Another man spoke and slammed the hood with the flat of his hand. “Damn outside agitators comin’ down here! We oughta show them how we feel ’bout their meddlin’. Show them some real southern hospitality and send them back to Ohio with something they ain’t ’bout to forget!” He pushed on the side of the car. A few others joined him.
Little Man exploded. “That’s it!” He reached for the door handle to confront them.
“Keep that door locked!” commanded Stacey.
The car rocked back and forth. Stacey revved the engine, but there was no place for us to go. The white men pushing on the car laughed and pushed harder, trying to overturn us. A white man leaning against the hood of his truck in the next lane smoking a cigarette put a stop to it. “No need for that,” he said in a calm, deep Mississippi drawl. The men rocking the car stared across at the man. He was a big man, red-haired, and towering. He looked like a logger. Inside the cab of the truck a young boy was leaning out the open window. He looked to be the man’s son. “They just sittin’ in their car, stuck here just like the rest of us, mindin’ their own business,” the big man said. “Don’t need trouble here today. Y’all boys jus’ keep on walkin’.” His steely gaze rested on the men. He expected to be obeyed.
The men hesitated, then took their hands off the Oldsmobile. They moved slowly away, but not before one of them spat on the car. The big white man who had come to our defense watched them go, then flipped his cigarette in the street, walked to the driver’s side of his truck, and, without even looking at us, got in while his boy kept staring. Some colored people came walking up the sidewalk. We rolled down our windows and asked them what was happening. They told us hundreds of protesters were marching after Medgar Evers’s funeral. The police were waiting for them and stopped them at Farish Street.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
The traffic began to move. We came to the intersection of Capitol and Farish. The crowds that had held up the traffic had dispersed. We kept on driving. Once out of the downtown area, we managed to make it over to Little Willie’s. A lot of neighborhood people were standing on the street, talking. Most seemed to be dressed in funeral clothes. All spaces for parking on the curbless street were already taken. Little Willie was standing in front of his house along with a group of men, among them Solomon Bradley. Little Willie saw us and motioned Stacey to pull into his driveway. Little Willie left the group and came over to the car as we got out. “What happened to y’all, man?” Little Willie asked Stacey. “Y’all get caught up in that march?” He didn’t give Stacey a chance to answer. “Was looking for y’all at the funeral. Course now, there was so many folks—”
“Didn’t make it to the funeral.” Stacey took off his coat and slung it across one arm. His shirt was drenched.
“Didn’t make it?” Little Willie looked around at all of us and knew something was wrong. Then he took a closer look at the car and saw the holes. “Lord, what happened!”
“Got shot at,” Stacey told him.
“What! When?”
“Tell you inside,” said Stacey.
Little Willie started across the lawn to the house. “Got news for y’all too.” Solomon met us at the steps and we entered the house together. Inside, two large fans were blowing at opposite corners of the living room for a cross breeze. Another large fan was in the dining room, which opened into the living room.
Dora and her eldest daughter, Maylene, were setting the table. They gave us big smiles and Dora said, “See y’all finally made it in. Just about to set food on the table. Y’all’s names in the pot. Sit on down in there and we’ll call you soon as we get it on.” We thanked her and sat down. My feet were killing me. By now, Christopher-John and Man had taken off their coats, and they were as sweat-drenched as Stacey. I was drenched too, but I wore nothing I could take off but my shoes. I kicked them off and set them beside the sofa.
“So, what’s your news?” Stacey asked Little Willie.
Little Willie looked at us with a wide grin. “Our boy’s here.”
I leaned forward, looking from Little Willie to Dora. “Moe’s here? Well, where is he?”
“Right here, Cassie,” said Moe, entering from the kitchen.
Christopher-John jumped up. “Well, we’re all sure some kind of glad to see you!”
The rest of us stood to greet Moe as he came into the room. Solomon shook Moe’s hand. “It’s really good to see you, Moe. Haven’t seen you since Memphis.”
“Long time ago,” said Moe.
“You were on the run then too.”
“Never seems to end.”
Solomon nodded. “Sorry to hear about Morris. We did a lot of work together. He was a good man.”
“Yes . . . yes, he was. He felt the same about you.”
We all questioned Moe about what had happened with him after Morris’s funeral. He had made it to Strawberry walking, then had gotten a ride with a colored man headed for Jackson. The man was going only as far as downtown Jackson and had let Moe out near Capitol Street. “There I was,” Moe said, “just walking toward Capitol when I saw a lot of our folks coming down the street. Looked to be hundreds of them. I asked somebody what was going on and they told me that right after Medgar Evers’s funeral, young folks started gathering and singing protest songs and talking about the killing of Medgar Evers. They were angry and they started marching, marching right toward Capitol, and other folks joined along the way.
“I was standing near when they met up with the police over on Farish. There was a bunch of white folks too standing round near the police. Some of the police roughed up the marchers, rest of them didn’t make a move. They just stood there waiting. They had their dogs and they had their guns. Some of our folks had bottles and some had bricks and they began throwing them at the police.”
“Calvin was in that march!” interjected Little Willie. “Told Dora and me we almost had a riot on our hands!”
“That’s the truth,” Moe confirmed. “Would’ve been one too if this white man hadn’t gotten between our folks and the police. He got on a bullhorn and began begging everybody to just stop where they were. Told us his name and said he was a federal agent. Said a lot of folks in the colored community knew him and knew he stood for right. Said nobody wanted a riot in Jackson, didn’t want anybody getting hurt. He begged folks to go on home. Colored man then took the bullhorn and said pretty much the same thing ’bout being peaceful. Then folks began to turn around and leave Capitol. I turned with them and came over here. Now I’ve got to get over to the other side of town, where I left my car. Like I said, left it with the family of a friend of mine works at the plant with me.”