Courtland Cox

Interview for Eyes on the Prize Documentary
May 14, 1979

Provided by Washington University Digital Gateway.
Revised and updated by Courtlant Cox, October, 2014.
(See citation, for details).

Contents

March on Washington

Changing John Lewis' Speech

Differences Within SNCC

MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention

Response of the NAACP

Role of the FBI in Mississippi

The March on Washington

INTERVIEWER:

OK, CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE EARLY PLANNING SESSIONS FOR MARCH ON WASHINGTON? WHO WAS INVOLVED AND WHAT THE POLITICS WERE?

[See March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom for background & more information. See also March on Washington 1963 for web links.]

Courtland Cox:

A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin built a coalition for the March on Washington by organizing the civil rights organization, liberal groups, churches, and Jewish organizations. Rustin and Randolph first approached SNCC and CORE, the two most active civil rights organizations, then they talked to the NAACP and Urban League to get the buy-in of the civil rights organizations. Bayard Rustin then approached the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish organizations. Bayard's strategy for the March on Washington was to get A. Phillip Randolph as the established leader and then get the most active civil rights groups as the driving force so that the other civil rights organizations would join the March.

INTERVIEWER:

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT WHO PUT UP THE MONEY FOR THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, WHO SUPPLIED THAT?

Courtland Cox:

I think a lot of the money came from the labor unions, some monies came from the civil rights organizations. I know the personnel came from the civil rights organizations, they paid for the personnel. A lot of it came from liberal organizations, church groups, and that's probably where most of the money came from, the liberal-labor-civil rights community.

INTERVIEWER:

IT'S A QUESTION ABOUT HOW THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON CAME TO BE. WHAT AGENDAS WERE OPERATING? I MEAN, WAS A. PHILIP RANDOLPH JUST TRYING TO CONSUMMATE HIS 22 YEAR OLD DREAM? WAS SNCC HAVING ITS OWN PARTICULAR CONCERNS? OR WERE THE LIBERAL-LABOR PEOPLE SIMPLY CONCERNED TO PUSH KENNEDY'S CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION? DID THE MARCH REPRESENT A KIND OF CONSUMPTION OF ALL OF THESE AGENDAS, OR DID IT REPRESENT A MEDIATION?

Courtland Cox:

The March on Washington represented a number of things for a number of people. The first is the Civil Rights Bill. The Bill was coming up in Congress and there was discussion about how to avoid the Republican-Dixiecratic opposition.

In order to get a civil rights bill passed, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, felt that it was important to go back to the kind of things that they knew in the earlier days when they were in CORE in '46 and the labor movement. They felt that direct action and demonstration were necessary.

There was also another group planning their own March on Washington. The group was led by Malcolm X, Julius Hobson Sr., Gloria Dandridge, Stanley Branch, Dick Gregory, and a number of other people who felt the need to bring the country to a halt. They discussed laying down in front of trains and on runways at airports, and bringing this country to a halt until civil rights legislation was passed. So that this group of people felt that the March on Washington could organize hundreds of thousands of people to grind this country to a halt.

Some of the leaders in the Civil Rights Movement felt the necessity to get in front of this Movement to bring this country to a halt. They were saying, "there go my people and I need to get in front of them because I'm their leader." The pacifist, liberal, civil rights organizations and labor movement felt pressure to build support for the Civil Rights Bill. They also felt, if they were to be successful, the need to stop the group of people they were prepared to bring this country to a halt.

For the March on Washington as I see it, there were probably about three major agendas. The first agenda was the passing of the Civil Rights Bill. I think the NAACP and the Urban League and the Kennedy administration thought that the motion of the March on Washington would get the civil rights legislation passed. The second agenda was the efforts to bring this country to a halt as long as the barriers to civil rights existed in the United States. Finally, I think that Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph had a jobs and freedom agenda and they used the March on Washington to advance the agenda.

INTERVIEWER:

OKAY. CAN YOU GIVE ME THAT DRAMATIC SCENARIO? WHAT HAPPENED THAT MORNING OF THE MARCH?

