A poignant and important memory of what it was like to register black voters in the South in the early '60s. Freedom Summer and 2004 by Meteor Blades Sat Mar 20th, 2004 at 07:02:05 GMT Today at the Los Angeles Convention Center, I registered 78 voters at a swearing-in ceremony for newly naturalized American citizens. There was a singer from Namibia, a dressmaker from Myanmar, a mathematician from Egypt, a lawyer from Argentina, a nurse from Iran, a professional poker player from Guatemala, a chemist from Korea, a laborer from the Philippines, a computer programmer from Sri Lanka, a student from Romania, a mechanic from Lebanon, a homemaker from Honduras, a taxi driver from Eritrea. As I looked at the colorful diversity of Americans in the queue in front of our table, I began thinking about the first time I registered voters. It was Freedom Summer in Mississippi, 40 years ago in June. In the small town of the South where I was born and lived until I was 9 years old, white people called us “red ******s.” In truth, our family was a mix of Scottish, African-American and Seminole. Most of us were light-skinned enough to “pass white” when we rode up to Americus or Valdosta. This deception got us into places we couldn’t otherwise have gone, like front row center at the movie theater instead of the “coloreds-only” balcony. Back home, however, where we were known, it was another story. Nobody in my family voted. Nobody on our side of town did. They couldn’t pass the trumped-up “literacy test,” nor pay the poll tax. Most wouldn’t even set foot in the county clerk’s office. Even attempting to register to vote was met with humiliation, intimidation and the barely veiled threat of retaliation. So, year after year, white men were elected to every office from sheriff to senator, each of them dedicated to ensuring that Mr. Jim Crow continued to rule the land. With philosophical help from the Supreme Court and more direct applications by the Klan, they had succeeded since the notorious “compromise” of 1876. All that was about to change. I signed up for Freedom Summer on March 20, 1964, the same day I got my official university acceptance. I lied about my age. The Freedom Summer organizers at the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality wanted volunteers who were at least 18. I was barely 17. In June, we all went to Ohio for training in voter registration and non-violent resistance. Most of the 550 or so activists who showed up were white, and most had never been in the South. Although everyone knew about the assassination of Medgar Evers, most were unaware that other blacks who had themselves registered or tried to register others in the past three years had been murdered in Mississippi. By the time my little contingent arrived in Jackson, on June 25, three Freedom Summer volunteers – one black, two white - had gone missing. Slain by cowards, as the whole nation was soon to learn. Every day, two of us went door to door cajoling black men and women to gather up the courage to come with us and demand their constitutional right to cast a ballot. We didn’t get many takers. Some people wouldn’t let us in their house. Others wouldn’t let us on their property. They were scared, and justifiably so. After the summer, most of us were going back where we came from and they were staying in Mississippi, no longer officially counted as 3/5ths a person, but legally kept from being whole. My partner and I, Charly Biggers, registered seven people all summer, and that was because Charly was one of the best talkers I ever met. Some volunteers didn’t register anyone. Many of us were arrested, often more than once. Charly and I shared a cell for two days with an activist from Massachusetts named Abbie Hoffman. He made us laugh the entire time. When the summer was over, out of 500,000 eligible blacks, Mississippi had 1,200 new black voters. Not many, we thought, but a victory, nonetheless. That summer, the courage of hundreds of local blacks, the murders of Chaney and Goodman and Schwerner, the publicity given to our voter registration drive, and the confrontation at the Democratic National Convention by members of the alternative Mississippi Freedom Democrats all played a part in crushing American apartheid forever. Racism didn’t end because of Freedom Summer. The struggle to ensure every American gets her or his full constitutional rights continues four decades later. And will, I am sure, continue four decades from now. As witness Florida, attempts are still made to deny people the right to vote based on the color of their skin. But this must now be done circuitously, via deception. Official Jim Crow is dead. Today, I watched with mixed emotions as the armed color guard unfurled the Stars and Stripes and marched up the dais as 2,500 immigrants stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as citizens. Throughout history, scoundrels have concealed themselves behind that flag for their own bloody purposes. They have tainted it with their greed and arrogance and crimes. They have pretended to be patriots and mocked the real thing. They still do. However, the flag and what it represents is not theirs. It is ours. It stands for all the good things about our country. This includes, most of all, an unwillingness by some to relent in realizing America’s ideals, no matter how grave the cost. I cannot know, I can only hope, that the majority of the 78 people I registered today will help us rescue our country from its rightwing scoundrels the way those 1,200 we registered 40 years ago helped rescue the Democratic Party from its racist scoundrels.
The biggest shame today is the amount of people who for whatever reason will not vote. I've been in line with over 200 people waiting for hours to get a driver's license,yet over the years less and less people show up for less than a half hour to decide the future of their govt. maybe if every registered voter voted politician's would be more likely to listen to them than special interest groups and pacs.
