CAN I, I'M GOING TO INTERRUPT ONE SECOND. UM, IT'S KINDOF TOUGH, BUT THEY WILL NOT HEAR MY QUESTIONS. OK, SO WHEN I ASK YOU SOMETHING, WHAT, WHAT WAS, WHAT WERE THE DIFFICULTIES IN REGISTERING, IT WOULD BE GOOD TO INCLUDE MY QUESTION IN YOUR ANSWER. TO, TO REGISTER, UM, SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES WE ENCOUNTERED… SPECIFICALLY, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES IN REGISTERING?

Well, the difficulties were, uh, to register in Mississippi the uh, the, er, you were at the mercy of the registrar. The requirements to, to be registered were you had to be able to read and write, you had to be able to interpret uh, any section of the constitution that the registrar required, to his satisfaction. Um, the requirements to be a registrar was simply to be elected by the people. There was nothing said you had to be able to read or write, uh, you know, nothing like that to be a registrar, but all that to become a registered voter, and so a, PH.D could, could uh, be denied the right to become a registered voter uh, by a registrar who, who didn't finish elementary school and so this was the kind of climate that we lived in and you can imagine the mentality of the people many times with whom you had to deal with. And this was certainly true in my town. Um, and uh, so, from the beginning ours was indeed a political fight rather than a struggle if you will, rather than just a purely civil rights struggle. Uh, because our, the climate in our state was such that to go out there and and wage that struggle just on a purely you know, civil rights basis um, the, the, we could never have gotten off the ground we would probably all have been killed you know and I mean intimated and, and just totally frightened off. Because you see you do have to understand something of the history of uh, voting rights in Mississippi uh you know, back, or during reconstruction, we had blacks participating, uh in every level of government but um, when uh the uh 1870 compact was uh, violated, was uh, you know betrayed, uh, open season is what happened on not only the blacks but, but, but those uh other whites and other people in the community who had coalesced and were really about the business of doing progressive kinds of things for the people of that state. And, and whole communities of people were, were, was simply slain you know, with immunity, and when word went out you know from the state to the federal government, asking you know for support, for assistance, for help, none came. And so the whole business was totally destroyed you know within a very short span of time and then Mississippi led the way in 1890 in the 1890s you know, they redid their constitution and that constitution of course uh, put Jim Crow laws in effect and from that time forward uh, Mississippi was, a, a very bad place to be just to put it very simply. Uh, as long…