DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Ed Spannaus correspondence, June-September 1964 | 1964-07-16 Mike Kenney to Ed Spannaus Page 3

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Ed Spannaus correspondence, June-September 1964

1964-07-16 Mike Kenney to Ed Spannaus Page 3

One lady I talked to Saturday makes 2.50 a day working 7 days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. as cook and maid in a white home. She is old and afraid to do anything for fear she will lose her only income and with it the tiny wooden house she saved for through many years of chopping and picking cotton. She never drinks a coke, even occasionally, but fixes instead a penny cool aid on a hot day to save the 9 cents she needs for her home and bills. She raises much of her own food on a little patch of land next to the house. She lives alone and has no other support. 

Despite the fear and intimidation (a house was shot into last year after the lady of the house was fired from her job of 21 years for suspected membership in NAACP; another house was bombed (one of the leaders of the movement here in Mileston where some of our people are staying -- he won't be bombed again. . . he came out shooting and evidently killed one of the bombers); and now the sheriff is telling people that if they sign anything they will go to jail.), we think we may have a movement going here. We had a meeting Sunday and we are having a high school organizing committee meeting today. In another town we are working on organizing teachers, and I am going to talk to high school kids in another area Friday. 

Yesterday while the Mississippi River was being dragged looking for the three missing civil rights workers from Philadelphia, two bodies of Negroes were found, one cut in half and one without a head. Mississippi is the only state where you can at any day drag a river and find bodies you were not expecting. And people wonder why we are here !

Things are really much better for rabbits here. There is a closed season on rabbits. Negroes are killed all year round. So are rabbits, really. The difference is that arrests are made for killing rabbits out of season. (About half the trucks you see here in Holmes county have gun racks across the back windows). Jesus Christ. This is supposed to be America in 1964. 

As you remember from the fone conversation from Oxford. I was scheduled to to into the most dangerous county in Mississippi and we were sent into Holmes for training under fire so to speak before entering the other area (no names because of suspected mail tampering). More and more however I (watch the jargon) suspect this will be our permanent assignment. One of the reasons that I think we will remain here is that we were not sent into McComb last week after the Freedom House there suffered a three explosion bombing. That would have been a obvious time to send us in. Personally I would bot mind at all staying in Holmes County for the rest of the summer (and if I do not go back to school next year -- a distant possibility now -- I would not mind staying here for a year).

Graduate school seems pretty sterile here. 

Still am having financial and car problems. I have spent the whole 250 I brot with me (on car repairs (two tires torn up already by the dirt roads), Freedom House repairs, food, travel, etc and cet.) and still have the problem of an insufficient car. Plus if I stay on next year I will have to go back to Iowa in two weeks and liquidate

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One lady I talked to Saturday makes 2.50 a day working 7 days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. as cook and maid in a white home. She is old and afraid to do anything for fear she will lose her only income and with it the tiny wooden house she saved for through many years of chopping and picking cotton. She never drinks a coke, even occasionally, but fixes instead a penny cool aid on a hot day to save the 9 cents she needs for her home and bills. She raises much of her own food on a little patch of land next to the house. She lives alone and has no other support. Despite the fear and intimidation (a house was shot into last year after the lady of the house was fired from her job of 21 years for suspected membership in NAACP; another house was bombed (one of the leaders of the movement here in Mileston where some of our people are staying -- he won't be bombed again. . . he came out shooting and evidently killed one of the bombers); and now the sheriff is telling people that if they sign anything they will go to jail.), we think we may have a movement going here. We had a meeting Sunday and we are having a high school organizing committee meeting today. In another town we are working on organizing teachers, and I am going to talk to high school kids in another area Friday. Yesterday while the Mississippi River was being dragged looking for the three missing civil rights workers from Philadelphia, two bodies of Negroes were found, one cut in half and one without a head. Mississippi is the only state where you can at any day drag a river and find bodies you were not expecting. And people wonder why we are here ! Things are really much better for rabbits here. There is a closed season on rabbits. Negroes are killed all year round. So are rabbits, really. The difference is that arrests are made for killing rabbits out of season. (About half the trucks you see here in Holmes county have gun racks across the back windows). Jesus Christ. This is supposed to be America in 1964. As you remember from the fone conversation from Oxford. I was scheduled to to into the most dangerous county in Mississippi and we were sent into Holmes for training under fire so to speak before entering the other area (no names because of suspected mail tampering). More and more however I (watch the jargon) suspect this will be our permanent assignment. One of the reasons that I think we will remain here is that we were not sent into McComb last week after the Freedom House there suffered a three explosion bombing. That would have been a obvious time to send us in. Personally I would bot mind at all staying in Holmes County for the rest of the summer (and if I do not go back to school next year -- a distant possibility now -- I would not mind staying here for a year). Graduate school seems pretty sterile here. Still am having financial and car problems. I have spent the whole 250 I brot with me (on car repairs (two tires torn up already by the dirt roads), Freedom House repairs, food, travel, etc and cet.) and still have the problem of an insufficient car. Plus if I stay on next year I will have to go back to Iowa in two weeks and liquidate