Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

would minimize competition of Movement forces in the state." Through COFO,
the Mississippi FreedomMovement was able to mount a major campaign to
provide food to poor Delta residents. The ability to provide poor Delta Blacks
with food after the suspension of the federal commodities program increased local
support forCOFO's voter registration work. Since Greenwood was SNCC terri-
tory, the organization moved all of its Mississippi personnel, including Watkins
and Hayes to the Delta city.
SNCC activity initially started in Greenwood in the summer of 1962 . That
summer, Sam Block, a college student from Cleveland, Mississippi, initiated voter
registration. Block was soon joined by Rust College (in Holly Springs, Missis
sippi) graduate Willie Peacock. From the time SNCC started operations in Green-
wood, its activists would face a virtual reign of terror. Until reinforcements came,
Block, Peacock, and a small number of other SNCC cadre received the brunt of
the threats and attacks of local racists and minimal support from the Black com-
munity, and virtually no federal intervention. On one August evening in 1962, a
group of armed whites forced Block, Peacock and other SNCC workers to flee the
Greenwood SNCC office. Soon after, pressure from the local police forced the
Black owner of the building where SNCC had an office to ask the organization to
leave . In September of that year, ChuckMcDew appealed to legislators to put
pressure on the Justice Department to provide protection for voter registration
workers in Mississippi . Earlier McDew approached President Kennedy and
requested federal marshals to monitor racist violence in the state, warning "there
is a great possibility of more Emmet Till cases." In January 1963, Bob Moses and
six other Mississippi SNCC activists filed suit in Washington D.C . against several