Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking by Jessica Mitford Page B

evening wore on, its nightmare quality began to unfold. First there was the tear gas, an alien and threatening odor. Next, incredibly, Reverend King was telling us in matter-of-fact tones that the mob outside was completely out of control, they had injured some of the U.S. marshals and had overturned and burned a car. The implication was rather strong that the church might be next. More incredibly, the vast, packed audience was taking it in stride. There was not a sign of panic, not a shriek, not a fainting fit. Just murmurs of “Yes, Lord,” “That’s right,” lots of singing, lots of patient confidence. It seemed to go on forever and ever. Later, it was announced by the General of the Alabama National Guard that no one could leave the church until morning because of the danger outside. The atmosphere became positively jolly—like an impromptu camping expedition, I thought, as we prepared to make ourselves as comfortable as possible for the long hours of confinement.
    Searching that sea of calm, determined faces, I felt as though I’d stumbled on the very source of strength that would brace a young girl to exchange a year in Paris for a stretch in the Jackson prison, or a provincial gentlewoman to brave the scorn of her social set by publicly giving a hand to the black sit-ins.
    Sometime after five o’clock in the morning, having learned that my borrowed car was the unlucky one that had been demolished earlier, I was driven home in an Alabama National Guard jeep. It was a morning of startling beauty—a soft, warm, breezy dawn in which the lovely little town looked its very best.
    TRIP NOTES
Montgomery after the Freedom Riders. The Fire Marshal came round to see me about the burned-up car. I was rather hoping he might be interested in finding the vandals who had destroyed it but he only asked me whether I was connected with CORE or NAACP, whether I had made other stops in the South or had come directly to Montgomery from California, whether I had attended regular church that Sunday morning, whether I knew anyone else who was at the meeting, why I went, whether my friends had lent me the car “of their own free will.” ... An editorial in the Montgomery Advertiser deplores the view that mob violence will chase industry from Montgomery; it points out that Atlanta had the greatest race riot in history in 1906, six hundred blacks killed and carted off in trucks—and look at flourishing, industrial Atlanta today! ... A twenty-two-year-old English student here is in trouble. She was quoted in a man-in-the-street interview as saying, “Negroes should be allowed to go any place they wish. I am for integration of the races 100 percent.” Since when she has been dropped from, of all things, the English-Speaking Union! ... The Country Clubbers have vanished from my life like summer snow since the car burning. One of them called me (sounding absolutely terrified) to say a rumor was spreading that she had accompanied me to the meeting, that her husband and in-laws are furious with her for even knowing me, that it wouldn’t be safe for us to meet again.... Twenty-two students from Auburn University signed a letter which appeared in the Advertiser , first sane thing to appear locally. They’ve since been hanged in effigy on campus by counter-students.... A local white couple, Fred and Anna Gach, have been tried and convicted of disturbing the peace. They saw a black Freedom Rider being stomped by the mob, shouted to a policeman (who was standing with back to the scene, arms folded) to “do something.” He did something—he arrested the Gaches....
    Just before I left, I was smuggled into one last drawing room for tea. By now there was virtually only one topic of conversation in Montgomery: the Freedom Riders, and for comic relief the case of the young English girl versus the English-Speaking Union. After the usual preliminary comments on the weather, the strawberry cream cake, and the youth and beauty of all present, our