Chapter 18, The Fall of Ole Miss, Summary and Analysis

Tension grew in Mississippi, where Moses returned to the SNCC offices one day to find a white posse had ransacked them, and several SNCC volunteers had barely escaped. Moses was struggling to find people to register to vote, since fear ran deep in Mississippi after the burning of the church. His funding was also limited, since many civil rights leaders felt it was too dangerous to continue work in Mississippi. To circumvent this difficulty, a new organization was created, the Council of Federated Organizations, or COFO, through which to raise money. The group was under fire from local whites, however, and when Moses attempted to register a woman sharecropper to vote, she was told by the owner of her land that he had been harassed, and that would throw her off...