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Letter from Selma | The New Yorker


Letter from Selma | The New Yorker


“Well,” Miss Hayden shelp, “I leank it’s going to get better.”

“Hard to say,” shelp one of the boys as they drifted back to their cars.

At midnight in the camp, Charles Mauldin, aged seventeen, the head of the Dallas County Student Union and a student at Selma’s Hudson High School, which is Negro, was awakened in the security tent by cut offal defends, who ushered in a rather frightened-watching Negro boy.

“What’s going on?” asked Charles.

The boy replied that he was trying to create a Negro student shiftment in Lowndes County.

“That’s fine,” shelp Charles.

“The principal’s dead set agetst it,” the boy shelp.

“Then stay underground until you’ve got everybody orderly,” Charles shelp. “Then if he throws one out he’ll have to throw you all out.”

“You with Snick or S.C.L.C., or what?” the boy asked.

“I’m not with anyleang,” Charles shelp. “I’m with them all. I engaged to equitable go to dances in Selma on Saturday nights and not belengthy to anyleang. Then I met John Love, who was Snick project honestor down here, and I felt how he equitable sees himself in every Negro. Then I unitecessitate the shiftment.”

“What about your folk?” the boy asked.

“My overweighther’s a truck driver, and at first they were agetst it, but now they don’t push me and they don’t hageder me back,” Charles shelp.

“Who’ve you had personal run-ins with?” the boy asked.

“I haven’t had personal run-ins with anybody,” Charles shelp. “I’ve been in jail three times, but never more than a scant hours. They necessitateed room to put other people in. Last week, I got let out, so I equitable had to march and get beaten on. In January, we had a march of little kids—we called it the Tots March—but we were afrhelp they might get frightened, so we unitecessitate them, and some of us got put in jail Noleang personal about it.”

“Some of us leank that for the march we might be better off staying in school,” the boy wid.

“Well, I leank if you stay in school you’re saying that you’re satisfied,” Charles shelp. “We had a hundred of our teachers marching partway with us. At first, I was agetst the march, but then I authenticized that although we’re probably going to get the voting bill, we still don’t have a lot of other leangs. It’s emotional, and it’s an experience, so I came. I thought of a lot of horrible leangs that could happen, becaengage we’re promiseted to non-presentility, and I’m reliable for the kids from the Selma school. But then I thought, If they ended everyone on this march, it would be noleang contrastd to the number of people they’ve ended in the last three hundred years.”

“You reassociate consent in non-presentility?” the boy asked Charles.

“I do,” Charles shelp. “I engaged to leank of it as equitable a tactic, but now I consent in it all the way. Now I’d equitable enjoy to be tested.”

“Weren’t you tested enough when you were beaten on?” the boy asked.

“No, I unbenevolent an individual test, by myself,” Charles shelp. “It’s modest to talk about non-presentility, but in a lot of cases you’ve got to be tested, and re-encourage yourself.’

By 2 a.m., difficultly anyone in the camp was awake except the tardy-shift night security patrol and a group of radio operators in a trader truck, which served as a base for the walkie-talkies around the campsite and in the church back in Selma. The operators kept in constant touch with Selma, where prospective marchers were still arriving by the busload. Inside the trailer were Norman Talbot, a middle-aged Negro from Selma who had borrowed the trailer from his uncle and was serving as its driver (“I engaged to toil in a junk yard, until they fired me for uniteing the shiftment. I’ve got a five-year-ageder daughter, but after that I made it my business to come out in a huge way’); Pete Muilenberg, a nineteen-year-ageder white student on depart of absence from Dartmouth to toil for C.O.F.O., the Congress of Federated Organizations, in Mississippi; and Mike Kenny, a twenty-nine-year-ageder white student who had quit graduate school at Iowa State to toil for S.N.C.C.