Courtland Cox:

Well, first of all, we came up and we were all very excited and the March on Washington was supposed to be a huge, big event. I think Bayard Rustin and I went out to the [assembly point], the [Washington] Monument, and by 8 o'clock there were I think 50 people out there. And our question was, was anybody going to be out here? And everybody kept saying, "Well, there's no one out here because nobody could get into Washington because the roads are all jammed into Washington." And by 10 o'clock there was a sea of humanity that existed in — on the March on Washington — on the monument grounds.

A number of people were coming in from Virginia and the young NAACPers and so forth were coming in and doing their little marching steps and so forth. And the situation was probably made even more momentous and dramatic 'cause that was the day that Ossie Davis announced that [W.E.B.] DuBois had died. He had died, I think the day before in Ghana and it was announced at the March on Washington and those of us who had some appreciation for DuBois saw it as, you know, a tremendous, a passing of a tremendous Afro-American. And I think we were going on, things were going well and so forth and we felt that victory was — we were really going to make an impression this day.

INTERVIEWER:

SO WHO SPOKE TO WHO FIRST?

Courtland Cox:

I think that probably the people who spoke first were A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. I think the people who came in second were the SNCCs, the COREs. I think the people who came in third were the NAACP — Urban League. People who came in fourth were members of the religious community, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic. And on top of all of that was the Kennedy administration wanting to make sure that that notion was within the bounds of the political process.

Changing John Lewis' Speech

INTERVIEWER:

HOW DID IT HAPPEN THAT FOLKS WANTED TO CHANGE JOHN LEWIS' SPEECH? OR CAN YOU TELL ME THAT THEY DID AND THEN TELL ME WHY?

Courtland Cox:

The real question about John Lewis' speech centered on the role that the Kennedy Administration wanted to play in the March on Washington and the political light the President wanted to be seen in 1963. The fact of the matter is Kennedy wanted to speak at the March on Washington and was only through the insistence of Bayard Rustin and some others that he did not speak at the March on Washington.

Then there was the question about whether Kennedy received the group before or after the March on Washington [referring to the delegation of civil rights leaders]. Symbolically, if they received him before the March, then they would report to the group on what Kennedy said. If they received him after the March, the group would be reporting to Kennedy what went on at the March on Washington. The delegation met with the President at the conclusion of the March on Washington to report the hopes and aspirations expressed at the historic gathering.

The real question about John's speech was the desire of the Kennedy Administration not wanting to be criticized on the issue of civil rights. The Kennedys wanted to be perceived by the Black community in a good light because Kennedy came to the Office of Presidency with a lot of votes from the Black community. The President wanted to be perceived as someone in front of the March on Washington, allowing it, wanting it, encouraging it. John's speech was the only speech at the March on Washington that criticized the Kennedy Administration for the lack of civil rights enforcement because the SNCC people were being brutalized in the South.

John stated that the Civil Rights Movement was going to march through the South as Sherman did during the Civil War. To some, this statement conjured up an image of violence. The Kennedy people didn't want that, so what they did was Kennedy called up Archbishop O'Boyle who was the bishop of Washington and said to him, "I want John Lewis' speech changed." Archbishop O'Boyle called A. Philip Randolph and Randolph called Bayard Rustin and they came to us about changing it on two points. That is to say, [the criticism of] the Kennedy Administration for lack of enthusiasm in enforcing civil rights law, and the whole question of alluding to violence, even though it's historical violence, the allusion was too much in 1963.

Bishop O'Boyle said was he wanted a change or the Catholic Church would withdraw from the March on Washington. We refused to change it, and in fact told Archbishop O'Boyle that he could leave and if he did, that was his problem. After we were adamant about not changing it, Bayard asked A. Philip Randolph to speak to us and Randolph said to John Lewis, Jim Forman and me, "You know I have waited 22 years for this March on Washington; please let us have unity at this last moment." And it was only because of that plea from Randolph in terms of the whole generational thing, the whole historical perspective that we agreed to make some changes.

