Kay Mills

I look back now and know that it was fortunate I didn’t write This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer first. I could never have told that story as well if I hadn’t learned from my experience with my first book. I was a tiger on research but I had to know what to leave out as well as what to put in.

Lesson #2 involves serendipity, the seemingly random occurrence. Be ready for it. It will happen but you have to recognize it when it comes. And it generally comes when you are out and about following up leads.

Serendipity struck on the first book when, after several rejections by publishing houses, Cynthia Vartan, an editor at Dodd, Mead, liked the idea. Her husband worked at the New York Times so she knew more than a bit about the news business.

Serendipity struck on the Hamer book more than once, but the main time I remember was one day in Greenville., Mississippi. I had hoped to interview a lawyer who had been a member of the all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic convention—the delegation that a group led by Aaron Henry and Fannie Lou Hamer challenged as unrepresentative because black people couldn’t participate in party meetings. But he stood me up. I had been traveling a lot and was tired and wanted just to go back to the Ramada Inn and read. No, you cannot do that, my good angel told me, you did not come to Mississippi to sit at the Ramada Inn and read. Besides, she added, the housekeepers will be at work vacuuming.

I always tell students to make one more phone call, so I followed my own advice. I went to the pay phone at the post office (this being pre-cell phone days) and reached a lawyer that an earlier interviewee had said I should contact. I hate cold calls but I prepared my spiel about my book. Not only did he answer his own phone (it’s a small town, remember) but he was delighted to hear from me. “Mrs. Hamer was involved in one of the first cases I handled when I moved to Greenville,” he told me. I knew nothing about the case. He would, he said, be happy to talk to me. Furthermore, he still had the trial transcript. The opposing lawyer had been Senator James O. Eastland’s son-in-law. He and Hamer had had a wonderful exchange during the trial when he tried to imply that she couldn’t know much about the case because she was on the road so much. Oh, yes, she traveled a lot, she replied, but when she was needed back home, she was there. It was an illuminating moment.

To be continued