Harold Titus's Blog, page 24

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- The March

… some thirty-two hundred marchers left the sunlit chinaberry trees around Brown Chapel and set off for Montgomery. In the lead were King and Abernathy, flanked by Ralph Bunche of the United Nations, also a Nobel Prize winner, and Rabbi Abraham Heschel of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, with his flowing white beard and windtossed hair. Behind them came maids and movie stars, housewives and clergymen, nuns and barefoot college students, civil rights workers and couples pushing baby carriages. In downtown Selma, Clark’s deputies directed traffic, and the sheriff himself, still wearing his NEVER button, stood scarcely noticed on a street corner. As two state trooper cars escorted the marchers across the bridge, a record-store loudspeaker blared “Bye Bye Blackbird.”

The procession headed out Highway 80 now, helicopters clattering overhead and armed troops standing at intervals along the route. Several hundred whites lined the roadside, too, and a car with “Cheap ammo here” and “Open season on niggers” painted on the sides, cruised by in the opposite lane. Confederate flags bristled among the bystanders, some of whom gestured obscenely and held up signs that read, “Nigger lover,” “Martin Luther Kink,” and “Nigger King go home!” A woman in her early thirties screeched, “You all got your birth-control pills? You all got your birth-control pills?” On the whole, though, the spectators looked on in silence as King and his fellow blacks, United States flags floating overhead, trampled forever the old stereotype of the obsequious Southern Negro.

At the first encampment, some seven miles out, most people headed back to Selma by car and bus. King and the rest bedded down for the night in well-guarded hospital tents, the men in one and the women in another. “Most of us were too tired to talk,” recalled Harris Wofford, a friend of King and a former adviser to John F. Kennedy. But a group of Dallas County students sang on: “Many good men have lived and died,/ So we could be marching side by side.”

The next morning, wrote a New York Times reporter, “the encampment resembled a cross between a Grapes of Wrath migrant labor camp and the Continental Army bivouac at Valley Forge,” as the marchers, bundled in blankets, huddled around their fires downing coffee and oatmeal. At eight they stepped off under a cloudless sky.

As they tramped through the rolling countryside, carloads of federal lawmen guarded their flanks, and a convoy of army vehicles, utility trucks, and ambulances followed in their wake. Far ahead Army patrols checked out every bridge and searched the fields and forests along the highway. Presently, a sputtering little plane circled over the marchers and showered them with racist leaflets. They were signed by White Citizens Action, Inc., which claimed the leaflets had been dropped by the “Confederate Air Force.”

At the Lowndes County line, where the highway narrowed to two lanes, the column trimmed down to the three hundred chosen to march the distance. They called themselves the Alabama Freedom Marchers, most of them local blacks who were veterans of the movement, the rest assorted clerics and civil rights people from across the land. There was Sister Mary Leoline of Kansas City, a gentle, bespectacled nun whom roadside whites taunted mercilessly, suggesting what she really wanted from the Negro. There was one-legged James Letherer of Michigan, who hobbled along on crutches and complained that his real handicap was that “I cannot do more to help these people vote.” There was eighty-two-year-old Gager Lee, grandfather of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who could march only a few miles a day, but would always come back the next, saying, “Just got to tramp some more.” There was seventeen-year-old Joe Boone, a Negro who had been arrested seven times in the Selma demonstrations. “My mother and father never thought this day would come,” he said. “But it’s here and I want to do my part.” There was loquacious Andrew Young, King’s gifted young executive director, who acted as field general of the march, running up and down the line tending the sick and the sunburned. And above all there was King himself, clad in a green cap and a blue shirt, strolling with his wife, Coretta, at the front of his potluck army.

They were deep inside Lowndes County now, a remote region of dense forests and snake-filled swamps. Winding past trees festooned with Spanish moss, the column came to a dusty little Negro community called Trickem Crossroads. Walking next to King, Andrew Young pointed at an old church and called back to the others: “Look at that church with the shingles off the roof and the broken windows! Look at that! That’s why we’re marching!” Across from it was a dilapidated Negro school propped up on red bricks, a three-room shanty with asphalt shingles covering the holes in its sides. A group of old people and children were standing under the oak trees in front of the school, squinting at King in the sunlight. When he halted the procession, an old woman ran from under the trees, kissed him breathlessly, and ran back crying, “I done kissed him! I done kissed him!” “Who?” another asked. “The Martin Luther King!” she exclaimed. “I done kissed the Martin Luther King!”

On the third day out King left Alabama and flew off for an important speaking engagement in Cleveland; he would rejoin the marchers outside Montgomery. It rained most of the day, sometimes so hard that water spattered high off the pavement. The marchers toiled seventeen endless miles through desolate, rain-swept country, some dropping out in tears from exhaustion and blistered feet. When they staggered into a muddy campsite that evening, incredible news awaited them from Montgomery. The Alabama legislature had charged by a unanimous vote that the marchers were conducting wild interracial sex orgies at their camps. “All these segregationists can think of is fornication,” said one black marcher, “and that’s why there are so many shades of Negroes.” Said another, “Those white folks must think we’re supermen, to be able to march all day in that weather, eat a little pork and beans, make whoopee all night, and then get up the next morning and march all day again.”

On Wednesday, as the weary marchers neared the outskirts of Montgomery, the Kings, Abernathys, and hundreds of others joined them for a triumphal entry into the Alabama capital. “We have a new song to sing tomorrow,” King told them. “We have overcome.” James Letherer hobbled in the lead now, his underarms rubbed raw by his crutches and his face etched with pain. Flanking him were two flag bearers—one black and one white—and a young Negro man from New York who played “Yankee Doodle” on a fife. As the marchers swept past a service station, a crew-cut white man leaped from his car, raised his fist, and started to shout something, only to stand speechless as the procession of clapping, singing people seemed to go on forever.

And so they were in Montgomery at last. On Thursday the largest civil rights demonstration in Southern history made a climactic march through the city, first capital and “cradle” of the old Confederacy. Protected by eight hundred federal troops, twenty-five thousand people passed the Jefferson Davis Hotel, with a huge Rebel flag draped across its front, and Confederate Square, where Negroes had been auctioned in slavery days. There were the three hundred Freedom Marchers in front, now clad in orange vests to set them apart. There were hundreds of Negroes from the Montgomery area, one crying as she walked beside Harris Wofford, “This is the day! This is the day!” There was a plump, bespectacled white woman who carried a basket in one arm and a sign in the other: “Here is one native Selman for freedom and justice.” There were celebrities such as Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte, the eminent American historians John Hope Franklin and C. Vann Woodward. Like a conquering army, they surged up Dexter Avenue to the capital building, with Confederate and Alabama flags snapping over its dome. It was up Dexter Avenue that Jefferson Davis’s first inaugural parade had moved, and it was in the portico of the capital that Davis had taken his oath of office as President of the slave-based Confederacy. Now, more than a century later, Alabama Negroes—most of them descendants of slaves—stood massed at the same statehouse, singing “We Have Overcome” with state troopers and the statue of Davis himself looking on.

Wallace refused to come out of the capital and receive the Negroes’ petition. He peered out the blinds of his office, chuckling when an aide cracked, “An inauguration crowd may look like that in a few years if the voting rights bill passes.” But a moment later Wallace said to nobody in particular, “That’s quite a crowd out there.”

Outside King mounted the flatbed of a trailer, television cameras focusing in on his round, intense face. “They told us we wouldn’t get here,” he cried over the loudspeaker. “And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and that we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, ‘We ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.’” For ten years now, he said, those forces had tried to nurture and defend evil, “but evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state. So I stand before you today with the conviction that segregation is on its deathbed, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists and Wallace will make the funeral.”

Not since his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial had an audience been so transfixed by his words rolling out over the loudspeaker in rhythmic, hypnotic cadences. “Let us march on to the realization of the American dream,” he cried. “Let us march on the ballot boxes, march on poverty, march on segregated schools and segregated housing, march on until racism is annihilated and America can live at peace with its conscience. That will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. How long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again. How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you will reap what you sow. How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Then King launched into “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” crying out, “Our God is marching on! Glory, glory hallelujah! Glory, glory hallelujah! Glory, glory hallelujah” (Oates 36-46)!


Works cited:

Oates, Stephen B. “The Week The World Watched Selma.” American Heritage, 1982, Volume 33, Issue 4. Web. https://www.americanheritage.com/week...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Injuction Lifted

MONTGOMERY: Jackson Street Baptist Church is the only church in Montgomery willing to open its doors for a SNCC-led protest. On Tuesday morning, a large number of demonstrators assemble there for a march on the Capitol in support of voting rights. Many were among the group surrounded by cops the previous evening before being allowed to disperse to their homes and campuses. Others have come from Tuskegee and Alabama State or are local high school youth cutting class to march for freedom. Also present are some clergy and several hundred northern students, mostly white, who have responded to Forman's call.

As the march approaches the Capitol, [James] Forman and several others advance ahead of the main line to reconnoiter. Suddenly, the Montgomery County mounted posse led by Sheriff Mac Sim Butler charge into them, whips and lariats lashing, long-clubs swinging hard. To keep from being knocked down and trampled by the hooves of rearing and lunging horses, Forman and the others wrap their arms around light poles, enduring the blows on their backs.

…

Forman later recalls: "That day became, for me, the last time I wanted to participate in a nonviolent demonstration. ... My ability to continue engaging in nonviolent direct action snapped that day and my anger at the executive branch of the federal government intensified."

Now joined by mounted troopers and sheriff's deputies on foot, the possemen attack the larger group at Decatur and Adams, a few blocks from the Capitol. They violently charge into the marchers, scattering them, driving them back into the Black neighborhood. MCHR doctors Richard Weinerman, Les Falk, Douglas Thompson and others try to give first aid to the injured. Nurse Robert Dannenburg is arrested and hauled off to the slammer.

…

I came to that march with a group from Pittsburgh, PA (3 chartered buses) with a contingent of students, some 30 strong, from the small, liberal arts, Catholic college where I was teaching at the time (Mount Mercy College, since renamed Carlow College). The march never made it to the Capitol building. A few blocks away the police stopped us and surrounded us. ... Suddenly we heard a loud noise coming from a side street ahead of us. A mounted posse came charging around the corner, the police stepped back, and the members of the posse charged into the marchers, clubbing them as they rode through the crowd. Marchers who fled onto porches found themselves trapped as the horse riders came up onto the porches after them. Eventually we made our way back to the church where the march began. — Sam Carcione.

…

The savage attack with charging horses loosens the tight grip that Montgomery ministers and deacons have held on their churches. That evening SCLC is able to secure a location for a large mass meeting where the topic is voting rights and police violence. Attending are King, Abernathy, Lewis, Forman, and dozens of local ministers and deacons. Forman's speech stuns them with what John Lewis later recalled as, "One of the angriest, most fiery speeches made by a movement leader up to that point."

There's only one man in the country that can stop George Wallace and those posses. These problems will not be solved until the man in that shaggedy old place called the White House begins to shake and gets on the phone and says, "Now listen, George, we're coming down there and throw you in jail if you don't stop that mess." ... I said it today, and I will say it again. If we can't sit at the table of democracy, we'll knock the fucking legs off!

Forman immediately catches himself and apologizes for his profanity in a church before women and children, and he adds the qualification, "But before we tear it completely down they will move to build a better one rather than see it destroyed." He goes on to question the sincerity of LBJ's promises, and in an echo of the original Alabama Project plan drafted by Diane Nash and James Bevel, he calls for "tying up every street and bus and committing every act of civil disobedience ever seen because I'm tired of seeing people get hit."

Though Forman apologizes, many in the church are offended by his language. Some are also alienated by his rage — but others share it. When Dr. King rises to speak, he preaches dedicated nonviolence and steadfast determination in the cause of freedom. "I'm not satisfied as long as the Negro sees life as a long and empty corridor with a 'no exit' sign at the end. The cup of endurance has run over. ... We cannot stand idly by and allow this to happen. [Tomorrow] we must get together a peaceful and orderly march on the courthouse in Montgomery [to confront Sheriff Butler]" (Brutal 1-5).

MONTGOMERY: On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy of SCLC, and James Forman and Silas Norman of SNCC lead some 2,000 people in pouring rain on a mile-long march from Jackson Street Baptist to the Montgomery County courthouse where Sheriff Butler has his offices. The route requires them to traverse a white neighborhood where furious hecklers line the street, shouting obscenities and curses, throwing what they can find at the protesters. King is their chief target. Alabama State and local high school students surround him in a living shield to protect him. Smarting from national condemnation, on this day the forces of "law and order" choose not to attack. A city official offers a lame apology for the previous day's brutality, "We are sorry there was a mix-up and a misunderstanding of orders." Activists assume that "mix-up" and "misunderstanding" refer to brutalizing nonviolent marchers where newsmen could take photos instead of herding the reporters away or waiting for nightfall.

King, Abernathy, Forman, and local Black leaders go inside to meet with Sheriff Butler, city and county officials, and John Doar of the Justice Department. For three long hours, the crowd waits in the rain, singing freedom songs, listening to impromptu speeches, and "testifying." To everyone's astonishment, the city police actually protect the crowd from a menacing throng of white hecklers.

The negotiators finally emerge at dusk. As does Sheriff Butler who apologizes for his posse's violent attacks. The Black leaders announce that white officials have agreed to stop using the posse against protesters. They have also agreed to establish policies and procedures for obtaining march permits to ensure First Amendment freedom of speech rights for Blacks. (The agreement only applies to the Montgomery city streets, not to state property under the jurisdiction of the Alabama State Troopers.) To most of the marchers, face-to-face negotiations between Black leaders and the white power-structure inside a government office is a significant achievement in and of itself, and the Sheriff's public apology and concessions on the right of Blacks to protest are seen as victories. But not everyone shares that view:

The others considered this a victory, we found it a shallow triumph and continued demonstrating until the end of the week when the march from Selma finally began. — James Forman, SNCC.

Later that evening, state troopers arrest more than 100 people, mostly students, for picketing on state property at the Capitol (Mass 1-2).

While the protest at the county courthouse is underway, at the federal court, Judge Johnson finally rules on the Williams v Wallace petition for an injunction requiring Alabama to permit a march from Selma to Montgomery.

After almost a week of hearings, during which contempt charges against King were dropped, Johnson ordered Alabama officials not to interfere with the Selma-to-Montgomery march. The plan Johnson endorsed, one worked out with military precision by civil rights leaders, called for the pilgrimage to commence on March 21 and culminate in Montgomery four days later. Only three hundred select people were to cover the entire distance, with a giant rally at the Alabama capital to climax the journey. “The extent of the right to assemble, demonstrate, and march should be commensurate with the wrongs that are being protested and petitioned against,” Judge Johnson ruled. “In this case, the wrongs are enormous.”

King and his followers were ecstatic, but Wallace was furious. He telegraphed President Johnson that Alabama could not protect the marchers because it would cost too much. Scolding Wallace for refusing to maintain law and order in his state (“I thought you felt strongly about this”), the President federalized 1,863 Alabama National Guardsmen and dispatched a large contingent of military police, U.S. marshals, and other federal officials to Selma (Oates 35).

SELMA: On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, SCLC and local leaders work long into the night preparing for the march. Anticipation runs high in Selma and the Black Belt counties. Freedom Movement supporters from all over America begin flowing into Montgomery and Selma by plane, bus, and car. Some come from as far away as Hawaii. Contingents arrive from voting rights battlegrounds in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland. They bring with them memories of their own struggles and suffering, and martyrs like Harry & Harriette Moore, Herbert Lee, Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman.

They all have to be fed and places found for them to sleep.

…

… the unsung scut-work of organizing logistic support for a multi-day road march with thousands of participants intensifies. Food — where and by whom will it be obtained and cooked, how will it be kept more or less hot and delivered to the marchers on the road? Clean drinking water. Portable toilets. Jackets and rain gear. Tents for sleeping. Sleeping bags. Garbage and trash pickup. Trucks and transport. Radio & walkie-talkie communications. Portable generators for campsites to provide security lights at night. March marshals. Security teams to guard the sleeping marchers. Press and public relations. And, of course, raising funds to pay for it all, to say nothing of the glamourous task of obtaining receipts, recording expenses, and issuing reimbursements. Everyone pitches in, locals and outsiders alike. Precision and coordination range from haphazard to nonexistent, but enthusiasm and energy are high.

…

Meanwhile, voter registration efforts and intermittent demonstrations and arrests continue in Selma, Montgomery, and the rural Black Belt counties. Many of those now participating are northerners waiting for the march to commence on Sunday.

NATION: In the North too, there is controversy. In a nationally-syndicated newspaper column on March 18 titled, "Danger From the Left," pundits Rowland Evans and Robert Novak label both John Lewis and James Forman, "two hotheaded extremists," who have "forced" a "weak-willed" Dr. King to resume the Selma march. Using words like, "capitulated," "abdicated," and "knuckled under," they charge King with having surrendered, "valuable ground to leftist extremists in the drive for control of the civil rights movement." And from their Olympian perch they proclaim that SNCC is "substantially infiltrated by beatnik left-wing revolutionaries, and — worst of all — by Communists."

Meanwhile, undeterred by these fulminations, hundreds of SNCC-led students continue their sidewalk sit-in on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, day after day in the snow and rain (March 1-7).

BIRMINGHAM: For reasons that are self-evident, Birmingham's nickname is "Bombingham." On Sunday the 21st, the first day of the March to Montgomery, five time-bombs using more than 200 sticks of dynamite are discovered before they explode. One is set to blast through Our Lady of the Universe Catholic Church during Sunday mass. A portable altar is quickly moved outside and the service completed in the parking lot. Another bomb is placed at First Congregational Church where many members of the Black elite worship. A Black high school, the home of Black civil-rights attorney Arthur Shores, and the former home of Dr. King's brother A.D. King are also targeted. Army demolition experts are called in to disarm them (Marching 1).


