The total distance between the two cities was thirty miles. We could walk this far but then not be able to walk far the next day. For this reason we were driven about ten miles after lunch.

There was a bitter cold rain, lasting all day; we were more comfortable walking than during our lunch or rest breaks. We all had rain suits or ponchos, so we could keep dry for a while. But we found no way to walk all day in rain and stay dry. We put large plastic bags over the heads of the drums; water would damage their untreated leather. The wet plastic muffled the drums' beat, which nevertheless helped focus our minds on the meditation of the chant and on that beat rather than on our cold wet bodies.

We had assembled at the South Carolina capitol. Shima had been there to say good-bye. We hated to see him go and looked forward to seeing him in New York in a few months. As we left, he had been beating his drum, chanting, and bowing to us.

Many people had joined for the three-mile walk through Columbia, including six seminary students and a young woman with two children. As we were leaving the city we saw eight Catholic nuns lined up on the sidewalk. The sisters were clapping loudly and cheering as we walked past.

At l:30, we still had more than ten miles to walk to Winnsboro. The next few hours were uneventful yet a test of will. It was close to 32 degrees, with rain driven by a hard wind. We resisted the temptation of riding a few miles in a support vehicle; the thought of not walking never really entered our minds. We had to walk as many steps as possible on the journey to New York, as a matter of principle.

The highway patrol met us about five miles outside Winnsboro. They told me, group leader today, that the Board of Education had withdrawn its permission to use the high school gymnasium for tonight's program. They would not even allow us to use the school property as an assembly point for the hosts to pick us up at the end of the walk. This I thought too much but nothing could be done about it now. I told Jerry the problem, and he drove ahead to find another assembly point.

At an afternoon rest break we met a photographer from the Rock Hill paper and two reporters from Time magazine. We had heard for a month that Time planned an article on the walk, but the expected reporters had never come. Another alert to expect them had come this morning, but we had thought nothing of it and now they were really there and wanting to take pictures of our walk through Winnsboro -- and to attend tonight's program, alas. With the cancellation, they decided now to interview townspeople as we walked through, coming to talk with us later in the evening.

. Three or four local people joined us and, entering the town, we saw the mill of "Winnsboro Cotton Mills Blues" fame. I sang as much of the song as I remembered, with John helping over blank places. There were six or seven police cars parked by the mill. Time's photographer wanted us to cross the street, to get the mill in the background, but the police would not permit us to cross.

Despite our problems with the school, passersby were very friendly as we walked through, many waving. The police stood at every intersection to stop traffic for us, and we walked directly to our hosts' house. Our hosts were a young doctor couple, Jan and Ellen, and we now decided to stay together, in this one house, so Time could talk to everyone. After washing and drying our wet clothes, and pot luck supper arranged by Jan and Ellen, the reporters returned. They had spent the last two hours interviewing people. The Chief of Police, opposed to our mission, told them that the country needed a good war: "People can't find jobs. During the Vietnam War, there was plenty of work. You can't even get a job in the cotton mill now." They had quotes supporting us as well, and many spoke up for Jerry for helping us. Some called him the "local disarmament preacher", a label surprising Jerry when he heard it.

The local editor interviewed us too, and took pictures of the Time photographer taking our picture. Time's presence in Winnsboro was as big a story as ours. After about an hour, "Meet the Press" concluded.

A couple of weeks later, we found the story in Time, by looking hard. There were four sentences about the walk in a general article about the peace movement in the South. Newsweek had indicated several times they would cover the walk but had not mentioned it, even as we got to New York; they finally gave two-sentence mention in a two-page article on the June l2th rally. The national media in the United States all but ignored the five peace marches that crossed the country.

   March 16, Winnsboro to Chester
Each day is intense now, with much to do -- very different from our first month. I was awakened, not by the usual sound of the monks' praying, but by singing. It was Carole, Mercury, Jane, and Sandy's new morning prayer, a half-hour of group singing. With the monks' chanting and drumming, and the quartet's singing, there was no way to sleep past 6:30. Bill and I alone formed a third prayer group; our prayer mode was sleep and we requested that our prayer of deep meditation be equally respected and not be disturbed.

Kate called with last-minute instructions regarding today's schedule. In Chester we were to wait outside the city hall, where we would be picked up at 5 o'clock by three drivers from Columbia, who would take us to a motel. Private accommodations couldn't be found, and a local minister paid for our four rooms out of his own pocket.

With this prospect, we left Winnsboro, continuing north now on route 32l. The Time reporters saw us off and wished us well.

Today Ishiyama gave Jane a Japanese-English dictionary and she began her first of many lessons in speaking Japanese. A former school teacher, she proved an adept student.

We reached the Chester city hall at four and tried to follow Kate's demand that we stay right there waiting for our rides. The police would not allow this: once we stopped walking our parade became a demonstration -- our parade permit didn't allow standing. So we went to a restaurant; I learned more about Mercury's culture when he put mayonnaise on his French fries.

In Chester we met two problems in economy, and failed to solve either. First, it turned out we had a local coordinator after all, Anne Peterson, a young woman who met us at the city limits and told us she had found accommodations for us. But the motel had been paid for. (It turned out Anne's phone had recently been disconnected, so Kate hadn't been able to reconfirm that Chester was ready for us.) Second, the manager of a dry-cleaning store noticed us at the city hall, came over, and offered to drive us to the motel. But we had no way to contact three cars coming 55 miles from Columbia to do this carry, and didn't want them to arrive with nothing to do for us after their long drive. (The manager did drive us to the city limits next morning; we chatted some more; I had told him about my grandfather's boyhood in Chester, and I had other relatives in the area still.)

The people from Columbia drove right back after dropping us at the motel; I felt bad they had taken time off their jobs. The Columbia Friends had really been supportive.

At supper, Anne told us of the ongoing civil rights struggle in Chester. Not long ago a young Black man had been arrested for breaking into a hardware store owned by a city councilman. While the man was in handcuffs, the owner asked him why he had broken in. The man replied he was innocent. The owner struck him across the face, calling him a "black son of a bitch." Later the owner pleaded guilty of assault. Blacks in Chester demanded he resign as councilman; he refused; people began to organize for his resignation. They held a demonstration after the city denied them a permit for one; many were arrested.

That night a meeting was scheduled to discuss strategy. Anne, seeing our interest, invited us to attend but her husband returned an hour later, upset. The chairperson of the meeting asked him to withdraw our invitation to avoid charges of "outside interference", although the meeting was supposed to be open.

Though we had asked for no part in the program, only wanting to learn more about the struggle for civil rights in Chester, we complied. Anne was clearly disappointed for us. go to page 25