Civil Rights Events

SCOPE Project

Everything Different, Nothing Granted

On Saturday, June 19, the volunteers begin dispersing to the 50 or so counties in Alabama, Georgia, North & South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida, where they will work for the next ten weeks. In some cases, the locations of SCOPE projects fluctuate over the course of the summer. Most are in rural counties, a few are in towns like Selma Alabama, Albany Georgia, Orangeburg and Charleston South Carolina.

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As SCOPE begins working across the South, Hubert Humphrey's promise has failed to materialize, the Voting Rights Act is still stalled in the Senate by a southern filibuster. This means that county voter Registrars — all white, of course — can still use their power to prevent Blacks from registering just as they have for generations past. SCLC has provided little training and few materials for this contingency

The day to day experiences of SCOPE workers parallel those of other summer volunteers from previous years in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Southwest Georgia. Tired from their journey, the northerners reach their counties late in the day or after dark, usually arriving at a church if one has opened its doors to the Movement or the home of a local leader if not. There they are sorted out to the places they will stay — the home of a Black family if they're lucky, a group "freedom house" or church basement if not.

The volunteers are honored and welcomed by the Black folk who first greet them. Often those put up in homes are offered the parent's own bed. Usually the volunteers manage to decline that privilege and sleep on couches, the floor in sleeping bags, or share a bed with the children. Food, much of it unfamiliar — collard greens, corn bread, grits, okra, gravy-biscuits, pan-fried chicken — is offered and shared as a bond of friendship, trust, and acceptance. It is only later that the northerners begin to realize that this warm embrace comes only from the most courageous members of the community, other local Blacks hesitate to talk with them, and many are afraid to even be seen in their company. Unlike so many of the adults, however, most Black teenagers are eager supporters of "the Movement." Some Black college and high school students sign up as local SCOPE volunteers, more would do so if not prevented by their parents, or forced to work long hours at low-wage jobs to save money for their next semester of college.

Some of the homes where volunteers stay are well-built and have phones, refrigerators, indoor toilets, and even showers — but many do not. Living rural, living poor, requires a sharp adjustment for some northerners — sleeping three or four to a creaking bed with a sagging mattress, outhouses, water from a handle-pump, showers made out of tin cans with holes punched in the bottom, cockroaches so large you can hear them skittering across the floor at night, mice beneath the weathered floorboards, hens scratching in the packed-earth yard.

Canvassing door to door by teams of northern and local volunteers begins in the hot, muggy heat — proselytizing the gospel of freedom one porch and front-room at a time — come to a meeting, the importance of voting, a better life for your children, voter registration procedure. The work is hard, the going slow. Many are still afraid — and justifiably so. Defying generations of white-supremacy can — and often has — led to being fired, or evicted, or suffering various forms of violent retaliation.

Within hours, or at most a day or two, the northerners are accosted by cops and sheriffs who identify, harass, and threaten them. For many middle-class college kids being treated as an enemy by the uniformed guardians of "law and order" is something new — and frightening. So too are their encounters with Southern whites, some of whom berate them, curse them, threaten them, and demand that they leave. Before coming south, few volunteers have ever been subjected to a white hate-stare — an unnerving experience — but one they learn to deal with as have "uppity" Blacks for generations (SCOPE-ing 1-3).

Upon his arrival in Williamston, North Carolina, June 23, Dartmouth University freshman Peter Buck witnessed police harassment. Soon after his arrival he wrote:

Tonight we went up to a real wild prayer meeting at Mt. Zion Holiness Church.

Police have been coming by at night trying to bait us out. Yesterday they tried to pick up Joe on a vagrancy charge, but we all took the trouble to keep money on us. The cop resorted to profanity and threatened bad things if he caught Joe out in the county alone. Today a couple car loads of red necks came by and talked to the boys out front. Told them how good they were to their negroes (Buck 8).

Lessons are learned. Northerners discover they have to talk slower and listen harder to unfamiliar southern accents. In towns, it's usually easy to identify where Blacks live because their streets are unpaved and often behind the railroad tracks or in some other undesirable area. In the rural farmland, piney forests, and mosquito swamps it's harder because all the roads are dusty (or muddy) and the shacks of poor whites — who are usually hostile — look little different from those of Blacks.

