
          Sermonette on the Movement
          By Hayden, CaseyCasey Hayden
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, pp. 27-29
          
          Mary King is like her ancestors. She walks a very straight line for
a long time. She was always like that: solid, linear, historical,
careful, analytical, objective, thorough. And stouthearted. The
amazing thing is that she wrote this book at all. To have gone back
over all this history had to be such an emotional experience, so
heavy. A strong persona, Mary, made of strong stuff. In the Freedom
House at Tougaloo Mary set her hair in pink curlers when the rest of
us could hardly keep up with our combs. When she left there she went
with cartons and cartons of WATS line reports, pots and pans, and
little scraps of paper. The Packrat. This is definitely the kind of
head it took to write this book. It is so full of so many details,
specifics.
          It is, I think, a good book. It is personal, of course. Everyone's
memories--everyone's slice of it--are personal, different. But she has
spoken well and carefully to a good many of the major questions of the
period. This book will be widely read in years to come, disputed and
quoted as an authority. Primarily, however, its value will be in
keeping alive a time which is rapidly becoming forgotten and/or
misunderstood. Blacks today are viewed vaguely, if at all, like any
other immigrant group. Like the Irish, they should just kind of meld
in, (without intermarriage, of course). We'd like to forget slavery
and the rigid caste system that followed. Really, slavery,
Slavery. Not easily overcome. So it is good, Mary, to keep this
information alive. You do history a favor.
          I appreciate getting to write about your book. The movement was
everything to me: home and family, food and work, love and a reason to
live. When I was no longer welcome there and then when it was no
longer there at all, it was hard to go on. Many of us in this
situation, especially the Southern whites, only barely made it
through. I count myself lucky to be a survivor. But that is another
story. For old times' sake, Mary, here are some comments on this
story.
          
            The Movement
          
          This story in Mary's words, meticulous Mary, comes out sounding
like what we were doing was the most natural and proper thing in the
world, that we were heroines from the very beginning, that each move
was carefully planned. I think for her, it probably was. Actually, as
I recall, one thing led to another and it was all quite underground,
illegal, dangerous and on the road. There was a lot of bumming of
cigarettes from each other and long cross-country drives in the night
to meetings and a lot of going home with someone afterward, or taking
someone home. It was outrageous, really. Exciting, liberating, spicy,
when we were young and in the South. Sometimes I have longed for the
movement so profoundly. The only nostalgia that compares is for my
grandmother's backyard when I was a child--the pomegranates and ripe
figs, roses and swast peas, ferns and irises and crepe myrtles and
oleanders, pecans and walnuts and swings and wet grass on little bare
feet in the summer time. The movement was rich like that. And in like
manner there is no going back.
          There was a comfort in that time that was born of the 

absolute
certainty that what I was doing was the right thing to be
doing. Nothing compares to that except the carrying, bearing and
nursing of my children. When we were young and in the South we were so
beautiful and naive. It was a children's crusade, really. We were the
fairhaired girls and nothing could touch us. Looking back we marvel at
our courage, but at the time there was no courage, no fear. We were
protected by our righteousness. The whole country was trapped in a
lie. We were told about equality but we discovered it didn't exist. We
were the only truth-tellers, as far as we could see. It seldom
occurred to us to be afraid. We were sheathed in the fact of our
position. It was partly our naivete which allowed us to leap into this
position of freedom, the freedom of absolute right action.
          I think we were the only Americans who will ever experience
integration. We were the beloved community, harassed and happy, just
like we'd died and gone to heaven and it was integrated there. We
simply dropped race. This doesn't happen anymore. And in those little
hot black rural churches, we went into the music, into the sound, and
everyone was welcome inside this perfect place.
          We were actually revolutionaries, in my opinion. Mary will tell you
we weren't, but I think we were. We loved the untouchables. We
believed the last should be first, and not only should be first, but
in fact were first in our value system and it was only the blindness
of everyone else not to recognize this fact. They were first because
they were redeemed already, purified by their suffering, and they
could therefore take the lead in the redemption of us all. We wanted
to turn everything not only upside down, but inside out. This is not
mild stuff. It is not much in vogue now. We believed, pre-Beatles,
that love was the answer. Love, not power, was the answer. All the
debates about nonviolence and direct action and voter_registration, in
my view, were really about whether love or power was the answer. And
we did love each other so much. We were living in a
communtiy so true to itself that all we wanted was to
organize everyone into it, make the whole world beloved with us, make
the whole world our beloved, lead the whole world to the consciousness
that it was our beloved and please come in to the fire, come in here
by the fire. Come on in with us here by the fire and break taboos left
and right. This is where it is truly safe.
          The movement in its early days was a grandeur which feared no
rebuke and assumed no false attitudes. It was a holy time.
          This is of course, just my personal experience, as is Mary's
experience, as is all of life.
          