And in the midst of that, probably about 11 o'clock, we got a message that Archbishop O'Boyle had stated that if we did not withdraw John's statement, that in fact he was going to withdraw from the March on Washington. Now the reason that he was able to make that statement was that, I was a representative for the March on Washington for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and John had gave me, gave me the speech the day before and I passed it out to the press trying to get maximum publicity. And what happened was, the press gave it to Archbishop O'Boyle and to the Kennedys and they looked at it and did not like the speech because of a number of reasons. The first, it criticized the Kennedy administration and put them in the same league with the Dixiecrats. Secondly, it alluded to the question of violence and I think it had a cynicism — not a cynicism, a penetration of the reality as opposed to the kind of good feeling that was supposed to be evidenced at that meeting. We told Archbishop O'Boyle — 

INTERVIEWER:

HOW, WHAT WERE THE, THE SPEECH WAS CHANGED IN THE MORNING. MAYBE YOU COULD JUST TELL ME THAT ...

Courtland Cox:

We began changing the speech about 11 o'clock on the morning of the March. The rewriting of John's speech took place on the top of the Lincoln Memorial where Lincoln was looking down benevolently upon the colored. Sitting under Lincoln's statue we used little manual typewriter as we sat on the marble floor to make the hurried changes as the crowd gathered and the speeches were being made.

[For comparison, see Original Speech of John Lewis and Speech of John Lewis as Given.]

INTERVIEWER:

LET ME JUST BREAK YOU UP. I'M JUST REALLY INTERESTED IN THE LOGISTICS OF THE ACTUAL CHANGING OF THE SPEECH. YEAH ...

Courtland Cox:

All right. We were on top of the Lincoln Memorial and Bayard asked us to change the speech and we told him that we weren't going to change the speech and that, you know, you'd have to do it over our dead bodies. We weren't going to change it. Then he went down, during — in the crowd and got A. Philip Randolph.

And A. Philip Randolph said, "I have waited 22 years for this. Would you young men please accommodate an old man?" And he had, by — I mean Randolph speaks in these stentorian tones and he was kind of coming at us and I think Forman, myself, and John Lewis were quite overwhelmed by his request. Here's a man, I think in 1963, Randolph must have been about 75. He must be about ninety now. So he was 75 and here we were, you know, one-third his age, and he was asking us to do this for him. He said "I waited all my life for this opportunity; please, don't ruin it," and we felt that, for him, that we had to, to make some concessions.

But the march had already started; the speeches had already started, [James] Baldwin had begun to speak, [Harry] Belafonte was introducing all the five planes of movie stars that he had brought in, so we were in the midst of, you know, trying to change a speech that had been sent out to the press in the midst of this gathering and John, John had not even seen the speech changes that we were making.

So, Forman would type a page he'd give it to me; I'd look at it, and say, "It's all right," You know, help type another page and then I'd give it to John, then after I read it, then John would try to quick read it, to see if — to get the feel of it. But I think as it came out, it probably brought much more attention to John's speech because the focus of the change that was made and why it was made from the original to the changes got a lot of press attention and I think in the last analysis, I think most people remember the speech that got changed and probably the "I Have A Dream" [speech], of course, who could forget that? And John Lewis' speech. Those were the two speeches of the March.

Differences Within SNCC

INTERVIEWER:

CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT ANY FACTIONALISM IN SNCC IN TERMS OF FOLKS WHO WERE INTERESTED IN DIRECT ACTION AND ...

Courtland Cox:

Well, I think that there have always been some factionalism in SNCC. I think the factionalism centered on the question of nonviolent methodology, but I think probably centered on also the question of nonviolent philosophy. One group in SNCC supported reform and some sort of ordered and limited change. This group supported more voter registration because it would broaden the base of the Democratic Party in the South and then you could get rid of, or cause pressure on, the Dixiecrats.

["Dixiecrat" refers to Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen from southern states. Dixiecrats were segregationists who opposed Black aspirations, stood against civil rights and civil liberty issues, were fiercely anti-Communist, were against government social and educational programs, favored farm and cotton subsidies, and were strong supporters of "law and order" policies. On almost every issue they defended the status quo and opposed change. With Blacks largely denied access to the vote in the South, the Dixiecrat legislators were able to win reelection term after term, and since committee chairmanships were based on seniority they controlled the key legislative committees and thereby exercised political power far in excess of what their numbers would normally have warranted.]

