Freedom's Children Read Free Page A

not always good people.

    Growing up I knew the rules. It was clear. You went to the courthouse and there was the “colored” bathroom and “white.” You saw the signs. I don’t think we had a public water fountain in Holly Springs except at the courthouse. But you see, Mr. Arm-stead who was black had his store, and so when we wanted water, we could just drink there.
    I didn’t experience it, but I heard my grandfather and my father say that generally if there was a white person on the sidewalk, you actually got off to let them pass. You also could not look at a white woman. I remember my mother telling us certain things. She never just came out and said, “Don’t you all look at a white woman,” but it was kind of understood that you tried to avoid as much eye contact as possible.
    Of course I heard about Emmett Till in 1955. Even at age seven it was shocking. We knew that a fourteen-year-old boy had been killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. We knew that was one of those codes, and that he was killed because he had broken that code. We knew that was evil, and we knew the evil could happen again.
    I think that was a watershed. Not only was Emmett Till killed, but there was almost an absolute cover-up. The system decided to completely close and say we’re not going to see justice done here.

THELMA EUBANKS—MCCOMB, MISSISSIPPI
    I first heard of the movement through mass meetings at the church. At the mass meeting they talked about all of the things that were going on around here. The church bombings had started at that time. I think sixteen black churches got bombed around here. They never tried anybody for it, but we knew the Klan was doing it. Later on they tried to bomb our church, but the gunpowder wouldn’t go off. That’s when the blacks got the neighborhood watch committee. Three or four of the church members would stay up with rifles, watching.
    They burned crosses. I saw one. It was burned on this lady’s yard one night. She was a black schoolteacher. She didn’t have anything to do with the movement, but I guess they put it up there because it was high ground, and everybody could see it. White folks got some funny religion around here. They really do, when it comes to blacks. I guess they think ain’t nobody going to heaven except white folks.
    But the cross burning didn’t make me afraid. I’ve never been afraid once I got involved. I didn’t think about being afraid. A lot of people were afraid, I guess, that people would try to burn their houses down. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I didn’t have sense enough to be.
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    Blacks used to be slaves, and slavery was bad down in this part of the country. My grandparents were sharecroppers. They stayed on the white folks’ place. So they had to do what they said to do. My grandmama used to tell me stories. Her and my grandfather were on wagons and horses then. They could be riding through Liberty or Amite County, and if a white man wanted her, she got on the back of that wagon with him, and my grandfather dared not turn around. When they got through with her, she just got back up there and sat beside him and kept going.

JUDY TARVER—FAIRFIELD, ALABAMA
    I had a white doll with blond hair. They probably didn’t make a black doll. And then a lot of our people at that time were conditioned to think that maybe the lighter-skinned blacks were somehow superior to the darker. Black was not a popular word. It was a stigma if you were dark-skinned. Oh, you better not call anybody black! That was a fighting word amongst our own people until the sixties. Then it changed and got to be the thing. I felt real good about that change.
    Whenever you would hear whites speak, all you ever heard them say was “nigras.” How could they go to church on Sunday and have these kind of feelings? We’d pass their churches. They would be full of cars everywhere.