            On Being Radicals
          
          Some of us were radicals. We liked to think of being radical as
going to the root of things. Of course, I was with the New Left folks
a lot, the rowdies, although they were quieter and more scholarly
then, before the war. Unfortunately radicals of the right came up with
clearer answers to the questions we raised than we did. And better
P.R. The failure of liberalism which we correctly identified has in
fact issued forth in a right swing. I don't know any left-wing
radicals today, really. However, in reading Mary's book, and in memory
of the old days, I found myself making marginal notes in some parts of
the book. The following approach to the women's movement is an example
of the style in which we thought, mostly at the time about race. Even
for those of us who do not pretend to be politically involved it is
good to do these exercises now and then for old times' sake, to keep
the form intact: Traditionally, the notion that women are trapped by
and need to be liberated from their childbearing function, their
biology, is widely accepted in the women's movement. I think it's
incorrect. If carried to its logical extreme this position would
result in the eradication of the human race.
          Why not take biology, the body, as positive and see the problem in
the society, the culture's attitude toward birth? No one talks about
labor much anymore, and never about labor as a source of value and
seldom about labor as in bearing children. Both are undervalued and
their place in the rewards of the culture are not reflective of the
truth of their value to the experience of being human. Anyone who is
present at a human birth, and especially the conscious mother, knows a
great secret. Freedom is not a question of the control of the birth
function (although certainly that is useful to have at our command) so
much as recognition and dignification and reward of this function and
the child-rearing function that follows from it. This line of
reasoning carries one into deep waters, of course. We used to think
like this all the time, these radical approaches with astounding
implications.
          Mary talks about organizing lower class women, a mass movement. We
used to refer to the movement as a mass movement, back when it was
happening. The word masses, like the word labor, is seldom used. What
are some issues which touch all women rather than primarily or
disproportionately benefiting upwardly mobile professional women?
          I think about this one: Why is every second woman I talk to over
thirty suffering from irregular and heavy menstrual periods? Why are
the doctors giving out hormones, DNC's and hysterectomies with abandon
to handle the problem. What is the root cause? What is the relation of
all this to the hormones we eat, for instance, in all meat and dairy
products? Is anyone testing for this? Who should decide what we eat,
anyway? (One can get into this one on cancer and pollutants and
petroleum by-products and nuclear power, also.) Similarly, given the
value of the experience of giving birth, and the need for women to
claim it as their own, what is the feminist reaction to the shutting
down of birthing centers nationwide by the insurance companies? It is
the insurance companies who control the experience of the woman in the
act of giving birth, the insurance companies and the AMA. This issue
is as important as abortion. The conscious experience of birth changes
the relationship of the mother from unconscious to conscious and thus
contributes to the survival and spiritual development of the human 

race. The next logical step in this thinking is to look at nursing
homes, the profit motive's impersonal and depressing answer to how to
orchestrate life's other most significant transition.
          Of course, the AMA and the insurance companies are big groups to
take on. This didn't slow us down. We were brash and young. To address
these issues means to address basic societal restructuring. It means
all the same things it used to mean when we were into it. These issues
cut across class lines. This is as it should be, as Mary
suggests. These issues are about survival and spiritual truth. This is
also as it should be. We need to think radically, even if it sounds a
bit mad. Very few people, after all, know how.
          
