Jack Bishop does not believe in coincidences.
That is true today, and it was true 60 years ago, when the Sunflower County native first met a group of Freedom Summer volunteers in Ruleville. The conversations and events of that summer would change Bishop’s life and perspective forever.
“I realized, more so now, but even back 60 years ago, that God was in control,” Bishop said. “As I look back on it every step I took, He was right there.”
Bishop was a rising senior at Delta State University in the summer of 1964.
He was by no means a liberal young man, and he probably would not describe himself as such today.
At one point, Bishop was asked to head a conservative Tenth Amendment organization at DSU called ATAC (Association of Tenth Amendment Conservatives).
A native of the Stephensville community, Bishop had always been around politics. His brother at the time worked for Mississippi Congressman Jamie Lloyd Whitten.
Bishop himself was a history major, and he was attending summer school in 1964 to get his teaching certificate.
One day, he received a phone call from then-Ruleville Mayor Charles Dorrough.
“He called me and asked me to come to Ruleville to meet some college students who were coming in,” Bishop said.
Those college students were volunteers in the Mississippi Summer Project, known by many as Freedom Summer.
Most of the volunteers were wealthy white or Jewish young adults from outside of the South.
The mayor told Bishop the names of the volunteers he was to meet, and he said that they were going to be staying at Fannie Lou Hamer’s home in Ruleville.
“I’ve been to Fannie Lou Hamer’s house, but I never met her,” Bishop said.
Bishop drove down Highway 8 from Cleveland to Ruleville, eventually coming to Hamer’s home there. By then, it was evening.
“We introduced ourselves,” Bishop said.
Bishop said that he introduced himself in the same manner to each of the volunteers whom he met that summer.
“We’re so glad that y’all have come to Mississippi. There’s only one thing that we ask, and that’s that you leave us better off than you found us,” Bishop said.
After the first introduction, Bishop invited the two men who were staying at Hamer’s home to the Mecca Drive-In for a coke.
“That’s where all of the kids hung out,” Bishop said.
Many of the volunteers had been taken aback by the number of pickup trucks with gun racks and guns in the back.
Bishop did his best to ease their concerns.
“They were scared to death they were there for them,” Bishop said. “I told them that most every farmer in these parts had a pickup truck, and they had a gun rack in the back with a rifle.”
After they had visited at the drive-in, the three men went back to Hamer’s home and visited some more.
“Over a period of time, we had a lot of visits and talked,” Bishop said.
Bishop said that there was a house where many of the volunteers met that had tint over the windows.
It was there that Bishop and some others from his group at Delta State, came many times to talk, debate and had a few drinks with the volunteers.
“That’s the way that my group did it,” Bishop said. “We talked about everything, even sports.”
Bishop said that one day some pickup trucks did start to circle the home. They were locals, and they were curious as to why there was always a crowd there.
Bishop said that he went out and talked to them, introduced himself, and he explained what the volunteers were doing there.
“If I hadn’t been there, there’s no telling,” Bishop said. “Some things could have happened.”
Bishop said that he went to the local Freedom School that had been set up in Ruleville.
It was there that he saw a young Black girl reading an illustrated book about Rosa Parks.
“I patted her on the shoulder,” Bishop said, and I told her, ‘My prayer is that you don’t have to give up your seat to anybody.’ I don’t know where that came from, but that’s what hit me, and she looked up at me, and she just smiled.”
Bishop was a young conservative, but he was by no means racist, he said. He grew up on the country roads of Sunflower County, and he interacted daily with white kids and Black kids.
Some of the Black families in the Stephensville area were as close as family, he said.
“A lot of these things are based on environment, relationships and the family that you grow up with,” Bishop said. “That’s what you feed off of. That’s where we really get our ideas… If I had gone through what they went through, I would have been upset too. I had never really thought about it before.”
Bishop said that he and his friends disagreed with a lot of the politics espoused by the volunteers, but that didn’t matter. They had become friends.
“We agreed to disagree,” Bishop said. “We talked it out. We didn’t come to fights and arguments. That’s what it’s all about.”
Those friendships have lasted over the last 60 years. Bishop has been able to keep up with some of the volunteers, and he has seen others at local reunions over the past decades.
He described the experience in 1964 as a building block that has helped him to become who he is today.
Like many from that summer, Bishop went on to build a life and a family. He entered the Army in the mid-1960s, and although he had been on orders to go to Vietnam on three different occasions, he never had to go.
Bishop remained active in politics, and he eventually joined the United States Postal Service in 1976 and retired from USPS a little over a decade ago.
Also, like many of the veterans of Freedom Summer, Bishop has never forgotten the bonds that grew from those conversations in Ruleville.
With a 60-year reunion event set for this weekend in Indianola, Bishop said that he is looking forward to seeing some of those friends again, and he’s going to greet them the same way that he did in 1964.
“We’re so glad that y’all have come to Mississippi. There’s only one thing that we ask, and that’s that you leave us better off than you found us.”
