This post was initially about Pat Walker, but I decided to shift the focus to the various reports regarding the July 5, 1964, bombing in McComb.

On July 5, 1964, dynamite went off at a house on 702 Wall Street in McComb, Mississippi. Four different documents tell a piece of what occurred that night.

Civil rights workers used the home as a gathering place for the Movement and conducted voter registration work. Willie May Cotten owned the property and leased it to the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). In an investigation report by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, the investigator noted the ten civil rights workers who organized from the home: Jessie Harris (Jackson), Dan McCord (Manhattan, Kansas), Dennis Sweeney (Portland, Oregon), Julius Samstain (Jackson), Freddie Green (Greenwood), Curtis Hayes (McComb/Summit), George Green (Jackson), Clint Hopson (Ashberry Port, New Jersey), Sherry Everett (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), and Pat Walker (Jackson). The bombing injured Hayes, with the FBI launching a “thorough investigation.”

The investigative report only shared so much. In actuality, the explosion came as the group of ten civil rights workers slept. A reported additional guest included a California congressman, yet other articles shared that two stayed briefly at the house prior to the attack.

An article in the Clarion-Ledger (Jackson) provided more details about the 10 civil rights organizers.

– Julius “Mendy” Samstein, 25, white male (Jackson)
– Jesse Harris, 22, Black male (Jackson)
– Curtis Hayes, 21, Black male (Summit) | involved in the McComb Movement since 1961
– George Greene, 21, Black male (Jackson)
– Dennis Sweeney, 21, white male (Portland, OR) | student at Stanford University
– Dan McCord, no age listed, white male (Manhattan, KS) | minister of the Disciples of Christ and organizes with the National Council of Churches
– Clint Hopson, 29, Black male (Asbury Park, NJ) | law student at Washington State University
– Freddie Greene, 19, Black woman (Greenwood) | Sister of George Greene
– Sherry Everett, 20, Black woman (Pittsburgh, PA) | Shaw University in Rhode Island
-Pat Walker, 21, Black woman (Jackson)

From the Enterprise-Journal (Hattiesburg):
(direct quotations)
– Julius (Mendy) Samstein, 25, white male Jackson
– Jesse Harris, 22, Negro male, Jackson
– Curtis Hayes, 21 Negro male, Summit. Hayes was a figure in the sit-ins at McComb in 1961 and has since been a professional worker in the Civil Rights field.
– George Green, 21, Negro male, Jackson.
– Dennis Sweeney, 21, white male, a student at Stanford University in California; home address given as Portland, Ore.
– Don McCord, 27, white male, Manhattan, Kans., a minister of the Disciples of Christ, working in the group for the National Council of Churches.
– Clint Hopson, 29, Negro male, Asbury Park, N.J., a law student at Washington State University.
– Freddie Greene, 19, Negro female, Greenwood (sister of George Greene).
– Pat Walker, 21, Negro female, Jackson.
-Sherry Everett, 20, Negro female, Pittsburgh, Pa. a student at Shaw University, Providence, R.I.

Since April 1964, five explosions had ripped through McComb’s Black community. The first occurred at local civil rights leader C.C. Bryant’s barbershop. He served as the president of the Pike County NAACP. The next three explosions happened on the same night, June 22nd, damaging the homes of the Bates, Andrews, and Bryant. Then came July 1964, an attack on the McComb Freedom House.

Greene heard “three rapid explosions in succession like gunshots, only much louder.” The room where Hayes and Sweeney slept received significant damage, injuring both men. The explosives, left by unknown assailants, damaged the home’s living room and a bedroom. A final article from the Hattiesburg American gave the following profile of the house’s occupants at the time of the bombing.

– Freddie Green, 19, “George Green’s [sic] sister.”
– Mindy Samstein, 25, of New York
– Sherry Everett, 19, a “Pittsburgh Negro”
– Jesse Harris, 22, a “Jackson Negro”
The journalist described the above as “all SNCC staff workers.”
– Clinton Hopson, 26, a Howard University law student
– Pat Walker, a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worker from New York
– & Rev. Don McCord, a “white minister from Stafford, Kan., and a representative of the National Council of Churches’ commission on race and religion.”

As I work on building a detailed, comprehensive list of volunteers, including biographical information (race, age, hometown, occupation, college/university attended, etc.), I become interested in how three different newspapers provide conflicting names and details for each volunteer. Pat Walker appears to be a local Mississippian, but by the last article, the reader learns that she is a New Yorker working with CORE. Is Rev. McCord from Manhattan, KS, or Stafford? And Hopson, did he attend Howard Law School or Washington State? And why did the journalist not notice while crafting similar articles for different publications?

So my task becomes searching through these records—newspapers articles and Sovereignty Commission records—to pull (& certify) the correct information regarding each volunteer who came to Mississippi that summer.