Meridian, August 5

At the Freedom school and at the community center, many of the kids had known Mickey and almost all knew Jimmy Chaney. That day we asked the kids to describe Mickey and Jimmy because we had never known them.

“Mickey was a big guy. He wore blue jeans all the time.” . . . I asked the kids, “What did his eyes look like?” and they told me they were “friendly eyes” “nice eyes” (“nice” is a lovely word in a Mississippi accent). “Mickey was a man who was at home everywhere and with anybody,” said the 17-year-old girl I stay with. The littlest kids, the 6, 7, 8 year olds, tell about how he played “Frankenstein” with them or took them for drives or talked with them about Freedom. Many of the teen-age boys were delinquents until Mickey went down to the bars and jails and showed them that one person at least would respect them if they began to fight for something important. . . . And the grown-ups too, trusted him. The lady I stay with tells with pride of how Mickey and Rita [his wife] came to supper at their house, and police cars circled around the house all during the meal. But Mickey could make them feel glad to take the risk.

People talk less about James Chaney here, but feel more. The kids describe a boy who played with them—whom everyone respected but who never had to join in fights to maintain this respect—a quiet boy but very sharp and very understanding when he did speak. Mostly we know James through his sisters and especially his 12-year-old brother, Ben. Today Ben was in the Freedom School. At lunchtime the kids have a jazz band (piano, washtub bass, cardboard boxes and bongos as drums) and tiny Ben was there leading it all even with his broken arm, with so much energy and rhythm that even Senator Eastland [Senator James Eastland of Mississippi] would have had to stop and listen if he’d been walking by.

Source: Elizabeth Sutherland, ed., Letters from Mississippi (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 190.