master’s degree from Harvard, and taught high school mathematics. Unlike
King, Moses shunned fund-raising and the media spotlight. Unlike King,
who wore dark tailored suits, Moses dressed in the working man’s bib over-
alls. Except for his hypnotic eyes, the soft-spoken Moses was uncharismatic
and eschewed the cult of personality that sprang up around King. The move-
ment, Moses believed, needed ‘a lot of leaders.’ As project director of COFO’s
voter registration campaign, Moses presided loosely over twenty field secret-
aries in six offices.
Whites beat Moses repeatedly for being the ‘nigger who’s come to tell the
niggers how to register.’ Shortly after his arrival in McComb, he took three
blacks to the courthouse to complete voter-registration forms. Police promptly
jailed him for interfering with their duties. After Moses was released, the
sheriff’s cousin assaulted him with a hunting knife. Moses brought charges
against his assailant – the first time a black man sued a white Mississippian
over a beating – but the defendant was found not guilty. Still another time,
nightriders fired thirteen bullets into his car.
To withstand this onslaught, Moses advised his cohorts to prepare for a
lengthy guerrilla war. SNCC survival tactics included telephoning home base
frequently, driving unpredictably, and sometimes carrying .38-caliber hand-
guns. To foil wiretappers, SNCC workers talked with all the water faucets
running and the television volume full blast. If anyone failed to check in, a
flurry of phone calls were made to hospitals, jails, the police, and then the
Justice department – in that order.
The all-out war between white supremacy and racial equality made these
guerrilla tactics essential. The Klan bombed churches that hosted voter regis-
tration meetings and sprayed gunshots at homes where SNCC workers slept.
Blacks who went to the registrar’s office were viciously beaten, fired from
their jobs, refused medicine, denied credit and government aid, and cut off
from their heating fuel. When Hartman Turnbow registered in Mileston, he
was denied the ballot, his home was bombed, his family was shot at, and he
was arrested for arson. Ten policemen forced SNCC organizer Lawrence Guyot
to disrobe and then worked him over for hours until a doctor warned that
death was imminent. In broad daylight and in cold blood, state representa-
tive E.H. Hurst fatally shot Herbert Lee, a dairy farmer with nine children
whom Moses recruited to lead other blacks to vote. An eyewitness was
murdered in his driveway by three shotgun blasts. When SNCC workers and
black high school students staged a protest march against Lee’s murder, a mob
went after Bob Zellner, SNCC’s first white field secretary. The mob slammed
Zellner with a baseball bat, kicked his head, and gouged an eye from its socket.
He was hauled off to jail still clutching his Bible. The black students were
expelled, and Moses was sent to jail for disturbing the peace. The reign of terror
ended SNCC’s voter drive in McComb after six blacks had registered.102 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT