Freedom Summer 103Forman, James(1928–
2005): Former SNCC ex-
ecutive secretary who
demanded reparations
for slavery.Moses then moved the Voter Education Project to the impoverished delta.
He sent Sam Block, a 23-year-old native Mississippian, to organize Green-
wood, near the site where Emmett Till was butchered. Block had no car or
place to stay as he canvassed grocery stores, laundromats, and pool halls.
Before long, the sheriff cornered Block and spat in his face. ‘Nigger,’ he
demanded to know, ‘where you from?...I know you ain’t from here, ’cause
I know every nigger and his mammy.’ The sheriff ordered Block to pack his
‘goddamn bags’ and leave town, an order Block ignored. A few nights later,
Block heard noises outside his office. Deathly afraid, he climbed out through
the bathroom window, jumping from rooftop to rooftop before sliding down
a television antenna. SNCC sent in reinforcements, only to have most of
them serve hard time at the county work farm. County officials punished
the entire black community by withdrawing from the federal food surplus
program. When emergency shipments of food and clothing arrived from the
North, whites burned the supplies. Vigilantes also torched SNCC’s head-
quarters and shot at the remaining activists. By mid-1963, VEP reluctantly
cut off funding in Mississippi.
The vulnerable voting-rights workers received no protection from the fed-
eral government. Most galling of all, the FBI regularly arrested kidnappers,
bank robbers, drug-sellers, and spies, but not violent klansmen. Nor did it
enforce Section 242 of Title 18, US Code, which declares that any official
depriving a person of his constitutional rights has committed a federal crime.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover only investigated racial crimes, insisting that
‘we simply can’t wet nurse everybody who goes down to try to reform or re-
educate the Negro population of the South.’ In one egregious episode, an FBI
agent questioned a white activist beaten, kicked, and urinated upon by four
Mississippians. ‘Well, nigger lover, what seems to be the problem?’ SNCC
executive secretary James Formanconcluded that ‘the FBI was a farce....
It was all too clear whose side Uncle Sam was on’ [Doc. 13, p. 151].
As outside help butted against a stone wall, local black women, such as
Unita Blackwell, Annie Devine, Victoria Gray, Fannie Lou Hamer, Winson
Hudson, June Johnson, and Laura McGhee, filled important roles. Across the
South, women were the indispensable foot soldiers of the movement while
men were the officers. Hamer, a heavy-set woman from Ruleville who limped
badly from polio, was the twentieth child of illiterate sharecroppers. She
learned early on that whites were all-powerful. Her grandmother Liza, an
ex-slave, was raped repeatedly by white men. Fannie Lou’s mother had gone
blind after an accident when she received no medical attention. To help sup-
port her family, Fannie Lou started picking cotton when she was six and soon
dropped out of elementary school. Just as her parents were getting on their
feet, a white man poisoned their cows and mules, leaving them perpetually
in debt. Upon reaching adulthood, Hamer married a sharecropper and
Hamer, Fannie Lou
(1917–77): Dynamic
Mississippi SNCC organ-
izer and MFDP co-founder.