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This is Ellen Anderson and I'm speaking to Henry Anderson KP FA commentator who has just returned from Mississippi. Uh Hank, where, where were you in Mississippi? And why? Yes, I was invited down there by SNCC, the student nonviolent coordinating committee which from time to time holds

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workshops or institutes as they call them for its uh field staff and volunteers. And it usually holds these institutes in a little tiny town on the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico called Waveland. It's uh the nearest city that you've probably ever heard of is Biloxi. No.

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Well, I could say more about that, but uh anything else you'd like to know about the background? Yes. What are these institutes? And why were you invited down the SNCC has what they call a work study program under which youngsters I shouldn't call them youngsters. Um,

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young adults who have finished high school and who would like to go on to college but don't have the money for it. Work Force Nick for a year after which Snick pays their way to college for another year. And this institute was uh made up primarily

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of young people on this work study program. There were about 20 of them with the staff. Uh, if you can call it a staff of, uh, five or six people who talked about the legal aspects of the civil rights movement. And, oh, there was a young

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doctor who talked about public health problems that people are liable to meet with in the field. And I was invited down there to talk about the problems of organizing in rural areas because I've been associated with the farm labor movement here in California for some years.

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What have you done specifically in the area of community organization? Well, my most direct involvement was three years on the staff of the agricultural workers organizing committee of the A FL CIO with its headquarters in Stockton. But for the three years prior to that and the

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three years since then, I've uh maintained as much conduct as I could with the farm labor movement from an urban base, writing and speaking and so forth. Uh What did you do while you were there at the institute? Did you hold seminars or were they group

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discussions or what form did no lectures? Uh The whole thing was very unstructured as indeed SNIC is from top to bottom. Um very permissive, you might call it in which uh there was something in the nature of a discussion group one day, but most of the

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contact took place even more informally than that over the dinner table and uh around in the recreation room in the late evening and things of that sort. How did you spend your days? Well, all the days were theoretically given over to discussion groups of these various

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types that I've already mentioned, led by lawyers and one by a doctor and, and so forth. But that it didn't become oppressive. There was lots of freedom for the whole week. You were down there for one week. Mhm. Uh, how long do the institutes usually last?

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Is this a normal time period for them? Oh, this was a two week institute. I was there just for the last half of it. But they are still experimenting with this entire approach to uh orientation and training. Um Some of the other institutes have been for

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one week and uh I think the plan is in the future, they'll be even shorter, maybe just a few days and instead of trying to cover so many different subjects that they'll probably just uh take on one at a time. Do you think that this will

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be more valuable? Um According to, well, the response of the participants that you saw? Well, I'm not convinced in my own mind about uh the whole idea of institutes I myself would have preferred and I think it might have been more valuable to the uh volunteers

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and staff of SNCC too if I could have traveled around visiting them in the various local areas where they were actually carrying on projects and talking to them in terms which were more uh immediately relevant to their particular situation. It's rather difficult to do this sort

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of thing in a setting. Do you think that would have involved you more directly too? Yes, I think it would have been good for both points of view. And this is a possibility for the future because uh SNIC is very, very open and very flexible by

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comparison with any other organization that I know anything about. What about um some of the things that were happening while you were there during that week, there was a co O school in Mississippi was burned. And uh did things of this nature happen in the area

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that you were in? No, the Gulf coast of Mississippi is not typical Mississippi. It's not an agricultural region. The problems mostly occur in the uh areas which have the old plantation slave tradition. You know, the Gulf coast is supported by the fishing industry and large armed

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forces installations and a lot of tourism. Uh A lot of northerners spend their winters down there on the Gulf coast. And so it's not very much like the rest of the state. How many people were there? Well, people came and went, I suppose at one time

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or another during the course of the week, they were perhaps 40 different people. It was kind of a rotating participation. I would like to say a few words about this whole subject of terror and violence because it's something that apparently preoccupies, many people who are observing

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the situation from the north. I found that it does not loom by any means so large in the thinking of the people who are actually down there on the firing line. They're not obsessed by the dangers. If they were, I think they would become quite, uh,

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much less effective organizer. You know, you can't go around living in fear all the time in one way or another. Each individual has had to work it out in his own mind so that he's uh willing to accept whatever comes and get on about his business.

