I went to Mississippi with Freedom Summer and was assigned to Harmony Community in Leake County, working on Federal Programs. Dovie Hudson and her family were my host. I was asked to go to the COFO office in Jackson at the end of the summer to work on Federal Programs, and worked there until January, 1965. I then worked in the southwest, first in McComb and then in Amite County, with Louis Steptoe.
The worked changed my life. It was far more important to me than anything I — a naive youngster — contributed. As Bernice Reagon said, "I was reborn in the Civil Rights Movement." I learned, more than anything, that people make history. I saw heroism that I could never have imagined, and a sense of hope that infused people who had lived all their lives with the degradation of white supremacy. I also saw what is probably the most important kind of leadership — that at the level of communities, where people have to confront and deal with the people who make their day-to-day lives possible.
Of those who have passed on: I especially recall Dovie and Winson Hudson,
Louis Steptoe, and Alyene Quin. I was fortunate to be able to interview Alyene
Quin before she passed on. A video with selections from that interview can be
viewed (over a high speed connection) at:
www.siu.edu/~jadams/mississippi_delta/race_frame_pg.html.
They are true heroes.
When I returned to Harmony during the Freedom Summer Reunion a few years back, Winson Hudson told me that most of the houses in the community were built with support from the Farmers Home Administration. It was gratifying to know that a COFO's Federal Programs project on had made a difference.
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