Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- SNCC/COFO WATS Reports

Daily WATS Reports

Before there were "800" numbers there was Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS). A WATS line allowed a company or organization to make unlimited long-distance calls in a specified geographic area for a flat monthly fee.

In the early '60s, a call from one county to another was often billed as "long-distance," and long-distance calls were expensive. Cell-phones, of course, did not exist. Many rural communities in the South did not yet have direct-dial for long-distance, so out-of-area calls had to be placed through the local operators who were all white ("Ma Bell" did not hire Blacks in the South for anything but the most menial positions). Operators in league with the Sheriff or Citizens Council would often block or tap calls from freedom fighters. But a WATS line allowed civil rights workers to bypass the local operators, which meant they could reach their offices when under siege by cops or the Klan. And with a WATS line, long-distance charges were billed to the organization and calls could be made from pay-phones, or the phones of local folk who had little money for phone bills.

It was understood, of course, that Movement WATS lines were tapped and bugged by every law enforcement agency from the FBI down to the local beat constable. And anything said over the WATS line was passed on by the cops to the Klan and White Citizens Council.

At SNCC, CORE, COFO, and SCLC offices in cities such as Jackson, Greenwood, and Atlanta, the life-saving WATS lines were manned (or, more accurately, woman-ed) around the clock, 24 hours a day, recording incidents of violence and arrest, dispatching doctors and lawyers to aid the injured and incarcerated, alerting organizers of danger and need, notifying media and Justice Department of abuses and outrages, and coordinating support and assistance nation-wide. As the calls came in over the WATS line hour by hour, the substance of each call was added to each day's "WATS Report" and summaries were prepared and distributed to the press and Movement supporters around the country.

There is no doubt that there are Freedom Movement activists alive today who would have been killed or maimed had word not gotten out quickly of Freedom Houses under attack by Klan night-riders or of activists being "detained" by southern sheriffs.

Example WATS Reports

Some of the reports listed below are from the COFO WATS line in Jackson, some are probably from the SNCC office in either Atlanta or Greenwood. We've tried to guess which is which, but we can't be sure we guessed right.
Many of these PDFs were created from photo-copies of the originals and for some of them the on-screen visual quality may be poor due to the poor quality of the copies. Due to the poor quality of photo-copy, some of the reports are not searchable at all, and for others search is inconsistent or erratic.

1964
SNCC WATS Line Instructions & Policies
July	August
COFO July 1, 1964 COFO July 2, 1964 COFO Digest July 2, 1964 SNCC July 2, 1964 COFO July 3, 1964 SNCC July 3, 1964 COFO July 4, 1964 COFO July 5, 1964 COFO July 6, 1964 SNCC July 6, 1964 COFO July 7, 1964 SNCC July 8, 1964 COFO July 8, 1964 SNCC July 9, 1964 COFO July 9, 1964 COFO Summary June 30-July 9, 1964 COFO July 10, 1964 Community Centers July 10, 1964 SNCC July 10, 1964 COFO July 11, 1964 COFO July 12, 1964 SNCC July 12, 1964 SNCC July 13, 1964 COFO July 13, 1964 COFO July 13-14, 1964 COFO July 14, 1964 SNCC July 15, 1964 SNCC July 15, 1964 COFO July 16, 1964 SNCC July 17, 1964 COFO July 17, 1964 SNCC July 18, 1964 COFO July 18, 1964 COFO July 19, 1964 SNCC July 20, 1964 COFO July 20, 1964 COFO July 21, 1964 COFO July 22, 1964 COFO July 23, 1964 SNCC July 23, 1964 COFO July 24, 1964 COFO July 25, 1964 SNCC July 25-31, 1964 Holly Springs Freedom Day, July 25, 1964 COFO July 26, 1964 SNCC July 26, 1964 COFO July 27, 1964 COFO July 28, 1964 SNCC July 28, 1964 COFO July 29, 1964 SNCC July 29, 1964 COFO July 30, 1964 SNCC July 31-Aug 8, 1964 COFO July 31, 1964	COFO August 1, 1964 SNCC August 1, 1964 COFO August 2, 1964 SNCC August 2, 1964 COFO August 3, 1964 SNCC August 3, 1964 COFO August 4, 1964 SNCC August 4, 1964 COFO August 5, 1964 SNCC August 6, 1964 COFO August 6, 1964 SNCC August 7, 1964 COFO August 7, 1964 COFO August 8, 1964 COFO August 9, 1964 SNCC August 10, 1964 COFO August 10, 1964 COFO August 11, 1964 COFO August 12, 1964 COFO August 13, 1964 SNCC August 13, 1964 COFO August 14, 1964 SNCC August 14, 1964 COFO August 15, 1964 COFO August 16, 1964 SNCC August 16, 1964 COFO August 17, 1964 SNCC August 17, 1964 COFO August 18, 1964 SNCC August 18, 1964 COFO August 19, 1964 SNCC August 19-21, 1964 COFO August 20, 1964 COFO August 21, 1964 COFO August 22, 1964 SNCC August 22, 1964 COFO August 23, 1964 SNCC August 23, 1964 COFO August 24, 1964 SNCC August 24, 1964 COFO August 25, 1964 COFO August 26, 1964 SNCC August 26, 1964 COFO August 27, 1964 COFO August 28, 1964 COFO August 29, 1964 COFO August 30, 1964
1965
SNCC, April 29, 1965 SNCC, May 4, 1965 SNCC May 6, 1965 SNCC May 16, 1965 SNCC May 28, 1965 SNCC June 4, 1965 SNCC June 15-July 30, 1965 SNCC June 29, 1965	SNCC July 6, 1965 SNCC July 7, 1965 SNCC July 8, 1965 SNCC July 10, 1965 SNCC July 12, 1965 SNCC July 14, 1965 SNCC July 18, 1965 SNCC August 6, 1965
1966
SNCC, September 12-14, 1966