Letter from Joseph Ellin to Susan, August 17, 1964

              Mon. [ca. August 17, 1964, Hattiesburg, Mississippi] [typescript page 1] 


 

Dear Susan,


            I’m afraid you’re very right about a couple of things, for which I will whomp you when we get back.  I don’t know whether a FSNCC could be formed in Mazoo; frankly I was thinking more of K College than of Western.  But your idea of using the Voice group as a basis and doing SNCC work for special projects sounds very fine.  I don’t know what FSNCC does anyway; fund-raising I’m told.  Betty Garman says it’s for kids who want to get involved with a minimum of risk and disturbance to their lives.  (This is one of those typewriters.)  Special projects might include some sort of support work for the Mississippi winter projects.  From the number of people who are staying down here, the winter project will be almost as big, perhaps even larger if active recruiting is done, than the summer project.  One semester in school, one in Mississippi is the new thing.  Who knows, we might even send someone down here (hhhh Good grief the A on this one don’t go.aaa there it is.)  (ha.)


            Betty gave me the name of a friend of hers who’s going to start teaching at Mich state this fall, and is very interested in doing something campus SNCC-wise.  Is the Lansing group dead, dormant, or what?  Maybe we could get some kids who would sort of affiliate with them (or with [the] Ann Arbor group) and do things when necessary.


            I haven’t really found anyone to integrate with.  But Melvin Evans seemed to think integration was a good idea, though the Negroes he talked to were totally uninterested.  I don’t give enough of a damn for frats to try and push that on them, though if a Negro turned up who wanted to get into Kappa Woosis I might see if I could help him do it.  Next year we’ll have three Negroes on the faculty:  Jerry Long, Al Sampson, and that cat I don’t know but Nancy does who’s there now.  I guess they should push social integration if they want to.


            (This is number four, number three was too obviously not with it to even put the paper in.  We’ll be on number five soon.  I can’t imagine how we do this to typewriters.  I just had five machines in for repairs last week.)


            What I meant for you to do about the Freedom Party was to write to friends and relatives.  Not a mass mailing, just a note asking them to write to their state’s delegation to the convention seeking support for our challenge.  If you write to ten people, and they each could do likewise, and write to say a few Senators and so on at the same time, a great deal of mail would get sent out.  All you have to say is something like the Miss (Eastland) Dem party is racist and against LBJ anyway, so the civil rights groups in Miss have formed a new party to represent Miss at the convention.  And I (the letter writer) support the Freedom party at the convention and ask you to vote to seat them.  Very easy.


            Our rent is coming due Aug. 22.  I've got my bank book here and will write to the bank and ask them to make out a chech check (h doesn't come back up on this one) to Mrs. T. and send same to you.  When you get it you can give it to her.


            We expect to stay here till near the end of Aug, probably arriving in Mazoo say Aug 30 or 31, but we may come earlier if we get bored next week (the project ends this week officially but we thought we’d stay on.  Nancy wants to tend the libraries and there is a possible bus boycott that I may help out with if it comes off, which I doubt).  If you want to move out, please do so and put the cats in the vet’s:  there’s a place on what’s the name of that street, old  no. 131 that starts with a W… , way out of town (south), that I think is 50 cents a day cheaper than the Portage Animal Hospital (insist on two in a room please).  Westnedge, that’s it.  Southland Animal hospital.


            I doubt that any of the things I thought of doing in my premature dotage are really going to happen.  I suspect that I will try to spend the whole year writing my way away from