(3) Black and white

RJ: But you did go, to Holmes Country. How did that come about?

AO: When I left the Communist Party, I also left New York and went as far away as I could and landed in California. I was working as a carpenter, but I realized I had more to offer. I was articulate as well as being a very skilled worker. So, when people were organizing the Freedom Summer, I became involved. I went down to Jackson, Mississippi, and met with Bob Moses [of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, one of the key organizers of the movement]. I told him that I wanted to come down and make a hands-on contribution. One of the problems the movement had then is that they didn't even have a place to meet in some of the rural areas. I told them I wanted to help create such a thing, that I would raise all the money, that I would provide the skilled labor, but I needed the community to help. And I wanted to know that if the center was really threatened, I was in a community where the people were willing to defend it. So he took me on a tour of three different places. I met Fannie Lou Hamer [another legendary organizer, known for, among other things, her work with SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party], and she didn't need me. She was a powerhouse and had more than I could offer her.

Then I came upon this community in Holmes County, where the movement was based on small, individual farmers who had gotten 40 acres and a mule in the early Roosevelt days. I put it boldly to them. I said, "I want to come down. I want to do this. I'll need a lot of physical help. And I also want to know that if somebody comes along and wants to bomb the place, you guys will do what you can to stop them." They agreed. It had become widely known that the black people of Holmes County were pacifists -- until you shot at them. And then they shot back. It was great. So, I went back to Moses and I told him what I wanted to do. And then I came back to California in early spring of '64, and I quickly raised about $30,000 for materials.

I also told the community that the condition I attached to my work was that I would never come to a political meeting and judge them, and I would not permit the leaders from Jackson to come out and tell me what to do and not to do. The only people I would listen to would be the people I was working with. I never attended a single fucking political meeting for that project, and it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, a very happy time in my life.

RJ: Did you ever feel part of that community, as a white guy in a black world?

AO: You know, to be a white person and love or to be loved by a black person, that's very rare. There are very few whites who have had that, including whites in civil-rights circles. If you do experience it, it's beautiful. Because that's the closest you come to this world you want to build. When you break down that fucking wall, just momentarily even, it's beautiful. And most white people will never know it, because if you have 20 black people in a room having a meeting, the minute you walk in their conversation changes.

But I did become part of that black community when I was in Mississippi. It wasn't my community, but they let me in. The only time I was comfortable in that period was when I was around my black friends. When I went into white Mississippi, I was scared shitless. That was hostile territory. I felt safe when I came back to the place where I lived and worked. Everywhere else I faced danger at every little town on the way. They used to chase me like in the movies, with their pickup trucks with the shotgun, the rebel flag and they would try to run me off the road, laughing, drunk.

RJ: What did you do in response to those kinds of attacks or challenges? Did you ever fight back?

AO: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And there was one really crazy thing I did. I was in Jackson and tried to register at a hotel, and the clerk saw that I had a civil-rights button on my shirt. So he says, "I'm not going to register you. The goddamn law says that we have to take niggers in this hotel now, but that means black niggers. We don't accept white niggers." And he refused to register me. So, I went back to the movement headquarters and there were a couple of young lawyers there. I said that for reasons I couldn't tell them, I needed them to register in that hotel and get me a room, and they did it.

