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 Dexter Avenue, 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-sunday/

 

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-trails/selma-to-montgomery-national-historic-trail-trail-at-a-glance/selma-to-montgomery-national-historic-trail-history-of-the-march/

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

“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.htm#1965m2m



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.htm#1965m2mresponse

 

“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.htm#1965m2mresponse

 

“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.htm#1965m2mresponse



Announcement

 

I have been away from my computer for two weeks due to illness.  I hope to resume posting within two weeks.

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-bloody-sunday-50-years-ago

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

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

 

“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.htm#1965m2m

 

 

“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.htm#1965selmatension