Ruth E. Schein

COFO/Freedom Summer, 1964
Current Residence: San Francisco, CA

My testimony is offered in loving tribute to our fallen comrades, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman.

If someone were to ask me what in my whole life (and I'm now 83) I'm proudest of, I would say, "The two months I worked in Mississippi during the summer of '64."

At 47, I was older than almost all the other volunteers, but I never felt out of placeo I had volunteered with COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) and worked in the Jackson Office, where I helped to put out the legal newsletter, kept the files of volunteers, and did legal secretarial work for Bill Kunstler and the other attorneys.

A few of the many images that remain with me:

• The two FBI agents who came into the office and asked me if they could copy our files of volunteers so that the FBI could "protect" them. I didn't believe this at alI — I thought that the FBI just wanted to enlarge its dossiers. I told the agents that I was sorry but was not empowered to release the files to anyone, that they would have to get permission from Bob Moses.

• The hate-filled face, contorted with rage, of the white driver who, making a right turn, accelerated as I stepped off the curb to cross Lynch Street to get to the office. Thanks to good reflexes, I was able to jump back onto the sidewalk. As the car sped away, I noticed that it had no rear license pIate — or perhaps it was covered.

  I thought that I wasn't affected by this narrow escape, but every time thereafter when I crossed that street, my knees turned to jelly.

• My most unforgettable person: Stokely Carmichael, the "magnificent barbarian," as Len Holt characterized him in The Summer That Didn't End. How I admired his fiery spirit, his courage, his defiance! Rest in peace, Stokely, you fought the good fight.

• Taking minutes in shorthand of the first session of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and meeting Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.

Knowing that Freedom Summer was making history, I kept a copy of everything that came off the mimeograph machine. On my return, I gave the material, which filled a few cartons, to the Schomburg Library in Manhattan. Historians now have access to the actual documents issued by the Jackson office.

Back home in Manhattan, I did a little work for SNCC (Elizabeth Sutherland was in the office at that time), some public speaking, some fund-raising. (I remember that at one affair, held in Columbia University, we raised enough money to send a truck down South.) But nothing I did on my return was as substantive or meaningful as my work in Mississippi.

I am proud to be a Veteran of the Civil Rights Movement.

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