IMPRESSIONS FROM THE VOTER REGISTRATION BATTLE FRONT

LIBERTY, MISSISSIPPI, NOVEMBER, 1965

 By Debbie Green

EXCERPTS FROM DEBBIE GREEN’S 1965 JOURNAL:

“We were aware that the Village Voice proposed to send us to one of the most dangerous places in the South for Civil Rights workers, a rural area in which the movement was still in the pioneering stage.  The idea that a Negro might exercise his right to vote was a new one in Liberty, Mississippi.”

 “That day, Steptoe, Eric, and I went out canvassing. We got in the truck with Steptoe and drove for a long time and Steptoe started filling us in. We asked him about how many people he had registered and the general facts of the situation.

There had been no Negroes registered in that state since Reconstruction until six months ago. Bob Moses had been beaten up. Another man who had tried to register had been shot near the gin mill. His name was Herbert Lee, and he was shot by a white man named Hearst.

Hearst had the farm across the dirt road from Steptoe’s farm. Some of the roads are blacktop, but most are dirt. You can drive around those roads for miles, and all you see are shacks. Hearst, who lived across the street, had gone in broad daylight and asked Herbert Lee a question. Herbert was getting out of the truck and walking around it, and Hearst went up to him and shot him through the head, and he fell dead. Lots of people had seen it, so the cops stopped Hearst to write out a report. He stayed and talked to them for about an hour, and then he was free. He never had a trial. Nothing ever happened about it. That was just one killing. Others had been killed, but I don’t remember the details.”

Sharecropper Cabin, photo by Dorothea Lange