Then I went back and I went up the backside of the hotel, because I wouldn't have made it through the lobby. I got in the room and must've taken three or four baths, and I lay down on the clean sheets. Man, that was heaven, because I had been sleeping on a straw mattress. I spent the night, and then I went to the lumber yard and bought supplies -- a sack of concrete, a bag of nails and other things, with some cutting tools. And I proceeded to fuck up that room. I wrecked the television set, which was easy. Then I went to work on the electrical system and practically destroyed the electrical boxes, which were set in concrete walls. Then I packed the toilet full with nails and rapid-set concrete, which meant the only one way they could take care of it would be to jackhammer around the whole fucking thing under the floor to get to it. They had these cheap velvet paintings that I slashed. I fucked up the water supply, the electric, the TV, the radio, the furniture. I destroyed the joints of the bed. I slashed the carpet into bits. And the final thing I did was to peel back a piece of the carpet, take a shit and then, in my own shit, write on the wall, "white nigger strikes again." It felt so good, even though I could have gotten lynched. Then I snuck down the back, got into my pickup and raced for home, and I didn't feel safe 'till I got there. When I got there and I told this story, to people who had never been inside a hotel, so they couldn't fully appreciate what I had done, but they were rolling on the fucking floor. That was such a wonderful experience.

RJ: Not to interrupt that story, but do you ever get criticized for being a white guy and using the word "nigger"?

AO: Let me tell you a story about that. This is when I was a kid, before going to Spain. I went down to help organize miners in Pennsylvania in the formation of the CIO, in the early days when the union hated Communists but were willing to use us for free labor. I was Jewish, and that was a problem, too. But I managed to break in because one of the things that the miners, and steel workers in particular, did a lot in bars was hand wrestling, and until about five years ago, I had never suffered defeat in that. So, they accepted me, and said, "Hey, you're not like a Jew-boy at all," and that kind of shit.

One day, the mine operators locked out the workers, who were planning to strike. The miners were picketing the mine, and across the road was the National Guard. The officer in charge of the National Guard, a young pipsqueak of a guy, was trying to provoke the miners so he could have a reason to beat the shit out of them. And he singled out a black miner and baited him in particular, trying to provoke him into some sort of activity. Behind this black miner was a white guy marching, and he was like a cartoon of a redneck. I mean, he was as redneck as they come. So they baited this black guy, but they didn't get a rise out of him. He maintained his calm and his dignity. At the height of this officer baiting the black guy, the redneck suddenly whips out a revolver, and he says to the military guy, "If you don't stop fucking around with this nigger, I'll blow your brains out." Those exact words, and he was very convincing.

That evening we were at the union hall, having some shitty coffee and stale bread, and with me was a friend of mine from New York, Eddie, another Jewish kid but very small. He didn't fit at all. So Eddie walks up to this giant of a redneck and he says, "That was a very brave thing you did today," and the guy looks at him, "What do you mean, brave? I'm in the union, ain't I?" He didn't think what he had done was so special. Then Eddie said, "But you also did something terrible." "What did I do that's so terrible?" "You called a fellow union brother a nigger." "Well, he ain't a white man." At which point, the black guy comes walking up, puts his hand on Eddie's shoulder, and says, "Son, them were the sweetest words I ever heard."

To me that was a very profound story. I came home and told it to a group of left-liberal friends. You know what they got hung up on? That I said the word "nigger." I told them, "Don't you get what I'm trying to tell you? Do you want me to translate the fucking thing for you? It's a beautiful example of what we want people to understand." But to them, I committed a crime because I used the word nigger. Well, when I worked in Mississippi, to call a white man a nigger was a compliment because most white people couldn't be niggers if they wanted to be.

RJ: Back to the hotel story. Why did you do it?

AO: To deal with my rage. I was furious. I couldn't call a meeting with the hotel manager or stage a demonstration -- none of the usual activities were possible. So, I did it out of rage, to do damage to my enemy. It was a form of warfare. It was a guerilla attack. The fact is, to this day, when I think of it, that was great. I didn't hurt any people, but I was fucking up their property. I caused what today would have been a $40,000 repair job. I have to admit that when I was writing "white nigger strikes again" I was bubbling with joy, mixed with the fear. I had a bunch of those experiences where I only felt safe when I was back in that community, because the whites couldn't get me there.

RJ: Were you ever afraid for your life?