The Republican-Dixiecratic coalition blocked civil rights legislation in the Congress and many of the most powerful chairpersons in Congress were from the South so it was important that you had some political motion that could challenge them.

The other position of SNCC supported direct action. The supporters of this position said, "This country is wrong, it's fundamentally wrong and we have to go at the heart of segregation." And you had the whole religious, philosophical question of trying to change an unjust society. They had an uncompromising stand; they were prepared to go into Mississippi and Alabama into the worst places. While on the surface it looked like a difference in terms of methodology, that is to say whether you wanted voter registration against direct action, in SNCC the discussion was characterized as supporting a reformist agenda. Or on the other hand, what was considered a revolutionary" agenda, this agenda wanted to turn everything upside down. This group focused more on a nonviolent philosophy and it was more religious, and focused much more on injustices.

MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention

INTERVIEWER:

TELL ME ABOUT THE CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE.

[Referring to the 1964 MFDP Challenge to Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, NJ.]

Courtland Cox:

The 1964 Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City was a turning point for the SNCC organizers. I think before the Atlantic City convention the people in SNCC had not come so face to face with the exercise with naked power. I think that the people of SNCC, CORE and the people from Mississippi were used to the whole question of guns and violence and petty politics, on a state level, and they were used to dealing with those issues. Before Atlantic City, when confronted with the abuse of state power, we were able to appeal, however ineffectually, to the federal government and they did their little thing even though Hoover was a racist and he had number of FBI agents who were racists in Mississippi.

But what happened in Atlantic City was that we went through all the processes that the National Democratic Party said one had to go through in order to be credentialized and the white [delegates] from Mississippi went through none of the processes and, in fact, violated all of them. So the question was, was the Democratic [Party] going to obey its own rules or whether it's going to favor those whites who had been in the party all the time. Now the Credentials Committee would make a decision as to who would be able to represent the state of Mississippi on the floor. So that the presentation was being made by both groups.

Now what happened was that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 Democratic Convention had a tremendous sympathy among white liberals, the Black community, and the church community. And the person who seems to symbolize that thrust was Miss Fannie Lou Hamer. Now Miss Fannie Lou Hamer spoke on television and was being very effective in terms of her presentation of what was going on in Mississippi. And what [President] Johnson did at that time when he knew that she was on, she was beginning to ruin his [convention], he called the TV stations and preempted her in the middle of her speech, literally preempted in the middle of her speech. And he spoke about his trip to the hospital or some other foolishness — his beagles, something that was inconsequential.

What happened after that was that when Johnson saw there was some motion and, and things were moving, he began to get his act in motion. He called Humphrey up, and he told Humphrey, "Hubert, if you want to be Vice-President of the United States, you've got to stop these people from Mississippi." Hubert Humphrey called [Congressman] Kastenmeyer [D-WI], Walter Reuther from the UAW, and a number of other people and said to them, "These people got to be stopped. My getting the Vice Presidency depends on it." Reuther called Martin Luther King and he told King, "I gave you a $168,000 last year; if you don't stop these people from Mississippi you will never get another dime from me." So you had that kind of environment.

What began to happen was that, it looked as if the Democratic Party as a whole would, in fact, vote to credentialize the whites from Mississippi even though they violated the laws. However, it was clear that if we could get 11 of the 110 delegates [on the Credentials Committee], 10 percent of them, to vote that the Mississippians had a valid case it, the MFDP petition to be seated as the Mississippi delegation could be brought to the floor for the entire convention to vote on it. And Johnson knew that in fact if the MFDP petition were brought to the floor of the convention it's uncertain what would happen to the vote of who should be seated as the official Mississippi delegation.

So what Johnson did is he got a Negro congressman to quote, "befriend the group." And we had a strategy session in the convention hall, deep in the bowels of the convention hall we were strategizing; Miss Hamer was there, [Congresswoman] Edith Green from Oregon, Bob Moses was there, Donna Moses, a number of people who were essential actors in the discussion. We were meeting and discussing about what strategies we would involve in terms of doing a number of things. We knew at the time of the strategy meeting that we had 11 votes to bring out a Credentials Committee Minority Report.

