Bobs M Tusa. Faces of . Photographs by Herbert Randall. Tuscaloosa and London: Press, 2001. ix + 60 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8173-1056-1.

Reviewed by Judith Sheppard

Published on H-South (August, 2001)

Preserving A Summer in Black and White mer, pictured in several shots at an Independence It is every writer's sorrow to know that some‐ Day fsh fry he gave for Freedom School volun‐ times the image really is more powerful than the teers. A big-boned black farmer wearing a pith word. Yet, faced with that fact and the image that helmet and a Clark Gable mustache, a respected proves it, no writer resents it. Like everyone else, landowner and family man, he cooked fsh in two the writer who sees a magnifcent photograph, large iron pots on a wood fre under the trees of particularly one of historical signifcance, must his home, showed a real cotton plant to amusingly pay attention and respect that compelling clarity. fascinated Northerners, and allowed his tractor to pull excited volunteers on a hay ride without the Which is why the reader may come late to the hay. The fact that Dahmer would, two years later, excellent introduction to Faces of Freedom Sum‐ "lose his life defending his family" when that mer, a book of 102 black-and-white images from same home was ordered frebombed by a Ku Klux Hattiesburg, Miss. In 1964 volunteers and locals Klan wizard in a neighboring county (p. 11) lifts worked together to register voters and improve these pictures from well-composed snapshots to the poor education available to Southern blacks at public record of a martyr. that time. It is impossible not to turn frst to the glossy pages of photos, taken by Herbert Randall, Randall, who had received a John Hay Whit‐ then a young New York photographer on a fellow‐ ney Fellowship for Creative Photography grant to ship, and read the names--and fates--of the people create an essay on black life and came reluctantly in them later. to Hattiesburg, took 1,759 negatives over July and August 1964. He has gone on to a distinguished ca‐ But, as the writer also knows, in the end, reer, but thought little of the work he did then. words can make the images more meaningful. For When Tusa contacted him and he donated the instance: It makes a diference to have read the photos to USM, they remained in the sixteen 60-page introduction by Bobs M. Tusa, archivist at brown envelopes he'd stufed them in. "I have not the University of Southern Mississippi, and recall stopped looking at them since," says Tusa of the why you already know the name of Vernon Dah‐ pictures which, aside from 12 images printed in a H-Net Reviews

1965 book and a widely-distributed photo of Rab‐ Though Hattiesburg, largest Freedom Summer bi Arthur J. Lelyveld, beaten by a tire iron while site with seven , was sometimes in Mississippi registering voters, had never been "looked down upon as being 'too tame' by those printed. "Even Herbert Randall had not seen his who were seeking a summer of danger," accord‐ Freedom Summer photographs, apart from con‐ ing to SNCC feld secretary Sheila Michaels, it was tact prints and the photocopies I sent him, until he bad enough. SNCC records list 20 incidents of ar‐ attended the opening of (a USM archives exhibit) rests, harassment and assaults, including the se‐ on June 7, 1999," writes Tusa. "It was almost thir‐ vere beating of Lelyveld on July 10 and another of ty-fve years to the day since he had frst focused volunteer Peter Werner on July 20. his camera on the Mississippi Freedom Summer The frst, shocking photo of Lelyveld, his volunteers and clicked the shutter" (p. 4). shirtfront drenched in blood and a square ban‐ Tusa's careful, complete introduction re‐ dage partially covered his battered temple, is fol‐ counts the history of the whole of Freedom Sum‐ lowed reassuringly by a snap of him laughing and mer, its apparent failure and its ultimate success. joking with admiring supporters; nonetheless, he Her work provides the wider context of the com‐ had to be hospitalized. A close-up of Werner, who plicated, ambitious scheme of civil rights pro‐ was a naturalized American whose family had grams of that summer of which the Hattiesburg fed the Nazis, shows him clutching a telephone Freedom Schools and voter registration drive receiver; his shock over being assaulted from be‐ Randall photographed was a part. Freedom Sum‐ hind is as clear on his young face as his bruises. mer was a project based in fve districts in Missis‐ Another photo shows a young man pointing to sippi (but not in rural areas, considered danger‐ bullet holes in the grille of the white Saab in ous) under the umbrella of the Council of Federat‐ which Randall had ridden to Hattiesburg from ed Organizations (COFO), which was composed of Ohio, hidden by a blanket during the day. Not only groups with distinguished acronyms of their own: were there always the reports of violence around the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee them, there was always the threat of violence (SNCC, or "Snick"), the Southern Christian Leader‐ amongst them, recalls Michaels, "always a truck ship Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial across the street (from the Hattiesburg COFO of‐ Equality (CORE) and the Mississippi chapters of fce) with white men with a shotgun in the cab" the NAACP. These groups converged on Mississip‐ (p. 18). pi in 1964 because, said , then chair‐ Few of the photos are so dramatic as those of man of SNCC, "If we can crack Mississippi, we will Lelyveld and Werner. In many, you might feel you likely be able to crack (racial segregation) in the have wandered upon an ordinary gathering at a rest of the country" (p. 1). church with a lovely name like True Light or More than 200 volunteers, black and white, Priest Creek or Morning Star Baptist (though it came from outside the South -many from promi‐ was in Mount Zion Baptist that so much work oc‐ nent families, like the young woman whose father curred that it's now designated a historic civil was secretary to the Army under Truman, or the rights site). It was hot, of course, and the heat son of American architect Edward Durrel Stone-- soaks through the pictures the way it does every to teach in one of the 50 Freedom Schools or sign day in a Southern summer: cardboard church up voters. They came for many reasons, drawn by fans appear in almost every photo, and when Pete their ideals, testing their own mettle--a black Seeger leads a group in "," Charlestonian spoke of his need to "confront (his) sweat glistens on his face and throat, shirtsleeves fear" (p. 14)--or otherwise seeking experience. rolled up as high as they'll go. People simply talk