            What Goes Around Comes Around
          
          I know there is for you, Mary, something of a full circle in this
book. I know it took you twenty-five years to come to terms with much
of this history, with yourself. This means a healing. The idea of
coming full circle is important. Very important now in my life. It was
important then, too. We used to hold hands and stand in a circle to
sing "We Shall Overcome." When we were debating how to continue to
work and create together at Waveland after the summer of 1964 (which
was a momentous time and a time when we couldn't seem to get at
deciding what to do anymore) I remember talking about circles. Instead
of lines and boxes and hierarchy in the diagrams of how to organize
SNCC I was drawing circles indicating people working together and the
circles overlapping other circles as we all generated programs and
things to do together. That was how the movement really was. Our side
lost. But we were right. Hierarchy could not replace the circle dance
(as Milan Kundera has also pointed out, I found out after writing
this).
          Bob Moses changed his name to his mother's maiden name, around this
time of the women's memos. It was going back to something else to make
the present full, to say an understanding. He was the only one who
knew what to do. Bob wanted to do his doctorate at Harvard on the
philosophical differences in Swahili and English, I understand, after
he and Janet and the kids got back from Africa. After the SDS reunion
there was some money left over which came to the New_York group and we
used it to throw a party to raise some more money for a film on Ella
Baker. At the party Bob spoke and he talked about a Swahili word which
meant the mother of the tribe, the spiritual guide of the
community. He said Ella was that. He told about when he was a kid in
Harlem and his family was very poor and the only way they could afford
milk was through a milk co-opt Years later in the South he learned
that this milk co-op had been organized by Ella Baker.
          Things do not always fall apart. Sometimes what looks like falling
apart is only part of a coming full back around. I think we have to
hope for that, for a time when the truths women and old organizers
know will be honored and the secret compassion we have secured in our
hearts will find value in the population, among the people. Or that
the people will find we have shared this all along. Somewhere in the
questions that the Swahili/English text would raise must be the
question of whether history is linear or circular, or maybe
spiral. What is progress, really? How is history to be served? How do
we serve each other? What is to be done? 
          This was the question which led to my drafting of our second memo,
the Kind-of-Memo. It was so painful to see all the floundering about
trying to figure out what to do, to be burning out oneself, and to see
the community dissipating. It seemed like one should at least keep
talking about what was really happening, what really mattered, with
whoever would listen, whoever would talk back. That seemed to be what
was to be done.
          
            Tell It Like It Is
          
          When I was working several years ago with Elaine Baker, another
Tougaloo Freedom House grad, on an oral history project in a remote
part of southern Colorado, we came up with this idea of putting tape
recorders and tapes in the local library. Then we had the idea to get
a grant and do it all over the country, so anyone anywhere could come
in and record their life history and put it in the local oral history
archive. We were working on an old SNCC axiom that everyone is as
valuable as everyone else, and so is everyone's experience as valuable
as everyone else's. Radical equality, like a mother's love which sees
each of her children as equally valuable. Mary can be an inspiration
to all us survivors. We can, like her, write it down, record it,
somehow pass it along. We can seize the time and make it our own, make
our story our own, in our own style and fashion, as Mary has. For
instance, a book about my life would look like a sixties comic book
and be called "The Amazing Life of Casey Cason Hayden Cason, How She
Escaped Death and Lived To Tell About It." Getting it published or
broadcast is not the main thing. We all remember the discrepancy
between reality as we experienced it in the movement and what we read
about that reality in print. We know that publication does not
validate experience, nor do we need it for our experiences to be
valid. What you record will be used, be useful, someday. It will be a
service to the future. Save it for your grandchildren.
          Well, this is not a review, exactly. It is more like a sermonette
combined with notes scribbled down the side of a page. But it is part
of the healing and the moving forward and upward which is the root of
this book. So in closing I will say the only thing that I really do
want to say a great deal and which I think you will be glad I said,
Mary:
          For the Zen teacher body and mind are one. So for a brief time in
history, in our very own lives, art, religion and politics were
one. Those of us with SNCC in the South in those days were political,
it is true, but more radically, we were observers, participants, and
midwives to a great upheaval, uprising, outpouring of the human
spirit. This was the spirit of the thousands and thousands of poor
Southern blacks who were in fact the movement. The form, the style,
the very life of the movement was theirs. They were there when we got
there and there when we left. Many of them could not read or write and
they could barely speak the English language. They will never see this
book. They, and not we, were the heroes, the heroines. I was
privileged to have been their servant for a while. To them, for all I
learned from them and for all the beauty I witnessed, I extend my most
sincere and humble thanks.
          
            Editor's Note: Freedom Song by Mary King, William Morrow
and Co., $22.95, 592 pp.) appeared this year and has been hailed by
many reviewers as a monument to the civil_rights movement. Ms. King
worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the
early sixties and has recorded her experiences during this time. In
1986 she sent the first draft of her manuscript to Casey Hayden (a
Texas native lately of the Southern_Regional_Council staff, who now
works for the City of Atlanta) and asked if Hayden would like to write
a statement of her own which might be used as an introduction. The
following was Hayden's response to this request. The essay appeared in
abbreviated form as a preface to Freedom Song and is
presented here as a reflection on the period and the
book.
          
        
