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Philadelphia and Canton generated enough headlines and shocking TV footage to convert the march into a national cause celebre—and the celebrities began streaming toward Jackson. Comedian Dick Gregory, Showman Sammy Davis Jr. and Actor Marlon Brando turned up in Tougaloo to perform for the marchers the night before their seven-mile trek into Jackson. Meredith, recovered from his wounds, also flew back but at first refused to have anything to do with the main body of marchers, with the cryptic comment: "There have been some shenanigans going on that I don't like." In the end, Meredith decided to rejoin the march that he had started and lead the column on its last lap.
"What Do You Want?" The upshot of the Mississippi march may well be to harden positions on both sides of the black-power quarrel. The militants can be expected to cite the savagery of white Mississippians as proof that Negroes can hardly expect much in the way of help from whites. The moderates can be expected to counter, as Ralph Abernathy, one of King's aides, did recently, with the argument that "if the philosophy of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is carried to its ultimate conclusion, we are eventually going to have everybody eyeless and everybody toothless."
Precisely what impact the whole argument will have on the mass of America's 20 million Negroes is something else. A rally in Indianola, along the march route last week, proved only that the mob is most susceptible to the last pitch it has heard. Addressing the crowd there, S.N.C.C. Field Secretary Charles McLaurin advised, "When people say, 'What do you want?' don't say 'freedom!' Say 'black power!' " Then McLaurin shouted, "What do you want?" Yelled the crowd: "Black power!" Minutes later, Ralph Abernathy turned up and asked the crowd, "What do you want?" "Black power!" was the reply. Abernathy frowned. "Say 'freedom!'" he directed them. And from the crowd welled up a lusty roar: "Freedom!"
In the long run, to most Negroes freedom and power are mere abstractions, easily mouthed slogans for their deepest desires. For what they realistically and rightly crave is a more generous slice of what they are beginning to taste: more and better jobs, better housing, better education for their children, the means and access to the forms as well as the places of leisure that the white man affords. To these wants, "Take it easy, you've got a lot already," is cold comfort. "Yeah," replies the Negro, "but it's not enough. And for a century we've had nothing."
Black power is a ringing slogan in the summer of 1966—one that may well see all the counsel of well-meant moderation choked in Mississippi dust.