The Southern Front: 2 Weeks in
Mississippi
When We Get
the Vote, Wallace Will Get Religion
Mississippi Stories I: The
Fruits of Freedom Summer [PDF]
Mississippi Stories II: Still
It's a Fight for Power [PDF]
At a rally after the Birmingham bombing of 1963, I learned about CORE and joined Downtown Core on Delancey Street in NYC.
We were trying to organize the lower east side around housing issues. Mickey Schwerner taught us tenant organizing. At the opening of the World's Fair in 1964, we marched in protest and some were arrested.
I went to Mississippi, arriving the day Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman disappeared. I lived in the movement house opposite Tougaloo where Stokeley Carmichael would arrive in the wee hours, full of dramatic and funny stories. I worked at whatever needed doing for two weeks in the COFO office. I published my first Village Voice story when I returned. That summer in NYC, CORE protested a police killing of an unarmed youth. I traveled to Atlantic City to support the MFDP.
In 1965 my husband Paul and I bussed with Bill Strickland and the Northern Student Movement to Montgomery to organize housing for the marchers coming from Selma. I published a piece about this; in '94 after two weeks traveling with Hellen O'Neal, I wrote about the changes in the state after 29 years; in '95, I wrote about the Algebra Project in Mississippi (all these pieces were published in the Village Voice and Nation.
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