One afternoon when the white men were parked on the road, Mr. Wade Jamison came to the church. He parked on the grounds and spoke to the small group of people gathered in the classroom. Morris had invited him. Mr. Jamison spoke only briefly about the Mississippi constitution. He said he knew that everyone had been receiving instruction about its meaning and its intricacies and the possible questions they could face before the county registrar and how to answer them. What he chose to speak about was how he felt about the laws and the changes he wanted to see.
“Not all white people in Mississippi are against you in this,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time now, more than eighty years. As I grow older, it’s very difficult to face change, but change is always a reality. My father and his father and his father before him were all slave owners. None of them wanted to give up that way of life, but that change came. My father and my grandfather were forced to give up slavery and start a new way of life. I didn’t have to make that choice, but I did have to choose how to go forward after that and how to see the world. I had to decide if I would see people—black and white—as separate and unequal, separate and equal, or just plain equal. It’s taken me a while to reach the conclusion of just plain equal. That’s what all you are fighting for, and from my perspective, I want you to know there are white people here in Mississippi who understand and support you.”
After the class Morris, Guy, and I walked outside with Mr. Jamison. Mr. Jamison glanced at the white men across the road. “You know,” he said to Guy, “you’re taking quite a chance being here. You stick out like a sore thumb.”
“No more than you.”
Mr. Jamison smiled and said wryly, “Oh, they won’t mess with me. They’ve tried to in the past, but I’ve been around too long now for them to do me any harm. But all of you young people, you know what the risks are. Morris, you know better than anybody.” Morris only nodded. Mr. Jamison looked at me. “Cassie, glad to see you here. Looks like that law degree is coming in handy now.”
“Hope so,” I said.
Mr. Jamison then said good-bye, got into his car, and drove off the grounds. The men on the road stared after him as he passed, but said nothing to him.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
With the white men watching the comings and goings of people attending the classes, an uneasy feeling descended upon the church and the classes. Threats were made against Pastor Hubbard and all of us teaching. Some people chose not to return to the classes after the threats, but most stayed on, and in the early weeks of September several members of the Great Faith community, all of them elderly, decided they were ready to take the test again. Both Morris and I were going with them, but Guy also wanted to come. Neither Morris nor I thought that was a good idea. “You best stay out of it,” Morris told him. “It’s going to be tough enough when all colored folks walk into that white registrar’s office, but having a northern white man with us, helping us, is just going to make it tougher.”
“Well, maybe I could follow you in, just as a precaution, as an observer, in case something doesn’t go right and a witness is needed. I won’t be with you, just waiting outside.” He looked at me. “All right with you?”
I stared at Guy for a moment, then turned to Morris. “Perhaps he’s right. Who knows what could happen, and maybe we’ll need help from an outside source.”
Morris agreed and we headed out for Strawberry. Morris drove his car, and Ted Sanders, a Great Faith deacon, drove his. Guy trailed us. Once in Strawberry, we parked near the courthouse and all of us except Guy walked to the courthouse steps. At the top of the stairs, Morris opened the door and we all walked in. When we walked out again, not one person was registered to vote.
Everybody failed the test.
A white crowd was now gathered on the sidewalk at the bottom of the courthouse steps. They shouted obscenities at us. Some moved close and shoved all of us, including the old people. They spat on us. A sheriff’s deputy stood by doing nothing. I wanted to lash out, but we were taught to accept these white people’s anger and move on. Always we were to keep our goals in mind and not stoop to their level. The ugliness of their vitriolic hatred drenched over us, their vile spittle ran down our faces, and we kept on walking, saying not a word, keeping to our teachings. But at that moment, I hated these people as much as they hated me; there was no love in my heart. We pushed our way through the crowd. Some of the crowd followed us to our cars. We continued to ignore them. Deacon Sanders and his group immediately got into their car and left Strawberry. Mr. and Mrs. Steptoe had already gotten into Morris’s car, when Mrs. Batie whispered to me, “Cassie, I’ve got to go to the pot.”
I looked at her and understood. There were no restrooms for “colored” in the courthouse. I told Morris, and he decided we would go to the lone Negro café in town. Mr. Don Beasley, though, said he didn’t have to go. “I tell you what,” he said, “I’ll just go on with this boy here and keep him company.” He pointed his finger at Guy. “That be all right with you, young man?”
“Fine with me,” Guy said.
“All right then! Y’all go ’head, relieve yo’selves,” ordered Mr. Beasley. “See ya back at Great Faith!”
Guy helped Mr. Beasley into his car and they left. The rest of us headed for the café. The white crowd watched us go. Some thirty minutes later Morris and our group also left Strawberry. On the trip back to Great Faith, both Morris and I were upbeat, trying to keep the Steptoes and Mrs. Batie from being discouraged. “It’s going to take time,” Morris reminded them. “We couldn’t hardly expect to knock down the walls of Jericho in a day, but we’ll get there, be assured of that. We’ll get there.” As we traveled along the dirt road, Morris continued to talk about the next registration attempt, but soon after we passed the Wallace store and the road straightened toward Great Faith, he jammed on the brakes. In the middle of the road were Mr. Don Beasley and Guy. Mr. Beasley was seated on the ground, bent over Guy, who lay flat on his back, unmoving. At the side of the road was Guy’s car, the back end of it caved in and its front end in the ditch that ran along the road. Morris and I hurried from the car. I dropped to my knees beside Guy and reached out to him. His face was badly bruised and bleeding. His forehead had a gash across it. His eyes were closed. I cried out his name.
“He can’t hear you, Cassie,” mumbled Mr. Don Beasley. “He can’t hear nothin’.”
Morris hunched beside me and placed his fingers on Guy’s neck, just under his jawline. “He’s still breathing,” I said, my hand on Guy’s chest.
“Barely got a pulse though.” Morris looked over at Mr. Beasley. “What happened?”
“White men,” answered Mr. Beasley, his voice in a whisper. “Four white men. Ain’t know’d who they was. Come along in two trucks, shoved us off the road into that ditch yonder. Boy here helped get me out the car and them white men, they got outta their trucks, standing all around, and they hollered at this boy, ‘What kinda white man are you, helpin’ these niggers?’ Then they started beatin’ on him something terrible. Told me, ‘Uncle, you stay outta this.’ Told me I wasn’t worth foolin’ with, being old and ignorant and all.” Mr. Beasley’s voice rose angrily. “But I ain’t stayed outta it! I’m a man still and I tried to help, but I couldn’t do nothin’. They knocked me down and I couldn’t get up. They kept beatin’ on this boy and all I could do was pray the boy was all right and drag myself over to him when they stopped beatin’ on him.” Mr. Beasley looked at Morris and me with searching eyes and lowered his voice again. “He gon’ be all right?”