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Sometimes no one is at home, other times someone is home, but they're afraid to come to the door lest snitches report to employers, landlords and sheriffs that they talked to "race-mixing agitators." Often the bewildering complexities of race and fear complicate encounters between white northerners and Black southerners. Some folk are afraid not to talk to the white volunteers because saying "no" to a white person, any white person, violates engrained codes of social subservience. So white northerners have to find a delicate balance between urging Movement participation and avoiding traditional patterns of white dominance — not an easy task. More lessons are learned — Listen! Listen! Listen! Hear what folk are saying, understand the difference between a "Yes, I'll come to the meeting" of real agreement, and the "Yes, I'll register" said only to appease these white strangers so they'll go away.

Volunteers — both white and Black — learn that conversations are the heart and soul of organizing. Soon they come to understand that real teaching is not lecturing, but sharing — both ways. Many of the Black men and women the volunteers meet have been kept ignorant of even the most basic elements of democracy: what voting is, what registering is, what political offices are and why they're important — but they are well-schooled in the realities of race, exploitation and power, brutal realities that often stun white northerners but are familiar outrages to Black volunteers, northern and southern alike (SCOPE—ing 4).

Brandeis University volunteer Lynn Goldsmith Goldberg described what she witnessed on voter registration day, July 12, in St. Matthews, Calhoun County, South Carolina.

At two o'clock I began helping inside the registration room. The registrars found we were more help than bother, and we began the exhausting job of laboring with the people over the ridiculous form. Many people could barely write, and labored over each blank as we told them what to write; sometimes letter by letter. It was sweltering in the room as the sun came out. I was about to faint as five o'clock approached. The registrars were nice enough to finish with all the people who were in the room at five. Anyhow, about sixty people were turned away at the end. The last people who go through at quarter to six had come at about noon. People waited about six hours and were not registered. I felt very distressed as these brave people, most of them hardly knowing what was going on, standing in that heat so patiently. I couldn't believe them. They want so little, and no one will give it to them. I wanted to cry. What poor, poor people (Goldberg 10).

Larry Butler, working in Barbour County, Alabama, had a similar reaction. A student from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, Butler wrote about the first voter registration day that he witnessed.

Our first registration day in Clayton was a success; we had between 200-250

people there to register. About 90 were processed and 21 were registered. The old

literacy test disqualified all but the well educated from registering. A special ―treat for

us while in Clayton was the presence of Gov. Wallace who watched us all afternoon from

an auto body shop. The SCOPE workers were aglow. We were in the Governor‘s home

town working for the fall of his kind of government and he was there to witness the

crumbling of white supremacy at his home. He made one comment the whole time---

―That‘s the best dressed group of civil rights workers I‘ve ever seen. In Eufaula, about

150 persons showed up, 92 were processed and 16 were registered. It went like that for

the rest of the week. In all, about 112 people were registered that week. It was a battle

for that number considering the test and that everyone waited for many long hours.

White men from town came and sat in the jury box and mocked us, made cruel jokes as

children and men, who have never grown up, are prone to do. One old man, 74 years old,

got there very early and was one of the first to go to the registrars‘ table. He worked on

his test from 9:00 in the morning until 4:15, no lunch and no breaks. The registrars

treated him as they would have a cute child or a playful puppy. He took their attitude in

good humor, submitted to their disrespect for his age and also passed his test. One more

black man was registered and the next time the joke would be on the registrars.

The only trouble that week was a man who tried to run us over with a truck (Butler 5).

And soon northern volunteers are experiencing those brutal realities for themselves. Churches, offices, and schools associated with the SCOPE project are bombed and burned. So too are the homes and businesses of local activists. Some summer volunteers, northern and local, are arrested, some for engaging in constitutionally-protected free speech such as passing out leaflets or picketing, some for behavior made lawful by the Civil Rights Act, some on trumped up charges such as "vagrancy." In a number of places, northern and local activists are beaten by white thugs, or chased, or shot at. Fortunately, over the summer of '65 there is only one Movement-related murder — the Assassination of Jonathan Daniels on a SNCC project in Lowndes County Alabama. But fear — fear of arrest, fear of danger, fear of sudden unexpected violence, is constant, pervasive, and exhausting (SCOPE-ing 5).

