(Another excerpt from “My Soul is Rested.” This got to me, probably more than anything else in the book.)
SNCC field secretary Lawrence Guyot, on the decision to recruit white student volunteers from the North that summer, p. 286:
Wherever those white volunteers went, FBI agents followed. It was really a problem to count the number of FBI agents who were there to protect the students. It was just that gross.
So then we said, “Well now, why don’t we invite a lot of whites”–we attempted to recruit blacks but that was unsuccessful–“to come and serve as volunteers in the state of Mississippi?” We thought it would bring federal protection. It didn’t bring federal protection early enough for Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman,
What was the impact of the murders on the Summer Project?
It made us face what all of us knew. I mean, we never made any claim about being able to prevent anyone from being killed, not to one volunteer. Okay?….And it made us just a bit more cautious in getting the names and addresses of everyone, making sure that they got on the buses that traveled from Ohio to Mississippi, and there was definite people to pick them up when they were going to be picked up and this sorta thing. We never tried to hide the fact that there had been killings. We didn’t glorify in it. That was simply the way it was.
He ponders a question about whether there would have been an intense national reaction if all three of the Philadelphia victims had been black. (note from Katherine: only James Chaney was; he was from Mississippi. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were a social worker and a college student, respectively, from New York. All were younger than I am now.)
The question answers itself. We’d had hundreds of killings. We had some sixty-three people killed around the question of the vote before ’64. Any other question on that subject? None of them were white. Lord knows how many people were run out of homes, run out of the state. In Yazoo City, at this period of time, it was unthinkable to hold a membership card in the NAACP, absolutely unthinkable. And register to vote–good God, man, you’re talkin’ death. Why don’t I just shoot myself? It’s be quicker.
Why weren’t…
More people killed?
More people killed. I was trying to think of a different way to say it.
No, no, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. The only reason more people weren’t killed was because of the timing of the Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman killings, the involvement of the President in the search, and his deunancuiation of the act by having the search conducted. (note: Lyndon Johnson sent in 210 Navy troops to search for the bodies and set up the biggest local FBI office in the country in Jackson, MS.)
What would have happened to those of you in the project if the federal government had not pushed for solution…?
Oh man, look….[claps his hands for emphasis]….we were an open book. The phones were tapped, people knew where we were going, knew where we bought our gas, where lived….you name it. Fortunately, we didn’t operate internally as though we had something to hide. I mean, our protection was the black community. We never doubted that and we knew it and we acted like it. I have no doubt that the twenty five people who really made decisions in that state politically at that time could have been wiped out in a day–and would have been. I mean, what’s to prevent it?
I don’t know, you may think I’m overstating my case, because I was individually involved, but I have no doubt about it. Logically that’s the way the state deals with that kinda situation; that’s the way it woulda been dealt with. But the national attention, the inolvement of the President, the concern of the CIA. [Former CIA Director] Allen Dulles came to Missisippi….
How did you come to leave Mississippi?
The only reason I left Mississippi in ’68 was because of health. I was a delegate to the ’68 Democratic Convention. I went to a doctor [in Chicago] who was one of the top internists in the country….He said, “Yes, if you back to Mississippi you have about two months to live.”
I hade high blood pressure. I had heart trouble. I was and still am overweight, and I’d had enough.
How old were you?
Oh, let’s see. In ’68, oh, I guess I must have been twenty nine. [A long pause] Why?
heh. I was doing a “where are they now google” just found out that Guyot, now an activist in DC, has endorsed Dean for President. This doesn’t prove a damn thing, of course, but it made me smile.