“And with these white folks around here,” Papa said, “no one will.”
I turned to Papa. “Then eventually we’ll file a lawsuit against them.”
Coming from Strawberry the sky was clear, but halfway to home we noticed haze settling in. As we neared the Wallace store we smelled smoke. “Something’s burning,” Mama said. The pungent smell of smoke grew stronger as we approached the crossroads. Then we saw the black plumes rising above the trees.
“Great Faith!” I cried.
Papa pressed his foot flat to the gas. Morris was right behind. When we reached Great Faith, we saw several people already on the grounds running to and from the church toward the old well, buckets in hand. Others held hoses that were connected to the building, spraying water onto the fire. Mama, Papa, and I rushed to join them. Morris and the folks in his car did the same. Papa and Morris went over to help with the hoses. Mama and I and those able-bodied enough took up buckets and ran to join the brigade of people at the well. Already the fire had burned through a portion of the roof and smoke was spewing from broken windows. No one rang the bell; no one could get to the belfry to summon the community for help, but more folks were coming anyway. They had smelled the smoke.
More people joined the line at the well. Another line formed all the way to the creek as folks passed along bucket after bucket of water in a frenzied effort to save the church. Others took up wet blankets and attacked the fire directly to try to beat it down. The men with their hoses at the front and back of the church sent water rushing onto the building. The elderly people, unable to lift buckets or swat the fire with blankets, stood back and prayed. We all fought the fire as best we could, coughing as the smoke filled our lungs, enduring the rising heat, the filth of the soot, and the burning embers that scorched our skin as the flames leapt toward us. Night settled over the grounds of Great Faith, but the light of the fire reddened the night.
The fire kept growing. We couldn’t stop it.
The fire could be seen in the belly of the church sanctuary. It consumed the pulpit and the altar and the benches. There was no longer hope of saving the building. Finally, as the roof of the church totally caved and the walls began to crumble, we put down our buckets and our hoses and our blankets and stood in horrified silence, watching Great Faith burn.
A HUNDRED YEARS
(1961–1963)
I went back to Boston. Morris stayed in the fight. After Great Faith burned, people turned away from trying to register to vote, but once Morris was out of jail, he became more defiant and went to each person who had previously attempted to register and tried to persuade them that this was not the time to quit. He told them that quitting was what the people who had burned Great Faith wanted, for the drive to end. Still, people were frustrated by their attempts to register, for despite all their efforts no one was registered, and they were sorrow-stricken by the burning of the church. The church could be rebuilt, but they figured they would never be allowed to vote. The teachers who had come from other parts of the state returned home, just as I had done, and only Morris was left in the Great Faith community to carry on the drive.
The Great Faith drive in Spokane County wasn’t the only one to falter. In other counties, teachers were also going home, but that didn’t mean protests were over. In late September we learned that Mr. Herbert Lee of Amite County had been killed by his white neighbor, who had ordered him to stop working in the drive. Mr. Herbert Lee refused. The white neighbor, a Mississippi legislator and relative to the sheriff, pulled out a gun and shot Mr. Herbert Lee right in front of more than ten other people. That white neighbor went before a coroner’s jury that same day and was acquitted. County law officials dismissed all charges. But the death of Mr. Herbert Lee sparked the black community to action and people took to the streets in protest. Some of the SNCC workers were arrested. High school students were arrested. Then, right around Christmastime, a bus carrying Freedom Riders arrived in McComb and the riders were brutally attacked and arrested too.
Soon after the freedom ride into McComb, Morris stopped in Toledo on his way to see Moe. It was the holidays and I was in Toledo. Since the burning of Great Faith, all of us had been raising money to rebuild the church. I had managed to raise more than a thousand dollars in Boston. Stacey, Christopher-John, and Clayton had done the same in Toledo. Across the country people who had been part of the Great Faith community, but had fled from Mississippi, were raising money. That included Uncle Hammer in Oakland. All of us were going to the churches and businesses in our communities and telling them what the church meant to our Mississippi community and why it was so important to rebuild. None of us knew the names of those who had burned Great Faith. Other churches throughout the South had been burned, but mostly under darkness. The people who burned Great Faith had come during the day, but no one had seen them. No one had been at the church.
Back home, plans were already under way for the rebuilding. Papa and other elders of the church had met with banks in Jackson and Vicksburg to see about getting a loan. They wanted the rebuilding to begin by the next revival, and the money we were raising would lower the amount of the loan needed. The banks, however, denied the loan. Great Faith Church had allowed the registration drive, and the banks were not about to forget that. Great Faith would have to raise all the money needed to rebuild. The Great Faith community remained undaunted. They wanted a building kickoff that would involve people coming home for the week of the revival to labor along with the community. In the meanwhile, church services were being held in one of the vacated school buildings.
“So, here’s the thing,” said Morris as we sat in Stacey and Dee’s living room strategizing about our next moves for Great Faith. “We get enough money raised and start rebuilding, we’ve got to make sure another burning doesn’t happen. You know a lot of the younger people have left over the years, but we’ve still got enough able-bodied men, women too, who could watch over the grounds, both during the rebuilding and after. We want to recruit those people coming for the revival and the rebuilding to stay on at night as well and watch out for the place.”
We were all in agreement with that.
Later, Stacey and I went with Morris to Canada. Morris told Moe about plans for the rebuilding of Great Faith. Moe was somber as he listened, knowing he could never be a part of it. Morris, reading Moe’s mind, slapped his eldest brother on the shoulder.
“One of these days, Moe, you’re going to get a fair hearing from up here. One day you’ll be able to come home.”
Moe didn’t respond. His look said it all.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
When I had taken my leave from the firm, it was understood that I would return. I had committed to that. Also, I was committed to seeing Guy again. There was so much unresolved between us. By the beginning of 1962, Guy was back in the office, and by the spring he was fully recovered and working full-time. That he had gone to Mississippi and had put his life on the line made me care for him even more, but what he had done had not made things easier for us. Mama and Papa were both aware of why he had come to Mississippi. They knew I was the reason. They admired Guy and respected him, but that didn’t change their minds about my having a relationship with him. Just like Stacey, they were unrelenting in their thinking. Any union with Guy, even if it were a legal one through marriage, would mean betrayal as far as they were concerned. I tried again to explain that to Guy. “I can’t go against them in this, Guy. I just can’t do it. I’m not tough enough or brave enough.”