Lynn Goldberg’s arrest occurred August 2. She wrote:

We were arrested today. I was not scared. I cried when a two ton policeman stood on Al's neck while hauling another limp body (Lenny's). I am hoarse from singing and yelling.

Why were we arrested — no charge. We were pulled from the courthouse.

Yesterday Orangeburg had a record registration day — so did we! — they registered 350 people and had three registrars (even a fourth). They were allowed to use the courtroom — so everyone could sit down. It was cool, quick, and comfortable.

Today was another registration day. Mary Ann and Alan went down to help since we didn't have extra days. At three the rest of us got a call — come down by four. There had been only two registrars, and one left because he didn't want to register any more niggars'. People were being asked to read. Those bastards!! No — we won't put up with it. At five we would stay. Calhoun was asked to support the sit-in — of course we would.

We talked to the people, telling them to stay. We sang songs and marched around the courtroom when the officials left. We opened the windows and let the city hear us. There were posters with slogans — they went up on the windows. All the adults left except three because they couldn't be arrested. Our decision meeting was short we would stay 'til 9:00 tomorrow, or be arrested. …

Sheriff Dukes came in. Suddenly, on both sides of the room husky men in uniform poured in. they stood on each side as we announced our decision. They rushed on us as we sat and sang, jumping over the seats. …

I was picked up and thrown. Then I was grabbed and dragged outside. As I passed Earl he encouraged me to try to walk. In front of me John and Al were dragged by the hands down the stairs and thrown into the car in a heap. My picture was taken. Al's hands were bent til they almost broke. Dozens of cars pulled up to the courthouse, with all of us singing. We were piled, pushed and thrown into the jail. Then we were split, and some of us were led around another way. We stood and sang songs while we waited for them to get our names. Fifteen girls are together in a revolting dirty cell with three beds. There is a toilet in the room that is disgusting. Also a sink and bathtub. We were finger printed and photographed. Juveniles were led out if they wanted. … (Goldberg 11-12).

In some of the most dangerous areas, local Blacks armed with rifles and shotguns guard the SCOPE volunteers as they sleep at night. Some volunteers initially question this departure from strict Gandhian nonviolence, but SCLC leaders and staff make it clear that while participants in public Freedom Movement activities must be nonviolent — and everything northern volunteers do is in essence a public activity — nonviolence as a way of life for southern Blacks is a personal choice — and so is self-defense of home and community from attack by night-raiding Klansmen (SCOPE—ing 5).

SCOPE policy at the beginning of the Summer is to concentrate on voter registration & political organization — and avoid direct action protests. Though many northern volunteers are eager to participate in marches and sit-ins, doing so diverts from SCOPE's primary objectives. Moreover, protests often provoke an increase in retaliatory white violence and cause police to mobilize around town centers both of which could deter people from going to the courthouse to register. And demonstrations will certainly result in arrests and expensive bail bonds that drain money needed for registration and organizing work. But with the Voting Rights Act still stalled by southern filibuster in the Senate, registration efforts show scant result. Frustrated at lack of visible success, some volunteers — local as well as northern — argue that direct action to protest continued denial of voting rights, to demand immediate passage of the Act, or to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will inspire and encourage registration efforts, not detract from them.

In a number of locales, the ban on direct action is either lifted by SCOPE Director Hosea Williams or simply ignored by those on the ground. When SCOPE volunteers are arrested and beaten in Taliaferro County GA, SCLC leaders organize picket lines, marches, and a boycott of white merchants. In Crenshaw County AL, local Black students volunteering with SCOPE convince the project to implement the Civil Rights Act, and a white mob attacks them when they sit-in at a local cafe. After two churches are burned and Blacks are fired and evicted for trying to register in Hale County AL, 500 are arrested on a mass march to protest continued use of the so-called "literacy test."

