Nana Biography

We had no way of contacting him, because he didn’t know where he was in Mississippi, so all we could do was sort of wait, but I think if anything bad happened to him we would’ve heard by now.  Someone would’ve gotten in touch with us. Eventually we heard. But the next thing that happened was that he was written up in the Saturday evening post with his picture picture.

Leonard? 

Leonard.  Oh yes. In fact, he’s mentioned in two books that people wrote about him. He lived with Mrs. Hamer, this is Fannie Lou Hamer, who was the black, who was famous in the south that year. You might not remember the summer of 1964.  But that was when all the students went down to register voters.

I remember the murders. Sure. 

This was the turning point in the civil rights movement.

Right, right.

So he spent that, while his two brothers were in Greece, traveling around to Delphi and bathing in the ocean. We were over there having this great time and he was living on grits and living a very spartan life when we saw him when we came home, he looked terrible – thin and heated, and I think it did something to him, psychologically, and that he had never been exposed to hatred as he had been down there .

-106-