Word: cofo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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None of the authors had had any contact with the freedom movement until this summer, when COFO workers set up over 30 schools in Mississippi. By the end of the summer "newspapers" were being written and read in communities all over the state...
...COFO workers are not alone when the Klan rides by. A 65-year old widow, who lives across from the office, has appointed herself a one-woman protection squad for "my boys," as she calls the workers. When the Klansmen approach, she leaves her rocker on the porch, goes inside, loads her rifle and carries it back to her rocker. "Don't you hurt my boys," she warns the Klansmen...
...rifle-packing widow is an exception. Apathy and fear keep most Neshoba Negroes from such open militance. One girl told a COFO field secretary that she liked to sit in the segregated section of the local movie theater. Only about 30 of the 1500 Negroes in Philadelphia show up at "mass meetings." And when COFO workers attempted for the first time to distribute two and one-half tons of food and clothing sent from Cleveland, Ohio, they found few takers...
Despite such apathy, however, COFO workers report that the local Negro citizens are extremely excited about the five arrests of police officers and optimistic about their chances of conviction. Many of them do not exactly understand the charges against the five officers--they think the men have been charged with murder--but are simply elated over the fact that something has been done...
...Negro man told COFO workers, "I really think they'll be convicted." Then pausing he continued, "But if they're not, I'm leaving, 'cause things will be three times as bad around here...