Bob Carroll Part 3
A Most Unforgettable Character
Part 3: Third Impressions
Bob and I both read Harvey Cox’s The Secular City during Second Theology (1965), so we were anxious to do something “relevant” that summer. We arranged with a SNCC volunteer to join him working on voter registration in Mississippi. It was a turbulent time. Malcom X had been assassinated in February, and two weeks later Martin Luther King had marched in Selma to demand an end to Black voter suppression. On August 6th, the week before we left, Lyndon Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act, mandating that observers could make sure Blacks were no longer barred from registering and voting. Bob and I were there to recruit Black voters.
We needed a cover story for our mothers, so we told them that we were going on a backpacking trip with some classmates. “No, you’ve never met them,” we said, knowing they’d want to phone their mothers. “And we’re going to be in a remote area, so we won’t be able to call.”
We arrived at the Greyhound Bus Station on the morning of August 12th, and immediately saw the Chronicle headlines: “Watts Explodes!” In our Harvey Cox imaginations, that made us even more relevant.
[Note: A while back, I heard from Pat Browne in regard to my first two pieces about Bob. “You know what you left out?” he said. “Bob was kind. I sat next to him for a lot of years, and I saw him do a lot of really nice things for people, helping them with their classes, stuff like that. He was a really kind guy.”
I totally agree. In fact, on the bus to Mississippi, Bob leaned over and said to me, “You know, Greg, I have a lot more money than you, so I’m going to pay most of the expenses on this trip.” And he did. He was truly a kind man and his generosity always lived up to his Marxist/Christian beliefs.]
After a couple of days on the bus, we arrived in Memphis and had a hamburger in a little cafe where all the local Whites were watching Amos and Andy on a black and white TV set mounted just below a Confederate flag. After eating, we caught the local bus down to Shelby, a small delta town about a hundred miles to the South. At first Shelby looked like every other quaint rural town, with white picket fences and well-tended lawns, but after a couple of blocks the asphalt turned to gravel and the street signs disappeared. Though the houses and yards were still neat and well-kept, the streets now had open sewers and there were no street lights. We had entered the Negro part of town, where residents paid the same taxes as their white neighbors but received no city services in return. A little further out, we reached the cotton fields and found the small clapboard house where we would be staying with our SNCC friend, Jack. The house had four rooms and was divided in two. We had one side and a Black mother with 6 kids lived in the other. As we walked up, the kids all crowded around us and wanted to know our names. The littlest boy immediately started laughing when he heard Bob’s name. “That sound like Baloney,” he giggled, “that’s what I gonna call you - Baloney.” Bob loved his new name.
We slept on the floor on our sleeping bags with t-shirts over our heads to keep the mosquitoes off. The toilet was a one-holer on the back porch, perched over a trench that angled down toward the river. We had electricity, but no refrigerator or other appliances. (The local Social Service office would use the lack of refrigeration as a rationale for withholding surplus butter and bacon from the indigent blacks. They would get only cornmeal and powdered milk.) The woman next door had a bed and an old black and white television set; the kids all slept on blankets on the floor. In the morning Bob and I would wake up stiff and sweaty inside our t-shirt mosquito nets and hear “I Love Lucy” coming through the wall from the TV set next door. Cognitive dissonance.
Bob seemed much more at ease in our new surroundings than I was, probably because he was used to seeing everything as theater. I lacked his aesthetic distance and took longer to adjust. Jack, the SNCC volunteer, sat us down the first day and briefed us on our situation: The local Negro women would take turns feeding us every night. During the day we would canvas the neighborhoods and try to convince folks to register. Once we got four or five signed up, we would drive them 140 miles to Jackson in the back of our old pickup truck, where SNCC lawyers would make sure they weren’t harassed by the White election commissioners. We’d also transport teenagers to non-violent defense workshops and other SNCC activities. Jack told us that the White power structure had thoroughly co-opted most of the Black ministers and school principals, often rewarding them with the bacon and butter that had been withheld from those who lacked refrigeration. He also told us to watch out for the Klan. “Make sure you never go out in the truck by yourself. They love to run Freedom Riders off the road.”
Coming as we did from the conviction that the Church needed to be more relevant, Bob and I headed out that Sunday to the local Catholic parish. Certainly there had to be a few liberal Catholics committed to racial justice in this town. We sat through an insipid sermon, went to Communion, and then headed to coffee with the rest of the congregants. As we got near the back of the church, a middle-aged woman started yelling at us. “You should be ashamed of yourselves, calling yourselves Catholics and then coming down here to stir up trouble.” We looked around and saw a bunch of other parishioners nodding their heads and looking similarly disgusted. We tried to talk to the pastor, but he just walked away. So much for relevance.
Bob was convinced that we’d have better luck at one of the Black churches, so the next Sunday we walked over to what we heard was the most popular Pentecostal church in town. It was really hot, and about 100 very poor Negro folks, dressed in their very-worn, but freshly-washed and starched, Sunday clothes, were standing in front of an old wooden church fanning themselves. The pastor was late, but no one seemed upset or surprised. This was evidently a common occurrence. Finally, forty-five minutes later, a brand new Cadillac pulled up in front of the church. The driver got out, came around to the passenger side, and opened the door for the pastor, all three hundred pounds of him, dressed in a grey sharkskin suit with a lavender tie and matching pocket handkerchief. Bob walked over and asked him if we could make a brief announcement during the service about voter registration. The pastor hurried away shaking his head, muttering “No politics in the house of the Lord.”