Works Cited:

“Brutal Attack in Montgomery.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“March 18-20, Organizing the March.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

March 21-24, Marching to Montgomery.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Mass March to Montgomery Courthouse.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Oates, Stephen B. “The Week The World Watched Selma.” American Heritage, 1982, Volume 33, Issue 4. Web. https://www.americanheritage.com/week...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Seeds of Hope

Thursday, March 11, 1965

NATION: Demonstrations supporting Black voting rights continue across the country. In city after city, civil rights organizations — particularly CORE — organize street marches and sit-in occupations of federal buildings. In churches and on college campuses, Friends of SNCC chapters mobilize support and collect money, books, food, and clothing for the Alabama Black Belt. Telegrams are flooding Congress and phones are ringing off the hook. Do something! Do something now!

WASHINGTON: Twelve students, Black and white, pose as tourists and slip into the White House where they stage a main-corridor sit-in. The first (and so far as is known, the only) such protest ever to occur inside the White House itself. They remain all day. But in the evening there is a swank soiree for members of Congress and their wives. Such notables might be offended by the sight of American citizens exercising their Free Speech rights about an issue that is shaking the nation. The protesters are arrested.

Meanwhile, negotiations for a single bipartisan voting bill continue. Katzenbach, Justice Department lawyers, Senate leaders both Republican and Democrat, Senate staff, and civil rights leaders are all involved to one degree or another. LBJ is pushing them to move fast. By the weekend he wants to announce that he is submitting a bill to Congress.

MONTGOMERY: The injunction hearing before Judge Johnson drones on, and on, and on. It is continued over to Friday.

SELMA: The "Selma Wall" vigil continues around the clock in intermittent rain. Tired of hearing the protesters sing "We've got a rope that's a Berlin Wall," Chief Baker removes the clothesline barrier (though not his cops). Everyone continues to sing "Berlin Wall" anyway. Several times a day students try to find a way to march out of the Carver Project, but each time speeding caravans of trooper cars manage to block them (Thursday 1-2).

BIRMINGHAM: All day Wednesday and into Thursday, Rev. Reeb's condition slowly deteriorates in a Birmingham hospital. The doctors know it is just a matter of time.

For the national media, the attack on the white ministers and news of Reeb's medical condition are major stories that equal, or surpass, the Turn-Around-Tuesday events on the bridge. Both stories continue to clash with President Johnson's, "Defend Democracy in Vietnam" PR campaign. He is not amused.

For Blacks, the contrast between the public reaction to the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the assault on Reeb is stark and bitter. Senators, congressmen, and other prominent Americans send personal telegrams of concern and condolence to Reeb's home in Boston. Pundits comment and analyze at length, and when Mrs. Reeb flies to Birmingham, she has to dodge a swarm of reporters to reach her husband's side. For Mrs. Jackson there had been nothing; not a note, not a phone call, and at most a few lines in the national press. Most galling of all is that the white public in general does not even notice the discrepancy; to them the police murder of an Afro-American man is of no consequence. But Black bitterness is not directed against Rev. Reeb — the people in Selma know he put his life in danger to stand with them and they honor and respect him for his courage and support.

Shortly before 7 pm on Thursday, March 11, Rev. Reeb dies. President Johnson phones Mrs. Reeb in Birmingham and arranges to fly her and her husband's body home on an Air Force jet.

SELMA: Police Chief Wilson Baker announces that he knows the identities of the four killers, and he promises to file murder charges against them. Meanwhile, the "Selma Wall" vigil continues around the clock in a cold rain. Squads and platoons of cops and troopers face the nonviolent protesters, determined to prevent any marching anywhere. From behind the police lines, white thugs hurl rocks at the protesters, hoping to provoke some response that the cops can use as an excuse for an attack on the demonstrators. On one occasion they even fire a pistol, lightly wounding a teenage girl. As usual, all the forces of law and order gathered in their hundreds — local, state, and federal — ignore these acts of violence by whites against Blacks.

[Four white men were eventually indicted for murdering Rev. Reeb. One of them, R.B Kelley, provided information to the police and was never brought to court. In December of 1965, the other three, Elmer Cook, William Hoggle and Namon "Duck" Hoggle were put on trial in Selma. They were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury. The courtroom was packed with white spectators who burst into applause and cheers when the verdict was read. No federal charges were ever filed against the four killers. In March 2011, 46 years later, the FBI announced it was reopening the case as a Civil Rights era "cold-case" investigation.] (Death 1-2).

Friday through Monday

WASHINGTON: While protests roil the streets of Washington and elsewhere around the country, on Friday, intense negotiations over voting rights language between Senate kingpins, administration officials and civil rights principals continue. By now legislative leaders agree that some provision for suspending the so-called "literacy tests" included in the bill and also authority to send federal registrars into counties that continue to systematically deny Black voting rights. But there is no agreement on the formulas or thresholds that would trigger such "drastic" federal action. … Another thorny issue is just how strong federal oversight of election and registration procedures should be in the affected states and counties, and whether all poll taxes should be eliminated.

MONTGOMERY: Meanwhile, Judge Johnson's marathon hearing on the right of American citizens to march in protest and petition their Governor for redress of grievances drags on — and on — and on. At the end of the day it's continued over to Monday, March 15.

On Friday evening, the students holding out at Dexter Church vote to return to their colleges where they can mobilize for further action come Monday. Jim Forman of SNCC issues a national call for students — many of whom are now on Spring break — to converge on Montgomery to support the Capitol protests. …

SELMA: The "Selma Wall" vigil continues — around the clock in a cold rain. From before dawn to deep in the night the women in the church kitchens continue to serve fried chicken, greens, and cornbread to hungry protesters who grab a few winks of sleep on the church pews between mass meetings and their shift on the line. All of the women laboring at the hot stoves hour after hour are Black — except one. Nellie Washburn is the daughter of Nannie Washburn — 65 years old, Georgia born, child of white sharecroppers, a textile worker from age 7, a union organizer in the 1930s, a life-long "Red," and a stalwart opponent of racism and exploitation. She, her blind son, Joe, and her daughter Nellie answered Dr. King's call.

NATION: On Saturday and Sunday, weekend demonstrations in support of voting rights flare in cities large and small across the nation. Some 30,000 people march in New York, half up 5th Avenue and the other half in Harlem, led by nuns from the Sisters of Charity. John Lewis, Jim Forman, and Bayard Rustin address the New York rallies. Two marches are also held in San Francisco, one a long torchlight parade that snakes through the city. In Los Angeles, students block mail trucks to protest federal inaction. More than 20,000 participate in a "Rally for Freedom" on Boston Common, and 1,000 defiantly march in New Orleans past angry white crowds who heckle and threaten them. Protests of varying sizes are held in other urban centers, and also in places like Norfolk VA, Binghamton NY, St. Augustine FL, and Bakersfield CA. In San Jose CA and Beloit WI marchers set off on 54-mile treks — the same distance as from Selma to Montgomery. And in Ottawa Canada and other foreign capitols there are sympathy protests outside American embassies.

WASHINGTON: More than 15,000 rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House where Fannie Lou Hamer tells them: "It's time now to stop begging them for what should have been done 100 years ago. We have stood up on our feet, and God knows we're on our way!" Close by, more than 1,000 people picket around the clock on Pennsylvania Avenue, their songs and chants clearly audible inside the West Wing corridors of power where Katzenbach tells LBJ that negotiating and drafting the voting rights bill is almost complete. It will be ready for submission on Monday. Johnson announces to the press that on Monday evening he will present the bill to Congress in a nationally televised address (Friday 1-4).

MONTGOMERY: Meanwhile, the hearing before Judge Johnson begins its fourth day [Monday] of examining the seemingly complex question of whether American citizens should be allowed to peacefully march to their state capitol and petition for redress of grievances (as is plainly and explicitly permitted by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution). Once again, the hearing is continued over to the following day, but this time with a significant change. The judge instructs the SCLC lawyers to prepare and present detailed plans for their proposed march to Montgomery — a sign that he intends to rule in favor of the march. While Movement observers are elated, some note that this forward motion in the long-stalled proceeding takes place only after President Johnson is finally ready to submit his voting bill to Congress with a televised address to the nation on the issue of Black voting rights. LBJ can now spin the March to Montgomery as support for his leadership and his legislation (Monday 2).

MONTGOMERY: Also on Monday, Jim Forman and SNCC staff lead 400 or so Alabama State students on a march from the ASC campus to the Capitol a dozen blocks away. Joining them are a number of mostly white northern students who have responded to Forman's call. Halfway there, cops block them at Jackson and High streets in the heart of the Black community. College administrators try to talk the protesters into returning to school, but the students refuse. Local Blacks urge the young marchers to hold fast.

Jackson and High is a center of Black commerce. On one corner is the Ben Moore hotel, Black-built, Black-owned, and the only hotel in the city where Blacks are welcome to stay. It was a hub of activity during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and over the years has become the usual site of the rare meetings between white and Black community leaders (because, of course, it is unthinkable for white officials to meet with Blacks in City Hall as if they were equal citizens). SNCC now uses the hotel as their unofficial headquarters, the place where they hold staff and strategy meetings.

The demonstrators are blocked in the Jackson & High district for most of the afternoon, but as evening falls, the police line is withdrawn and they resume marching toward the Alabama seat of government. As they near the Capitol they are surrounded and attacked by state troopers and sheriff's deputies mounted on horses.

Meanwhile, back at the Jackson & High, the Montgomery County sheriff's posse, some of them mounted, show up eager for action. As a center of Black business and political activity, the district is a tempting target. Finding no marchers to attack, they beat local Blacks and charge against them with their horses. Not part of an organized demonstration, and with no defined leadership, the community responds with thrown rocks, bottles, and bricks. In retaliation the possemen escalate their violence (Protests 1-2).

The Tide Turns

Back on Wednesday, March 10th, the march to the Dallas County courthouse to pray for Rev. Reeb was blocked by the "Selma Wall." On this Monday, six days later, the vigil still continues around the clock, day after day, in sun and rain, though the goal now is to hold a courthouse memorial service rather than pray for Reeb's recovery. But still they are barred by the forces of "law and order" — Selma city cops, sheriff's deputies & possemen, and Alabama State Troopers. State alcohol agents and game wardens wearing green plastic helmets have been called in to replace troopers who were shifted to Montgomery in response to the student-led "second front."

Rachel West, age 8, remembers:

"During that time it seemed each day and each night was like the one before it; nothing changed. The rope stayed there, we stayed there, the troopers stayed there; we'd sing hour after hour until our throats became hoarse. The rain fell, fell almost constantly. The sun would come out briefly, then it would start raining again. We'd be soaked to the skin. It would turn warm; it would turn cold."

With the march blocked, the Freedom Movement assembles for a Reeb memorial in a jam-packed Brown Chapel. Dr. King is scheduled to deliver the eulogy, but he is stuck in Montgomery at Judge Johnson's interminable injunction hearing. The hours tick by and the crowd grows restless, even annoyed, at the delay. Finally, late in the afternoon, King arrives and is ushered to the podium.

Dr. King's eulogy for Rev. Reeb evokes memories of the Birmingham children and Jimmie Lee Jackson. He places Reeb's murder in context, laying blame not just on the "sick, misguided" killers, but also on indifferent religious leaders and irrelevant churches that "keep silent behind the safe security of stained glass windows." He condemns the "timidity" of the federal government and the apathy of citizens it supposedly serves. And, "Yes, he was murdered even by the cowardice of every Negro who tacitly accepts the evil of segregation." He goes on to talk about the Freedom Movement and what it means, recalling the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the student sit-ins, and the Freedom Rides.

Dr. King ends his eulogy with a testimony of hope. He tells the story of Bus Boycott's darkest hour, of how he was sitting in a courtroom where an Alabama judge was about to issue an injunction shutting down the carpools upon which the boycott depended. "The clock said it was noon, but it was midnight in my soul." Then, suddenly, news arrived that the United States Supreme Court had ruled against bus segregation. "Out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of equality and justice are being born..." There are seeds of hope for, "the shirtless and barefoot people. ... Therefore, I am not yet discouraged about the future ... So we thank God for the life of James Reeb. We thank God for his goodness."

As Dr. King finishes, Rev. Abernathy rushes into the church and comes to the podium to announce that the "Selma Wall" has fallen! federal Judge Thomas in Mobile has issued an injunction permitting a march to the courthouse and a memorial service on the steps. The judge's ruling is the result of behind the scenes maneuvering and complex negotiations among Movement leaders and visiting religious dignitaries, Leroy Collins of the Federal Community Relations Service, and Selma Police Chief Wilson Baker, who for days, has argued in vain with Sheriff Clark to allow a memorial march and end the exhausting stand-off.

A wave euphoria sweeps through the packed church. The crowd surges through the doors and out on to Sylvan Street where they begin forming a march line three abreast. Angrily, grudgingly, the cops and possemen and troopers grip their billy clubs and step reluctantly to the side. More than 3,500 strong, the marchers stride down Sylvan Street, swelling with pride and "an immense sense of accomplishment" as they pass the spot where, for so long, they have been blocked. Under the strict terms of the injunction, the protesters are not allowed to gather for the service, so only those at the front of the line can hear the brief prayer and Dr. King's short tribute to all those who have been killed struggling for freedom. But when they conclude by singing "We Shall Overcome" everyone lifts their voices and the song flows like a wave back down the line that stretches for blocks along Alabama Avenue. As they head back to Brown Chapel, the line turns at the courthouse so that every single marcher, Black and white, shares in the small victory of reaching the courthouse steps.

For the Movement, the courthouse march is an encouraging win. And with the "Selma Wall" now broken, there is no need to resume the vigil. The daily mass meetings continue, filled with fervor and expectation as Selma Blacks and outside supporters await President Johnson's speech and Judge Johnson's injunction ruling. The city police return to their normal duties and the possemen bitterly slink away, their sense of defeat palpable. The state troopers remain nearby to prevent any attempt to cross the bridge, but they too sense that the tide is turning (Reeb 1-5).

WASHINGTON: In a televised address to the nation, President Johnson presents the draft Voting Rights Act to a joint session of Congress. Every single senator and representative from Mississippi and Virginia boycott the session as do other southern members. His speech is titled, "The American Promise," and in it, he forthrightly condemns the denial of fundamental rights based on race and the nation's failure to live up to the promise of its creed (President 1).

“It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote,” Johnson said in his slow Texas drawl, and he reviewed all the obstacles to Negro voting in the South. His bill proposed to abolish these impediments through federal overseers who would supervise registration in segregated counties—exactly what King had been demanding. With Congress interrupting him repeatedly with applause, Johnson pointed out that “at times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.” But “even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement... the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.” In closing he spoke out of his south Texas past and his own brush with poverty and racism as a young schoolteacher. “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. ” He added slowly and deliberately, “And we shall overcome!”

Congress exploded in a standing ovation, the second of the night, indicating that the passage of Johnson’s bill was certain. As television cameras swept the hall, King wept. “President Johnson,” he said later, “made one of the most eloquent, unequivocal, and passionate pleas for human rights ever made by the President of the United States” (Oates 33-34).

… An estimated 70 million Americans listen to the President's address, none more intently than the freedom soldiers fighting what almost amounts to a second civil war in the Black Belt of Alabama.

... we listened to Lyndon Johnson make what many others and I consider not only the finest speech of his career, but probably the strongest speech any American president has ever made on the subject of civil rights. ... I was deeply moved. Lyndon Johnson was no politician that night. He was a man who spoke from his heart. His were the words of a statesman and more, they were the words of a poet. Dr. King must have agreed. He wiped away a tear at the point where Johnson said the words, "We shall overcome." — John Lewis, SNCC

MONTGOMERY: Not everyone shares that view. In Montgomery, the SNCC and student demonstrators are still trapped and surrounded by police on a dark street near the Capitol. They listen to LBJ's speech on a tiny transistor radio held aloft in a protester's hand. For many SNCC field secretaries who have endured years of federal indifference, liberal betrayal, and Washington complicity with segregation, his words ring hollow and his hypocrisy is unbearable.

To us, they were tinkling, empty symbols. Johnson also spoiled a good song that day, for to sing "We Shall Overcome" after that speech was to reawaken the sense of hypocrisy created by his use of the three words. — James Forman, SNCC

SELMA: Yet to the embattled men, women, and children of Alabama's Black Belt, Johnson's speech is a ringing endorsement of their courage and struggle. And it's a promise that their suffering and sacrifice will not be in vain.

I remember lying on the living room floor in front of the set, watching, listening. It seemed he was speaking directly to me. "The effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessing of American life must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really, it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." When he said that all the people in the room, my sisters, my parents, the ministers, all cried out and applauded. I just lay there watching, listening. Somebody had heard us. ... Except for that one time, we just listened quietly. Once in a while I'd hear my mother or father agree with an, "Um-hmm," but that was all. I remember after his speech going over to Sheyann's, and she was just sitting there in the living room, thinking about it. And I said, "You hear that speech?" And she says, "I heard it." Then after a long time she said, "But he's there in Washington, and we be down here by ourselves." — Rachel West, Selma student, 8 years old (President 2-5).

Tuesday, March 16

MONTGOMERY: In Judge Johnson's courtroom, SCLC lawyers submit a detailed proposal for a march to Montgomery under federal protection. Unknown to them, the judge has received a personal phone call from U.S. Attorney General Katzenbach. No one knows what was said between them, but now, suddenly, after days of delay, the judge begins moving with alacrity. Rather than taking days to ponder the imponderable, he ends the session by announcing he will hand down his ruling on the morrow (Tuesday 1).