After four weeks in Americus Georgia where the Washington State University SCOPE team has been assigned and SNCC has been organizing since 1963, only 45 new voters are registered. On July 20, four Black women are arrested for standing in a "white-only" voting line during a local election. Benjamin Van Clark and Willie Bolden, two of Hosea Williams' field leaders from the Savannah Movement, are sent from Atlanta to organize and lead protests. Hosea Williams of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC issue a set of demands: release of those arrested, longer registration hours, Afro-American voter Registrars, formation of a biracial committee to discuss race issues in Americus, and that a new election be called because separate voting lines are inherently unconstitutional. The white power-structure remains adamant, and a boycott of white-owned stores commences. Under pressure, the county agrees to hire a few Afro-American clerks to register voters. Within two days 647 Blacks are added to the rolls. Within a week there are 1,500 new Black voters in Sumter County GA.

Sussex County in Southeast Virginia is rural, poor, and small (total population 12,000). Blacks outnumber whites two to one. The voter registration office is open only two hours per month. The SCOPE project requests that hours be extended — request denied. They circulate and submit a petition signed by those who want to register — petition denied. More than 100 Blacks march in protest to the courthouse and daily picketing commences. On the one day the office is open, more than 140 line up to be registered, but few are processed and fewer added to the rolls. A delegation drives up to Washington and meets with Justice Department officials. Under threat of federal registrars, additional hours are added (Direct 1-2).

Larry Butler’s SCOPE group decided to resort to direct action.

The SCOPE workers became frustrated. All their energy was spent in canvassing and mass meetings. Little was being accomplished and we were becoming a Boy Scout chapter whose special project was voter registration. Many people were afraid of the workers because we were white and the old fashion attitude of ―Yas sir, Mr. Charlie‖ was evident. Often in our canvassing we ran across old people in the backwoods who had heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, but thought he was the United States President. Freedom had not come to Barbour County, only civil right workers had.

We knew something was wrong and we were bored and disappointed. … (Butler 6).

The Voting Rights Act does not become law until August 6, 1965. So for seven long weeks SCOPE projects must try to register voters under the old "literacy test" system specifically designed to deny Black voting rights. It's slow going. Before the March to Montgomery, attempting to register at the courthouse was essentially an act of protest. It was a demand for federal enforcement of the Constitution and a cry to the nation for justice. But now that the Voting Act is on the verge of passage, few Blacks are willing to endure the danger and humiliation of applying to register knowing they will most likely fail, when if they just wait until the new law takes effect they can actually succeed. Nevertheless, dedicated SCOPE activists — local and outside both — manage to ensure that there's a line of applicants waiting at the courthouse on each registration day.

In Selma Alabama, which is still under a federal injunction, 1470 applicants go to the court house between June 20 and August 6 — but only 56 are actually registered (4%). In Crenshaw County Alabama, on the nine days the registration office is open before the Voting Rights Act is passed, 318 Blacks go to the courthouse to register, 242 are "processed," but only 58 are actually registered (18%). In Hale County Alabama where more than two-thirds of the population are Black, it's the same old story, voter applicants are fired and evicted, churches are burned, and almost no one is actually registered.

After the Voting Rights Act is signed into law on August 6, some county Registrars comply with it, and in those places SCOPE manages to register a good number of Black voters during the project's last three weeks. But elsewhere, particularly in the Deep South, white resistance to both the spirit and letter of the Act is adamant and Registrars continue to use their power to deny Afro-American voting rights (Voter 1-2)

Racists in St. Matthews, South Carolina, act out their anger. Lynn Goldberg revealed the following August 18 diary entry.

Some time between 8:00 and 9:00, when no on was home — our house had been shot at with a shotgun. Ulp! I was suddenly nervous. I ran back to the other SCOPE house and told Earl. He did not believe it had been a shotgun. However he hurried and offered to accompany us home. Three cars went to St. Matthews, filled with people.

What a sight! A hole about a foot in diameter was in the front picture window. The whole glass was cracked in all directions. The shade was drawn, and splattered with shot holes. But that was nothing — the inside was utterly unbelievable. Shattered glass was strewn over every inch of the room. Not a place was left uncovered. The back wall was dotted with holes. The whole place was a shambles. Everyone stood around — amazed.