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There is a lot of joking actually, it goes on uh about being stopped by the rural cops and, and so forth, but you didn't find any of this where you were anyway. No, and I did not have the opportunity to get up to the central and

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northern parts of the state where the danger is much more clear and present. Was there discussion of voter registration at the institute? Well, I would say there was more discussion of strategy in organizing in general for whatever purposes, voter registration is a big part of it,

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of course, but not by any means, all of it. And this I want very much to comment about because it seems to me to be snc's greatest strength. Uh The greatest hope not only for the civil rights movement, but uh I hope that goes far beyond

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that that particular movement. The Snick approach is basically grassroots organizing, which of course is a term that a lot of people use. But I think a lot of people misuse labor unions claim that they are organizing and political parties who go out and canvas. Voters claim

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that they are organizing. But SNIC means something rather different by it. Ideally, the situation would be something like this. A SNCC representative, a staff member, they're called field secretaries. By the way, there's something like 200 of them all together. Uh Field secretary will go in to

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a new area. Usually they work by county units and uh he may be accompanied by some volunteers and he'll go around from door to door in the neighborhoods or the farming areas where the people actually live, will knock on their doors at times of the day

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when they have time to talk and we'll find out from them, what they are really concerned about what they regard their biggest problems as being. And it would be another important part of the function of the field secretaries to gain some kind of feeling for people's

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state of readiness to do something about these problems. And on the basis of this information and to some extent this intuition, the organizer then sets up meetings in which he calls together the people who have expressed uh their feelings that they, they do have problems, they

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want to do something about them. These meetings are usually held in churches, not because there's any religious connection, but because the homes aren't big enough. And the churches are literally the only facility that is available to Negroes to meet in most of these areas, the only

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uh quasi public type of meeting place. All right, at these meetings, there is a give and take extensive discussion. Um It is said within the movement that uh every SNCC meeting is something like a group therapy session, which uh everybody is not only permitted but encouraged

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to really uh deliver, deliver what's uh whatever his innermost feelings are. And uh people are encouraged, you know, to, to talk back to whoever is chairing the meeting if they are so moved and they frequently are. So anyway, in the course of uh these meetings, something

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coalesces. People decide what to concentrate on in this particular area. Um Local leadership emerges, the jobs, the responsibilities are divided up and uh it may be a voter registration campaign. It may be the establishment of a freedom school. It may be the organization of a farmers

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co-operative. There is one of those uh going on in the northern part of the state which I found particularly interesting because of my rural interests. Um I'm told that in some parts of the state, the biggest single problem on people's minds is the condition of the

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roads which become practically impassable in winter because they're unpaved. And you know, people can't get to the store to buy groceries or, or anything. Well, whatever the problem that is selected is uh the organizing proceed, you go out to talk to more people and get more

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people involved. And the idea is that the SNCC representatives can uh after getting this thing headed down the road, leave the area, go on to some other new area in the knowledge that this local organization will continue on its own. Do they usually transfer interest from

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uh an immediate problem such as building roads to uh more general problems like voter registration? Well, I should, I should have said that uh the process that I've described doesn't always work out ideally and in a number of areas, I dare say, the organizer, even with

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the very best of intentions may find that the local people are simply too unsophisticated, uh too unsure of themselves to um go through these steps that I've mentioned. And, and so the organizer is practically forced to suggest to them that maybe it would be a good

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idea to, to coordinate their local activity with the statewide Freedom Democratic Party or whatever it might be. So that is overwhelmingly the largest single undertaking of the movement in the state of Mississippi um political action generally. So we call it voter registration is part of it,

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this whole concept of a um an alternative to the Dixiecrat Party. They call it the Freedom Democratic Party. Here's another part of it. So the, the main effort is just to get people to organize themselves and start moving in a direction together that I think is

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the vital concept. And the reason why I said that I think the whole rest of the country has this very important lessons to learn from what SNCC is doing. This is bona fide organizing as I would use the term and I don't know any place else

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in the entire country where it is going on to any significant extent. And yet I am convinced that it is the way to solve any number of other social problems. In addition to the civil rights problem, I'm convinced it is the way out of the farm

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labor problem in California, for example. And uh the uh I'm convinced it's the technique which is necessary for the so called war on poverty. If that, if that program is ever going to really mean anything. And I'm also convinced that it's the way out of the