Works cited:

“Death of Rev. Reeb.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Friday, March 12 through Sunday, March 14.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Monday, March 15.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Oates, Stephen B. “The Week The World Watched Selma.” American Heritage, 1982, Volume 33, Issue 4. Web. https://www.americanheritage.com/week...

“President Johnson: "We Shall Overcome." The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Protests and Police Violence Continue in Montgomery.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Reeb Memorial March in Selma.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Thursday, March 11.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Tuesday, March 16.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Turn-Around Tuesday, Immediate Aftermath

SELMA: Jam-packed mass meetings simultaneously get under way in Brown Chapel and nearby First Baptist. The participants are mostly Black, men and women who have defied physical and economic terror for the vote. Young students who have cut class to march and go to jail rock the sancturaries with their singing. Hundreds, men, women, young and old, have come in from the surrounding Black Belt counties, from Perry and Wilcox, from Marengo, Sumter, Hale and Green, and also from Birmingham, Tuskegee, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Mobile, and elsewhere in Alabama. Carloads of Black marchers are arriving from Freedom Movement centers in Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and the Carolinas.

SNCC organizer Maria Varela, recalls:

"On the morning of the second march, as I stood at the door of Brown Chapel I was struck by the fact that coming up the steps were mostly middle-aged and elderly black men and women. Listening to them, it became apparent that they were angry and ashamed that the children had taken the beatings for protesting the denial of the vote to adults. I remember one woman in particular. No bigger than five feet tall, she appeared to be in her seventies. She wore a black overcoat with flimsy 'going to town' shoes and brought a thin cotton bedroll tied up with her toothbrush and umbrella. That was all she brought for a march that, if we made it across the bridge, would go on for days. I don't remember ever seeing her before at any of the mass meetings in Selma. My guess was that this was her first time coming out for anything. She came for the children. And she seemed to really believe that she was going to survive that wall of mounted police and walk the fifty miles to Montgomery."

Buses and cars continue to arrive, unloading weary northerners — most of them white — who have pressed on through the night to reach Selma in time for the march. Vans and taxis shuttle back and forth on US-80 bringing in more from the Montgomery airport. Clark's deputies tail and harass cars with northern plates; drivers coming in from Montgomery have to maneuver around the small army of state troopers waiting on the far side of the bridge.

Anticipating casualties, Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) doctors and nurses set up a large emergency aid station in the basement of First Baptist. For weeks to come, they staff and maintain this center, dealing not just with Movement-related medical problems but all the hidden health issues of racism, poverty and exploitation that Alabama's segregated system conceals and denies.

Early one morning I was [at the aid station] and a young Black woman came in, real hesitant, furtively — scared. She was carrying a sick infant, maybe a week or so old, and bad sick. It turned out she was a sharecropper or tenant living on a rural plantation out in the county somewhere. Her newborn baby was dying, but the landowner refused to let her leave the plantation. Either because he didn't want to pay any medical expenses for her, or he didn't want her to become contaminated with Freedom Movement ideas. Or both. Somehow she heard about the MCHR doctors at First Baptist through the grapevine — the secret rumor line that ran like an invisible network beneath the notice of the white power-structure. In the dead of night, like a runaway slave, she snuck away carrying her child all the way to Selma on foot. She was terrified of what the owner would do to her when he found out she had escaped. The nurse had to keep reassuring her that she wouldn't be sent back. My assignment was elsewhere, and I had to leave without knowing what happened to her or her child. — Bruce Hartford, SCLC.

It's mid-afternoon when more than 3,000 marchers begin assembling on the playground next to Brown Chapel. MCHR medics with canvas first-aid satchels are spaced along the line. Roughly two-thirds of the marchers are Black, the rest are white with a few Latinos and Asians. Dr. King addresses them:

"Almighty God, thou has called us to walk for freedom, even as thou did the children of Israel. ... We have the right to walk the highways, and we have the right to walk to Montgomery if our feet will get us there. I have no alternative but to lead a march from this spot to carry our grievances to the seat of government. I have made my choice. I have got to march. I do not know what lies ahead of us. There may be beatings, jails, tear gas. But I say to you this afternoon that I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience. ... If you can't be nonviolent, don't get in here. If you can't accept blows without retaliating, don't get in the line."

Dr. King then articulates the justice and purpose of marching to Montgomery, but he fails to inform the marchers of his agreement to turn the march around when ordered to halt — an omission that will lead to confusion, contention, and bitterness. And greatly increase distrust between SNCC and SCLC.

Singing "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round," they march four-abreast through the streets of Selma heading toward the bridge. Dr. King leads the line with prominent ministers, priests, rabbis, and nuns. At the foot of the bridge, a federal marshal halts them and reads to King the full text of Judge Johnson's injunction. "I am aware of the order," King replies. He strides forward up the rise.

When they reach the crest of the bridge they see ahead of them more than 500 state troopers — practically the entire Alabama force — lined up across the highway behind barricades. Lurking nearby are Sheriff's deputies and a mob of possemen. King leads the long line down toward the waiting phalanx. Major John Cloud of the troopers orders the protesters to halt. King argues their right to march, but Cloud refuses. The marchers stretch back for almost a mile up and over the bridge, into town, and down Water Street. Starting at the front and moving backward down the line, they kneel for prayers offered by Rev. Abernathy, Bishop Lord, Dr. Docherty, and Rabbi Hirsch.

Singing "We Shall Overcome," the protesters then rise. Suddenly, Major Cloud shouts, "Troopers, withdraw!" In what is clearly a pre-planned maneuver, the cops quickly pull back the portable barricades blocking the highway and seemingly open the way to Montgomery — though their menacing ranks line the road on either side. King has just a split second to decide. Sensing a trap to lure him into clearly violating the injunction and thereby justifying a violent police attack, he shouts, "We'll go back to the church now!" He leads the marchers in a U-turn back up and over the bridge.

As the marching lines pass each other — one returning to Brown Chapel, the other moving forward toward the turn-around spot — those whose view had been blocked by the bridge-rise call out to those returning, asking what had happened? No one knows, but everyone maintains the self-discipline of nonviolent action. For this march, Dr. King is the captain, and no one breaks ranks to dispute his decision — that is for later, off the street.

For most of the marchers their feeling is one of overwhelming relief that the police have not attacked. But for many there is also a deep sense of betrayal, they had keyed themselves up to the highest peak of their courage and now they are being ordered to meekly retreat. For most SNCC members, now including a good portion of the Mississippi staff, feelings range from disgust to fury ….

…


Back at Brown Chapel, where late comers from the North are still arriving, King tells the mass meeting that the march was "The greatest demonstration for freedom, the greatest confrontation so far in the South." But not everyone sees it so. From the audience come questions, challenges, and disagreements. One young man asks, "Why didn't we just sit down on the highway and wait until the injunction was lifted?"

King does not answer directly, replying instead that they will eventually reach Montgomery. He asks those northern supporters who are able to do so to remain in Selma until the march can take place.

When James Forman of SNCC speaks, he addresses a deeper issue than the tactics of turning around or not:

I've paid my dues in Selma. I've been to jail here, I've been beaten here, so I have the right to ask this: why was there violence on Sunday and none on Tuesday? You know the answer. They don't beat white people. It's Negroes they beat and kill" (Turn 1-6).

SELMA: As evening falls in Selma, there is much confusion, coming, and going among the northerners who answered Dr. King's call. Most of them had assumed they would march that day in solidarity and then either be in jail or immediately return home to their normal lives. Now they are being asked to remain indefinitely until Judge Johnson's anti-march injunction is lifted. For many, particularly the major religious leaders, it is impossible to stay over and they regretfully depart to resume their ecclesiastic responsibilities. But knowing that their presence provides at least some limited deterrence to police violence, others decide to sojourn in Selma at least for a night or two.

Among those who change their plans and remain in Selma are Unitarian ministers James Reeb and Orloff Miller of Boston and Clark Olsen of Berkeley. After dinner at the crowded, Black-owned, Walkers Cafe, they stroll back toward the Movement offices at Alabama and Franklin streets. They pass by the Silver Moon Cafe, a hangout for Klan and possemen. Selma Blacks know not to walk that block after dark. When Movement activists arrive from out of town, the local families they stay with warn them of such danger spots. But in the confusion of the day, with hundreds of northerners arriving in a short time and abrupt changes in travel plans, the three white ministers are unaware of the danger.

Four men with baseball bats and makeshift clubs step from the shadows and advance on the three ministers. "Hey you niggers!" They strike Olsen and Miller and bludgeon Reeb in the head. As they run off they shout, "Now you know what it's like to be a real nigger!"

Miller and Olsen are bleeding but not seriously injured. Reeb is dazed and confused and can barely see. They make it to the SCLC office where Diane Nash quickly sends Reeb to the Burwell Infirmary in a hearse from the downstairs funeral parlor. The Black doctor at Burwell determines that Reeb needs immediate neurosurgery. The nearest emergency unit willing to undertake an operation of that kind is in Birmingham 90 miles away. They refuse to treat him without an advance cash payment of $150 (equal to a bit over $1,000 in 2012). The ministers don't have anywhere near that amount and neither credit cards nor medical insurance are available in the mid- 1960s. By now Reeb has fallen unconscious.

Somehow, Diane manages to scrounge up the fee and the hearse rushes Reeb, Olsen, and Miller north toward Birmingham. Not far out of town, one of its old tires blows out. It's a dangerous area of rural Alabama for an integrated group to be stranded at night, so they run on the rim until they reach a Black radio station where they can summon a new hearse-ambulance. Dallas County sheriff's deputies spot them and interrogate the Black driver and the white ministers, but refuse to provide an escort or protection. Cars driven by hostile whites begin to cruise back and forth past the parking lot where they wait.

It takes almost two hours to locate a replacement ambulance, find a driver with the courage to make the run, and get it to Birmingham. The unconscious Reeb hovers near death. Olsen and Miller have to brace the stretcher to keep it from rolling around as they head north at high speed on the narrow county road. They have no trained medic, and the two ministers don't know how to prevent infection from entering Reeb's lungs. They arrive at University Hospital in Birmingham past 11pm, four hours after the attack. Reeb has a massive skull fracture and blood clot, now complicated by a pneumonia infection. The doctors know there is no way they can save him (Savage 1-2).

In Selma, Reeb’s beating touched off fresh waves of protest marches.

At mid-day, Wednesday, Rev. L.L. Anderson of Tabernacle Baptist leads 500 people out of Brown Chapel on a march to the Dallas County courthouse. They barely get out of the church before a line of city cops block their progress on Sylvan Street (today, Martin Luther King Street). Behind them lurk platoons of state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and the posse of volunteer racists in their khaki work clothes and plastic construction helmets. Mayor Smitherman and Chief Baker declare an "emergency ban" on all marches. "It is too risky under the present circumstances — taking under consideration the facts as they now affect the city," explains the Mayor.

What he means — but is politically unwilling to say — is that if any protesters, Black or white, leave the protection of the Carver housing project which surrounds Brown Chapel, Lingo or Clark might order their men to savagely attack them as on Bloody Sunday. And that the swarm of local and visiting Klansmen are still on the prowl, hungry for more blood after assaulting three "white niggers" the night before. Neither the troopers, nor the sheriffs deputies, nor the city police can be counted on to restrain them.

...

As the standoff on Sylvan continues, protesters gather in First Baptist at the edge of the Carver Project, half a block from Brown Chapel. From there, 250 marchers try to outflank the cops on Sylvan and reach the courthouse by way of Jefferson Davis Avenue. A car caravan of troopers rushes to head them off. Swinging, poking and stabbing with their clubs, they drive the demonstrators back into the church.

Outside Brown Chapel, Police Chief Wilson Baker strings a waist-high clothesline across Sylvan Street to mark the line that marchers are not allowed to pass. The Selma students quickly dub it the "Selma Wall" and "Berlin Wall" and improvise a new freedom song to the tune of "Battle of Jericho:"

We've got a rope that's a Berlin Wall,
Berlin Wall, Berlin Wall,
We've got a rope that's a Berlin Wall,
In Selma, Alabama.

We're gonna stay here 'till it falls,
'till it falls, 'till it falls,
We're gonna stay here 'till it falls,
In Selma, Alabama.

It will be six days and nights of around-the-clock, 24-hour vigil in hard cold rain and blazing sun before Selma's "Selma Wall" finally falls (Selma Wall 3-4).

MONTGOMERY: While student marchers are confronting the "Selma Wall" in Selma, Dr. King, DCVL, and SCLC leaders appear before Judge Johnson on Wednesday morning for his hearing on their Williams v Wallace petition that the state of Alabama be ordered to allow the march to Montgomery. The courtroom is crowded with supporters and reporters. King is called to the stand and state attorneys try to prove he had violated Johnson's "no-march" injunction the day before. …

…

Though Judge Johnson does not jail Dr. King, neither does he issue any ruling on the main issue of the Freedom Movement's right to march to Montgomery. Instead, the hearing runs all day and continues into Thursday. Movement supporters are puzzled at the tedious, lengthy testimony, and some believe that the judge's delaying tactics have more to do with coordinating political strategy with LBJ and Katzenbach than any legal complexities in what is clearly an open and shut First Amendment issue. They suspect that the judge is blocking the march until the administration manages to pull together a voting rights bill and submit it to Congress. Then LBJ can spin the march to Montgomery — when it finally occurs — as a march in support of his bill and his leadership rather than an indictment of federal indifference, inaction, and complicity with racial segregation (Hearing 1-2).

TUSKEGEE: After the second march is halted on Turn-Around-Tuesday, TIAL [Tuskegee Institute Advancement League, an organized group of university students] meets on Tuesday night and decides to hold their Montgomery action on the morrow regardless. Since the march is blocked in Selma, they will open a "Second Front" of the struggle by marching to the Capitol and delivering to Governor Wallace a freedom petition. Despite opposition from some Tuskegee administrators, donations are collected, buses are chartered, and a car caravan organized.

SELMA: In the aftermath of the turn-around on the bridge, at roughly the same time as TIAL is committing to march in Montgomery, and Reb. Reeb is eating dinner with his companions at Walkers Cafe, a tense meeting begins in Selma between SNCC leaders and SCLC executive staff. It flares into shouting, bitter recriminations, harsh accusations, and open hostility over what happened and what to do next. The confrontation only halts when Rev. Reeb and his bloodied companions stagger into the office.

Learning that students are marching on the morrow in Montgomery, SNCC Executive Secretary Jim Forman decides to pull most of the SNCC staff out of Selma and into Montgomery where Tuskegee and Alabama State College students form a natural SNCC constituency (Meetings 1-2).

Stokely Carmichael, an SNCC member and future leader, thought that the movement itself was playing into the hands of racism. “It’s like, for us to be recognized,” he said, “a white person must be killed.” What kind of message does that send” (Dowley 4)?

Meanwhile, at the evening mass meeting in Brown Chapel, Dr. King calls for a Wednesday morning march to the Dallas County courthouse to pray for Reeb's life, protest police and Klan violence, and continue demanding the right to vote (Meetings 2).

On Wednesday, March 10, seven hundred Tuskegee students, carrying brown bag lunches packed by the cafeteria workers, caravanned to Montgomery to deliver their freedom petition to Alabama’s governor George Wallace. SNCC workers in overalls took over organizing the crowd that gathered six blocks from the capitol. “They’re directing people, they’re forming the perimeter … they’re trying to train [us] in nonviolent direct action even as we’re moving,” then Tuskegee professor, Jean Wiley, recalled. On DexterAvenue, state troopers blocked the march, swinging billy clubs, which prompted the students to sit down in the street and begin singing freedom songs. George Wallace refused to meet with them, and when TIAL’s George Ware attempted to read the petition, he was arrested.

As the day wore on, state troopers refused to let the occupying protesters back in the ranks if they needed to use the bathroom. Jim Forman’s urging to “just do it here” earned the protest the name “the great pee-in.” Past midnight, heavy, cold rain forced the students to seek shelter in nearby Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. SCLC’s Jim Bevel showed up the next morning to dissuade them from continuing protests because they were drawing attention away from the Selma campaign. As Jim Forman and others in SNCC angrily left the church to resume their demonstration, state troopers arrested them and beat other protestors back inside.

The following Monday, SNCC staffers resumed demonstrations with four hundred Alabama State University students. Law enforcement officials surrounded and beat the demonstrators. They also, unprovoked, beat local Black residents in the Black business district. At the march the next afternoon, television cameras recorded the sheriff’s mounted posse attacking the protesters with whips and lariats. “My ability to continue engaging in nonviolent direct action snapped that day,” Jim Forman explained, “and my anger at the executive branch of the federal government intensified.”

Forman’s anger came out later that night at an SCLC-sponsored rally at a Montgomery church. From the pulpit, he declared that President Lyndon Johnson was the only man with the power to stop George Wallace and the posse. “I said it today, and I will say it again,” he exclaimed, “If we can’t sit at the table of democracy, we’ll knock the f*cking legs off!” He knew instantly that he had gone too far and apologized.

At this point, after more than four years of struggle across the South, Forman and many SNCC staffers no longer put their hope in the federal government. When the Selma to Montgomery march finally took place, “some SNCC people served as marshals,” Forman explained, “but we had generally washed our hands of the affair” (Bloody 5-8).


Works cited:

“Bloody Sunday.” SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University. Web. https://snccdigital.org/events/bloody...

Dowleu, Alex and Marcos, Steve. “54 Miles that Mobilized a Nation and Fractured the Civil Rights Movement.” National Park Planner. Web. https://npplan.com/national-historic-...

