- Curtis Hayes: You knew couldn't look at white women - look at them in the eye - without gettin' in trouble.
- L.C. Dorsey: 'Cause you could be lynched for eye rape, which was really something that people believed in - that you were looking at a woman in a way that indicated that you had bad intentions toward her.
- L.C. Dorsey: What I remember about meeting white kids, the first time, who were Movement kids - young people in the Movement, was their demeanor: how they treated us, how they approached you, how they were courteous and polite, and how they didn't talk down to you. And there was no fear associated to talking to them. There was no consciousness of your place with them.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: I looked inside and I saw Emma Bell, who's a legend in the Civil Rights Movement. I saw her sittin' at a typewriter, typin'. And I had never seen a black woman that could type like this woman could type! You know, she was typin', she wasn't even lookin' down at the paper. So, I said to myself, "Oh, she's typin' a whole lot of p's and q's. She don't know what she's doin'." And I went on inside the office. I was scared to death because Mama had told me, don't go down near that, foolin' with those folks, because she had to live in this town. And inside and the first I did, once I got inside, was to go look over Emma Bell's shoulder and see what she really was typin'. She hadn't missed a word.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: When I came back and we went to a fast food restaurant. And somebody said, "let's go on in here." And I said, "Chile, we can't go in here, can we?" They'd say, "Yeah." And we went to the counter and a white man was behind the counter, he said, "My I help you, Ma'am?" And that's when I said - girl, I bought the hamburger, the coffee, the French fries; 'cause, every time, he had to say, "Ma'am" and "Thank you." And never before had I heard a white man, you know, a local white man saying that kind of thing.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: It was so beautiful to see people like Miss Luba Belle Dawson and Miss Maghee. They would be walkin' with pride! And there titties would be stickin' out a whole long way in front of them. Mama would say you could see their titties a block before you'd see them. But, they'd be walkin' with such pride! And they'd be marchin' and remember myself tryin' to walk with that heavy step that they used. It looked the earth would catch their feet and hold them.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: The Movement was the beginnin' of me findin' myself. I felt that the Movement is the greatest thing I ever seen. And I had a respect for people who started takin' a stand. And made me feel good. And people started lookin' at me.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: Whereas, the whole town, to me, was lookin' down it's nose at me, the Movement said to me, "I was somebody." "I was somebody," they said.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: Chief Larry was looked on with awe simply because he was the Chief of Police and he had the last word on everything. And, as usual, somebody pushed me forward... As I saw the look on his face, here's Ida Mae's girl up here. He was just stunned! He didn't know what to do! And for the first time in my life, I saw indecision in Chief Larry's face and that made me feel so proud. People started lookin' up to my face, into my eyes, sayin', "That cat is sho nuff tough, isn't she." I wasn't so tough. I was scared on every march. But, I knew that I couldn't turn back. Something would - just wouldn't let me turn back.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: I don't know who set the bomb; but, it was probably because of my activities in the Movement, you know. I don't know who... But, there was some people who saw an explosion, like somebody had thrown a bomb into our house. And my Mama was in there and she was in a wheelchair, you know. She couldn't walk. Well, Mama died. Mama died, I remember, she died in the Greenwood-Leflore Hospital a few days later. And my most vivid memory of this time is the nurses, who, I heard one of them say, "I don't want to take care of that old stickin' black woman."
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: I went to babysit for this white family. And the white woman called me upstairs. I went on upstairs in a hurry so as not to keep the white woman waitin'. She said, "Mr. Lawrence wants to see you." And I looked in the bed and Mr. Lawrence was layin' down among the bed clothes - they were so silky. And, I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Lawrence, what chu want with me?" And he immediately pulled me down into the bed and had intercourse with me. I was 11 years old that day. It was my birthday. It was no reason to run and tell our mother or our father; because, they couldn't do anything about it. But, get killed, if they said somethin' about it. So many times, girls, we girls were talkin' and laughin' about it, you know, never tellin' our parents. But, it happened very, very frequently. But, after I was raped at 11, I started havin' men right and left, you know. So, I was easy - and I walked sassy - and I would cuss. I could out cuss a longshoreman.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: I heard there were some outside agitators had come to town to stir up trouble between the whites and the coloreds. And that they weren't going to have anything to do with them. I immediately started lookin' for 'em; because, if they was new men in town I wanted to turn a trick with 'em. I figured maybe they'd have some money.
- Victoria Gray-Adams: They thought, you know, hey, this is something, it's better than nothing. But, the fact of the matter was, it was - nothing.
- [first lines]
- L.C. Dorsey: You don't dream, things that you can't imagine. I dreamed about just growing up and being married and having a white house with a white fence and staying in it and cooking and I'm sure that came from my "Dick and Jane" reader. In high school, I decided I really wanted to be a secretary, 'cause I'd seen one someplace, maybe in a magazine. And they wore church clothes, everyday, and they didn't have to chop cotton and they didn't have to pick cotton, they didn't have to be in the hot sun. They sat in a nice office. And I saw pictures of them talkin' on the telephone. And I thought that was an *excellent* job to have. It would be an excellent way to spend your life.
