but controversial, feature was to import hundreds of northern volunteers –
three-quarters of them white college students – to register local blacks and
teach their children. The idea for the ‘freedom schools’ came from Charlie
Cobb, a SNCC field secretary and Howard University divinity graduate who
wanted to ‘challenge the myths of our society.’ While some activists, espe-
cially those from Mississippi, opposed white involvement for implying black
incompetence, undercutting the grassroots movement, and probably antagon-
izing local sheriffs, most agreed with CORE’s Dave Dennis that ‘the death of
a white college student would bring on more attention to what was going on
than for a black college student getting it.’ After all, federal officials turned a
blind eye to 150 cases of violence against civil rights workers.
A COFO flyer distributed on northern college campuses called for ‘A
Domestic Freedom Corps’ in Mississippi that summer, along the lines of
Kennedy’s Peace Corps. The children of prominent Americans signed on
to become movement cannon fodder, notably Jerry Brown, the California
governor’s son who became governor himself; Len Edwards, a California
congressman’s son; and Harold Ickes, the son of Franklin Roosevelt’s Interior
secretary. Other volunteers became well known after their stint in
Mississippi, including Susan Brownmiller, who became a leading feminist
theorist; Barney Frank, a Harvard graduate student who became a
Massachusetts congressman; Ed Koch, later the mayor of New York City; and
Mario Savio, who initiated the ‘free speech’ movement that fall at Berkeley.
While most came from the North, some were southerners, including Bob
Zellner of Alabama and Casey Hayden and Sara Evans of Texas. Many vol-
unteers were the children of Methodist ministers and belonged to such
activist groups as SDS and NSA. Some were reared in leftist households, but
most came from liberal Democratic families and intended to fight the ‘Nazis’
of their time. As one put it, ‘I’m going because the worst thing after burning
churches and murdering children is keeping silent.’
White Mississippians saw the college blitzkrieg as the largest invading
army since the Civil War, and the locals intended to preserve segregation at
all costs. To send a signal to the volunteers before they came, the 6,000-
member White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan committed a rash of arson and
murder against the ‘satanists’ who were ‘defiling’ Christian civilization. Their
leader was imperial wizard Sam Bowers, a navy veteran with a fetish for
explosives and swastiskas who ran a vending machine business called Sambo
Amusements. The police harassed black and white SNCC workers who were
seen in each other’s company. One sheriff ordered a white woman out of a car
driven by a black man: ‘Slut, I know you fuckin’ them niggers. Why else
would you be down here? Which one is it? If you tell me the truth, I’ll let you
go.’ The state legislature tried to control, if not intimidate, the students by
doubling the state police force. In Jackson, the mayor hired more police;106 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Bowers, Sam (1924–
2006): Mississippi KKK
leader who ordered the
murder of blacks.