[spectre] Mississippi thunder

[Séamas Cain]

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There is good news from Sue Sojourner in Duluth, Minnesota ...

Sue's book, “Thunder of Freedom,” has been published by the University
Press of Kentucky in a wonderful hard-bound edition.

http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/list_description.php?skip=0&max=5&keyword=Sue+Sojourner

Sue is a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement.  She worked as an
activist in Holmes County, Mississippi for the five years from Fall
1964 through Summer 1969.  Her book, which chronicles the Civil Rights
Movement in Holmes County and the region, tells of the real dangers
and fears that the local activists experienced and how they built one
of the most effective grassroots Movements in Mississippi.

The book is marred somewhat by Cheryl Reitan, a “writing consultant,”
and her efforts to frame the narrative in terms of “leadership” and
administrative-mentality.  I suspect that the people most interested
to read this book, aging activists from the 1960s, and/or the young
activists of today, would be somewhat put-off by the “leadership”
élite framework.  After all, during much of the 1960s, people of the
movement talked and acted with a clear sense of PARTICIPATORY
democracy, direct and grass-roots involvement, spontaneity, direct
action, and COMMUNITY solidarity.  We did not act to create
“leadership” cadres.

Nevertheless, Sue Sojourner's wealth of detail concerning the
grass-roots movement in Holmes County more than makes up for Reitan's
notions.  Sue has written : “Strong, growing, they lived through real
danger and fear.  They survived and built one of the most effective
grassroots Movements in the state.  They'd changed their lives — not
just for each individually, but for all their people.”

http://www.suesojourner.com

http://www.thunderoffreedom.com

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I also recommend the following publications : “Indignant Heart,” by
Charles Denby, the autobiography of a black activist; and “Dialectics
Of Black Freedom Struggles,” by John Alan.  Both of these books were
published by our friends in the News and Letters Committees, based in
Chicago, Illinois.

They also published “The Free Speech Movement And The Negro
Revolution,” by Mario Savio and others; and “The Maryland Freedom
Union,” by Michael Flug.  Those publications are now out-of-print but
can be obtained through InterLibrary loan.

http://www.newsandletters.org/issues/2013/May-Jun/index.asp

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Northeastern Minnesota was well-represented on the Selma Freedom March
... three separate groups from Duluth, unaware of each other until
after the march, participated in the struggle.  “The Duluth Herald,”
in its issue for Tuesday, 30 March 1965, Volume 82, Issue Number 301,
on the front-page, reported that “It Hinges On Love:  Marchers Return
Impressed.”  “The Duluth News-Tribune,” in its issue for Wednesday, 31
March 1965, Volume 95, Issue Number 333, on page 7, reported that “Six
UMD Rights Workers Back On Campus.”  “The Statesman,” the official
newspaper for the student community at the University of Minnesota in
Duluth, in its issue for Friday, 2 April 1965, Volume 35, Issue Number
20, on the front-page, published the article “UMD Students Join Selma
March.”  Brooks Anderson, Kenner Christensen, Orlis Fossum, Deanna
Johnson, and Darlene Keeler — five of the seven activists from UMD —
were interviewed about their participation in the events of the march
between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama.

Lorenzo Rosebaugh, a teacher at Duluth Cathedral High School, returned
to the South in December of 1965 with four of his students:  Tim
Blackburn, Steve Pokorney, Terry Stingl, and Bill Aldrich.  At
Meridian, Mississippi, and under the auspices of the Mississippi
Freedom Labor Union, they engaged in boycott-support and picketing
against a large chain store, the “Winn-Dixie,” because of its failure
to hire black workers.  Blackburn and Stingl each reported that “The
injustice we saw was unbelievable.”  Aldrich said “I felt myself to be
in another country.”  They were the only high school students among
the activists of this national protest campaign.  For additional
information, see the Friday, 14 January 1966 issue of “The Duluth
Register,” Volume 42, Issue Number 3, on the front page, “Students See
Bigotry Unmasked In Meridian, Mississippi.”

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I was a member of SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]
during the early 1960s.  One project I worked on was the verbatim
transcription of statements by black activists in Jackson,
Mississippi.

Quoted verbatim, Mrs. Annie Mae King said “When we got inside the barn
there were about 100 or more cops and patrolmen and they began to push
us from one side to the other.  They yelled, ‘Get back, nigger, get
back.’  They pushed us all into each other.  One of them pushed me
across the back with one of the blackjacks and said, ‘Get on up there
in the line.’  And they just beat up children, pushing them and
hitting them in the head ... And this lady had rinsed out her panties,
and she was lying on a pallet.  And they asked her to get up.  And
they snatched the tick out from under.  And as she lied on the floor
two cops taken her by her feet, and they drug her about 25 feet across
the hall, and they kicked her all in her privates and beat her
terrible.”  Etc.

This was included in a typed and mimeographed three-page report,
titled “Two Statements From Jackson, Mississippi,” published in
February of 1965 by the Atlanta, Georgia regional office of SNCC.

(Let people speak for themselves!)

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN AMERICA :

http://www.crmvet.org

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The “Occupy Wall Street! Movement” in the United States vanished with
barely a murmur!  It evaporated before our very eyes.  Here and there,
retreating into a private world of mostly private concerns, OWS
continues as a few small groups or micro-groups.  Some of these groups
have become in-groups, élites, exclusionary factions, more like a cult
of Moonies than people seeking to challenge the capitalist world.
Usually these in-groups are dominated by alpha-males, and quite often
the alpha-males do nothing but engage in smear, slander, invective,
name-calling, and endless defamations of others WITHIN the Movement.

However, they seem to be doing very little to shake up Wall Street.

But this is not the way to create a freedom movement, a creative mass
movement that will challenge and contend with the malaise of State
Capitalism!

Let the mass movement(s) we knew in the past guide us in creating a
new movement today, and certainly the old Civil Rights Movement
provides examples, models, for that activity.  Let us create new
movement(s) devoted to PARTICIPATORY democracy, direct and grass-roots
involvement, spontaneity, creativity, direct action, and COMMUNITY
solidarity.

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The revolution will be creative or it will not BE at all!

Séamas Cain

323 Fourth Street,
Cloquet, Minnesota,
  U.S.A.,
  55720 - 2051

Phone : 218.879.8628

E-mail : seamascain at gmail.com

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