- Victoria Gray-Adams: They literally armed themselves for the coming of the volunteers into the state that summer. That - that really sums it up. It was an army, as though you were going to be invaded by the enemy.
- L.C. Dorsey: The Movement exposed you to people who lived differently. It exposed you to ideas and interests and concerns and, for the first time, introduced the possibility of a different life than just pickin' and choppin' cotton. It unleashed yearnings in me.
- Victoria Gray-Adams: These young people were willing to take risks. They cared enough about what they thought was important, what was necessary, and be willing to do something about it. And that is what attracted me. That is what attracted me. Because, I was always out there tryin' to do something about something, but, the support system was never there.
- Len Edwards: There were cultural tensions and leadership tensions and, I mean, just all the things that kind of go with this encounter of these very different, very different cultures and very different people.
- Heather Booth: I grew up thinking that the police were your friends. They were the crossing guards that helped you cross the street and the place to call if you ran into trouble.
- Victoria Gray-Adams: And I said, "Well, dear, I never, ever at anytime thought the police was my friend. Because, anytime the police showed up at my community, it meant trouble."
- Victoria Gray-Adams: I expected to see lots of hands go up. They didn't; so, you know, I raised mine and three men, bus drivers, school bus drivers, we were the ones who committed to going up to the courthouse. We went down today and by tonight, probably, the bus drivers didn't have a job - certainly not later than the next day. All the bus drivers had been fired.
- Victoria Gray-Adams: The people had read in the state newspapers, you know, the regular media, that these people are communists, these people are et cetera, and the black community was about as afraid of them as anybody else.
- L.C. Dorsey: I started choppin' cotton, I think, when I was about 6 or 7. And basically I was very happy. I mean, I didn't know that we were poor. Cause everybody I knew, except the white folk - who we all knew lived differently, lived the same way we did. You know, I thought we were fine.
- L.C. Dorsey: My father was unable to read and write. He'd never gone to school. He was convinced that education was the only was black people had to get out of anything they were in.
- L.C. Dorsey: The straw boss, the agent, the guy who was hired to run the operation, like a business manager, was opposed to us going to school when there was work to be done. And he had a rule. He would go around and say that these kids are too big to be in school, any way, and they need to be in the field. And my father so so adamant about going to school until - he would walk us to the bus stop with this gun every morning.
- L.C. Dorsey: It was like livin' in a foreign country where you were challenging the powers to be and it was with no protections. There were no courts to concern themselves about our lives. The FBI was not down to protect us from a crime of violence. There were no law enforcement, local or state law enforcement officers to protect us. So, it was a very scary - period.
- L.C. Dorsey: I was really excited about that. I would run home every evening and listen to it and every weekend, when the newspapers came, we'd read about it in the newspaper. It was people saying we're not taking this stuff any more. Who stood right up and looked them in the eye in a way I had never seen anybody do with white folks.
- L.C. Dorsey: I went up to this white man and told him who I was and that I wanted to see if he had any objection to me talking to his people about registering to vote. And he was so nice. He said, "No, I don't." And I was saying, "Oh, gee, this was going to be a piece. of cake." And as I was walking away, he called to me and said, "Oh, by the way, when you finish registering them to vote, don't bring them back here. Take 'em to your house." And that just stopped me cold; because, I was livin' in this condemned house myself that wasn't fit for people to be livin' in. I had no place. I had no job.
- Red Heffner: There was a hardening of the political atmosphere. It was - there were no soft edges at all. It was just absolutely segregation and segregation and segregation forever.
- Curtis Hayes: So, the excitement was this feeling of camaraderie, this knowing that you have somebody wit'cha who was puttin' their life on the line, just like you and the belief that you are invincible. The belief that your cause was right.
- Curtis Hayes: I always felt inferior - to the northern students. Personally, I thought they were smarter than we were. I thought - and they thought they were smarter than we were. I knew we knew more about Mississippi than they did. But, they had the ability to carry out these long analysis, intellectual discussions about our environment. That seemed like a foreign language to us.
- L.C. Dorsey: So, you learned how to negotiate your life with white folks. And, I guess, you also leaned the fear associated with them - of how much power they actually had over you. How they could determine whether you could continue to live or whether - you died.
- Henry E. Garrett: [archival footage of this Past President of the American Psychology Association] Like it or not, this is a European civilization - a white man civilization. And it should remain that, with the negroes considered to be, more or less, guests.
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: They started usin' teams. Whites and blacks would go. I think they used the whites, because, blacks had a heard time sayin' no to white folk. We don't care what they would say. So, they used the white women and we would go in teams and we would try to get people to go vote. They would say, "Yes, Ma'am. I'm goin'. Yes, Ma'am. I'm goin', I'll be there tomorrow." And by the time they left, they'd go inside, shut the door, pull their curtains down, and say, "I ain't goin' nowhere!" And the white girl, "I can't understand what happened?"
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland: I got my first introduction to a black person who was writing: Richard Wright. And as I read Richard Wright's book, I kept thinkin', well, you mean black folk can actually write books? Because, I'd always been told blacks had done no great things. They hadn't done anything. We had nothin' that we could be proud of.