“Hearing before Federal Judge Johnson.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Meetings and Decisions.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Savage Assault on Unitarian Ministers.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The ‘Selma Wall’.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

"Turn-Around-Tuesday.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Unrelenting Pressure from Washington

Across the international date line, Sunday afternoon March 7 in Alabama is Monday morning, March 8, in East Asia. Halfway around the world from Bloody Sunday in Selma, U.S. Marines in full combat gear are wading ashore on Da Nang beach. They are the first of what will eventually rise to more than 500,000 American combat troops on the ground fighting to "defend democracy" in Vietnam. …

Behind the scenes, President Johnson pressures Dr. King to cancel the Tuesday march. Just a few months earlier, LBJ had campaigned on repeated promises never to send American boys to fight in Indochina — though as the Pentagon Papers later reveal he had already decided to do just that. Now the first U.S. combat troops are landing in Vietnam. He has prepared a carefully planned media campaign to justify his action both domestically and internationally. TV cameras are stationed on Da Nang beach to capture the dramatic scene while pro-American Vietnamese greet them at the tideline with "Welcome U.S. Marines" banners. But now on this Monday throughout the world, news stories and images of Marines wading ashore to "defend democracy" in Vietnam clash with images of real-life American democracy in action on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma Alabama. Johnson is furious, and he wants no risk of any repeat violence on Tuesday that might compete with his public relations strategy, or continue to give the lie to his "freedom" rhetoric.

WASHINGTON: By Monday morning pickets are marching in front of the Justice Department. Three SNCC members manage to enter Attorney General Katzenbach's office and stage a sit-in. As the cops drag them out, SNCC worker Frank Smith shouts: "It did not take the Attorney General long to get his policemen up here to throw us out. Why can't he give us the same protection in Alabama?" Twenty more SNCC activists enter the building and occupy the 5th floor corridor outside the AG's office until they are eventually dragged out around 9pm. Pickets from SNCC, CORE, SCLC, NAACP and other organizations appear outside other DC buildings. Protesters demanding federal intervention to protect Black voting rights block traffic by lying down on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House.

Under pressure from the White House and members of Congress whose constituents are demanding action, Attorney General Katzenbach huddles with Justice Department lawyers. They now accept that something has to be done about Black voting rights this year — not at some vague future date. But what?

…

MONTGOMERY: Lawyers working with SCLC file Hosea Williams v George Wallace before U.S. District Judge Johnson in Montgomery, petitioning him to prevent Alabama cops from blocking a renewed march on Tuesday, March 9. They are stunned when he refuses to rule on their plea without first holding a formal hearing on the issue. Instead of allowing a march the following day, he asks that it be held off. Without a federal injunction, Wallace and his troopers are free to block the Tuesday effort by any means they choose.

SELMA: Dr. King is now in Selma, and by phone from Washington, Attorney General Katzenbach browbeats him hour after hour to call off the Tuesday march. DOJ official John Doar and Community Relations Service head Leroy Collins bring personal pressure to bear. They promise administration support for a new voting rights bill, but imply that might be conditional on there being no second march.

WASHINGTON: Moving with what for them is astounding speed, the National Council of Churches' Commission on Religion and Race responds to King's appeal by immediately issuing a press statement endorsing his call. They dispatch a flood of telegrams to Protestant congregations nationwide urging clergy and laity to march with Dr. King in Selma. …

SELMA: On this Monday in March, 150 carloads of state troopers and a swarm of possemen occupy Selma like an army. Local students and SNCC activists — many just arrived from Atlanta and Mississippi — lead impromptu freedom marches through the Carver Housing Project. Made up mostly of young people, they try to maneuver through the cops blocking their way to downtown. Caravans of cop cars loaded with club-wielding troopers race with lights flashing and sirens screaming along the dirt streets of the Black community, barring every nonviolent effort to reach the courthouse and the commercial district.

Meanwhile, a day-long mass meeting in Brown Chapel starts early Monday and runs late into the night as people re-live the violence, come to terms with beatings and humiliation, and renew their determination to be free. SCLC and local leaders preach the power of nonviolence as the only effective answer to police savagery.

James Bevel: "Any man who has the urge to hit a posseman or a state trooper with a pop bottle is a fool. That is just what they want you to do. Then they can call you a mob and beat you to death."

By mid-morning, carloads of outside supporters — most of them white — begin unloading in front of the church steps where yesterday mounted possemen had lashed men and women with whips and rifle-toting troopers had threatened even children with death.

Rev. F.D. Reese, DCVL: They had seen the news and left home before the broadcast officially ended for the evening. I saw new life leap into the faces of the people and they were ready to sacrifice more. During the next 48 hours, hundreds and hundreds of people from heaven knows how many different states in the Union came to Selma. Black families opened their homes and gave their beds to people who had come to Selma. ... Local residents opened their homes and travelers from afar accepted the warm embrace and kindness that was extended. The only phrase a newcomer to Selma had to utter was, "I am here to march." That phrase secured the speaker a home, a bed, and food with no questions asked.

As the mass meeting continues into the afternoon, whites — bishops, ministers, rabbis, wives of U.S. Senators, union leaders, and students from famous universities — now mingle with Blacks in the main floor pews and the balcony benches. Each new group is introduced to speak a few words of support from the pulpit. … They are met with wild applause and thunderous singing.

…

… Taking a line from Langston Hughes, Dr. King defies Wallace and rebuffs President Johnson's demand that the march be canceled:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. ... If a man is 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life ... and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer and he's afraid that his home will get bombed or he's afraid that he will lose his job, he's afraid that he will get shot or beaten down by state troopers, he may go on and live until he's 80, but he's just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. And the state of breathing in his life is merely the announcement of an earlier death of the spirit" (Monday 1-6).

WASHINGTON: By Tuesday morning, the 20 SNCC activists expelled from the building on Monday night for sitting-in outside Katzenbach's office have now returned 200 strong to fill the corridor. More than 700 men, women, and children are now picketing the White House.

In the Oval Office, Johnson's attention is divided. He is determined to prevent any repetition of Sunday's embarrassing violence in Selma. Through his surrogates, he continues to demand that Dr. King cancel the march. But his main focus is the war he is greatly expanding in Vietnam. As previously planned, this day and the next is given to personally briefing every single member of Congress in groups of 50 each. …

NATION: Hundreds rally at the FBI office in Manhattan, blocking traffic on 69th Street and 3rd Avenue. More than 10,000 march through downtown Detroit, with Michigan Governor George Romney placing himself at the head of the line. In Chicago, protesters snarl the Loop by sitting-down in the intersection of State and Madison. Protests demanding federal action to protect voting rights erupt in Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Haven, San Francisco, Syracuse, and elsewhere across the nation (Tuesday 1)).

MONTGOMERY: Court convenes on Tuesday morning to hear SCLC's plea that the march to Montgomery be allowed to proceed without interference by the state of Alabama. SCLC's attorneys are stunned when Judge Johnson issues an injunction against the Freedom Movement. He blocks the march until after he holds formal hearings on their Williams v Wallace petition. …

Everyone knows that the FBI taps Movement phones. King's conversations and plans — including his determination to defy Washington pressure and march on Tuesday — are reported directly to White House and DOJ officials. Many activists suspect that Judge Johnson's blatantly political ruling is issued in collusion with the President as a way of forcing King to abandon the march.

SELMA: Judge Johnson's injunction creates a lose-lose dilemma for Movement leaders in Selma. Activists and organizers all agree that an immediate return march — larger than the first one — is the only way to counter police brutality. If violence is allowed to stand unchallenged it will halt organizing momentum throughout the Black Belt, and if Alabama can successfully use state-terror to intimidate the Movement, so will other states. With national support now behind them, Alabama Blacks are demanding a new march to defy Wallace and erase the degrading humiliation of Bloody Sunday's clubs, gas, whips and horses. They need to march, they need to prove to white racists — and themselves — that they, "ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round." Movement leaders fear that if the march is canceled morale and momentum will plummet.

Almost a thousand northerners, many of them important religious leaders, have come to Selma to put their bodies on the line alongside Alabama Blacks. They are frightened and scared. But they are also determined. They have summoned their courage to face their starkest fears of violent danger and criminal arrest. Their emotions are at a fever pitch — they are ready to march! March now! If the march is postponed for a week or two while Judge Johnson deliberates, will they return to Selma when the march is permitted? No one knows.

But the whole point of the Selma campaign is to win voting rights — not march to Montgomery. More than 4,000 people have gone to jail to win the right to vote, Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed fighting for the vote; 600 men, women, and children endured Bloody Sunday for the vote. The march to Montgomery is not the goal, it's just a tactic to achieve that greater purpose.

Arguments against marching:

Through spokemen, President Johnson sends a promise from Washington that he will support new, strong voting rights legislation. But his surrogates also warn King that if he marches on Tuesday, LBJ may weaken — or possibly oppose — a new voting rights bill. Even with the President behind it, a voting bill has to overcome a southern filibuster to pass in the Senate. That filibuster cannot be broken without the votes of Republican senators. Republicans, and particularly their leader Everett Dirksen, are strong for "law and order." They are already uncomfortable with Blacks disobeying local segregation ordinances and police commands; they might well view breaking a federal injunction as defiance of their own national authority (and so too might some northern Democrats). Even if Tuesday's march wins through to Montgomery — which no one believes is possible — doing so at the cost of eventual defeat in the Senate is a disaster, not a victory. And despite Judge Johnson's political stab in the back, confidence remains high that he will eventually rule in favor of the Freedom Movement's right to march to Montgomery.

Moreover, if a voting rights law does pass, it is the federal courts who will have to enforce it. Federal judges are fiercely jealous of their authority; they don't take kindly to defiance of any kind, and they have long memories. It is their rulings and interpretations that will put teeth in the law — or not. Dr. King has never violated a federal court order. His overarching strategy is to use the power of federal laws and courts to force the South to change. For years, segregationist politicians have mobilized white resistance to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. They've called for "interposition" and "nullification" and "standing in the schoolhouse door." If Dr. King and the Freedom Movement now disobey a federal injunction, might not the federal judges equate them with James Eastland, Robert Byrd, and George Wallace?

Movement leaders meet in the Selma home of Dr. Sullivan Jackson. Tension is high, debate is hot. James Forman of SNCC demands an immediate all-out march come hell or high water. James Farmer of CORE counsels caution and patience — any attempt to break through the wall of troopers will be a bloody failure for no gain and maybe great political loss.

The unrelenting pressure from Washington continues unabated. On the phone, Katzenbach urges King to obey the injunction. He cannot understand why they simply cannot wait a few more days on the promise of eventual relief. King replies, "But Mr. Attorney General, you have not been a Black man in America for 300 years." CRS chief Collins personally delivers a message from LBJ that the Bloody Sunday violence disgraced the United States in the eyes of the world. The President's overriding concern is to prevent more violence, so he wants the marchers to stay home to guarantee the peace. Rev. Shuttleworth shouts back, "You're talking to the wrong people! [Take it up with Wallace and Clark]. They're the ones in the disgrace business!"

Everyone weighs in, but the weight is on Dr. King. As he decides, so it will be. He tells Doar and Collins that he has to keep faith with the people of Selma. He has to march. Collins immediately offers a compromise. Judge Johnson's order does not prohibit marching within Selma. So King can march over the bridge to the Selma city line at the far bank of the Alabama River and then turn around and return to the church when ordered to do so in conformance with the injunction. He assures King that the troopers and Clark's posse of ragtag racists won't attack.

"I don't believe you can get those people not to charge into us even if we do stop," King tells him. He knows that Clark and Lingo may whip heads regardless of what promise they make to Collins. He also fears that even if he disappoints the marchers and loses precious momentum by turning around, Judge Johnson will consider him in violation for crossing the bridge, and President Johnson will turn on him for failure to meekly accept the "no march" command. Either way he's caught. Reluctantly, he agrees to Collins' plan (Judge 1-4).


Works cited:

“Judge Johnson's Injunction.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Monday, March 8.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Tuesday, March 9.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- March to Montgomery -- Bloody Sunday

MONTGOMERY: Declaring that the march is "Not conducive to the orderly flow of traffic and commerce," Governor Wallace issues an edict forbidding it. "[The] march cannot and will not be tolerated." He orders the state troopers to "Use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march."

SELMA: On Friday the 5th, Hosea Williams asks the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) for doctors and nurses in case of violence. Led by Dr. Al Moldovan, six MCHR doctors and three nurses arrive in Selma on Saturday. The march is scheduled to leave Selma on Sunday, March 7th.

Anticipating that their march will not be allowed out of Selma, SCLC leaders make few logistic preparations for a 50-mile trek to Montgomery over 4 or 5 days. They assume everyone will be arrested for violating Wallace's edict. The plan is to kneel and pray when ordered to turn around or disperse. By refilling the jails, they will maintain pressure on Washington and the federal courts. Though he [Martin Luther King] had previously said he would lead the march, SCLC leaders convince him to remain in Atlanta — he is more valuable out of jail speaking and mobilizing support than sitting in a cell. It's a decision that infuriates SNCC field workers in Selma who condemn it as a betrayal of the local marchers (though they themselves are still refusing to participate in the march) (Tension 9).

Here is a different accounting of King’s absence.

On Saturday, March 6, King was back in Atlanta, where he decided to postpone the march until the following Monday. On a conference phone call with his aides in Selma, he explained that for two straight Sabbaths he had neglected his congregation—he was co-pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church—and that he really needed to preach there the next day. He would return to Selma on Monday to lead the march. All his staff agreed to the postponement except Hosea Williams, a rambunctious Army veteran with a flair for grass roots organizing. “Hosea,” King warned, “you need to pray. You’re not with me. You need to get with me.”

On Sunday morning, though, King’s aides reported that more than five hundred pilgrims were gathered at Brown Chapel and that Williams wanted permission to march that day. In his church office King thought it over and relayed word to Brown Chapel that his people could start without him. Since the march had been prohibited, he was certain that they would get arrested at the bridge. He would simply join them in jail. He expected no mayhem on Highway 80, since even the conservative Alabama press had excoriated Lingo’s troopers for their savagery in Marion (Oates 20).

SELMA: Sunday, March 7, dawns cold and raw. Tension grips the city. The air is pregnant with potential violence. Carloads of white thugs prowl the streets looking for trouble. Just over the Edmund Pettus bridge on the road to Montgomery, a swarm of state troopers, sheriff's deputies and mounted possemen, wait impatiently. They are itching for action. John Carter Lewis, a Black dishwasher, is stopped on his way home from work. He's guilty of being Black in the wrong place. Two troopers attack him, striking him with their clubs, breaking his arm and bloodying his head.

After Sunday services, some 400 marchers gather at Brown Chapel. Some are still in their Sunday suits and dresses; others carry knapsacks and rolled up blankets tied with rough twine. Their mood is somber but determined. There is little of the spirited singing that buoyed previous protests.

John Lewis recalled: We expected a confrontation. We knew that Sheriff Clark had issued yet another call the evening before for even more deputies. Mass arrests would probably be made. There might be injuries. Most likely, we would be stopped at the edge of the city limits, arrested and maybe roughed up a little bit. We did not expect anything worse than that.

The MCHR medical team sets up a first aid station at Brown Chapel — a table, a mattress, and some basic medical supplies.

Charles Bonner, a Selma student leader, remembered: Even though we had been demonstrating for two years now, we had the uneasiness that this was going to be a different day — uneasiness is to put it mildly, if not euphemistically, because frankly it was a fear, it was a terror that was going through us all. We were scared, because we didn't know what was going to happen.

With horns blaring, a caravan of cars filled with 200 marchers from Perry County rolls in and unloads. Off to the side, SCLC divides its field workers into two groups, those who will march and presumably end up in jail, and those who will stay behind to mobilize a follow-on protest. James Bevel, Andrew Young, and Hosea Williams flip coins to decide who will lead the march in King's absence. Hosea is the odd man out.

It is mid-afternoon when the 600 or so marchers line up two-by-two and head for the bridge. Leading the line are Hosea Williams and John Lewis, behind them are SCLC leader Albert Turner of Marion and Bob Mants of SNCC. (It is SNCC policy that no one is allowed to go into danger alone, so he volunteers to accompany John despite SNCC's opposition to the march.) A few rows behind them are two of Selma's indomitable leaders, Amelia Boynton and Marie Foster. A handful of white civil rights workers and Movement supporters are mixed in among the Black students, teachers, maids, laborers, and farmers who make up most of the marchers. Behind them is a flatbed truck with some rented portable toilets and a couple of ambulances staffed by MCHR medics. (All but one of the ambulances are actually hearses owned by Black funeral parlors.)

Police roadblocks have closed the bridge to vehicles. The MCHR ambulances are blocked. Gangs of possemen on foot lurk nearby. The marchers remain on the sidewalk as they start up the bridge rise. When the leaders reach the crest, they see what awaits on the other side. State trooper cars, their lights flashing, are parked across the highway. A phalanx of more than 200 troopers and sheriff's deputies are lined up two and three deep to bar the march. To one side is a band of possemen in their khaki uniforms and construction helmets. More than a dozen of them are mounted on horses and they carry long leather bullwhips. White thugs armed with bats and pipes and waving Confederate battle flags crowd the burger-joint parking lot.

As the marchers start down the bridge slope toward the waiting cops, Hosea Williams looks over the rail at the cold, choppy waters of the Alabama River 100 feet below. "Can you swim," he asks John Lewis. "No." "Neither can I, but we might have to."

The media is confined off to the side where their view is limited. With their usual clueless certainty, TV reporters are telling viewers that the "militant" SNCC has "forced" this dangerous march on an "unwilling" Dr. King.

