I marked my first ballot in 1971, as a white college student pollwatcher for the Charles Evers gubernatorial campaign in Mississippi.
I was helping illiterate black voters, many of them over sixty, who were voting for the first time in their lives. It took a lot of courage for them to vote in Scott County, Mississippi, even in 1971. They had to walk through a gauntlet of hostile white men to get into and out of the polling places.
At a rural polling place in Lake, as votes were being counted, a group of white men walked in carrying nooses which were clearly intended for me and another pollwatcher. We managed to get out unharmed but not before black voters contacted Evers headquarters to report the noose sighting. Evers cancelled a press conference to call for a black self-defense team to get to the polling place to rescue us and an elderly black minister who was serving as bailiff. This was all after the sheriff, re-elected in a landslide that night, came by, saw we were in danger, and told us we had it coming for interfering in Mississippi politics. When I explained that we were protected by Mississippi state law, he responded (and this is not fiction): "Boy, this is Scott County, Mississippi, and in Scott County, I am the law."
