Father William Morrissey--an Irish priest formerly from Brooklyn who coordinated the volunteers into Mississippi project--complained bitterly to me about the Northern workers. He told me that he was forced to take the blame when volunteers were ineffective. In Adams County where he was running for the state senate, Morrissey told me how he had left detailed instructions for the volunteers about how he wanted the precinct canvass organized. He explained that he had been forced to go to Jackson for a couple of days. When he returned, he found that the volunteers had gotten only halfway through the job.
As it turned out, Morrissey was glad that the task had not been finished. The Northern volunteers working on the canvassing cards had organized them by street within city rather than by street within precinct. It is impossible to canvass an entire street in rural areas as there are often large gaps between houses. Often these divisions are marked by rivers and by long stretches of bridges. Usually if one canvasses within one precinct on one street, there is a good chance that houses will be close together. Morrissey then had to take an additional week reorganizing the cards by precinct so that canvassing routes could be given out.
The National Committee to Elect Charles Evers, which was based in New York, tried to recruit teams of northern organizers to train local coordinators. This plan failed dismally. Most of the northerners who went to Mississippi went with the main idea of improving their own standing in their home communities. Consequently a number of liberal politicians came for a minimal period of time--usually must as long as it took to be photographed with Mayor Evers.
None of the major presidential contenders (many of whom Evers himself had helped) spent any time in the state with the exception of John Lindsay. Senator Edmund Muskie refused to go on Mayor Evers' campaign committee for fear of angering his southern white supporters. Senator Henry Jackson, who said that he would campaign for all official Democratic candidates, refused to come to Mississippi at all because he said Evers was running as an independent. Evers was running as an independent--with the blessings of Democratic National Chairman, Larry O'Brien--because blacks are not allowed to participate in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party. Evers is Democratic National Committeeman from Mississippi. His organization, the Loyalist Democrats, are the official Democratic Party of Mississippi.
Ted Kennedy also refused to come to Mississippi to help Evers. Evers spent almost two solid months campaigning for Robert Kennedy in 1968, but the most Ted Kennedy would do for Evers was to give him a fundraising party at his home in Massachusetts.
Lindsay sent a number of his advancemen to Mississippi for the two weeks before the election. Two of his workers did some advance work, but were not skillful enough to take over election day operations in a county. Another Lindsay worker went to Adams County and tried to give the impression that he knew everything there was about Mississippi politics. He made frequent references to "Big John" and infuriated the local people by talking about successful campaigns he had waged in New York City.
When he arrived in Adams County, the weekend before the election, the Lindsay advanceman told the local coordinator that he had been sent by campaign manager, Ed Cole, to "get the campaign together." Under Morrissey's leadership a decent job was being done, but this fellow began reassigning people according to his own desires. There was strong resentment of the advanceman from a number of local blacks and they called Cole to find out why he had been sent to Adams. Cole said that he simply sent the fellow to Adams to help out and that he had not intended for him to take over the campaign there.
Cole then said that he would reassign the advanceman. However, Lindsay's troubleshooter had already done a great deal of damage, alienating a number of local workers from the campaign.
Evers and Cole were perhaps the only two people competent enough to have organized local campaigns in each of the 82 counties. However, Evers, as the candidate, had to travel around the state making appearances. Thus he did not have the time to be in one area for more than a day at a time. Cole had both to schedule Evers and manage the central headquarters in Jackson. In addition to this, Cole tried to settle local disputes as best he could on the telephone. He simply did not have the time to travel around the state to clear up every problem.
One night in June, Evers and part of his staff went to Copiah County. When we got there, we found there had been a dispute and a group of younger blacks had left the meeting. Evers dispatched Cole to get them and proceeded to hear the story of the people still in the hall. Apparently there had been a minor dispute over what night to hold the Democratic Party meeting and what night to hold the NAACP meeting. The argument, while trivial on the surface, illuminated the split in that county between the younger and the older black leaders.
When Cole returned with the other members of the group, Evers quickly settled the dispute by recommending that instead of having two separate meetings, one general "mass meeting" be held. Evers then asked the leaders of both factions how much registration work had been done. Predictably little had been done because of the dispute.
Evers then organized a registration campaign for the last two weeks of June and dispatched a group of students from his Jackson headquarters to canvass in Copiah. I did not go but heard reports that the first couple of days of the campaign were a success. However, after three days, another dispute arose over where the canvassers would go. The younger blacks felt they were being left out of a policy-making role and they felt they should decide where the students should canvass.
In the past, when problems like those arose Evers could step in and settle the disputes. However, this year he was in another part of the state speaking and could not be reached. For the rest of the summer there was chaos in Copiah County.
Evers had built a strong organization in the third Congressional District (of which Copiah is a part) following the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In 1967 he produced an 85 per cent turnout in the twelve counties in the district. He was also able to elect three-quarters of the blacks who won local office. In 1968 he ran in a special election to fill the Congressional Seat of Governor John Bell Williams. He won the first primary against six white opponents but was forced to face a runoff because he had not won a majority. He lost the runnoff by a 2-1 margin to a single white opponent but proved that he was the dominant force in Mississippi black politics.
This year he entrusted the leadership of the campaign in the third district to a variety of local leaders. In his home county, Jefferson, a twenty-one year old student from Alcorn A.M. was given control of the campaign. All the black candidates in Jefferson lost and Evers ran behind his 1968 totals in the Congressional race in Jefferson county.
Despite the obstacles Evers faced, progress was still made. Evers got 5,191 more votes in the third Congressional District in his race for Governor than he did in the second primary in 1968. His effort marks the beginnings of a statewide black political machine in Mississippi. As he said in his letter to volunteers thanking them for their help: "What we did this fall was the start of a new era in the south. All the struggle and sacrifices of the '60's, all the pain and fear, were carried out so that today we could begin to build the strong political movement the south needs. A hard-nosed broad-based organization with the power to get blacks on the ballot and get them elected. That movement we're building now.