Charles Bonner: We kept stepping two by two, one foot in front of the other one, marching resolutely into hell, because it was so clear that we were going to be beaten. I mean, these men were just so prepared, they were not going to let their readiness go to waste by not beating us. I mean, when you look back on it, it was very clear.

When they come down off the bridge, the marchers cross over the Selma city line into the county jurisdiction of Sheriff Clark. The troopers and deputies begin donning their gas masks. The marchers stride forward on the shoulder of US-80, known in Alabama as the Jefferson Davis Highway. The front of the line is about 100 feet from the bridge when Major Cloud of the state troopers orders Williams and Lewis to halt and turn around (March 1-6).

“It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,” Major John Cloud called out from his bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse, you are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue.”

“Mr. Major,” replied Williams, “I would like to have a word, can we have a word?”

“I’ve got nothing further to say to you,” Cloud answered (Remembering 5).

As planned, the leaders motion for everyone to kneel in prayer.


Bonner: "I was probably about 10 to 15 rows back from John Lewis. ... I saw John Lewis ... kneel down with Hosea Williams, and of course we sat, like these waves you seen in the stadiums, as they knelt all the demonstrators behind fell in line and I knelt as well.

"Troopers Advance!" shouts the Major. A wave of cops smashes into the people at the front of the line.

Charles Fager: From between nearby buildings a line of horses emerged at the gallop, their riders wearing the possemen's irregular uniform and armed with bullwhips, ropes, and lengths of rubber tubing wrapped with barbed wire. They rode into the melee with wild rebel yells, while behind them the cheers of the spectators grew even louder. "Get those Goddamned niggers!" came Jim Clark's voice. "And get those Goddamned white niggers!"

John Lewis: The troopers and possemen swept forward as one, like a human wave, a blur of blue shirts and billy clubs and bullwhips. We had no chance to turn and retreat. There were six hundred people behind us, bridge railings to either side and the river below. ... The first of the troopers came over me, a large husky man. Without a word he swung his club against the left side of my head. I didn't feel any pain, just the thud of the blow, and my legs giving way. ... And then the same trooper hit me again. And everything started to spin. I heard something that sounded like gunshots. And then a cloud of smoke rose all around us. Tear gas. ... I began choking, coughing. I couldn't get air into my lungs. I felt as if I was taking my last breath.

Amelia Boynton is viciously clubbed to the ground and tear gas is shot directly into her face as she collapses into unconsciousness. Hosea Williams scoops up little Sheyann Webb and carries her to safety through the tear gas and charging horses.

Sheyann Webb: He held on until we were off the bridge and down on Broad Street and he let me go. I didn't stop running until I got home. ... I was maybe a little hysterical because I kept repeating over and over, "I can't stop shaking Momma, I can't stop shaking." ... My daddy was like I'd never seen him before. He had a shotgun and he yelled, "By God, if they want it this way, I'll give it to them!" And he started out the door. Momma jumped up and got in front of him. ... Finally he put the gun aside and sat down. I remember just laying there on the couch, crying and feeling so disgusted. They had beaten us like we were slaves.

Behind the possemen come the white thugs, beating down anyone who manages to stumble out of the gas cloud. They assault the reporters and break their cameras. One of the "reporters" is actually an FBI agent, and the three men who attack him are later arrested for assault on a federal agent. They are the only whites ever arrested for violence on "Bloody Sunday." They are never brought to trial.

The troopers, deputies, possemen, and thugs pursue the retreating marchers over the bridge and through the city streets, beating and assaulting Blacks wherever they find them — whether they're demonstrators or not. Dr. Moldovan and nurses Virginia Wells and Linda Dugan plunge into the swirling tumult. They lift unconscious and crippled victims into their ambulance and race back to the aid station at Brown Chapel, which is quickly swamped with the injured and wounded. By the end of the day, 100 of the 600 marchers require medical attention for fractured skulls, broken teeth and limbs, gas poisoning, and whip lashes.

The troopers and possemen swarm into the Carver Projects beating whomever they catch and charging their horses up the steps of Brown Chapel to attack those trying to seek sanctuary in the church. Another band of possemen force their way into First Baptist and throw a teenage boy through a stained glass window. Sheriff Clark fires tear gas into homes to drive people outside where they can be attacked. [Wilson] Baker tries to stop the carnage, but Clark shouts in his face, "I've already waited a month too damn long!"

Sheyann Webb's constant companion, Rachel West, 8 years old, recalls:

I saw the horsemen ... riding at a gallop, coming around a house up the way, and that's when I turned and ran. I heard the horses' hooves and I turned and saw the riders hitting at the people and they were coming fast toward me. I stopped and got up against the wall of one of the apartment buildings and pressed myself against it as hard as I could. Two horsemen went by and I knew if I didn't move I would be trapped there. I saw the people crying [from the gas] as they went by and holding their eyes and some had their arms up over their heads.

I took off running. ... I was out in the open then, right in the middle of the street and heading for the yard toward our house, and I heard these other horsemen coming and I knew they were going to catch me. I just knew they were going to either trample me or hit me with a club or whip. My legs didn't seem to be moving — it was like in a bad dream when you are chased by something and can't run. Well, just as I got to the yard this white [SNCC worker] named Frank Soracco came by me and he was moving fast. And I must have been crying out, because he stopped and just swept me up and carried me under the armpits and kept moving.

Some Blacks begin to retaliate with thrown rocks and bottles, but Movement leaders and civil rights workers move among them, urging nonviolent discipline. The cops are raging with mob fury, all control abandoned to racist hate. Many are now carrying loaded rifles and shotguns at the ready. The activists know that if a single white officer is injured by a tossed brick there'll be a blood-bath of indiscriminate gunfire.

Eventually, the frenzy of cop violence subsides and the forces of "law and order" occupy the Carver Project and Selma's Black commercial district, forcing all Blacks inside and off the street. They allow the MCHR ambulances to ferry the most seriously wounded — more than 90 — to Good Samaritan Hospital and Burwell Infirmary (a Black old-age home).

Among those hospitalized is John Lewis with a skull fracture and concussion. Before he allows himself to be taken to hospital, he tells the battered and bruised people gathered in Brown Chapel, "I don't known how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam. I don't see how he can send troops to the Congo. I don't see how he can send troops to Africa, and he can't send troops to Selma, Alabama. Next time we march, we may have to keep going when we get to Montgomery. We have to go to Washington." His words are reported in the New York Times and the Johnson administration responds by announcing that they will send FBI agents to Selma to, "... investigate whether unnecessary force was used by law officers and others."

As the afternoon wanes and evening falls, Brown Chapel remains crowded with marchers and supporters huddling together for mutual support. Acrid tear gas fumes still emanate from clothes and skin. Eyes weep and breathing is labored. There is anger and rage, of course, but also deep humiliation at being whipped and beaten and driven. Outside, the troopers and deputies strut like conquering heroes. Inside, people are dispirited and dejected. They have endured so much, violence, jail, economic retaliation, and yet despite all, practically no one has been registered to vote.

Sheyann Webb recalls:

When I had first gotten to the church ... my eyes were still swollen and burning from the tear gas. But what I saw there made me cry again. I'll never forget the faces of those people. I'd never seen such looks before. I remember standing and looking at them a long time before sitting down. They weren't afraid, because they were too beaten to know any more fear. It was as though nobody cared to even try to win anything anymore, like we were slaves after all and had been put in our place by a good beating.

I sat with Rachel up toward the front. ... we were just sitting there crying, listening to the others cry; some were even moaning and wailing. It was an awful thing. It was like we were at our own funeral. But then later in the night, maybe nine-thirty or ten, I don't know for sure, all of a sudden somebody there started humming. I think they were moaning and it just went into the humming of a freedom song. It was real low, but some of us children began humming along, slow and soft. At first I didn't even know what it was, what song, I mean. It was like a funeral sound, a dirge. Then I recognized it — "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me' Round." I'd never heard it or hummed it that way before. But it just started to catch on, and the people began to pick it up. It started to swell, the humming.

Then we began singing the words. We sang, "Ain't gonna let George Wallace turn me 'round." And, "Ain't gonna let Jim Clark turn me 'round." Ain't gonna let no state trooper turn me 'round. Ain't gonna let no horses. ..ain't gonna let no tear gas — ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round." Nobody!

And everybody's singing now, and some of them are clapping their hands, and they're still crying, but it's a different kind of crying. It's the kind of crying that's got spirit, not the weeping they had been doing. And me and Rachel are crying and singing and it just gets louder and louder. I know the state troopers outside the church heard it. Everybody heard it. Because more people were coming in then, leaving their apartments and coming to the church — because something was happening.

We was singing and telling the world that we hadn't been whipped ... I think we all realized it at the same time, that we had won something that day, because people were standing up and singing like I'd never heard them before. ... When I first went into that church that evening those people sitting there were beaten — I mean their spirit, their will was beaten. But when that singing started, we grew stronger. Each one of us said to ourselves that we could go back out there and face the tear gas, face the horses, face whatever Jim Clark could throw at us (March 6-12).

SELMA: Unknown to the battered freedom fighters gathered in Brown Chapel, there is a political tsunami racing outward from Selma Alabama. Print and radio reporters jam the lines as they file their stories by phone. TV crews evade the trooper's highway blockade and rush their film to Montgomery where chartered planes fly it to New York for processing.

…

ATLANTA: Throughout the late afternoon, urgent phone conversations are held between Movement leaders in Selma and Dr. King and his executive staff in Atlanta. After more than 4,000 arrests, the brutal attack in Marion, police murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, and now a massive assault stretching from the Edmund Pettus bridge into the heart of Selma's Black community, there can be no doubt that Governor Wallace and Sheriff Clark are determined to suppress the voting rights movement with savage police violence. That cannot be allowed.

Dr. King decides. They have to defy Wallace and Clark by marching again. But not alone. For the first time ever, he mobilizes all of SCLC's resources to issue a nationwide call for people of conscience to stand with local Blacks as they nonviolently confront troopers, deputies, and possemen. In previous years, small groups of northerners had been asked to support protests in places like Birmingham and St. Augustine, but never before has King made a general plea for thousands of people to place their bodies on the line against police violence. As night falls, hundreds of telegrams are being dispatched from Atlanta, reading in part:

The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call therefore, on clergy of all faiths, representatives of every part of the country, to join me in Selma for a minister’s march to Montgomery on Tuesday morning, March ninth.

…

Tuesday is chosen to give northern supporters time to reach Selma, and also time for SCLC attorneys to file a motion in federal court on Monday morning to prevent the state of Alabama from blocking the march. Unlike the Dallas County voter-registration cases which had to be filed in the Mobile district court of Judge Thomas, this motion will go before federal Judge Frank Johnson in Montgomery for the Middle District of Alabama. Judge Johnson is considered a "southern liberal," and SCLC leaders are confidant that he will grant their motion to allow a march from Selma to Montgomery. In the past, Johnson has ruled against bus segregation during both the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Freedom Rides, and he has supported Black voting rights in a number of cases. He has no love for Wallace — who once referred to him as a "carpetbagging, scalawagging, integrating liar" — and even less for the violent racists who bombed his mother's home in the mistaken belief that he lived there. U.S. Marshals now guard his home around the clock.

When word of the brutal attack arrives from Selma, members of the SNCC Executive Committee are meeting in Atlanta. … Bypassing SNCC's normal consensus-style decision making process, Jim Forman issues a mobilization call for all SNCC members to converge on Selma, resume the march, and confront the cops and troopers. He charters a plane to fly himself and other SNCC leaders from Atlanta to Selma.

SNCC veteran and Selma organizer Prathia Hall recalls:

On Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, I was at the Atlanta SNCC office when a call came from ... Selma. Over the phone we could hear screams of people who were being attacked. SNCC immediately chartered a plane so that people could go to Selma right away. As the group was ready to leave, Judy Richardson said, "Wait a minute, there are no women in this group. Where's Prathia?" And so I went.

It was a very traumatic time for me. When we got there we saw what had happened. It was a bloody mess; people's heads had been beaten; they'd been gassed. Of course we held a rally. At the meeting people were angry; they, too, had been traumatized. One man stood up and said, "I was out on the bridge today because I thought it was right. But while I was on the bridge, Jim Clark came to my house and tear-gassed my eighty-year-old mother, and next time he comes to my house, I'm going to be ready." Everybody understood what that meant. People had lived their lives basically sleeping with guns beside their beds — that was just a part of the culture. These were people who were struggling to be nonviolent, who in their hearts and spirits were not a violent people, but they also had notions of self-defense."

JACKSON: SNCC's large Mississippi staff is holding a state wide meeting in Jackson when word of Selma and Forman's mobilization call reaches them. By evening, carloads of SNCC veterans are rushing east on Highway 80 at dangerously high speeds.

...

NATION: Across the country, Freedom Movement activists respond. Some begin mobilizing support demonstrations at federal buildings in their home communities. Others head for Alabama. Linda Dehnad, of the New York SNCC office, recalls:

I was on the [Friends of SNCC] steering committee in New York. I worked with students. My house on Riverside Drive & 90th Street [was] the place [for SNCC folk] to stay when they were in New York. So my house always had SNCC people in it. On Bloody Sunday my dining room was filled with people. We were watching TV. We just turned on the news. So we're watching the news and somebody said, "Oh my God. That's John." Within 10 minutes, my house was empty. They grabbed their stuff and they went.

The Sunday night movie on ABC is the network premier of Judgment at Nuremburg, a major TV event with an estimated audience of 48 million. Correspondent Frank Reynolds interrupts the program with news from Selma followed by 15 minutes of Bloody Sunday film. Some viewers are at first confused, assuming the images are of Nazi atrocities. CBS and NBC also provide dramatic coverage — as do the Monday morning newspapers (Sunday 1-8).

Nearly 50 million Americans who had tuned into the film’s long-awaited television premier couldn’t escape the historical echoes of Nazi storm troopers in the scenes of the rampaging state troopers. “The juxtaposition struck like psychological lightning in American homes,” wrote Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in “The Race Beat.”

The connection wasn’t lost in Selma, either. When his store was finally empty of customers, one local shopkeeper confided to Washington Star reporter Haynes Johnson about the city’s institutional racism, “Everybody knows it’s going on, but they try to pretend they don’t see it. I saw ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ on the Late Show the other night and I thought it fits right in; it’s just like Selma” (Remembering 6).

For many Americans who have never before marched, never before protested, Bloody Sunday is the tipping point that moves them into action. Not Bloody Sunday alone, of course, but the cumulative effect of all that has gone before. Students, clergy, housewives, and men and women from all walks of life, both Black and white, determine to take a stand. Some hear of and respond to King's call, others act spontaneously. Some hit the road for Selma, some protest locally, some demand immediate action from their U.S. senators and representatives (Sunday 9).


Works cited:

Klein, Christopher. “Remembering Selma’s ‘Bloody Sunday’.” History. Web. https://www.history.com/news/selmas-b...

“March 7, ‘Bloody Sunday.’” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Oates, Stephen B. “The Week the World Watched Selma.” American Heritage, June/July 1982, Volume 33, Issue 4. Web. https://www.americanheritage.com/week...

“Sunday, March 7.” The March to Montgomery (Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Tension Escalates.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- Selma Voting Rights Movement -- The Killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson

In 1962, when civil rights organizer Albert Turner persuaded some black residents of Marion to try and register to vote, an elderly farmer named Cager Lee was one of the first in line at the courthouse.

Standing with Lee was his daughter, Viola Lee Jackson, and her son Jimmie Lee Jackson. They were not permitted to register. When Jimmie Lee Jackson saw his frail 80-year-old grandfather rudely turned away from the registrar’s office, he became angry. He knew that he must be a part of the movement for civil rights.

Years earlier, when he was a proud high school graduate of 18, Jimmie Lee Jackson had made plans to leave rural Alabama for a better life in the North. He abandoned those dreams when his father died, leaving him to run the family farm. Determined to make the most of his life, Jackson took logging work in addition to farming, and he became active in a local fraternal lodge. At age 25, he was the youngest deacon ever elected at his church.

After the incident at the courthouse, Jackson saw the chance for real change in his hometown of Marion. He wrote a letter to a federal judge protesting the treatment of black voter applicants. He attended civil rights meetings, participated in boycotts of white businesses, and joined others in marching for the right to vote (Jimmie 1-2).

On Tuesday, February 18, [1965] carloads of Alabama State Troopers led by its commander, Al Lingo, swarm into Marion, Perry County, to suppress Black defiance. SCLC project director James Orange is spotted walking on the street and is arrested for "contributing to the delinquency of minors" (by encouraging students to march around the courthouse singing freedom songs).

James Orange is immensely popular among both young and old in Perry County's Black community, and that night tiny Zion Methodist Church is packed to overflowing as word spreads of his arrest. The lockup where Orange is being held is just a block and a half away. The plan is for a short night march so they can sing freedom songs outside his cell window and then return. If the troopers block them, they plan to kneel in prayer and then go back to the church.

Albert Turner and local minister, Rev. James Dobynes, lead 400 marchers out of the church and up Pickens Street two-by-two on the sidewalk. They are halted by Lingo's troopers. Jim Clark and some of his Selma posse are also present, along with an angry mob of local whites. As planned, Dobynes kneels and begins to pray. Suddenly, all the street lights go dark. The mob savagely attacks news reporters covering the protest. Richard Valeriani of NBC is clubbed, his head bloodied. Some of the mob have come prepared with cans of spray paint they use to sabotage camera lenses. Others smash the TV lights. No photos are taken of the troopers, deputies, and possemen wading into the line of marchers with hardwood clubs and ax-handles flailing, beating men, women, and children to the ground.

SCLC field secretary Willie Bolden described his experience.

