continue to work even after the disappearance of the three workers as Freedom Summer 1964. How could one do the work of the Civil Rights Movement when, on any given day, any given worker could be targeted for a savage example of Southern white hatred?

The only possible answer I can provide is that the veterans, the tireless workers of the Movement possessed the DREAM. They did the work to achieve Medgar's Dream. They were active in pursuing voters to gain political and, ultimately, economic power in Missississppi. The testimony of their actions in the face of very tangible fear demonstrate their understanding that they are just the worker, a body, a resource. Southern Hate can kill the body but IT CANNOT KILL THE DREAM.

They dream is still not dead. There is a new Movement in the air...

Photos from Wednesday May 14, 08

David James here with some photos:

This is the grave site of Fannie Lou Hamer, one of my civil rights heroes, and her husband Perry "Pap" Hamer in Ruleville. That jail was tiny. It was a holding cell in Drew, MS where Charles McLaurin and 13 others (!) were stashed overnight by the Sunflower County cops. We figured it to be about 15 feet by maybe 25 feet, but it was divided into three cells. The group photo, also from Ruleville, is of us at the Sunflower County Freedom Project in Ruleville, with high schoo student program members. It's to better prepare them for college. More in yesterday's post.

Couple Shots