Mississippi: A March Resurrects a Movement

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI — Overcoming disunity, out-of-fashionableness, poverty, and aching ft, the civil rights motion was reborn Sunday on the grounds of the Mississippi state capitol, earlier than the executioners’ eyes of 700 Mississippi troopers and police, armed with M-1s, dwell ammunition, and tear fuel.

The ragged band that had begun as one mystical prophet in Memphis, that turned 100 in Hernando, that turned 1000 after the baptism of spit in Philadelphia and tear fuel in Canton, had turn into 15,000 Sunday afternoon. They usually had been 15,000 Mississippi Negroes, their biographies etched of their bent spines and gnarled fingers. There have been a few clergymen, 100 New Left varieties, a small group of Thirties liberals like Paul O’Dwyer, and a handful of dreamy Dylanesque children, however largely they had been the porters, maids, and highschool college students of Jackson, giving a nice motion the uncommon present of a second probability to redeem its nation’s best sinner.

The anemia of the civil rights motion, inflicted by ghetto riots, integration subsequent door, and the rhetoric of LeRoi Jones, has been cured — not less than for a second — by a cathartic wave of blackness and bitterness. One senses that the obscenely banal feedback of the President and the Legal professional Basic after the tear-gassing in Canton had been an excessive amount of for even the beneficiant, ecumenical soul of Martin King. They helped the paralyzed transfer­ment flip a troublesome nook; ex­cept for the Scholar Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, that is nonetheless a reformist fairly than revolutionary motion, however its opposition is now whole and its vitality renewed. Subsequent week the Southern Christian Management Convention can have 35 organizers within the 15 rural counties the march handed via, and SNCC can have a dozen. Mississippi II is about to start.

The temper of the march redirected the too many desires deferred because the hike from Selma 14 months in the past. The unseating of Julian Bond, the failure of the struggle on poverty, the triumph in Alabama of Mrs. Wallace, the gerrymandering of the Mississippi congressional districts, and the tear-gassing in Canton, they’ve all pushed the ambrosia of liber­als — love — out of the Movement. The spirit of Gandhian agape that hung like a halo over Selma, with its nuns and angelic-faced college students, was gone, changed by a clenched militancy fueled by a despair expressed by Martin King’s admission that his dream of Washington 1963 has become a “nightmare.”

The march created its share of small, memorable moments. Singing, Sunday-dressed children on unpainted porches waving Amer­ican flags. Marlon Brando limp­ing alongside anonymously between a 66-year-old cotton picker and a 16-year-old scholar from a segregated Jackson highschool. The disgrace within the eyes of the previous Negroes after they turned away from pleas that they be part of the pilgrimage. Bob Parris, who began this explicit arc of his­tory in 1961, hovering unnoticed and unhappy on the perimeters of the gang. (He’s now quietly organizing in Bolivar County.)

 

Dick Gregory stated he “wished LBJ was the Pope, so that way folks would only have to kiss his ring.”

 

However extra enduring than such vignettes is the onerous political significance of the 21-day journey down sunbaked U.S. 51. The affirmation of Martin King because the soul and pivot of this motion; now even the kamikazes of SNCC admit “King’s got balls,” after the trials of Philadephia and Canton. The barring of the NAACP from the climactic rally program on the capitol as a result of “they are part of the Administration, not the Movement,” as a militant minister put it. The brand new path SNCC has charted for itself, because it begins to march to the sound of a completely different drummer. Each SNCC employee explains the slogan Black Energy otherwise, and so does each journalist. (In Canton, when Stokely Carmich­ael screamed, “This will separate the men from the mice,” the AP wire quoted him as saying, “This will separate the men from the whites.”)

Cleansed of its tumescence of hate, Black Energy is an clearly efficient technique for about 40 rural counties within the Black Belt. Defined intelligently, it’s excellent psychotherapy for Negroes ashamed of their blackness. As a stance, it’s sure to seize the loyalty of many younger ghetto Negroes who’ve felt themselves orphans because the assassination of Malcolm X. However as a program for a motion, it’s the fantasy of victims.

Saturday evening, about 2000 marchers, plus about one other 9000 Jackson youngsters, stuffed the grassy athletic subject of all-Negro Tougaloo School for what Automotive­michael known as “a party.” Sammy Davis sang present tunes after which flew out on a non-public jet to Las Vegas after march leaders tried to disgrace him into staying for the procession to the capitol the following day. James Brown, who makes Elvis Presley appear to be a paraplegic, re-created the am­bience of the Apollo together with his blues. Marlon Brando informed them, “You are the heroes of America … I should be out there and you should be up here.” Carmi­chael, addressing their buried satisfaction, stated, “I know you’re out there. Smile so I can see you.” Dick Gregory stated he “wished LBJ was the Pope, so that way folks would only have to kiss his ring.” Then the rally ended about 10 p.m., and the leaders retired to proceed their public debate that has gone on since Memphis, when Roy Wilkins and Whitney Younger went dwelling, and Bayard Rustin rejected  King’s plea that he come to Mississippi to deal with the logistics of the 220-mile procession. To the fury of a lot of the Movement, Rustin claimed he needed to end an ar­ticle for Commentary. SNCC was dissuaded from civil disobedience, the NAACP barred from the platform due to Wilkins’ antagonistic remarks, King’s most gifted aide, Andrew Younger, chosen to emcee the capitol rally, and the divinely impressed Meredith granted the longest talking time together with King.

Then it was time for King, the 37-year-old preacher who holds the unity of this amoeba-like motion in his therapeutic fingers.

 

Then it was time for King, the 37-year-old preacher who holds the unity of this amoeba-like motion in his therapeutic fingers. The speech he supplied was merely a variation of his inspirational sermon delivered within the shadow of the Lincoln Monument in 1963. He informed of his rising nightmares and his enduring desires within the rolling, hypnotic cadences of the agricultural preacher. Nevertheless it was the humane, incorruptible mystique of the person that received the gang, his crescendo phrases profitable affirmations of “amen” and “Say it, brother” repeatedly.

Then it was 6 p.m. and it was ending. Meredith nonetheless had the shotgun pellets lodged in his physique, a crushed marcher was nonetheless in a Canton hospital with a collapsed lung, 5000 newly registered voters had been within the rolls in 15 counties. The gang reached out to seize robust however unfamiliar black fingers and sing the holy tune of the motion:

“God is on our side. We are not afraid …”

SNCC’s Willie Ricks, who has the look of a Occasions Sq. evangelist, started to scream, “Black power, black power, black power …”

However he was drowned out by the rising voices of 15,000 Negroes singing, “We shall brothers be — black and white together — we shall overcome — someday.”  ❖

This text from the Village Voice Archive was posted on January 14, 2023.

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