Several aides recommended that the marchers be allowed to head east from Selma along U.S. Highway 80 without any hindrance, for there was no chance that the illprepared participants, who expected to be stopped, could complete the fifty-four-mile walk. This approach, gubernatorial press secretary Bill Jones argued, would make King and his compatriots “the laughing stock of the nation,” especially if state authorities led the unsuspecting protesters to think they would be halted on the outskirts of Selma. Wallace agreed, and while Alabama newspapers reported that the march would be blocked, word
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