The cameras were shooting. All of a sudden we heard cameras being broken and newsmen being hit. I saw people running out of the church. ... The troopers were in there beating folks while local police were outside beating anyone who came out the door. ... A big white fella came up to me and stuck a double-barreled shotgun, cocked, in my stomach. "You're the nigger from Atlanta, aren't you? Somebody wants to see you," he said, and he took me across the street to this guy with a badge and red suspenders and chewing tobacco. "See what you caused," he said, and he spun me around, "I want you to watch this." There were people running over each other and trying to protect themselves.

One guy was running toward us. When he saw the cops he tried to make a U-turn and he ran into a local cop. They just hit him in the head and bust his head wide open. Blood spewed all over and he fell. When I tried to go to him, the sheriff pulled me back and stuck a .38 snubnose in my mouth. He cocked the hammer back and said, "What I really need to do is blow your God damned brains out, nigger." ... I was scared to death! He said, "Take this nigger to jail." So they took me, and they hit me all over the arms and legs and thighs and chin. There were others there got beaten the same. ... There were literally puddles of blood leading all the way up the stairs to the jail cell.

Albert Turner of SCLC recalled the beating and death of Reverend Dobynes.

They started beating Reverend Dobynes who was on his knees at that point praying, and they carried him to the jail by his heels. And beat him on the way to the jail. Really the public doesn't know, but Dobynes died also as a result of the beating. He did not die immediately, but he really never did recuperate from it. He died roughly a year later, but his head was severely damaged, and he just never did survive it, but nobody says that he really was murdered or killed from that... that demonstration.

Marchers desperately try to retreat to the church; many are cut off. Some of the fleeing marchers take refuge in Mack's Cafe, a small Black-owned jook joint. Among them are Cager Lee, 82, his daughter Viola Jackson, and her son, military-veteran Jimmie Lee Jackson 26. Jimmie Lee is a church deacon who has tried to register five times and has been denied each time. Troopers follow them in, smashing out the lights, over turning tables, and beating people indiscriminately. They attack Cager in the kitchen. His daughter tries to come to his aid and they knock her to the floor. Jimmie tries to protect his mother and one trooper throws him up against the cigarette machine while another [James Bonard Fowler] shoots him twice, point-blank in the stomach. They club him again and again, driving him out into the street where he collapses.

Albert Turner narrates: After shooting him then they... then they ran him out of the door of the cafe, out of the front door of the cafe. And as he run out of the door, the remaining troopers, or some of the remaining troopers, were lined up down the sidewalk back toward the church, which he had to run through a corridor of policemans standing with billy sticks. And as he ran by them they simply kept hitting him as he kept running through. And he made it back to the door of the church, and just beyond the church he fell.

A reporter encounters Jim Clark prowling the streets with some of his possemen. When asked why he's in Marion, Clark replies, "Things got a little too quiet for me over in Selma tonight. It made me nervous."

Perry County has no hospital and the local infirmary is swamped with serious injuries. An unknown number of others lie wounded in jail. The infirmary is not equipped to care for gunshot wounds, so Jimmie Lee Jackson is rushed 30 miles by ambulance to Selma in adjacent Dallas County. Since the "white" public hospital there won't treat Black protesters, he's brought to the Catholic-run Good Samaritan Hospital (Shooting 3-6).

NEW YORK: On Sunday evening, February 21st 1965, Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem under circumstances that remain controversial to this day. His death hits the Civil Rights Movement hard. Despite tactical differences over integration and nonviolence, he is seen as a courageous and forthright Black leader in the fight against white-supremacy. John Lewis attends his funeral and later says: "I had my differences with him, of course, but there was no question that he had come to articulate better than anyone else on the scene — including Dr. King — the bitterness and frustration of Black Americans."

ALABAMA: Governor Wallace issues an unconstitutional order barring all night-time marches everywhere in the state and assigns 75 troopers under Lingo to enforce his version of "law and order" in Selma. At a rally of the Dallas County White Citizens Council, former Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett tells some 2,000 whites that they face, "... absolute extinction of all we hold dear unless we are victorious." After the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the murder of Malcolm X, hope begins to waver and the mood of Alabama Blacks turns increasingly bleak.

SELMA: Day after day, vigils for Jimmie Lee Jackson are held outside Good Samaritan, and mass meetings in Black churches around the state condemn the shooting and pray for his recovery. Despite their anguish and sorrow, grimly determined groups continue marching to the Dallas County courthouse in Selma to add their names to the appearance book. DCVL leader Amelia Boynton calls on Blacks to expand the economic boycott to all white- owned businesses as well as the city buses that still require Blacks to sit at the rear.

…

… over in "Bloody Lowndes" to the east, where no Black in living memory has been registered to vote, James Bevel, now out of the hospital, tries to stealthily infiltrate, "like Caleb and Joshua," seeking — without success — a church that will host a voting rights meeting.

LOWNDES COUNTY: Every fourth Sunday, Rev. Lorenzo Harrison of Selma preaches to tiny Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Lowndes County a few miles from Hayneville, the county seat. Word of Bevel's effort leaks back to the white power-structure and a rumor spreads among whites that Harrison intends to speak about Black voting rights. Carloads of Klansmen armed with rifles and shotguns surround the church. Members of the little congregation recognize Tom Coleman, son of the sheriff and an unpaid "special deputy," who in 1959 was known to have murdered Richard Lee Jones at a chain-gang prison camp. (Soon he will kill again.) Another is a plantation owner with 10,000 acres who had once shot to death a Black sharecropper because he seemed too happy at the prospect of being drafted out of the fields and into the Army. Mount Carmel Church has no phone they can use to call for help — few Blacks in Lowndes have telephone service and those that do suspect their calls are monitored and reported to authorities. With quiet courage, Deacon John Hulett manages to smuggle Harrison to safety.

SELMA: On Tuesday the 23rd, Al Lingo serves an arrest warrant for "assault and battery" on Jackson (Tension 1-5).

Jimmie Lee Jackson appeared to be on the way to recovery. At 9pm, [February 25] as Dr. William Dinkins recalled, Jackson was sitting up in his bed talking and in good spirits. Thirty minutes later, Dinkins received a call from the hospital that another doctor had decided Jimmie needed to undergo further surgery. Dinkins argued against it but eventually was forced to proceed. During surgery, Jackson was under a safe dose of anesthesia. Minutes later, his blood turned dark and Dr. Dinkins stated to the other doctor that Jackson should be put on 100% oxygen. Instead the doctor decided to increase the levels of anesthesia and in minutes [February 26] Jimmie Lee stopped breathing and died. Dr. Dinkins was adamant that Jimmie Lee Jackson could have survived had this second surgery not occurred (Jones 2-3).

Three days before Jackson’s death the Alabama state legislature had passed a resolution supporting the state troopers’ actions in Marion. Dodging an indictment from a grand jury, Fowler does not suffer punishment or disciplinary action. He is allowed to continue in his job.

PERRY COUNTY: Voter registration offices will be open again on Monday, March 1, and over the weekend SCLC and SNCC organizers concentrate on mobilizing Blacks in Dallas, Perry, Wilcox, Marengo, and Hale counties to honor Jimmie Lee Jackson and demand their right to vote. At a Sunday memorial service and voter registration rally in Marion, James Bevel preaches from the Book of Esther and tells the congregation: "We must go to Montgomery and see the king! Be prepared to walk to Montgomery! Be prepared to sleep on the highway!" By this he means not a march in Montgomery, but a march on the state capitol to present to Governor Wallace a demand for justice in the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson and also their call for voting rights. Old Cager Lee and Jimmie Lee's mother, Viola Jackson, bandages still covering their injuries, are ready to join him.

…

SELMA and MARION: The rain is still coming down on Wednesday, the day of Jimmie Lee Jackson's funeral. In Selma, R.B. Hudson High is practically empty as the students boycott class for his memorial service. Two thousand mourners file past the coffin in Brown Chapel where a banner reads, "Racism killed our brother." In Marion, where 400 manage to jam themselves inside Zion church for Jackson's service and 600 wait outside in the rain, Dr. King asks: "Who killed him?"

“He was murdered by the brutality of every sheriff who practiced lawlessness in the name of law. He was murdered by the irresponsibility of every politician from governors on down who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. He was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that is willing to spend millions of dollars a day to defend freedom in Vietnam but cannot protect the rights of its citizens at home. ... And he was murdered by the cowardice of every Negro who passively accepts the evils of segregation and stands on the sidelines in the struggle for justice” (Tension 6-7).

It wasn't until 2007, 42 years after Jackson’s death, that [James] Fowler was arrested and charged with first and second degree murder. Fowler initially maintained that he had acted to defend himself, but eventually accepted a plea bargain for misdemeanor manslaughter. He received a six-month jail sentence, but served only five months and was released in July 2011 because of health problems. In 2011, the FBI began investigating Fowler’s role in the 1966 death of Nathan Johnson, another black man, who Fowler had fatally shot after he stopped Johnson for suspicion of drunk driving. Fowler died of pancreatic cancer on July 5, 2015 at the age of 81 (Jimmie Biography 4).

ATLANTA: Dr. King endorses Bevel's proposal for a march from Selma to Montgomery. But SNCC opposes the SCLC plan. They see it as a dangerous grandstand play by King that will do nothing for the local people. John Lewis disagrees, "I knew the feelings that were out there on the streets. The people of Selma were hurting. They were angry. They needed to march. It didn't matter to me who led it. They needed to march. Lewis stands alone and is outvoted. The SNCC meeting does agree that SNCC members can participate in the march as individuals, but not as SNCC representatives. SNCC sends a letter to King stating: We strongly believe that the objectives of the march do not justify the dangers ... consequently [SNCC] will only live up to those minimal commitments ... to provide radios and cars, ... and nothing beyond that (Tension 8).


Works cited:

“Jimmie Lee Jackson.” Teaching Tolerance. Web. https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-r...

“Jimmie Lee Jackson Biography.” The Biography.com. Web. https://www.biography.com/people/jimm...

Jones, Ryan M. “Who Mourns for Jimmie Lee Jackson?” National Civil Rights Museum. Web. https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/new...

“The Shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Tension Escalates.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- Selma Voting Rights Movement -- Escalating Brutality

Arrival of the state troopers greatly escalates tension. Meeting with his Executive Staff in Atlanta, Dr. King decides that it's time for him to call attention to the continuing denial of Black voting rights by going to jail in Selma. From his jail cell, he intends to issue a "Letter from a Selma Jail" that he hopes will have an effect similar to that of his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Up to now, SCLC senior staff have carefully maneuvered to avoid any risk of King being arrested. Changing that policy is a complex strategic decision. He is the prime symbol of Black resistance to white-supremacy and the top target of every racist hate group and fanatic. Clark's deputies are known for their vicious brutality toward Blacks, and past history gives them scant reason to fear any consequences for whatever they might do to a prisoner in their custody. Behind bars, King will be vulnerable to any "lone-gunman" or "crazed assassin" who "mysteriously" finds his way into the Dallas County jail. Moreover, while King is incarcerated, he cannot travel around the country speaking to mass audiences and the national media about the issue of voting rights. Nor can he continue to raise the huge amounts of bail bond money required to keep the Selma campaign going. The Selma marchers are willing to face arrest because they trust that SCLC will bail them out, but if those funds dry up so will the number of protesters.

… Monday, February 1, is the fifth anniversary of the historic Greensboro Sit-In. Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy lead 260 marchers out of Brown Chapel. Two-by-two they head for the courthouse. As usual, Chief Baker halts the line and orders them to break up into small groups. This time they refuse. As American citizens they have a right to peacefully assemble and march in protest. They know that Baker will arrest them, putting them in the Selma city jail which is run by Baker's police, rather than the county jail which is staffed by Clark's deputies. Most of the marchers are bailed out by SCLC, but as planned, King and Abernathy refuse to post bond and they end up sharing a cell …

…

… Deep in the dingy cell block, King talks quietly with the regular prisoners who tell him their stories of southern injustice. One has been waiting two years for trial with no opportunity for bail. Another was jailed after being beaten by cops on the street. Now 27 months later he has still not been told the charges against him. Others have similar tales. King is saddened, but not surprised. Jails all over the Deep South are the same, and until Blacks gain the vote and enough political power to challenge reigning sheriffs and mayors, nothing is going to change.

…

Students march out of Morning Star Baptist Church in Marion to support voting rights for their parents. A state trooper tells SCLC organizer James Orange, "Sing one more freedom song and you're under arrest." The singing continues and 500 are busted. The little county lockup can't hold more than half a dozen prisoners, so they are crammed into a bare concrete stockade and forced to drink from cattle-troughs. After work, some 200 parents assemble at the church and march to protest the brutal conditions inflicted on their children. They too are arrested.

… The next day, 520 more are sent to jail in Selma, and on Wednesday, another 300 for defying a new injunction issued by Judge Hare forbidding demonstrations outside the courthouse. The total number of arrests in Selma since January 18 is now more than 1,800.

In Selma the cells are full and the small rural lockups are jammed beyond capacity. As arrests mount, prisoners are shuttled to jails and chain-gang camps all over the region. At Camp Selma, the beds are removed so that prisoners have to sleep on the cold concrete floor. They are made to drink from a common tub of water and the single toilet is clogged.

...

From his jail cell, Dr. King issues "Letter from a Selma Jail." SCLC publishes it as a full page ad in the New York Times and Freedom Movement supporters circulate it, but it fails to generate the impact of his earlier "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

President Johnson’s attention is on America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. Public attention is more focused on events in Selma. Johnson is forced to issue a statement about voting rights for black Americans.

[All Americans] should be indignant when one American is denied the right to vote. The loss of that right to a single citizen undermines the freedom of every citizen. This is why all of us should be concerned with the efforts of our fellow Americans to register to vote in Alabama. ... I intend to see that that right is secured for all our citizens.

Meanwhile, under pressure from the Department of Justice and white moderates in Selma who hope that concessions will weaken or divert the movement, Judge Thomas issues a new order on Thursday morning requiring the Dallas County registrars to stop using the literacy test. It also prohibits them from rejecting Blacks for minor spelling errors on their application. He further mandates that they actually process at least 100 applications on each of the two days per month that registration is open. This represents a slight improvement over his previous order that merely allowed 100 Blacks to wait in the alley without being arrested. But he does not order that any Blacks actually be added to the voter rolls. Nor does he mandate any increase in the number of registration days. Even if all 100 applicants are added to the rolls on each of those two days per month — which no one believes will happen — that's only 200 per month and there are 15,000 unregistered Blacks in Dallas County. Moreover, his ruling still only applies to this single county and nowhere else in Alabama (Letter 1-6).

Whenever possible, Freedom Movement arrestees are kept segregated from the regular prisoners so as not to contaminate the inmates with dangerous ideas such as speedy-trials, right to an attorney, racially-unbiased justice, and other such "subversive" notions. The main exception to this rule is that white civil rights workers are sometimes locked in with white prisoners who are encouraged by the guards to show these "race traitors" the error of their ways with a thorough beating. For their part, the deputies — all white, of course — inflict their own physical abuse on "uppity" Blacks who are rebelling against the sacred "southern way of life."

Jail food is so foul it's inedible until hunger forces inmates to swallow it down while trying not to gag. Though the authorities allocate a daily budget to feed each prisoner, it's up to the jailers to spend the money as they see fit — and they get to pocket whatever is left over. The result is a salt-encrusted diet of black-eyed peas or lima beans contaminated by roaches, a square of crumbly cornbread, acrid black coffee, and on special occasions, grits or a boiled chicken neck. But small as the expenditures are, as the number of prisoners swells, so too do the costs of feeding and guarding them, thereby diminishing the "surplus" funds that deputies and guards are accustomed to skimming off the top.

Inside the jammed cells, Movement prisoners endure uncertainty, boredom, rats, roaches, clogged toilets, inedible food, lack of showers, sweltering heat, and freezing cold. Freedom songs and spontaneous group prayer bolster their courage and spirit. When not singing or praying there is talk. The boys talk about girls (and sex), and the girls talk about boys (and sex). There are also ongoing discussions and debates about the Movement, strategy, tactics, nonviolence, Black history, economics, civics, politics, philosophy, and a universe of other subjects. Some of the prisoners are college graduates or undergrads, some are still in segregated Colored schools where many topics are forbidden and cannot be spoken of openly, and some have had little or no formal education at all, though they are well- schooled in the brutal realities of white-supremacy and Black exploitation. Each person teaches what they know, and soaks up new knowledge from everyone else. The jam-packed cells become intellectual pressure-cookers where new ideas, new concepts, and new contexts ferment, bubble, and fume. In later years, some of the young students tell interviewers that it was this jailhouse university that inspired them to find their way to college, something they had not previously thought might apply to themselves (Bound 1-3).

WASHINGTON: On Tuesday, February 9, Dr. King travels to Washington to meet with Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and briefly with President Johnson. LBJ is still preoccupied with Vietnam, but the Selma campaign is generating intense public and congressional pressure to do something about Black voting rights. He tells King that he will soon send legislation addressing the issue to Congress — though what it will consist of is not clear.

SELMA: Sacrifice and suffering are beginning to wear down the Black community. Some are becoming discouraged and weary after weeks of futile struggle. Adults and children are enduring arrest after arrest and longer sojourns in dreary cells, parents are being fired from jobs and families evicted from their shacks. The weather is wet and cold and, in too many homes, there's scant funds for food and even less for heat. And no one is being registered to vote. No one is being registered to vote, no victories are in sight, not even small ones such as a neighbor or relative achieving recognition as a citizen-voter

On the white side, the costs of policing marches, arresting thousands of demonstrators, and feeding, guarding, and transporting hundreds of prisoners is bankrupting Dallas County. Deputies and jailors are personally feeling the effects as they're forced to spend money on feeding prisoners that normally would find its way into their personal pockets as traditional perks of office. They are not amused.

