Men Still at Work: Professionals Over Sixty and on the Job (29 page)

Here is where the formidable Fannie Lou Hamer entered the picture. Mrs. Hamer helped to organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 for SNCC and its partners, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the NAACP. The foundation for their efforts can be traced back to 1954 when Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie were working for the NAACP in Mississippi, and to 1960 when Freedom Riders came to McComb, Mississippi, to help Bob Moses organize a voter registration drive. The so-called 1961 McComb Project became “ground zero” for mass demonstrations that quickly spread to other cities and towns. Civil rights leaders in the state—the NAACP’s Aaron Henry, SNCC’s Bob Moses, SCLC’s Arnell Ponder, and CORE’s Dave Dennis—formed an umbrella organization called the Council of Federated Organizations, or COFO, that attempted to unify the various black grassroots organizations with their sometimes competing philosophies and tactics. (The Hamer Institute helped to establish the COFO Civil Rights Education Center which is located on John R. Lynch Street, the heart of the Civil Rights Corridor in Jackson.)

In 1962 when Mrs. Hamer was forty-four years old and working as a sharecropper and record keeper on a plantation in Sunflower County, Mississippi, she attended an SNCC voter registration meeting where she learned for the first time that black people actually had a constitutional right to vote. Since she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” she volunteered to go to the courthouse in Indianola and register to vote. Her temerity led to eviction from the plantation and several attempts on her life which she barely survived, yet Hamer persisted, becoming an SNCC Field Secretary, traveling around the country speaking and registering people to vote.

By 1964, Mrs. Hamer and other activists, including young Leslie Burl McLemore, had cofounded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Convinced of the validity of their cause, they headed for Atlantic City, New Jersey, to challenge the legitimacy of Mississippi’s all-white, anti–civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Although the Democratic leadership was unsympathetic to the MFDP, Mrs. Hamer was allowed to present their case before the Credentials Committee. The proceedings were televised and viewers all over the country heard how discriminatory practices, such as illegal tests and poll taxes, and outright intimidation were preventing blacks from voting in many states. The Credentials Committee’s concession was to give two delegates speaking rights; the rest of the delegation was seated as honored guests. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Mrs. Hamer was seated as a member of Mississippi’s official delegation.

After running unsuccessfully for Congress in 1964 and in 1965, Mrs. Hamer worked on behalf of Head Start, a Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. She continued to fight for civil rights until her death in 1977 at the age of fifty-nine. She is remembered for her courage and leadership, as well as for singing Christian hymns and freedom songs to fortify herself and her followers when threatened by hostile crowds.

The Hamer Institute originated in 1997 as an action plan hatched among a group of five fellows participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College Teachers, held at Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. Leslie was one of those founding faculty members. “Our group of five was interested in social change, so instead of spending time updating a bibliography on civil rights along with the rest of our colleagues, we decided to replicate the NEH model itself, targeting K–12 teachers and students instead of college teachers and making Jackson State University our base. The NEH was an early funder and has continued to support our work for fifteen years. We have also received grants and donations from institutions of higher education, corporations, small businesses, and individuals.”

One thing Leslie regrets is not having time to write articles about the civil rights movement when he was a full-time faculty member. He was pulled in many directions—getting involved in community affairs, building up JSU’s political science department, and writing proposals. “I wrote lots of proposals for purchasing computers and for helping junior faculty complete advanced degrees and further their careers,” he explains. “You could say that helping all those junior faculty members get established is a significant part of my legacy. Another piece, now that I am working part time, will be a book about the 1964 Freedom Summer I plan to write with a colleague. Time is too precious to waste. ”

Leslie Burl McLemore is hardly a time waster. In fact, he readily admits that he is “driven to volunteer.” He is leading an effort to restore the Mt. Zion Cemetery in his hometown of Walls, Mississippi. He participates in a school-based mentoring program for youngsters attending the Walls Elementary School (which was his high school in the 1960s). He is still involved in an advisory capacity with the Mississippi Humanities Council. He is a member of the Civil Rights Education Commission, the Mississippi National Museum Commission, and the Mississippi Freedom Trail Commission. He conducts voter registration for the DeSoto County chapter of the NAACP. And he is spearheading the class of 1964’s fundraising drive for Rust College scholarships. “In 2014 it will be fifty years since our graduation. The first year we raised $25,000, this year it was $100,000, and we hope to reach $150,000 by 2014. Our goals are modest. Most of the classmates are folks of modest incomes and many are retired, so we have to be realistic.”

Leslie and his wife Betty Mallet make the two-hundred-mile commute between Jackson and their home in Walls on different schedules, so family time has to be protected. “Betty has a busy law practice in Jackson. She is much younger than I am and hopes I will keep working for a long time. Actually, she’s thrilled that I am still working!” Their son Leslie II finished law school, got an LLM at American University, and stayed in Washington to seek a job in the second Obama administration.