During the strategy session, the Negro congressman asked Bob Moses for the list of 11 persons agreeing to be part of the Minority Report. Bob did not want to give it to him. And I said to Bob, "Do you think this man is going to steal the list of names, why don't you give the man the list of names?" And this Negro congressman said, "Yes, I want to give this list of names to Chairman Lawrence, Governor Lawrence from Pennsylvania, and I want to show him we have the strength to pull a minority vote on the floor of the Democratic Convention. Therefore they have to make concessions to the Mississippi Democratic Party."

However, Bob Moses was still distrustful of the promise by this congressman to act on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and was very reluctant to part with the list. And I must say, in my ignorance I pressed him to give the list so that he could show that we had some clout in the situation. Well, Bob gave the list reluctantly to the congressman and what happened next was something unbelievable. Every member, every person who was on that list, every member of that credentials committee who was going to vote for the minority, got a call [that] said, "Your husband is up for a judgeship, if you don't shape up, he won't get it. You're up for a loan here, if you don't shape up, you won't get it." We began to see how political power worked in the real world.

Although we were used to Mississippi and to the beatings and so forth, you had a situation where there's the good guys and the bad guys. In Atlantic City, there were no good guys; you just saw naked power and self interest at work. Therefore, you had no allies except those people that you came with. In the attempt for the MFDP delegation to be seated, they were abandoned by leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, the religious community, the liberal community, who tried to blunt the thrust of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to take its rightful place as the lawful delegation from Mississippi. I think it had a profound impact on SNCC organizers to see people they considered friends and allies succumbing to demands of political power and money.

INTERVIEWER:

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT ... DID, ONE DAY YOU SAT IN THE SEATS. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT WHAT WENT ON INSIDE ...

Courtland Cox:

That's right. What happened was there was some confusion as to whether the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was going to get the recognition as the delegates or whether the whites were going to get the recognition. I think that the whites were going to get it, but they were some kind of conditions or the spirit wasn't right. So the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party didn't get their seats, but the whites decided they were going to walk out until Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the convention [stopped] treating them as if they were some sort of pariahs. So they walked out and didn't show up for the convention.

We were riding in a cab, Bob, Donna, and me. And the discussion centered around what to do, and so I said, "If they left, why not take the seats?" And Bob said that was a good idea — I was kind of half joking really. However, he proceeded to develop, along with a number of the SNCC people, a scenario for getting the seats. And what we did was we got the badges of people, sympathetic delegates from around the country. Delegate's badges or alternates badges. The seats were empty because the Mississippi delegation had walked out. So all of a sudden on national TV at night, the Mississippi delegation, with the help of the SNCC people, took the seats of the white Mississippi delegation. And that was on national television and I'm sure that Johnson didn't like that.

So the next night when we went back there were no seats for the Mississippi delegation. I mean the space for the Mississippi delegation was just a big hole. Everybody had seats around it and it was a big hole where the Mississippi delegation was supposed to be. But I think the point was made that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was unjustifiably denied the right to sit in those seats. And even though they had followed the total process that the Democratic Party had prescribed, that they couldn't get seated. The question of who controls, who got what, was supposed to be gotten, and the question of white supremacy was made clear to the SNCC organizers.

INTERVIEWER:

WHAT DID FOLKS DO WITH THESE LESSONS?

Courtland Cox:

I think different people did different things. I think a number of people became totally cynical. I think a number of people felt that you had to look at different avenues and broader avenues to political power. I think a number of people probably either moved to the right or to the left. But I think most people were not unaffected by it. I think that the sense of looking at the Democratic Party and seeing how it operated and seeing how, when it came down to making a choice, all the people you thought were on your side began to crumble. I mean, the liberals began to crumble, the labor movement began to crumble, and a number of the civil rights leadership began to crumble.

And the only people who did not crumble in the final analysis were the people from Mississippi. They were the people who stood firm. Miss Hamer, Miss Devine and others of the MFDP delegation stood firm. The delegates from Mississippi stood firm because they knew they had to bear the brunt of that action. And the people whose existence depended upon the benevolence of either the Democratic Party -- the labor movement, the liberal movement and Civil Rights Movement -- caved in under the pressure, because that's where their bread and butter lay.

INTERVIEWER:

WHAT ABOUT JOE RAUH?

