SNCC/COFO WATS Reports

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Before there were 800-numbers there was Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS). A WATS line allowed a company or organization to make unlimited long-distance calls in a specified geographic area (such as one or more states) for a flat monthly fee.

In the early '60s, a call from one county to another was often billed as "long-distance," and long-distance phone were very expensive (cell-phones, of course, did not even exist). Many rural communities in the South did not yet have direct-dial for long-distance, so out-of-area calls had to be placed through the local operators who were all white ("Ma Bell" did not hire Blacks for anything but the most menial positions). Operators in league with the Sheriff or Citizens Council would often block or tap calls from freedom fighters. But a WATS line allowed SNCC and CORE workers to bypass the local operators, which meant they could reach their offices when under siege by cops or the Klan. And with a WATS line, long-distance charges were billed to the organization and calls could be made from pay-phones, or the phones of local Blacks who had little money for long-distance bills.

Everyone understood, of course, that Movement WATS lines were tapped and bugged by every law enforcement agency from the FBI down to the local beat constable. And anything said over the WATS line was passed on by the cops to the Klan and White Citizens Council.

At SNCC, CORE, and COFO offices in cities such as Atlanta, Jackson, and Greenwood, the life-saving WATS lines were manned (or, more accurately, woman-ed) around the clock, 24 hours a day, recording incidents of violence and arrest, dispatching doctors and lawyers to aid the injured and incarcerated, alerting organizers of danger and need, notifying media and Justice Department of abuses and outrages, and coordinating support and assistance nation-wide. There is no doubt that there are Freedom Movement folk alive today who would have been killed had word not gotten out quickly of Freedom Houses under attack by Klan night-riders or of activists being "detained" by southern sheriffs.

As the calls came in over the WATS line hour by hour, the substance of each call was added to each day's "WATS Report" and summaries were prepared and distributed to the press and Movement supporters around the country.

Example WATS Reports

Notes — 

• Some of these reports are from the COFO WATS line in Jackson, some from the SNCC office (either Atlanta or Greenwood). In some cases we've had to guess which is which.
• Some reports were typed on legal-size paper and we were not able to scan the bottom couple of lines.
• Some reports from some days are missing.

1964
July	August
COFO July 1, 1964 COFO July 2, 1964 COFO Digest July 2, 1964 SNCC July 2, 1964 COFO July 3, 1964 SNCC July 3, 1964 COFO July 4, 1964 COFO July 5, 1964 COFO July 6, 1964 SNCC July 6, 1964 COFO July 7, 1964 COFO July 8, 1964 SNCC July 9, 1964 COFO July 9, 1964 COFO Summary June 30-July 9, 1964    SNCC July 10, 1964	COFO August 1, 1964           SNCC August 1, 1964 COFO August 2, 1964 SNCC August 2, 1964 COFO August 3, 1964 SNCC August 3, 1964 COFO August 4, 1964 SNCC August 4, 1964 COFO August 5, 1964 SNCC August 6, 1964 COFO August 6, 1964 SNCC August 7, 1964 COFO August 7, 1964 COFO August 8, 1964 COFO August 9, 1964 SNCC August 10, 1964 COFO August 10, 1964 COFO August 11, 1964 SNCC August 15, 1964

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