She introduced us to a song called “I Love Everybody.”
“People who have nothin’—no runnin’ water, not hardly a thin’ to eat—still sing this song about lovin’ everybody,” she said. Then she led us in the song, which included, by name, people in power who’d beaten or killed civil rights workers. We even sang that we loved the racist governor of Alabama, George Wallace. I pictured Aunt Carol rolling over in her grave. She hated that man.
I began to really feel the emotion of the songs and by the time we ended with “We Shall Overcome,” I was more awake and joy-filled than I’d been all day.
Once the events of the evening were over, I crossed the dark campus, hoping Peggy would still be up. I felt inspired to make a new start with her, hoping she had the same positive feelings about the day that I did. She wasn’t in the room when I got there, though, and it was way past curfew. I climbed into bed, but was too fired up to sleep. Something had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t even understand it. I felt hope and fear, determination and cowardice, all mixed together. I wondered if that’s what all those speakers had wanted us to feel.
* * *
I was still awake when Peggy slipped quietly into the room an hour after I went to bed. I sat up.
“You don’t need to be quiet,” I said. “I’m awake. You can turn on the light.”
She flipped the switch and I blinked at the brightness. Peggy’s curly auburn hair glittered in the light. She dragged her suitcase onto the floor and ignored me as she rummaged in it for something.
“Today was really good, wasn’t it?” I asked.
She didn’t look up but I could feel her roll her eyes. “If you say so,” she said.
“I learned so much.”
She looked at me then. “They probably don’t teach you much in your little segregated schools in Podunk, North Carolina.”
I bristled. I was sick of tiptoeing around this girl. “First of all,” I said, “my high school was integrated.” Not by much, but it definitely had not been the lily-white school she was picturing. “And second of all, I got into the University of North Carolina, which was no easy feat, so I must have had a decent education. And third of all, can we please try to get along? Because that’s why we’re down here, right? To learn how to help people get along? And if you and I can’t even do that, there’s really no hope.”
Whoa, it felt good to get all that out, and for a moment she just stared at me.
“You’re probably right,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.”
“You’re … already?”
“David and I split up.” I thought she was crying, but she turned her head away from me so I wouldn’t see as she went back to digging in her suitcase. “And I was never so bored as I was this morning listening to those speeches. You sat through them all day? I couldn’t stand it. So I know I’m in the wrong place for me. I’m leaving in the morning.”
I was quiet for a moment, taking this in. “You were doing this because David was?” I asked.
“I thought I could get into it but it’s just not how I want to spend my summer.”
“Can I … can I help you with anything?” I asked.
“Just go back to sleep.”
I lay down and rolled onto my side facing the wall. I heard her open the door to the closet as sleep finally found me, and when I woke up early in the morning, she was gone.
* * *
Peggy was not the only student who left. Over breakfast, I heard whispers of at least two other students leaving. It was probably good they left now, before the hard work began. I was determined not to be one of them.
I was sitting across from a guy as I ate, and he smiled at me. “I love the food in the South,” he said, nodding to the biscuits and sausage gravy on his plate. My own plate held scrambled eggs and grits. My usual breakfast.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“New Jersey, where I’d be eating pork roll and eggs and hash browns.” He grinned. He looked as though he wore a perpetual smile. “You’re from down here, obviously. With that accent.” He had a pretty significant accent of his own.
“You could tell from that one sentence?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “South Carolina?” he guessed.
“North,” I said.
“Well, good for you.” He took a forkful of his biscuit. Chewed and swallowed. “They told us Southern students wouldn’t work out, though.”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” I said, thinking of my conversation with Hosea Williams.
“Maybe you can lose that accent.” He looked doubtful.
“Is it really that strong?”
“Wow. Yeah.”
“Wow. Yeah,” I repeated, trying to imitate him. “How was that?”
He seemed to find it uproariously funny. “What’s your name?” he asked, when he’d finished laughing.
“Eleanor. Ellie.”
“Well, Ellie,” he said. “You look like you’re up for a challenge. What’re you doing with SCOPE?”
“I want to help,” I said simply. “Same as everyone else.”
“Cool,” he said. “I’m John. Happy to meet you.”
“You too.”
“Actually, this is my third trip South this past year. And to be honest, I’ve gotten to really crave biscuits and gravy.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “Third?”
“I was in Mississippi last summer, doing civil rights work. And I was out here just a few months ago for the Selma march. The third march. The big one. The one where no one got killed,” he added soberly.
This guy didn’t just talk about doing the work, I thought. He actually did it. “It must have been … it must have felt so good, being in that Selma march. Knowing what it meant.”
“It did indeed,” he said.
“You’re courageous,” I said. “You didn’t know how that march would turn out. That you’d be safe.”
He smiled. “I’m committed,” he said.
“Are you a student?” He looked too old, but how else would he have time to be a civil rights worker?
“Seminary,” he said.
I nodded. I could picture him as a preacher.
We were quiet for a moment. I swallowed a mouthful of grits, looking around the cafeteria. “I think I’m the only Southern white person here,” I said finally to break the silence.
“You may be right,” he said. “Your accent’s nice, but it does make you more … vulnerable. You’ll have to work harder to let people know you’re on their side.”
“I’m nervous,” I admitted.
“I understand,” he said.
“Were you nervous? Last summer, knowing other workers had been killed? And in the march, knowing—”
“Yes, of course.” He smiled at me with sympathy. “By the end of this week, you’ll feel less jittery, but you need to keep some of those nerves. Don’t let your guard down. There are people down here who’d just as soon kill a civil rights worker than look at one. The trick is to stay focused on the goal. Keep your eyes on the prize, like they say in the song. That’s all you can do, Ellie May.”