McComb vs. Harlem: A Matter of Identity

Over the ’64 Christmas holidays, 37 Negro high school students from McComb, Mississippi, were brought to New York by private funds raised by two COFO volunteers who had spent the summer teaching in the McComb “Freedom School.” The McComb kids received a rude shock in New York. Their Harlem counterparts—the small group of teenage Negroes active in civil rights organizations—taunted them, brutally derided them, accused them of cowardice and called them “Toms” because they believed in non-violence. As one girl, Eula Lee, later wrote: “I had heard the bombs and rifle shots of McComb, Mississippi, and seen the crosses burn in front of churches and homes, but never before had I seen such an open attack a...