Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

While one white man scuffled with a Negro woman on the sidewalk, his companion bludgeoned her from the blind side. There was little doubt about the nature of the encounter or the names of the people involved, because Sunday’s Advertiser carried a photograph with a caption naming the attacker. The white photographer and reporter at the scene both said that the police had stood by passively, and that the crack of the baseball bat on the woman’s head could be heard from half a block away. Governor Patterson announced that he would leave the investigation to local officials. Police Commissioner L. B. Sullivan—who had replaced Clyde Sellers since the bus boycott—blamed the Negro students for causing the original disturbance and the Advertiser for publishing the photograph. Editor Grover Hall, while dividing the larger blame between “rash, misled young Negroes” and “white thugs,” defended his newspaper against the police commissioner. “Sullivan’s problem is not a photographer with a camera,” he wrote. “Sullivan’s problem is a white man with a baseball bat.”