Ed King's Mississippi: Behind the Scenes of Freedom Summer by Rev. Ed King & Trent Watts

Author:Rev. Ed King & Trent Watts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Non-Fiction, Civil Rights, Illustrated, Race, Politics, Social Movements, United States, History
ISBN: 9781628461169
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

4. Jackson, Miss., 1964—July, COFO office, M. L. King talks to staff

This photograph would have been taken in the COFO office on Lynch Street in Jackson. The map of Mississippi on the wall behind Dr. King shows the five congressional districts into which the state was then divided. We had the work in the state that summer organized between the civil rights groups that way. The fourth congressional district was for CORE; that district took in a number of eastern counties, including the Meridian area, where Mickey and Rita Schwerner went to work. SNCC would have had responsibility for four districts and CORE one. SCLC was cooperating everywhere and we welcomed any help we could get from the NAACP anywhere; that cooperation was a matter of principle, but was also practical, because of the need for manpower throughout the state. Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, the three volunteers who disappeared in Neshoba County, were technically not with SNCC, but rather with CORE. In the Jackson office we would have had a few paid SNCC people, but most of them would have been summer volunteers. Dr. King’s visit here was again to identify with the workers, to lend support, and to get a firsthand view of the work that we were doing. He certainly didn’t have to persuade any of these people that what we were doing was important. His visit was to show his symbolic identification with them. In the office that day people did things like point out on the map places like Greenwood, for instance, and highlight what activities were going on in different places. Neshoba County is indicated by the small dark circle on the map just above the head of Dr. King.

—Rev. Edwin King, interview by Trent Watts, June 2, 2009, transcript, December 2009, transcript in author’s possession.

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