Shouts of joy went up from the congregation, followed by prayers and a hymn of praise. It was a dramatic rescue straight out of Hollywood, except that the giant cloud of tear gas drifted slowly back over the church. Some of Abernathy’s deacons were obliged to block panicky people from fleeing into the hands of the mob, while others rushed to close windows. The sudden absence of ventilation, combined with an unusually warm May night and the body heat of fifteen hundred frightened people, quickly turned First Baptist into an acrid sauna. outside, the marshals fell prey to the gas too, as few of
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