I drove down to Oxford Ohio with Bob Zellner. I'd met Bob and Dottie at Brandeis University. For four years before Oxford Ohio I'd been at Oxford England: and before that I'd grown up and went to school in the British Crown Colony of Kenya.
Kenya became an independent state in 1963, the year before SNCC presence in Mississippi. In the Colony of Kenya, where I grew up (and where my wife-to-be was born), and like Miss., the colour of your skin was it: us white folk had the best of what was available, and violence protected that arrangement. Like all white men, I had to undergo military after school — note, all WHITE men. Africans resisted in various ways, essentially the MauMau uprising, which saw about 11,000 Africans killed by the Whites.
Fortunately, I never had to go into active service, but I do remember one time when we, 12 uniformed armed white men entered an African village, and within ten seconds it was empt... Kenya wasn't all bad, but that episode is engraved on my soul.
Oxford England was not at all like Oxford Ohio. I recall the agony on the face of Bob Moses when the news came through about the "disappearance" of three men, years months found murdered: and we knew that Mississippi was not the most cheerful place into which to go.
I was dropped off in Holly Springs, and experienced both the supportive force of comrades and, like all of us, the venom of white racialism. I recall a sheriff shoving his gun into my face and, half in tears, half in rage, dragging me out to a Civil War Memorial, shouting about his great great granddaddy (or somesuch) who had died defending the freedom of Mississippi ...
Another more modern white defender of Mississippi freedom tried to run me over (and we shared a laugh when he missed!), while another was extremely hostile when three of us (one black) arrived to de-segregate the (his?) Church.
Then of course actions enshrining Civil Rights changed things, in both Kenya and Mississippi, so peace more or less applies where in my early lifetime, it occasionally peeped over the wall.
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