WHITE (December 3-4, 1969)

Thousands of stars illumine the southern sky of Black Belt, Georgia.  The whole magnificent heavenly world of white and black—glowing softly, subdued, peaceful – fills the soul and stirs hope.  I ponder the events of the day and shake my head involuntarily and remember unbelievingly that it is 1969, fifteen long years since the Supreme Court’s historic decision……………

Two White Vista Volunteers, the black deputy director of a Community Action Agency, I pulled over to the side of a gas station-truck stop dinner for lunch.  A curl of black smoke lolled out of the exhaust pipe chimney from the fixings of Southern fried chicken and deep fried catfish, the specialties of the house.  A large black man swung open the loose hinged screen door of the Men’s room – the only architectural prop on the whole left side of the building that prevented the slouching establishment from falling to the ground.  Dee, the IAP director, rolled down his window and called over in a low voice to the other black man who was getting into his car.  “They serve colored folks here?”  “Sho. Yo won’t have no problem here.”

Man, it is dark out here.  Fifteen years later yet more than mere vestiges of discrimination and racism remain.

A lonely (black top) county road runs along past the meeting place tonight.  A small clearing about 100 feet off the rod and a beautiful white, simple church glows in the black darkness.  Three cars with the windows rolled up tight wait in a semi-circle; only the orange parking lights and the stars over head reveal the silhouettes of people inside the car.  “Now don’t be disappointed, you hear. Oh well you know I’m really saying that to myself.   I really feel low in spirit when so few people show up.  What time do you have?”

“About quarter to eight.”

“Well, we might as well get out and start.”  Her musical voice is low, whispered and despondent.

Celestine is a remarkable girl.  Her very light coffee with cream complexion gives of a gold glow.  A pale brown fully grown Afro crowns her head and accentuates the taught fine features of her face.  She is not pretty.  Her frame is small but she is more than five feet five inches.  Her bony knees would serve the pre-med student well in examining all the bones, ligaments and tendons.  She weighs less than 100 pounds yet she is a very beautiful person indeed: her impassioned voice, her commitment and devotion to her people and her laugh – bright and clear, ringing and overflowing.

I follow her out of the car and watch.  To each of the parked cars, not more than a half a dozen, she walks gracefully almost airily over, bends down and says, “Hello, Mrs. Williams. Good to see you here.  Hi there, Miss Wright, how’s your brother getting along with that there bad leg of his?”

The people’s car doors open as if a magic wand has passed over each of the cars.  Middle aged people, old people – mostly tired folk get out of the car.  They make their way up the steps through the freshly painted portals and into the church. It is half-brick and half wood.  The beams and boards of the arched roof are of knotty pine.  Simple unvarnished benches with stiff wooden backs sever as the pews of the congregation.  The walls are made of concrete.  A large childlike drawing of Christ baptizing a group of black folk in the river occupies nearly the entire front.  The original wood church had burned down 2 years ago.  No one ever found how or why but the people had pooled their money and labor and finished this new church just 2 months ago.

The men sit on the left and the women on the right.  A total of 15 people have shown so far at the meeting.  Cel told me that they had been averaging close to 40 people here in Lee County.  This is the 4th meeting.  The whites in the county are disturbed at the movement because not only do the blacks make up 70% of the population in this county, but now they have an option to buy this farm of more than 5,000 acres.  That would be the largest farm in the county and it would be in black hands.  With the land in their hands, it would only be a small step to running for elective county offices.  Blacks in power.  Another Fayetteville, another Sparta, Georgia where the balances of political power on the county level could shift to the majority of the people – the blacks.  Maybe the bad showing is due to the belated rumblings and agitating of the ole “Tic” Forester the former Congressman from the District.  These old white folks are back to their old tactics of intimidating the poor blacks: that if “They attend any here meeting that’s going to create a sharecropper city, they soon will not have any job working for 50¢ an hour picking cotton or gathering pecans and shelling them.  No sir, “They will fire their niggers before they let them go ahead and organize this communist plot of putting – you hear – sharecroppers on a 5000 acre piece of land.”