Cops and COFO in Philadelphia

A twelve-car motorcade pulled away from the COFO office in Philadelphia Miss. on Monday and headed for the Neshoba County courthouse, carrying four COFO workers and 39 local Negro citizens who wanted to register.

When cars arrived and prospective registrants piled out, they were escorted up the court-house steps by Neshoba county sheriff Lawrence Rainey and deputy sheriff Cecil Price, both of whom were recently indicted for depriving Philadelphia Negroes of their civil rights.

Inside the courthouse, the registrants sat on the floor in the hall outside the registration room, waiting to fill out the 12-question test. Only three people were permitted into the registration room at once, so that it was 5 P.M. before all 39 were through.

Surprisingly Easy

Except for one COFO worker who was roughed up, the only incident of the day was the arrest of one registrant on charges of passing a bad check.

Philadelphia COFO workers had not thought on Sunday evening that the second "Freedom Day" would be so peaceful. Rainy and Price the day before, told COFO staff members that they would be out of town on Freedom Day. "You'll be on your own" the sheriff and deputy sheriff had said.

That spelled trouble. On the first Freedom Day on Sept. 14, a local white citizen had beaten a COFO photographer over the head with a blackjack and smashed his $250 camera.

But evidently Rainey and Price were apprehensive themselves, for late Sunday evening, they called COFO to say they would be around after all. "When we found out how many people were coming to register, we decided to postpone the trip a day," Price explained afterward.

Such cooperation between civil rights workers and local law officers is new in Neshoba County. Last June three COFO workers were-murdered after being held in jail for six hours on a speeding charge. Recently, five law enforcement officers (Rainey, Price, two policemen and a former sheriff) were arrested and indicted by a Federal grand jury for beating six Philadedphia Negroes, and thus violating their civil rights.

The charges carry a maximum penalty of a $1000 fine and a year's imprisonment--if the Federal government can win a conviction. But with most Negroes barred from juries in Mississippi the prospects for such conviction seem dim.

The five arrested men never saw the inside of a jail. After being seized, they were taken to Meridian, where they posted bonds of $1000 on each charge. Immediately afterwards they returned to Philadelphia to resume their law enforcement duties.

COFO workers in Philadelphia felt their return quickly. According to Ralph Featherstone, 25-year old Negro COFO worker from Washington, D.C., Rainey and Price circled the office four times that evening.

An uneasy truce has existed in Neshoba County ever since COFO set up its Philadelphia project in late August. Plans for establishing an office earlier in the summer were postponed after the three workers were murdered there.

COFO in Philadelphia

Seven COFO workers--all male, for the area is considered too dangerous for girls--are now operating in Neshoba, doing voter and Freedom registration and organizing a farmers' league for the local Negroes, most of whom support themselves by farming and sharecropping. In September, COFO workers drove a bookmobile around the county, reading books and telling stories to the children who gathered round. Now, however, the bookmobile has been replaced by freedom school classes, which began Wednesday in the bottom of the COFO office. The Freedom School shares the office, a former hotel, with a 600-book library, the voter registration headquarters and the workers' beds.

The evening after the first Freedom Day a white, who was drunk, walked into COFO headquarters with a pistol bulging in his pocket. He began a conversation with one of the workers in which he threatened his life--but he left when the worker calmly walked out of the room.

Some local Negroes have been intimidated for their support of the freedom movement. Several weeks ago, the principal of the Negro high school suspended 57 students for wearing freedom buttons to class. COFO workers who inquired were told that such pins were not educational and it was "against school policy" to allow students to wear such "controversial material." The students have filed suit against the superintendent, the principal, and the board of education, alleging that their rights under the First Amendment and the Civil Rights Act have been infringed.

On four occasions Ku Klux Klan members have driven by the Philadelphia office in pickup trucks, carrying rifles in their laps or in racks. COFO workers report that the Klansmen spin their tires, kicking up dust and dirt and forcing anyone in the road to leap aside for safety.

But COFO workers are not alone when the Klan rides by. A 65-year old widow, who lives across from the office, has appointed herself a one-woman protection squad for "my boys," as she calls the workers. When the Klansmen approach, she leaves her rocker on the porch, goes inside, loads her rifle and carries it back to her rocker. "Don't you hurt my boys," she warns the Klansmen.

Apathy and Fear

But the rifle-packing widow is an exception. Apathy and fear keep most Neshoba Negroes from such open militance. One girl told a COFO field secretary that she liked to sit in the segregated section of the local movie theater. Only about 30 of the 1500 Negroes in Philadelphia show up at "mass meetings." And when COFO workers attempted for the first time to distribute two and one-half tons of food and clothing sent from Cleveland, Ohio, they found few takers.

"There are a few brave souls and some who follow these brave souls, but many are scared," one Philadelphia civil rights worker said. "Lots of people don't even know what equal rights are. This is the worst I've seen of the effects which segregation has had on the minds of Negroes."

Despite such apathy, however, COFO workers report that the local Negro citizens are extremely excited about the five arrests of police officers and optimistic about their chances of conviction. Many of them do not exactly understand the charges against the five officers--they think the men have been charged with murder--but are simply elated over the fact that something has been done.

One Negro man told COFO workers, "I really think they'll be convicted." Then pausing he continued, "But if they're not, I'm leaving, 'cause things will be three times as bad around here.