Recognition for Leslie’s contributions to social justice has come in the form of several awards: the W. E. B. Du Bois Award from the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists in 2010 and the Fannie Lou Hamer Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists in 1995–96. However, when I asked Leslie what he is proudest of, he replied, “Without question it is my role in helping to create the Hamer Institute and being able to continue working with my colleagues there. I plan to contribute in one capacity or another for several more years. The ongoing challenge is to get young people to appreciate their right to vote, a right that we had to fight hard for.” When the time does come for him to step down, Leslie would like COFO’s current director, Dr. Daphne Chamberlain, to succeed him as director of the Hamer Institute. The fact that she earned her doctorate in history from Ole Miss, previously off limits to blacks, speaks volumes about the success of the civil rights movement which Leslie Burl McLemore helped to bring about.

Additional popular roles for older men who volunteer include: serving as a member of a church or temple committee, town committee, or community agency; assisting in house-building for the poor via Habitat for Humanity; acting as a writing coach/editor; and donating various forms of professional service pro bono, such as reviewing charts for a home nursing service, providing legal assistance, mediating court disputes, chairing a hospital’s finance and audit committee, and deploying to natural disasters as a Red Cross mental health manager.

One man’s volunteer job is “home helper.” Another man drives carpool and supervises homework for his grandkids. The rest are performing unpaid work in a variety of capacities on behalf of many organizations:

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job coaching for working-poor breadwinners

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mentoring youngsters at a Boys and Girls Club

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assisting with university outreach

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mentoring business school students

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helping children with cancer

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judging at a high school science fair

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coordinating a foundation’s auction

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working on an organic farm

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serving as general counsel to a major ballet company

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participating in Rotary projects in the United States and overseas

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facilitating synagogue attendance by handicapped adults

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organizing art for a hospital’s intensive care unit

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befriending the local library and historical society

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trying to find employment for struggling musician friends

My findings about volunteering deviate from the national data in two areas. The first difference is fairly small. The BLS says part-timers are more available for volunteering than persons employed full time. That seems perfectly logical, yet somewhat more of the full-timers in my study (64 percent) are volunteering than the part-timers (61 percent). The second difference is startling. The BLS says women volunteer at a higher rate than men. My findings contradict the national data on this point: among the women, 52 percent are volunteering, and while that is more than double the national average and quite respectable, it is 17 percentage points less than the rate for men (69 percent). This difference may well derive from men’s greater tendency to work for an employer—more than half of the men do, while the majority of the women are self-employed or consulting—and from their companies encouraging (and sometimes requiring) their employees to perform community service or donate professional services pro bono. The difference might also be related to women putting more time in on housework than men do, which could be a valid reason! Let’s just agree that both men and women who volunteer demonstrate generosity and a strong sense of engagement, be it civic, social, cultural, or religious in nature.

Leisure time activities are as important to older men as they are to older women. True, one seventy-three-year-old lawyer hastened to remind me that
work
comes first: “My job/work gives focus to the day. Leisure fits around it.” But most subscribe to the old saying (apparently a proverb that has been around for more than 350 years) that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. As a library trustee and member of two book groups, I was pleased to find that reading—print and electronic materials—is the favorite pastime of both men and women. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the men and more than four-fifths of the women (85 percent) enjoy reading in their spare time. At least two of the men profiled in these pages are active members of book groups—Chuck Willie and Dick Winslow. Chuck belongs to a coed book club in Concord, Massachusetts, that he cofounded with his wife thirty years ago. Dick is the linchpin of a men’s book group in Mercer Island, Washington, that gets together every four to six weeks to talk about books, sports, politics, and the economy.

Reading, sports and fitness, travel, and computer use are the top four leisure-time activities for
both
men and women. However, after reading, the preferences of older men and older women diverge slightly. Sports and fitness are in second place for the men: 62 percent are participants in or spectators of a variety of activities, including tennis, skiing, hiking, kayaking, cycling, boating/sailing, golf, and working out at the gym. Examples drawn from among the men I interviewed include: Jim Fannin, who cycles regularly to keep in shape for the heavy lifting required by cemetery preservation work; Paul Fideler, who does weightlifting, stretching, and biking to keep fit and to stave off hip and possibly knee replacement surgeries; Jack Buckley and Neil Tift, who get up early every morning to run before leaving for work; Bob Schecter, who plays tennis three times a week; Ted Grenham, Bruce Chabner, and Andrew Fogelson, all of whom are avid golfers; John Kaneb, who jogs and lifts weights; Jon Kapstein, who swims; Don Brick, who gave up tennis and skiing after having both knees replaced but goes to the health club regularly; and George Doubleday, who does yoga and Pilates, bikes, walks, skis, and swims.

George Doubleday’s calendar is chock-full of commitments. In addition to working at Geographic Expeditions (he is the seventy-two-year-old chairman of the San Francisco–based tour operator and outfitter), he tackles outdoor chores on his Sonoma County property, takes piano lessons, is a member of two boards, hosts family visits, and keeps fit. The long-range planning he is doing for GeoEx includes finding someone to replace him—eventually.