On Wednesday, February 10, some 160 students march to the courthouse carrying hand-lettered signs reading "Let Our Parents Vote," "Wallace Must Go," and "Jim Clark is a Cracker." By now, the courthouse protests have become somewhat routine; everyone knows what to expect, and with so many of the SCLC and SNCC staff either in jail or working in the outlying counties, the students are organizing and leading their own marches. But this time is different.

"Move out!" Clark shouts, and his deputies and possemen herd the students — some as young as nine — down Alabama Avenue toward the jail. They assume they're being arrested as usual. But instead of entering the jail, the cops force them to start running. "You wanted to march, didn't you? March, dammit, march!" shout the deputies as they jab and poke with their clubs. Clark rides along in his car as the young protesters are forced to run down Water Street and then out on lonely, isolated River Road bordering the Alabama River sloughs and bogs. Clubs strike those not moving fast enough and the searing pain of the possemen's electric cattle-prods burn through their winter clothes. Run! Run! Faster! Faster!

At the creek bridge, sheriffs use their cars to block the road so that reporters and photographers back at the courthouse — who were taken by surprise by Clark's switch — cannot catch up. A fifteen-year-old boy pants to a guard, "God sees you." The deputy smashes him in the mouth with his hardwood club. Some of the students collapse, vomiting, and shaking. They are beaten with clubs to keep them moving until they can run no more. Some bolt, or are driven, into the bogs, others manage to escape to a Black-owned farm.

Clark returns to the courthouse. With a smirk and wink, he tells reporters that the student prisoners "escaped" his custody. SNCC Chairman John Lewis writes out a statement on a scrap of paper:

“This is one more example of the inhuman, animal-like treatment of the Negro people of Selma, Alabama. This nation has always come to the aid of people in foreign lands who are gripped by a reign of tyranny. Can this nation do less for the people of Selma?”

Clark's brutal treatment of the Black community's children re-energizes the movement which had been sagging under the weight of march after march, arrest after arrest, all for little result. The next day, Thursday, more than 400 adults and students march to the courthouse in a revitalized show of strength. The wave of adverse publicity caused by Clark's cruelty temporarily gives Wilson Baker the upper hand in the ongoing struggle between them, so Baker is able to apply his "kill 'em with kindness" strategy. Hare's injunction is not enforced, and no one is arrested or beaten. Clark and Hare are furious (Clubs 1-6).

Arrests continue to mount, people continue to lose their jobs, and the endurance of Selma's Black community is sorely tested. Tension and disagreement among SCLC, SNCC, and DCVL leaders erupt into dispute. The immediate issue is how to respond to the minimal concessions contained in Judge Thomas order of February 4th … Under the new Thomas ruling, on the two days per month the Registration office is open Blacks will be allowed to fill out the voter application in the order their names are listed in “an appearance book” without having to wait all day in the alley.

…

DCVL argues that even though the Thomas order does not apply to any other county in the state, it should be characterized as a small, encouraging, partial victory to raise spirits. And its procedures should be followed in the hope of getting at least some Black voters added to the rolls.

…

On Monday, February 15, voter registration offices open for applications. The line of waiting applicants stretches for blocks in the dank February cold. Over the course of the day, almost 100 who have low numbers in the appearance book are allowed to fill out voter applications, some 600 more sign the book for a chance to apply in the future. When school ends in the afternoon, the teachers join the end of the queue, and 800 students march by to honor the adults.

…

Later that evening, the turnout for the nightly mass meeting at Brown Chapel is large. Large and frustrated. Despite marches, arrests, court orders, and over a thousand appearance book signatures, only a trickle of Blacks have actually been registered to vote. Hosea Williams tells them that despite the huge number of Blacks who lined up at the courthouse that day, "We're just about as far from freedom tonight as we were last night." (Holding 1-6).

The sight of 1,500 Blacks freely marching to the courthouse in Selma without arrest or retribution outrages Hare, Clark, and the other hard-line segregationists. The White Citizens Council runs a full-page ad in the Selma Times-Journal equating the Civil Rights Act with Communism, … a sign that the political tide is swinging back toward Hare and Clark.

…

The focus is now on adding new signatures to the appearance book rather than lining up en masse day after day at the Dallas County courthouse. On Tuesday, February 16th, John Lewis of SNCC and C.T. Vivian of SCLC lead a small band of those who have not yet signed the book to add their names. …A cold rain is falling, and Vivian leads the little group to the Alabama Street entrance where an overhang provides some shelter. Sheriff Clark bars the door, allowing only a few at a time inside. Citing Judge Hare's injunction, Clark orders the remainder to leave. C.T. confronts him face to face, "You're a racist the same way Hitler was a racist!" Deputies push them off the steps with their clubs, knocking several people to the pavement. Vivian leads them back to the door. They demand to be let in out of the rain. A deputy smashes his fist into C.T's face, sending him reeling back with blood flowing from his mouth. Then they drag him off to jail.

At the mass meeting on Wednesday night, DCVL leader Rev. Reese calls for an economic boycott of white stores owned by, or employing, members of Clark's posse. Dr. King, ill with a viral fever, hoarsely tells the crowd, "Selma still isn't right! ... It may well be we might have to march out of this church at night..."

By now, most of those in Brown Chapel are veterans of direct action and they are grimly aware of what a night march implies. Night marches allow adults with jobs to participate after work which increases numbers and political impact. But night marches are dangerous because Klansmen, police, and possemen can attack under cover of darkness with little risk of being identified. Even with flash bulbs and portable spotlights, the range of media cameras is sharply curtailed and it's easy for the cops to keep reporters far enough away so that nothing is recorded on film (Shooting 1-2).


Works cited:

“Bound in Jail.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Clubs and Cattle Prods.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Holding On and Pushing Forward.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights

Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Letter From a Selma Jail.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The Shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- Selma Voting Rights Movement -- Clash of Wills

Sheriff Clark, his deputies, and his posse bar the main courthouse entrance on Alabama Avenue and herd the Blacks into a back alley out of sight (local whites, of course, are freely allowed in through the front door). In the alley, Blacks wait all day for a chance to fill out the voter application and take the literacy test. … the Registrar is "too busy" for any Blacks to apply …

Meanwhile, integration teams test facilities in downtown. Everyone is served in compliance with the Civil Rights Act. King, Shuttlesworth, and other Black leaders check in for a night at the ornate, historically "white-only," Hotel Albert. While talking in the lobby with Dorothy Cotton, Dr. King is knocked to the floor and kicked by a leader of the National States Rights Party who is quickly arrested by Wilson Baker.

The next day, Tuesday, January 19, Black voter applicants and student supporters return to the courthouse even though the registration office is closed and won't open again for two weeks. This time they are not taken by surprise, and many refuse orders to wait in the back alley — they insist on using the front door on Alabama Avenue. First in line and first to be arrested are Hosea Williams of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC. Amelia Boynton [a registered voter] is again present to vouch [for the applicants]. Sheriff Clark grabs her by the neck and manhandles her into a police car. Clark's deputies surround those trying to use the main entrance. They use their electric cattle-prods to herd everyone down Alabama Avenue toward the county jail. Among them is 3rd-grader Sheyann Webb (age 8), who later recalls:

I was the youngest, certainly the smallest, of the "regulars" in the demonstrations. ... I was with Mrs. Margaret Moore again.. ... Deputies with sticks and those long cattle prods moved toward us. I squeezed tight on Mrs. Moore's hand; there was a sudden urge to back away, even turn and run. Somebody shouted, "Y'all are under arrest!" I looked up at Mrs. Moore, "Me, too? Are they arrestin' me?" "Don't be scared," she said. "Don't let go of my hand." I saw some of them deputies push our people, saw some of them use the cattle prods and saw men and women jump when the electric ends touched against their bodies. ... My toes were stepped on and I lost my balance several times as we were wedged together. Then they ... began marching us down Alabama Avenue, back toward the [county jail]. I was now holding onto Mrs. Moore with both of my hands, watching so I wouldn't get touched with one of the prods. We were being moved like cattle. ... [At the jail] an officer came up to me and asked why I was there. "To be free," I said.

Sheyann is released and allowed to return home, but more than 60 others are charged. Lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund manage to get them released pending trial in time to attend the evening mass meeting where they are honored as heroes.

The following day, Wednesday, January 20, applicants and supporters march to the courthouse in three sequential waves, each one carefully broken into small groups to conform to Baker's decree forbidding "parades." They insist on using the Alabama Street entrance and are all arrested by Jim Clark. … By the end of this third day, some 225 have been incarcerated. A sheriff's deputy cracks wise, "Jim Clark 225, Martin Luther Coon, zero!"

…

On this day when Black citizens in Selma — many of them combat veterans of World War II and Korea — are being denied not only the right to vote but their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, President Johnson is inaugurated in Washington before a huge throng of supporters.

…

… Johnson's speech contains only a single, vaguely worded, platitude alluding to racial justice. Though many Black leaders and some civil rights activists attend inaugural balls and events, Dr. King is not among them. He has declined all inaugural invitations and remains in Selma (Marching 2-4).

In the South, teachers have no unions to protect them. Black teachers can be fired at will by white school boards, and the White Citizens Council stands ever vigilant to root out "agitators" and "trouble-makers." In many southern states, membership in the NAACP is legal grounds for immediate, mandatory dismissal, as is any other form of civil rights activity — or even just trying to register to vote. As a result, while many Black teachers clandestinely support the Freedom Movement, few are willing to sacrifice their financial security by risking any sort of public participation.

But in Selma, a few school teachers such as Margaret Moore and Rev. F.D. Reese defy the school board and Citizens Council by assuming leadership roles. Rev. Reese is both a teacher at Hudson High School and President of the Dallas County Voter's League (DCVL) which becomes the major Selma freedom organization after Alabama suppresses the NAACP in 1956. As the 1965 voting rights campaign intensifies with nightly mass meetings, marches to the courthouse, and students walking out of school to face arrest, Reese, Moore and a few others begin organizing and mobilizing the Black teachers. They challenge their colleagues, "How can we teach American civics if we ourselves cannot vote?" One by one, teachers sign a pledge that they will go together to the courthouse and attempt to register as a group.

Friday, January 22, is the day. After school they gather at Clark Elementary School in their Sunday best — the women in hats, gloves, and high-heels, the men in somber suits. Reese takes roll of those who have promised to march. They are all present. They know they not only risk losing their jobs, they risk arrest — hundreds have already been jailed for trying to register to vote.

Reverend Reese commented: “The sheriff will think twice about mistreating you. You are teachers in the public school system of the state of Alabama, but you can't vote. We're going to see about that today. If they put us in jail, there won't be anybody to teach the children. [Clark] knows if they're not in school, then they'll be out in the streets.”

Some of the teachers hold up a toothbrush, a visible symbol of their willingness to face jail. Solemnly, silently, 110 of them — almost every Black teacher in Selma — march to the courthouse in small groups as required by Baker. Nowhere in the South, not ever, not in Nashville, not in Albany or Birmingham, not in Durham, Jackson, or St. Augustine have teachers publicly marched as teachers.

Again, Reverend Reese:

Parents came out of their simple dwellings to encourage us. Old ladies and old men walked slowly from inside their homes, and stood in front yards and near the sidewalk. The faces of men and women who had, due to their will power and faith, survived under one of the most oppressive and discriminatory systems in a Southern town met our eyes. It is difficult to say to whom this march meant the most, the teachers or the observers. The students who were home from school by this time cheered with delight as the rhythm of our footsteps signaled our intention to execute the plan. Black mothers held their babies and watched with great satisfaction as we marched toward the courthouse. Many Black bystanders in the projects were weeping and sobbing openly as we passed by their homes. They were outwardly shaken by the sound of our footsteps, knowing the teachers were not going to turn around. Many of the weeping bystanders had been arrested on numerous occasions during the past 12 to 18 months, while the teachers had only been exposed to minimal discomforts and abuses.

At the courthouse, Clark and his deputies wait. They wear pistols on sagging belts and carry cattle prods and hardwood billy clubs which they smack against their palms in anticipation. At 3:30 in the afternoon the first group approaches. Led by Reese, they walk two-by-two up the steps of the Alabama Avenue entrance. They will not go into the back alley; they will enter by the front or not at all. As each group arrives, the line snaking down the street grows longer. School Superintendent J.A. Pickard, and Edgar Stewart the School Board president (and a former FBI agent) confront them — the Registrar's is office closed, their request to register after class is denied. Go home.

Reese: We refused to move. After one minute or so the sheriff took it upon himself to move us. He drew back and began jabbing me and Durgan in the stomach. The deputies immediately imitated the sheriff's behavior. They began jabbing other teachers and wildly pushing us down the concrete steps. We began to fall back like bowling pins. The teachers grunted, bent over involuntarily as the blows from the clubs registered, and breathed heavily while falling. The strikes from the billy clubs stung. No mercy was shown to the women. The teachers had no weapons and desired none. Determination and will power were our weapons of choice. Clark and his men successfully cleared the front of the courthouse of marchers from the top step to the bottom.

With help from SCLC field secretary "Big Lester" Hankerson, Reese reforms the line and leads them back up the steps to the doors. Again the cops drive them down. Again they reform and rise up to the doors that are barred against them.

Clark threatens to arrest them all, but wiser heads prevail. The Circuit Solicitor pulls him inside and can be seen through the glass speaking urgently to him. Until now, only a few hundred Black students have participated in the protests, but if the Black teachers are all in jail, come Monday there could be thousands in the streets. Clark orders the teachers shoved back down the steps a third time. This time, Reese and SCLC leader Andrew Young decide the point has been made. Instead of trying again, the teachers march in their small groups back to Brown Chapel where a throng of their students wait to greet them.

Sheyann Webb commented: Most of us had viewed the educators as stodgy old people, classic examples of true "Uncle Toms." But that wasn't the opinion that day. I looked about me and saw scores of other children running about the [Carver Housing Project] shouting the news that Mr. Somebody or Old Mrs. Somebody was marching. Could you believe it?

Some little boys came running down the street yelling that they were coming back. Me and Rachel [West] went into the church which was packed with people. We waited and when the teachers began coming in everybody in there just stood up and applauded. Then somebody started to sing ... first one song and then another, as they walked in. And they were all smiling; kids were shaking hands with their teachers and hugging them. I had never seen anything like that before ...

Some of the women teachers were crying, they were so elated. Mrs. Bright spotted me, and rushed forward, hugging me. She appeared to be in a mood of triumph. She laughed, she wiped at her eyes, she hugged me again. I remember she said something about her feet being tired, and I said, "You did real good" (Teachers 1-5).

Over the weekend, U.S District Judge Daniel Thomas in Mobile — a native Alabamian with scant sympathy for Black civil rights — issues rules that permit Clark to continue forcing Black voter applicants to line up in the alley, but he requires that at least 100 must be permitted to wait without being arrested. On Monday, January 25, Dr. King leads marchers to the courthouse where they line up two-by-two as ordered by Thomas. Soon the line grows to 250 or more. Clark orders that all marchers in excess of 100 be dispersed. SNCC worker Willie McRae disputes this interpretation of the judge's ruling and is immediately arrested. He goes limp, and is dragged off to a police car.

Some of the Black voter applicants turn to see what is going on. Sheriff Clark strides down the sidewalk forcing them back into line. One of them is Annie Lee Cooper who, along with a co-worker, was fired from her job at Dunn's Rest Home after they tried to register back in October 1963. When their boss not only terminated them but subjected them to insult and physical abuse, 38 of their fellow workers — Black women all — walked off the job in protest. They too were fired and their photos circulated among potential white employers. Clark twists Cooper's arm and shoves her hard; she hauls off and slugs him with her fist. He is driven to his knees and she hits him again.

Annie Cooper recalled: I saw Jim Clark fling Mrs. Boynton around like a leaf a day or two before. Clark was larger than I on the outside, but I was larger than he on the inside. The altercation started. ... Jim Clark could not take me down alone. The town sheriff and I were going at it blow for blow, punch for punch, and lick for lick, with our fists. It was a plain old street brawl. Suddenly he cried out to his deputies: "Don'y' an see this nigger woman beatin' me? Do some'um." At the urging of the sheriff the others came to his aid. All four of them closed in on me.

Clark took his nightstick and prepared to land a blow. Before he knew it, I had his arm and held it back with a tight grip. Clark brought his billy club over my face. He managed to put enough power in his swing to graze me across the upper part of my eye with the nightstick. The blow stung and was hard enough to draw blood. It struck me over my eye. I was fiercely holding his hand so he could not strike me again. I heard Dr. King urging the marchers to stay calm. He was afraid the marchers were going to turn violent while watching the Policemen attack me. It was four against one. It took everything each of the four had to manhandle me.

The deputies wrestled me down onto the pavement, as the crowd looked on. Clark planted his knee in my stomach, as the deputies had me on my back. That was the only way he could have gotten his knee in my stomach. He stood no chance of wrestling me to the ground alone. The deputies rolled me over on my stomach and handcuffed my hands behind my back. They lifted me to my feet and took me to the paddy-wagon. I was taken through an alley in town. While walking through the alley, Clark took his billy club and landed a blow on my head. It was a fierce lick. The blow cracked my skull. ...

I remained locked up in the town jail the rest of the day. About 11 pm one of the deputies came to my cell. Jim Clark was nearby sleeping off his drunk. He was a heavy drinker. The deputy said: "I'm going to let you go before Sheriff Clark wakes up in a drunken stupor and decides to kill you."