[Referring to Joseph Rauh, chief legal counsel of the United Auto Workers Union, and head of Americans for Democratic Action the group which led the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.]

Courtland Cox:

Joe Rauh played the role of the broker for the Democratic Party. He always played that role, and still plays it today. Joe Rauh has not changed in umpteen years and he likes to be thought of as the liberal. The "Mr. Liberal," who, in terms of liberal causes plays the broker between those who are victimized and those whom are victimizers. And I think that Joe Rauh, up to the point of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenging a situation that Johnson began to hit back on, was for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, raising all the philosophical issues. When the power of realities came, I think Joe like the rest of the people caved in.

Response of the NAACP

INTERVIEWER:

OK, COULD YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE MEETING WITH THE NAACP FOLKS AFTER THE CONVENTION?

Courtland Cox:

There was a meeting after the Atlantic City convention with a number of people. The church people were there, labor people were there, SNCC people and the other civil rights organizations were there. SNCC was there basically taking notes, because we didn't want to actively participate in the meeting, but there was some things said that were offensive so we felt forced to comment.

The question was raised to SNCC, "Now that you had the '64 summer project, now that you had the Atlantic City, where would you be going, what kinds of people would you want to involve, and so forth?" Gloster Current, who was then I think director of branches for the NAACP, said that he wanted to take this to another level. He was tired of listening to the moans and wails of these people from Mississippi. He said there was a need to begin to cut away the underbrush. The way Gloster Current talked about the people from Mississippi and the people from Alabama, this is '63 and '64; people who, who were the heart and soul of the Movement, it gave one the sense that the people that he was referring to were much more trouble than they were worth. Mr. Current viewed the people from Mississippi and Alabama as disruptive of the kind of relationship that he wanted to establish with those who were in political and economic power.

The meeting gave us a sense that — because there was not much disagreement with him — those who were in the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement in many respects wanted to cut out the heart and soul of the Movement. When Gloster Current said, cut away the underbrush, he was trying to make the Movement a much more respectable, a Movement that could fit much more into the status quo. Now I think that the meeting, and many others like it which focused on the need to "cut away the underbrush" probably was the beginning of us finding ourselves in the situation we are in today because it took away the motion, the thrust, the most dynamic elements in order to try to accommodate those political and economic forces that were oppressive. In that meeting, the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement showed itself to be the most accommodating to the forces that were antithetical to its own interests.

Role of the FBI in Mississippi

INTERVIEWER:

WHAT ABOUT, WHAT ABOUT THE FBI DURING THE SUMMER OF '64 IN MISSISSIPPI? CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT THEIR INVOLVEMENT WAS IN MISSISSIPPI AND WHAT PEOPLE'S ATTITUDES TOWARD THEM WERE?

Courtland Cox:

Well, I'm trying to remember. I think the attitude of the FBI in '64 was to stand and watch the things that could happen to the SNCC organizers.

One thing that clearly stands out in my mind in McComb, Mississippi, a house got bombed. I think Curtis Hayes was in it, Mendy Samstein, and a number of the SNCC people were in it. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, but there was a huge hole in the house and the reason people didn't get killed was that a car was in front of the explosion and absorbed most of the thrust of the explosion, and therefore, there was, the house was damaged but people weren't killed. And I went down there along with some other people the next day and the FBI made it clear to us that they were there not to look after us, to see that we might be hurt, but to guard the evidence of the bombing.

I think that the FBI also in that situation was reporting on our activities to J. Edgar Hoover. I mean that's known. They were not impartial in the situation. They thought we were a disruptive force, a force that was out to destroy this country, and therefore reported on us. I think the FBI also acted in '64 as a force to encourage the quote red-baiting unquote that occurred in terms of a number of the civil rights leaders. I think that, that at their best, they watched; at their worst they reported, and who knows, may be part of the violence that occurred you know, in '64 on the people in Mississippi.

INTERVIEWER:

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANY INFORMANTS WITHIN, WITHIN THE WORKERS?

Courtland Cox:

No, I don't know anything ... There probably were, but you know I take that for granted, that they probably were. As to who they were and so forth, dealing with that I don't have any information.