152 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
SNCC HANDBILL ON THE USEFULNESS OF POLITICS IN MISSISSIPPI, 1964
To explain to blacks in the Mississippi delta why they should risk their lives
and homes to register to vote, civil rights organizers distributed copies of the
Sunflower County Political Handbook.
Politics is about our lives.
It is about whether the roads are any good.
It is about what our kids learn in school.
It is about what the sheriff does.
It is about whether we have work to do.
Politics is about whohas power.
The President listens to people who have power.
So does the Sheriff.
Poweris votesto elect people, or not to elect them.
Poweris moneyto pay for election ads.
The people with power get what they want.
Now just a few people have power.
They get control of government money.
They get government contracts for their factories.
They get the tax assessor to list their land at a low value.
We do not have money.
Our power must come from ourselves. From our numbers.
From us being together.
We must have power for us.
So wecontrol Sunflower County.
So the President listens to us.
So that we get what weneed.
This is a book about how things work. It is a book about how poweris used
to keep us down.
And how we can use power to lift ourselves up.
Source: Constance Curry, Silver Rights(Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1995), p. 62.Document 14WHITE VOLUNTEERS IN MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER, 1964
White college students volunteering in the Summer Project found Mississippi
a world apart from their privileged lives in the North.
Dear John and Cleo,
Our hostesses are brave women. And their fear is not at all mixed with
resentment of us, but that makes it none the easier for them. The other
morning a local newscaster said that someone was reported to have offeredDocument 15