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alienation which afflicts almost everybody rich and poor. It's my opinion that in a real sense, we in the north have more to learn from what is going on in the south than the south has to learn from the north. And one of the things to which

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I devoted myself in the week I was in Mississippi was trying to break out of the limitations of what has up to this point been almost a one way street of communication with northern liberals and radicals and intellectuals going down to the South as though to

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suggest that uh it's the north that has the skills and the know how and the South has the needs. I think this is the most pernicious and dangerous and mistaken kind of implication. I think at the very least that there needs to be a two way

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street. Uh and to make this more concrete, I'll, I'll tell you what I proposed while I was down there, I discussed the farm labor situation in California at great length. And, uh, drew what I think are rather striking parallels between the monolithic power structure which currently

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dominates Mississippi and the monolithic power structure which dominates rural California. In the one case, uh, it operates to keep a certain racial group in a subservient position. In the other case, it operates to keep a certain occupational group in a subservient position. Well, this was news

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to most of the people at this institute. They hadn't, they hadn't thought that this great enlightened progressive state of California had any such problems as this. Um But when they heard that it did, they were quite receptive to the suggestion that, uh, maybe we could start

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a two way street going here and, uh, maybe some of them could come to California for the summer and help us with the problems that we have. And a maybe, maybe we could reciprocate by, by sending some farm labor organizers from the San Joaquin Valley to

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Mississippi although I'm sorry to have to say that there are not too many such organizers out there in the San Joaquin Valley, Mississippi in a certain real sense is, uh, farther progressed than we are in the state of California. What, uh, what did you find to

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be the view of the people from the south of, um, a state like California? Oh, they had a kind of very hazy, vague, romantic vision of it, I suppose as the land of oranges and sunshine and all the good things of life, they were really quite

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astonished by the, the things that I told them about uh violations of civil rights and civil liberties. When farm workers try to organize, try to associate with each other, try to communicate with each other the whole business about the uh three branches of government, the legislative,

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the executive and the judicial, all being dominated by grower interests. Uh This was brand new to them. They, they quickly grasped it. Um And of course, when I talked about the Bracero system or now, I suppose I should say the foreign contract labor system in a

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broader sense, um They uh spontaneously exclaimed why? That's even worse than Mississippi. It's true. That's, that's the type of slavery they don't have there. And I think it really, I think it really was very helpful to their morale to be offered the suggestion that they weren't

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just the recipients of help uh from outside experts, you know, but that the rest of the country really had a great deal to gain from them. How would, how would they work if they came? Some of them came to California with whom would they work? Well,

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there are these nascent uh struggling self starting farm labor organizations out in the valley. There are several of them. The one that's farthest along is called the Farm Workers Association headquarters in the little town of Delano. Under the uh general leadership of Cesar Chavez. There are

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other groups, there's one in Ventura County, there's one around Porterville in Tulare County. Um And there will be more, there will be more, something is just starting up in that same general part of the valley called the Center for Community Development, which has a foundation grant

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and which is going to be going around looking for uh people who want to work as organizers. And secondly, um shoestring communities which want to be organized and bring the two together or if there aren't competent organizers around. And that is one of the most serious

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uh problems to set up a uh a school, some kind of training program to develop them. What are the, are the shoestring communities of farm workers in California? Uh comparable to the kinds of communities that say the rural Negroes live in Mississippi in many respects. I

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would say, yes, this is an impression. As I say, I did not have the opportunity to travel around and see much with my own eyes. But from the discussion, I gathered that, um, a Mississippi negro who came into, uh shack town in the San Joaquin Valley

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would probably feel quite at home. Well, obviously Californians have, do have something to learn about California. Not Mississippi. Yes. And I think that everybody would benefit from this kind of exchange. I think probably Mississippians would gather some insights about their own state from stepping outside of

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it for a little while. Most of these young people have probably never been out of their own state. And I think the experience of coming to a different state would suggest insights to them. Do you plan to go back down at all? I see my principal

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value as being uh to coordinate what I hope will proved to be this exchange program. And it's going to take somebody out here in California to do a lot of light work, letter writing and telephoning and so forth. Maybe some fundraising. I think I can be

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of more use out here than I could be back there. You think it actually will become a reality? Then I have no basis for judging that I can only say I'm going to work on it. Thank you very much. Thank you. This has been.