AO: There was one time when someone overheard a plantation owner and a deputy sheriff making arrangements to get rid of me. I mean, bump me off. The reaction of the elders of that community was, "Abe, you've got to get out of here. We don't want you killed. We appreciate what you're doing, but not at the cost of getting yourself killed." And I said, "Do you realize what'll happen if I do that? They're going to come here and bust your asses. You'll be in a worse position in many ways." So they put a bodyguard on me -- this is hard to conceive of, a black body guard for a white guy in Mississippi. He was tough; it would have taken the sheriff and 14 deputies to stop him. He was armed, and so was I. I had a carpenter's toolbox, and in it I had a shotgun, and they gave me a .38 and a holster, and we publicized it.

I also had Hartman Turnbow on my side. I was staying with him, and we became very close to each other. He was a legend -- the first black guy to attempt to register to vote in Mississippi. His house was full of bullet holes because he got attacked regularly. And he used to look at the holes in the wall and say, "I live in the most air-conditioned house in Mississippi." When he heard about the plot to kill me, he said, "Abe, I'm going to go see the sheriff, and you're coming with me." We walked into the courthouse, and the sheriff addresses him by his first name, which was typical. Hartman doesn't respond. He stands there. And the sheriff says, "I just talked to you. Did you hear me? Why don't you answer me?" Hartman says, "I won't answer you until you call me by my name," meaning his last name. The sheriff finally calls him by his last name, and Hartman says, "Sheriff, I'm here to register a complaint. I heard that one of your assistants and others are planning to kill my friend. No, he's more than my friend, he's my brother. Anybody that's going to deal with my brother is going to deal with Turnbow. And you know sheriff, it ain't no secret that I don't allow such things to happen. Now you better straighten this thing out 'cause somebody going to get hurt. There's going to be one dead man, and it could very well be" -- and then he names the deputy sheriff. Then Hartman imperiously turns his back on him, grabs me by the arm and starts walking out. I'm waiting for them to cut us in half. And Hartman says, "Don't worry, Abe, they're chicken shit. You notice, they come around at night and shoot us up. They ain't shot in the daytime in a long time. Not in this neighborhood, not in this community." He was right. But I was scared shitless. Later I told him that he had risked our lives. Hartman said, "Yeah, I done risked our lives, but I'd risk more if I didn't do that." I said, "What would you have risked?" He said, "I'm Turnbow, and I'm never going to let them white trash forget it." And that's who he was.

God, we had an incredible relationship. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before or since. I would risk my life for him. I really loved him. He was crude. He was rough. He was mildly undemocratic. There was only one chairman in all the meetings, and when he called for a vote there were very few people who didn't vote with him. He was dangerously authentic.

RJ: Dangerously authentic?

AO: Well, he was acting on feelings and thoughts that were very important to him to a point where he actually risked losing his life and the lives of others. He wouldn't back down. There was no negotiating when it got to that. If you hit him in that area, his dignity, there was no compromise. There was no give or take. You either backed off or you assaulted him. And assaulting him was truly dangerous.

Hartman was a phenomenon, but his end was a very sad one, which says a lot about movements. He was a pioneering figure when they needed an ice-breaker. But when they won the initial victories and had to develop a different political strategy, he was a total loss, and little by little he fell out of center position, and finally was almost disregarded. Then he got very sick, diabetes, lost a leg. I went to visit him, and he died not long after. They gave him a beautiful funeral to which hundreds and hundreds of people came. But he had gone from being a spearhead of a movement to being rejected. When you read books, his name comes up occasionally because when he attempted to register to vote, they firebombed his house that night. He's a part of that history in Mississippi.

RJ: Is that inevitable? The people who have the qualities it takes at the beginning of a project ...

AO: Are totally different than what is needed later. Yes, often the case. There are a few people who know how to make that transition. Hartman didn't have that. He had no people skills. The word diplomacy didn't register with him. He was totally authentic -- he had no tricks, no game plan. But you need a little bit of that stuff when you're building a movement.

Part 4 - Building political movements in an affluent society

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