Though slugging Clark is a violation of nonviolent discipline, no one in the Freedom Movement holds it against her. Everyone knows Annie Cooper's history of courageous struggle, and behind their impassive faces, everyone on the line is thrilled to see her strike back at the hated sheriff. Most wish they had done it themselves. But the savage retaliation inflicted upon her makes self-evident the tactical necessity of continued nonviolence. And no one can register to vote from a jail cell — if people are going to be arrested it has to be for trying to register. …

…

… on Tuesday and Wednesday there are more mass arrests at the courthouse as Clark enforces his no-more-than-100 interpretation of the judge's order. Among those arrested are SNCC members John Lewis, Willie Emma Scott, Eugene Rouse, Willie McRae, Stanley Wise, Larry Fox, Joyce Brown, Frank Soracco, and Stokely Carmichael. With the crowds growing larger, Clark calls for reinforcements and Governor Wallace dispatches some 50 Alabama State Troopers under the personal command of Alabama Director of Public Safety "Colonel" Al Lingo. The troopers, and Lingo personally, are notoriously hostile to Blacks and the Freedom Movement. The Selma Times Journal reports that in the week since the protests started on January 18 only 40 Blacks have been admitted to the Dallas County courthouse to fill out the voter application and take the literacy test. None have been added to the voter rolls (Annie 1-5).


Works cited:

“Annie Cooper and Sheriff Clark.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Marching to the Courthouse.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The Teachers March.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

Civil Rights Events -- Selma Voting Rights Movement -- Getting Started

Despite years of Freedom Movement struggle, suffering, and sacrifice, few Black voters have been added to voting rolls in the Deep South. Blacks who try to register face legal barriers, so-called "literacy tests," terrorism, economic retaliation, and police harassment. By the end of Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, after lynchings, shootings, beatings, jailings, evictions, and firings, only 1,600 new voters have been registered in that state — barely .004 of the unregistered Blacks.

While Blacks have deep and bitter knowledge about denial of voting rights, it is only in the aftermath of Freedom Summer, the lynching of Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman, and the MFDP Challenge to Democratic Convention that awareness of this as a national issue has begun to slowly emerge among white northerners. (And there is little appreciation that similar issues apply to Latinos in the Southwest, and Native Americans in many areas.)

So far as the Johnson administration is concerned, voting rights are not on the agenda for now. After receiving the Nobel Prize, Dr. King meets with the president in December of 1964. Johnson assures King that he'll get around to Black voting rights someday, but not in 1965. LBJ tells King that 1965 is to be the year of "Great Society," and "War on Poverty" legislation — not civil rights. "Martin," he says, "you're right about [voting rights]. I'm going to do it eventually, but I can't get a voting rights bill through in this session of Congress" (Situation 1).

In Selma, Alabama, the seat of Dallas County, in the heart of the state’s black belt (agriculturally and racially speaking), attempts to register black residents to vote have been almost entirely thwarted. “In Dallas County, where SNCC organizers Bernard and Colia Lafayette had started a voter-registration project back in early 1963, no more than 100 new Black voters have been added after two hard years. As 1964 ends, total Black registration in Dallas County is just 335, only 2% of the 15,000 who are eligible” (Black Belt 1).

Passage of the Civil Rights Bill in July 1964 brought hope to Dallas County. It is swiftly dashed.

On Saturday, July 4, four Black members of the literacy project — Silas Norman, Karen House, Carol Lawson and James Wiley — attempt to implement the new law by desegregating [in Selma] the Thirsty Boy drive-in. A crowd of whites attack them, and they are arrested for "Trespass." At the movie theater, Black students come down from the "Colored" balcony to the white-only main floor. They are also attacked and beaten by whites. The cops close the theater — there will be no integration in Selma, no matter what some federal law in Washington says.

Sunday evening there is a large mass meeting — the first big turnout in months. Sheriff Clark declares the meeting a "riot." Fifty deputies and possemen attack with clubs and tear gas. Monday, July 6, is one of the two monthly voter registration days. SNCC Chairman John Lewis leads a column of voter applicants to the Courthouse. They hope the new law will offer them some protection, but Clark herds 50 them into an alley and places them under arrest. As they are marched through the downtown streets to the county jail, the deputies and possemen jab them with clubs and burn them with cattle prods.

On July 9, Judge James Hare issues an injunction forbidding any gathering of three or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL [Dallas County Voter’s League] as organizations, or with the involvement of 41 named leaders including the SNCC organizers, the Boyntons, Marie Foster, Rev. L.L. Anderson, Rev. F.D. Reese, and others. In essence, this injunction makes it illegal to even talk to more than two people at a time about civil rights or voter registration in Selma Alabama. And because it is an injunction rather than a law, Judge Hare can jail anyone who — in his sole opinion — violates it. And he can do so without the fuss, bother, and expense of a jury trial.

Activists and their attorneys file appeals. They know that on some bright day in the distant future, the blatantly unconstitutional order will eventually be overturned by a higher court. But here and now it paralyzes the Movement. Neither DCVL nor SNCC have the resources — human, financial, legal — to defy the injunction with large-scale civil disobedience. The weekly mass meetings are halted — for the remainder of 1964 there are no public Movement events in Selma, Alabama. The bravest of the local DCVL leaders continue to meet clandestinely; SNCC organizing is driven deep underground, and a pall of discouragement saps voter registration attempts (Selma Injunction 1-2).

SNCC had been the primary civil rights organization in Selma that had worked with the local Dallas County Voter's League (DCVL) in 1963 and 1964. Most of SNCC resources — organizers, money, leadership, focus — however, had been concentrated in Mississippi, first for the Summer Project and then for the MFDP Congressional Challenge.

Back in September of 1963, when four young girls were killed in the Birmingham bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church, Diane Nash Bevel and her husband James Bevel drew up a "Proposal for Action in Montgomery" — a plan for a massive direct action assault on denial of voting rights.

…

Their draft plan called for building and training a nonviolent army 20-40,000 strong who would engage in large-scale civil disobedience by blocking roads, airports, and government buildings to demand the removal of Governor Wallace and the immediate registration of every Alabama citizen over the age of 21. When she presents the idea to Dr. King, she tells him, "... you can tell people not to fight only if you offer them a way by which justice can be served without violence." Rev. C.T. Vivian and SNCC & CORE activists support the idea, but King and most of his other advisors do not consider it feasible.

A month later, Diane and James Bevel again raise the plan, later called the "Alabama Project," at an SCLC board meeting. The general concept of some kind of "March on Montgomery" some time in the future is supported, but no date is set, no specific plans are made, and there is no consensus around the idea of militant direct action and massive civil disobedience. Instead, SCLC's attention is focused on continuing the struggle in Birmingham and the situation in Danville VA (Alabama Project 1-2).

Ultimately, the “Alabama Project” idea is put on the shelf until after the 1964 Presidential Election.

In November 1964, with the Civil Rights Act passed and Goldwater defeated, the Bevels again raise the "Alabama Project," arguing that the time has come to move on voting rights — which cannot be won without national legislation that eliminates "literacy tests" and strips power from county registrars. Such legislation, they argue, can only be won through mass action in the streets (Alabama Project 4).

Rev. F.D. Reese of the Dallas County Voter’s League (DCVL) recalled: “In late 1964, SNCC's finances were dwindling. This organization was also beginning to experience internal differences regarding philosophies. The organization's effectiveness was waning in Dallas County. ... Those of us who had the vision knew the Movement in Dallas County had to be elevated to another level.” The DCVL leadership decided to “formally invited SCLC and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma.”

DCVL becomes the SCLC affiliate in Selma and SCLC commits to a voting rights campaign in Alabama with an initial focus on Selma and then expanding into rural Black Belt counties.

…

Saturday, January 2, 1965, is set as the date for defying the injunction and commencing a massive direct action campaign. There are no illusions. Selma, Dallas County, and the Alabama Black Belt are bastions of white-supremacy and violent resistance to Black aspirations. Everyone understands that when you demand the right to vote in Alabama you put your life — and the lives of those who join you — on the line (Alabama Project 5).

Major differences now separate the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Both nationally and in Selma, relations between SNCC and SCLC are tense. SNCC staff have been working and organizing in Selma for two years, enduring hardship, danger, brutality, and jail to slowly build an organizational foundation. They deeply resent SCLC coming in to use that foundation for a kind of large-scale mobilization that they distrust. SCLC counters that Selma's local leaders have asked for their help because the injunction has halted progress for six months.

Once close allies in the southern struggle, the two organizations are now on divergent paths. Dr. King and SCLC are still deeply committed to nonviolence, integration, multiracial activism, and appeals to the conscience of the nation. But after years of liberal indifference, federal inaction, and political betrayal, many in SNCC now question, and in some cases explicitly reject, some or all of those concepts.

SNCC is oriented toward building grassroots community organizations led by those at the bottom of society. Rather than seeing themselves as leaders, SNCC field secretaries view themselves as community organizers empowering local people to take control over their own lives. For its part, SCLC maintains that the community is already organized around the Black church, an institution that has sustained and shepherded Blacks through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, two world wars, and the modern era of school desegregation and bus boycotts. As they see it, Black ministers are, and always have been, the accepted community heads, and that the focus should be on moving those churches and preachers into social-political action. SNCC argues back that the ministers and congregation leaders are primarily concerned with issues affecting the Black elite and they do little for the sharecroppers, maids, and laborers who fill the pews. SCLC responds that splitting Black communities into rival camps weakens everyone and aids no one.

SNCC field secretaries toil anonymously in the most dangerous areas of the South with little or no media coverage or recognition, and they deeply resent the flood of publicity and adulation bestowed on Dr. King when he visits locales where they have been working for years. Some SNCC members express that bitterness by referring to him in a mocking tone as "De Lawd."

Though King accepts such derision with easy grace, other SCLC leaders and staff bristle with hostility. In SNCC's view, local Black communities can provide their own leaders and that media-centric, "big-name" outsiders like King not only hinder that process but are unnecessary. To SCLC, nationally-recognized spokesmen who can articulate the Freedom Movement to the world are essential, and some openly scoff at what they see as SNCC's over-idealization of local activism, noting that whenever King speaks in a Black community it is those very same local people who flood the aisles to overflowing.

In SCLC's view, the only way to substantially change the lives of those at the bottom of society is to win transformative national legislation like the Civil Rights Act. SNCC sees little value in federal laws that are weakly enforced and that, in any case, do not even attempt to address the grinding poverty of the great majority of the Black population. …

…

In order to win legislation at the national level, SCLC has to influence and maintain ties with the Johnson administration and the northern-liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But LBJ and those same liberals betrayed the MFDP at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City and SNCC wants nothing more to do with them. Instead, they have turned toward building independent Black-led political organizations outside the Democratic Party … (SCLC 1-3).

On December 28, Dr. King convenes a … meeting where he presents the SCLC plan, now called the "Project for an Alabama Political Freedom Movement." The proposal is to break the Selma injunction on January 2, engage in mass action and voter registration in Dallas County, and then spread out into the rural counties of the Alabama Black Belt. By spring, the campaign is to evolve into a freedom registration and freedom ballot campaign similar to what SNCC/COFO organized in Mississippi, culminating on May 4 in a direct action and legal challenge to the seating of the entire Alabama state legislature on grounds similar to those of the MFDP Congressional Challenge.

Bob Moses and Ivanhoe Donaldson of SNCC argue against the SCLC proposal. Instead, they urge support for the MFDP congressional challenge. But local leaders and activists from Selma and elsewhere in Alabama strongly endorse SCLC's plan and commit themselves to it. The ministers of Brown Chapel, Tabernacle, and First Baptist courageously pledge their churches for meeting space in defiance of the injunction.

…

Inside city hall and over at the county courthouse, the white power-structure cannot agree on how to handle the direct action campaign that SCLC has just publicly announced. Newly elected Mayor Smitherman, a local refrigerator salesman, is a "moderate" segregationist. He hopes to attract northern business investment — Hammermill Paper of Pennsylvania is considering Selma as the location for a big new plant, but they will shy away if "racial troubles" shine a spotlight of negative media on the town. Smitherman has appointed veteran lawman Wilson Baker to head the city's 30-man police force. They and their supporters believe that the most effective method of countering civil rights protests (and avoiding bad press) is to "kill 'em with kindness" as Police Chief Laurie Pritchett did in Albany GA.

Short-tempered Sheriff Jim Clark and arch-segregationist Judge Hare furiously disagree. They and their hard-line, white-supremacy faction are committed to maintaining southern apartheid through brutal repression. As they see it, billy-clubs, electric cattle-prods, whips, jail cells, and charging horses, are what is needed to keep the Coloreds in line — and if Yankee business interests don't like it, they can take their investments elsewhere.

These two factions are at war with each other. Baker narrowly lost to Clark in the sheriff's race, carrying the (white) city vote but not the rural areas. Now they angrily spar over jurisdiction. Baker's cops patrol the city except for the block where the county courthouse sits, which Clark and his deputies control. Outside the city limits, Clark and his volunteer posse reign supreme.

In the mid-1960s, more than 200 men belonged to the Dallas County Sheriff's posse. Some of them were also members or supporters of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan or National States Rights Party. Possemen wore cheap badges issued by Clark and semi- uniforms of khaki work clothes and plastic construction-site safety helmets. They were armed with electric cattle-prods and a variety of hardwood clubs including ax-handles. Some were mounted on horseback and carried long leather whips they could use to lash people on foot. Originally formed after World War II to oppose labor unions, under Clark the posse's mission was to defend white supremacy and suppress all forms of Black protest. And not just in Dallas County. In 1961, the posse formed part of the mob that beat the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, they participated in the mass violence when James Meredith integrated 'Ole Miss in 1962, and Bull Connor called them in to help crack the heads of student protesters during the Birmingham Campaign of 1963 (Selma 1-4).

The January 2nd date is chosen because Sheriff Clark will be out of town at the Orange Bowl football game in Miami. Chief Baker has stated that city police under his command will not enforce Judge Hare's illegal injunction, and without Clark to lead them, there is little chance that sheriff's deputies will break up the mass meeting on their own.

Rev. F.D. Reese recalled: “The day before the scheduled Mass Meeting it snowed. On 2 January 1965, the first Mass Meeting since July 1964 was held at Brown Chapel. … Around 3:00 p.m. on 2 January 1965 we thought no one was going to show for the mass meeting. ... Slowly the people started coming into the church. The Courageous Eight had given every indication that we were ready to go to jail. Law enforcement officers were present to see how many people would turn out. More people turned out than the city authorities expected. They did not arrest us. There were too many Black people inside and outside of Brown Chapel to be confined to the Selma City Jail.”

The mass meeting is a huge success, some 700 Black citizens from Selma, Dallas County, and the surrounding Black Belt fill Brown Chapel to overflowing. They are determined to defy the injunction, determined to be free. Also in the audience are numerous reporters and both state and local cops. Clark is not yet back from Miami and no effort is made to enforce the injunction.

… Now that the injunction has been defied without arrests or violence, the focus turns to the demand for voting rights. The voter registration office at the courthouse is only open on alternate Mondays — the next date is January 18. That gives two weeks to recruit, organize, and train voter applicants to show up en masse to register.

On Sunday the 3rd, King leaves for speaking engagements, fund-raising events, and meetings to organize national support. Diane Nash Bevel coordinates SCLC and SNCC staff, now operating in pairs, who fan out through Selma's Black neighborhoods, canvassing door-to-door to talk about voter registration. Though fear is still pervasive, a few courageous souls step forward. On Thursday, January 7, evening meetings and workshops with prospective registrants are held in each of Selma's five electoral wards. Sheriff's deputies barge into some of the meetings to "observe." Bevel electrifies the 50 participants at the Ward IV meeting in Brown Chapel by ordering them out of the building. They leave. The next day, some 200 students attend a youth rally. On Tuesday the 12th, ward meetings of up to 100 begin electing block captains.

Bernard Lafayette, SNCC's first Selma organizer who has close ties to both SNCC and SCLC, arrives from Chicago to help ease friction between the two organizations. Hosea Williams of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC are now in Selma. SNCC and SCLC field staff reinforcements begin to arrive. …

King returns to Selma on Thursday, January 14, to address a large mass meeting at First Baptist. He declares Monday a "Freedom Day" when direct action is to commence with a mass march to the courthouse by voter applicants. "If we march by the hundreds, we will make it clear to the nation that we are determined to vote." Volunteers will also apply for "white-only" city jobs, and integration teams will attempt to implement the Civil Rights Act by demanding service at segregated facilities — the first such action since students were beaten and arrested the previous July.

…

On Monday morning, January 18, Black citizens gather at Brown Chapel. After freedom songs, prayers, and speeches, Dr. King and John Lewis lead 300 marchers out of the church in Selma's first protest action since the injunction. Some are courageous adults determined to become voters, others are students for whom freedom is more important than attending class. They walk two-by-two on the Sylvan Street sidewalk (today, Sylvan Street is Martin Luther King Street). Police Chief Wilson Baker quickly halts the line. They have no permit for a "parade," but he agrees to allow them to walk in small groups to the courthouse. In other words, he is not enforcing Judge Hare's "three-person" injunction, but neither is he allowing Blacks to exercise their Constitutional right to peacefully march in protest.

Judge Hare and Sheriff Clark are furious at Baker's "betrayal." Clark, his deputies, and his posse, wait at the courthouse where they — not Baker — have jurisdiction (Marching 1).


Works cited:

“The Alabama Project.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The Black Belt, Dallas County, and Selma Alabama.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“Marching to the Courthouse.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“SCLC & SNCC.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The Selma Injunction (July).” Effects of the Civil Rights Act. Civil Rights Movement History 1964 July-Dec. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64c.htm...

“Selma on the Eve.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...

“The Situation.” Selma Voting Rights Campaign (Jan-Mar). Civil Rights Movement History 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery. Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline. Web. https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis65.h...