Charles McDew, leader of the Orangeburg march, would always recall looking back at the melee from a police car after his arrest, to see one of the hulking local football stars, David “Deacon” Jones, holding in his arms a crippled female student who had been knocked down by the firehoses. The expression on Jones’s face was one of peaceful sadness instead of rage. The sight of it haunted McDew. Although he had little use for nonviolence or even for Christianity, he became convinced that an inescapable power could be buried in doctrines of meekness and humanity.