The police had been by and looked things over. They said they would return with the sheriff in the morning. F.B.I. was contacted, and also U.P.I. We called Chief Strom for protection during the night. Matthew Perry was also informed of everything. It was still scary. Earl and the Orangeburg kids left us making precautions for night. Our beds were moved and windows blocked. Pleasant dreams (Goldberg 13-14).

In most Alabama counties, for example, registration continues to be limited to two days per month. August 16 is the first Alabama registration day after the Act goes into effect (and for most SCOPE volunteers returning to college in the Fall it's the last registration day they will see before leaving Alabama). Some 600 applicants line up to register at the Barbour County courthouse, but only 265 are processed and few are actually registered. In Butler County 568 line up, but only 107 are registered. In other states it's not much different. In North Carolina, the voter registration offices in counties with large Black populations simply close down until October. Georgia and South Carolina also continue to deny voting rights in predominantly Black rural areas.

The new law empowers Washington to send federal Registrars (called "examiners") to non-complying counties. Despite a widespread pattern of continued denial of Black voting rights, the Department of Justice assigns Registrars to only six of Alabama's 24 Black Belt counties. None are sent to any of the other SCOPE states. In the few places where federal Registrars do operate they are effective and Black voters are added to the rolls in large numbers.

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Dr. King demands that federal registrars be sent to every county covered by the new Act. Attorney General Katzenbach refuses. Instead he lauds what he claims is widespread "voluntary compliance" with the law by white officials, and he attributes the slow increase in Black voters to lack of local registration campaigns. SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and NAACP registration workers toiling in the field see little evidence of "voluntary compliance" in the deep South, and most of them are convinced that Washington is dragging its feet in a forlorn effort to somehow appease southern whites and keep them loyal to the Democratic Party. As of August 1966, a full year after the Act goes into force, federal registrars have been sent into less than one-fifth of the southern counties that need them.

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SCOPE's reported registration statistics are therefore to some degree estimates. By the end of the summer, at the high-end an estimated 70,000 Blacks attempted to register in the six states where there are SCOPE projects. Of that number, a bit under 50,000 succeeded (mostly during the three weeks after the Voting Rights Act goes into effect). Other estimates report somewhat lower numbers, particularly the number of new voters added to the rolls. Regardless of how many actually got registered, there are several hundred thousand Blacks of voting age in the counties where SCOPE has projects, and while 50,000 new voters is a good start, a start is all it is (Voter 3-5).

Throughout the remainder of 1965, and then 1966, the Johnson administration continues to drag its heels, refusing to supply federal registrars to places that clearly need them. Registrars are only sent into those counties that practice the most extreme — and overt — methods of denying voting rights to Afro-Americans. The locales that use more subtle and covert forms of resistance are able to avoid direct federal intervention and therefore delay, retard and minimize Black electoral power. But if Washington hopes that appeasement will keep southern whites loyal to the Democratic Party those dreams are dashed as the majority of white Democrats become white Republicans.

But slowly, as Black voting strength grows to the point where they can begin to swing close elections, and then eventually elect Black candidates in towns and counties with Afro-American majorities, overt white resistance to the Voting Rights Act begins to fade and politicians of all races seek Black votes — even George Wallace the (formerly) arch-segregationist Governor of Alabama, who by the 1980s is not only campaigning for Black votes but actually getting them when he runs as a Democrat against a right-wing Republican.

The results of SCOPE's community organization and political education efforts vary from place to place. SCLC's SCOPE volunteers support existing — or help local leaders organize new — voter leagues and improvement associations across the South. Like similar efforts by CORE, SNCC, and the NAACP, some of these local groups falter and die, others struggle on, and some thrive, providing an organizational form for Black political power for decades to come (Going 1-2).

Works cited:

Buck, Peter. “Transcript: Journal of a SCOPE Volunteer.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/buck65.htm

Butler, Larry. “A Short History of the Freedom Movement in

Barbour County, Alabama.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/buck65.htm

“Direct Action.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm#1965scope

“Going Forward.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm#1965scope

Goldberg, Lynn Goldsmith. “Diary of a Young Civil Rights Worker.” Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/nars/goldberg.htm

“SCOPE-ing.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm#1965scope

“Voter Registration.” Summer Community Organization & Political Education Project (SCOPE). Civil Rights Movement History. 1965. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm#1965scope