We decided to attend the service anyway, because we were curious about what a Pentecostal service would be like. The choir processed in first, dancing to a jaunty hymn, and looking very sexy compared to the Catholic choirs in our parishes. They belted out a few hymns and then the pastor got up and, in a deep and sincere voice, started talking about how he’d been under the weather, down with a bad cold, and that medicine was very expensive these days, so everyone needed to be generous and give whatever they could. These were about the poorest people we’d ever seen in our lives, but, when the collection was taken, they all dug in and tossed their coins in the basket. Then the choir sang another hymn and the pastor stood up and read some scripture. At the end of it, he gestured to the ushers to take up another collection. More singing, more scripture, another collection, then a long rambling sermon about how the Lord rewards faithful givers. Followed by another collection. Bob and I couldn’t believe it. Once in a while, our parishes would take up a second collection for some special cause like the missions, but never more than two. This guy knew no shame - SEVEN collections! He doubtless thought the more collections he took, the more money he’d make. Actually, though, the congregation had his number. We noticed that no one put in more than a few coins at a time. They knew how to pace themselves through this familiar gauntlet of greed.
Bob and I were really disgusted by now, but we were guests, so we just sat there enjoying the choir and ignoring the rest. But then came the distinctly Pentecostal part of the service, when the pastor, his coffers amply filled, called upon the Holy Spirit . . . “to descend upon this generous and faithful congregation and inspire them with Your Word.” He paused dramatically for a moment, then said, “Is anyone moved by the Spirit to speak?”
There was a moment of silence. No one made a move. Everyone seemed too intimidated by the big bozo.
Another moment went by, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Bob slowly rising to his feet. His eyes were closed as though he was experiencing some sort of mystical vision. He paused for a moment, and then, raising his arms heavenward, he crooned out a quote from St. Paul in a voice so deep and resonant that everyone in the church went totally silent, as though listening to the Spirit itself. I was watching the pastor, and as soon as he heard Bob’s voice, his eyes opened just a slit and I saw nervous little pupils darting around under big turtle lids. Bob paused dramatically after his quote from St. Paul, and then deftly linked early Christianity to present day Mississippi, and the oppression of Old Testament law to the oppression of the White power structure. He moved fast. By the time the pastor figured out what was happening, Bob had convinced the congregation that St. Paul wanted them to register to vote the next day.
The Klan didn’t like us at all. They’d drive by periodically, four or five guys in a fancy new car trying to run us off the road, flipping us off, yelling “Nigger lovers!” Being the non-violent idealists we were, we’d do our best to ignore them and they’d usually get bored and go away. One time, though, I was driving our old pickup truck with a bunch of teenage boys in the back. We were going to a non-violent defense workshop. All of a sudden, a shiny yellow Impala came whipping up next to our truck, feinting to the right like it was going to run into us. It was full of beefy guys in their 40s and 50s. They feinted a few more times, then slid in behind us crowding our bumper. I was trying to figure what to do when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw one of the kids waving an empty coke bottle at the car. Then I saw it fly in a high, graceful arc toward the Impala. I saw the front of the Impala dip suddenly and smoke pour out from the locked rear wheels. The bottle continued its arc and shattered on the pavement inches in front of the car.
“Oh God,” I thought. “What’re we going to do now?” I pushed down on the gas and looked in the rear view window, expecting to see the car roaring back toward us. To my surprise, it had turned around and was headed the other way. The boys weren’t so tough after all.
They were mad though. We soon got word that the Klan was planning to bomb our house that weekend. We decided the best thing to do was stay out of the house on Friday night, so we went down to the local dance hall/burger shack and watched the locals shake and shimmy. In the morning we headed home and were relieved to see the house still standing. Bob and Jack lay down to sleep, but I was too restless, so I wandered downtown to the White hardware store. I’d been thinking about the Klan guys I’d encountered on the highway, and it had occurred to me: They’re chickenshits. If we stand up to them, they won’t mess with us.
The hardware store was crowded with Saturday morning handymen buying screws and building materials. Everyone fell totally silent as soon as I opened the door. “Kin ah help yoouuu?” the cashier drawled from the counter.
I tried to walk as tough as I could - somewhere between McLaughlin’s jock strut and John Wayne’s cowboy swagger - up to the counter. “Ah’d like a box of 22 shells please,” I fake-drawled. The guy was surprised for a minute, but then he turned around and reached for the shells. Everybody in the store was still dead silent.
“That’ll be $2.59,” he sneered.
I gave him three dollars and waited for my change.
“Thanks.” I swaggered to the door, past the staring customers, aware of my wildly beating heart, but feeling God-struck and invincible. I knew I’d done the right thing. Bob didn’t agree. He told me it was a stupid stunt and that I’d violated every principle of the Civil Rights Movement.
“No I haven’t,” I said. “We don’t even have a gun.”
Bob was used to being the director. He hated it when his actors went off script.
The Klan backed off on bombing our house, (probably worried we might nick them with a 22,) but we ran into them again the next weekend when we drove into a nearby town and found ourselves in the middle of a High Noon type standoff between Klansmen and Negro activists. We had to spend the night in the house of a local civil rights leader, sleeping on the floor below the window line in case of Klan bullets.
Bob and I didn’t change the world in Mississippi, but we definitely changed ourselves. We came back to St. Pat’s ready to bring Civil Rights to the seminary.