Read Online And Do Remember Me by Marita Golden - Free Book Online Page A

Greenwood courthouse that summer to register to vote feared the required test as much as the phalanx of policemen and law enforcement officials who increasingly formed a protective flank in front of the building as picketing increased. The test consisted of a series of interpretative questions about the state constitution. The registrar, who administered the test, used his discretion in determining who passed. Negro Ph.D.’s had failed the test, legions of graduates of the voter registration schools had their tests marked invalid after a cursory ten- or twenty-second glance. Grown men returning for the fourth or fifth time and failing once again had sobbed like children in the hallways of the courthouse.
    T HEY’D BEEN MARCHING about an hour, careful to walk within the boundaries of the square, so as not to block pedestrians or cars. The protest, and the policemen stationed on the courthouse steps, had attracted a crowd that grew abusive and noisy the longer the picketing continued. A rotten tomato landed on Jessie’s arm. She saw an egg fly through the air and hit the twelve-year-old boy in front of her on the ear. In the Freedom House, Jessie had listened to the arguments about nonviolence that went on into the early morning. She had also heard the workers discuss self-defense and how to mentally survive when under attack. But as the voices of the crowd—businessmen on their lunch break, their suit jackets flung over their arms; mothers with children clutching their hands; elderly women, their faces twisted in disgust at the sight before their eyes; young teenaged boys fondling baseball bats, resting their taut, eager-to-fight bodies on the fenders of their cars—surged like a roar in her ears, Jessie simply wanted to run. A young white teenager threw a cherry bomb near the picketers. The explosion stunned and scattered them, and in the moments of confusion that followed, several young toughs waded into the group of picketers and began to beat them with rubber hoses and sticks. Jessie felt the metal sting of a hose nozzle against her cheek and instantly the warm flow of blood. Screams and shouts swirled around her and she saw young boys moving, running after the protesters, as though they were hunting rabbits. From the ground near a fire hydrant where she had scrambled, Jessie saw the police standing on the steps, silently watching the picketers being beaten. Macon had run onto the grass around the courthouse and lay crouched and huddled, her body protecting two young children who were marching with them. Finally policemen stormed down the wide marble courthouse steps and the youths scattered. The police used prods and clubs to round up the picketers and push them through the courthouse door to be booked on charges of disturbing the peace.
    Eight women were crammed into a cell designed for two inmates. As they stretched out on the floor to sleep the first night, Jessie felt a warm trickle of blood between her legs. She had come on her period. She was so embarrassed she began to cry. Unable to convince the sheriff to give Jessie sanitary napkins, each woman tore off a strip of cloth from her clothing and wrapped toilet paper around it and gave it to Jessie to use. Breakfast was watery grits, stale corn bread and salmon. They passed the days planning even bolder actions they would take once they were released. Macon told them stories about Mrs. Ella Baker, who had been one of the founders of SNCC, about Diane Nash, who was willing to go to jail while pregnant and serve a two-year sentence for a movement-related charge in Jackson. Macon told them about meeting Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and hearing her speak. They sat on the cell floor andmade up songs about those women and sang spirituals with so much conviction that drunks sleeping off a hangover, men arrested for vagrancy or petty crimes locked in other cells, added their voices.
    R EMEMBERING THE FATE of Alberta Garrison, Jessie swore not to be separated from the other