2 H-Net Reviews to each other, children play on a lawn or listen to image of the Sunbeam Bread girl, smiling over a teacher, dressed-up folks meet in the pews. her white bread sandwich, her halo of golden In fact, the apparently ordinary surface of the curls and blue eyes a reversed image of the photographs may lull the viewer into forgetting ragged and unsmiling black children she sees. the history through which these people moved or But in this book of haunting faces it is that of missing, at frst, the subtext, like the eagerness a young woman who is almost the epitome of dig‐ with which many Freedom School students wel‐ nifed defance who graces the cover. Gracie come the gifts of words and music brought them. Hawthorne, a Hattiesburg activist, sits in profle They snatch up books and magazines--sometimes in front of COFO Headquarters, her fearlessly un‐ the frst clean copies they've held that weren't dis‐ straightened hair shaped in an Afro, partially ob‐ cards from white school systems--and pore over scuring SNCC's "One Man, One Vote" sign. What them, as in one photo where young black men are she is thinking we are not told. But her head is enthralled by their frst copy of Ebony Magazine. high, her faraway gaze unafraid. It's a lovely im‐ In another, Lillie Dwight, her face a study in per‐ age. fect beauty, bends over her pencil and paper; a "Viewing these pictures brings back feelings I young black man is in soft focus behind her, light thought I had done with, memories that I no glancing of his spectacles. Two children go longer visit even in my dreams," writes Victoria through two volumes on a knocked-together Jackson Gray Adams, who is frequently seen in bench in a Freedom School library; in one lovely, the photos as a candidate for Senate softly lit scene, a group of black children sitting from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, on the foor turn lit, still faces up to folk singer in a foreword. "Truly there was such a time, and Pete Seeger. there was such a people, as this pictorial work af‐ Randall's photos also show the world outside frms ... The evidence of these pictures confrms, the schools and churches and its oppressively or‐ afrms, validates and reiterates the yearning for dinary poverty. A minister strides along the rail‐ an orderly, peaceful and just world." road tracks, sheaf of registration forms under his "Faces of Freedom Summer" is dedicated to arm; he passes blacks gathered on sagging porch‐ Sandy Leigh, the vibrant SNCC feld director who es of a string of never-painted shacks and shotgun coordinated the Hattiesburg eforts, is shown in a houses. At one, he writes on forms laid on a number of photos and who, Tusa says, was so stained mattress propped against a porch from badly beaten in New York in 1970 that he can no which three poor blacks stare at him, faces trou‐ longer remember those days. But he -- and we -- bled. Children clad in rags play beside the road, are lucky in this. For those who seek to step into a around torn screen doors and broken furniture. book that will make them feel as if they have just Four young girls giggle at the unseen photogra‐ walked up to Mount Zion to mingle with the work‐ pher as a white volunteer interviews Hattie Mae ers and the locals, who wonder what the intimate Pough, hanging out washing she's just scrubbed day-in and day-out of life in the heart of the civil on a washboard in one of four pails in her yard. rights movement might have been like, Faces of In an eerie echo of a literary device in "The Great Freedom Summer, its text and its photos, is a rich Gatsby," Randall leads us to the railroad tracks opportunity. that, the caption says, divides white and black Hattiesburg. There a crude sign warns vehicles to STOP/ MISSISSIPPI LAW. And just beyond it, beam‐ ing from the "white side" of town, is a billboard

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Citation: Judith Sheppard. Review of Tusa, Bobs M. Faces of Freedom Summer. H-South, H-Net Reviews. August, 2001.

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