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Edward KocheEdward Koche
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Session:         Page of 617

“I don't want to go to Tennessee -- I want to go to Mississippi.” He says, “Why?” I said, “Because I want to go to a place that's dangerous and I want to be more helpful.” He said, “Tennessee is more dangerous. The area that we're sending you to is more dangerous than Mississippi.” I said, “But nobody will believe it, so I've got to go to Mississippi.” And I went to Jackson, Mississippi. And Marion Wright, who's now the wife of Peter Adelman, a black woman, was in charge of the project down there. She's a local Southern woman. Peter Edelman was a Kennedy guy. I don't know what he did. I think he teaches now, and he ultimately married Marion. He's white, Jewish; she's black.

They were suspicious of me. Here's this guy. He's a district leader and he's running for reection and he's probably just doing this for the headlines and he's not going to do anything anyway. But I'm a very hard worker. No matter what I do, I always work very hard, and I really was committed to this thing emotionally.

So they send me with a young kid whose name is Berlman -- he's now out of the country; you'll never be able to find him -- from Jackson, Mississippi to Laurel, Mississippi to help a group of college youngsters, 18 to 20, half white, half black, who were there registering black voters in a registration drive. So I go out there with this kid Perlman in a car. It's about two hours out of Jackson, and we find where these people are. They





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