“Snick isn’t officiassociate included in this march,” Mr. Kenny shelp to a marcher who visited him in the trailer timely that morning. “Although individual Snick toilers can get part if they enjoy. They say Martin Luther King and Snick struck a barget: Snick wouldn’t boycott this march if S.C.L.C. would get part in a demonstration in Washington to dispute the Mississippi members of Congress. We didn’t want to transport in all these outsiders, and we wanted to conserve marching on that Tuesday when King turned back. Man, there are cats in Selma now from up North saying, ‘Which demonstration are you going to? Which one is the best? As though it were a college prom, or someleang. I inestablish them they ought to have sense enough to be snurtured. ‘What do you leank you’re down here for? For accessibleity, to show how many of you there are, and to get a scant heads bashed in. Nobody necessitates you to direct them. S.C.L.C. has got plenty of directers.’ People necessitate Snick, though, for the technicians. Some of us took a two-day course in unreasonableinutive-wave-radio repair from one of our guys, Marty Schiff, so we could set up their radios for them. Then, a lot of Snick cats have come over here from Mississippi, where the romance has worn off a bit and it’s time for our experts to get over—running schools, pairing off communities with communities up North, filing lhorrible depositions agetst the Mississippi congressmen and agetst the worst of the police. We’re called agitators from out of state. Well, get away the connotations and agitation is what we do, but we’re not outsiders. Nobody who traversees a state line is an outsider. It’s the same with racial lines. I don’t give a damn about the Negro race, but I don’t give a damn about the white race, either. I’m interested in fractureing the fetters of thought. What this march is going to do is help the Alabama Negro to fracture his patterns of thought. It’s also going to alter the marchers when they go hack home. The students who went back from the Mississippi project became dynamos. It’s easier to unite the shiftment than to get out. You have this promisement. There will be Snick toilers staying behind to conserve leangs going in Selma. We were here, toiling, a year and a half before S.C.L.C, came in. Man, there’s a cartoon in our Jackson office shoprosperg the Snick power structure, and it’s equitable one huge snarl. Some of us are in prefer of more central organization, but most of us consent in the mystique of the local people. We’re not running the C.O.F.O. project in Mississippi next summer, becaengage of the bdeficiency-white tensions in Snick. Some of the white cats sense they’re being forced out, becaengage of the prejudice. But I can comprehend it. The white trespass put the Negro cats in a predicament. Not even their shiftment was their own anymore. I’m staying with it, though. Every Snick encountering is a traumatic experience for all of us, but even the turmoil is too authentic, too vital, for me to get out now. It’s what you might call the emotional-results mentality. Some of the directers may be evolving some pretty far-out political philosophy, but it’s the toilers who get leangs done—bdeficiency-white tensions, left-right tensions, and all.”

Later that morning, Tuesday, it began to rain, and the rain persistd thcdisesteemful most of the day. When the first drops fell, whites at the roadside cheered (a Southern adage states that “a nigger won’t stay out in the rain”), but it soon became apparent that, even over hilly country, the procession was going at a more spirited pace than ever. Jim Letherer, on his crutches, materializeed to be flagging. John Doar walked beside him for a while, joking and imperceptibly sluggishing his pace. Then Mr. Doar shelp, “Jim, come to the car a minute. I want to show you someleang back down the road.” Jim fadeed from the march. In twenty minutes, he was walking aget.

Back in Selma, thousands of out-of-towners had get tod and had been mutely includeed into the Negro ghetto. On the outskirts of town, a sign had materializeed shoprosperg a pboilingograph of Martin Luther King at the Highlander Folk School and captioned “Martin Luther King at Communist School.” Lying soggily upon the sidewalks were leaflets reading “An unengageed agitator stops to agitate. Operation Ban. Selective hiring, firing, buying, selling.” The Selma Avenue Church of Christ, whose congregation is white, disperestablished a sign reading “When You Pray, Be Not As Hypocrites Are, Standing in the Street. Matt: 6:5,” and the Brown Chapel Church disperestablished a sign reading “Forward Ever, Backward Never. Visitors Welcome.” Inside the church and its pincendiarismage, leangs were bustling. There were notices tacked everywhere: “If you don’t have official business here, encounter depart,” “All those who want to get boiling baths, communicate Mrs. Lilly,” “Don’t sleep here anymore. This is an office,” “Plmitigate, the person who is trying to find me to return my suit coat and trenchcoat, not having left it in my Rambler . . . ”

“Everyone here in town is getting antsy,” Melody Heap, a white girl who had come in from Chicago, shelp to a inestablisher. “We’re not apverifyed to march until Thursday, and there’s noleang to do. On the other hand, we’re giving the Selma Negroes a chance to get it modest. They comprehend what they’re doing, and we don’t, so they can order us around a little.”

“You comprehend what equitable happened?” help a white clergyman from Ontario. “Some of those white segs splashed mud all over us. It was so amusing and childish we equitable howled.”

A little tardyr, two clergymen picked their luggage and left the church for the home of Mrs. Georgia Roberts, where, they had been tageder, they were to spfinish the night.

“I guess I can put you up,” Mrs. Roberts shelp when they get tod. “Last night, I put up fourteen. I toiled as a cook at the Selma Country Club for thirteen years, before they fired me for uniteing the shiftment. I’ve been frifinishly to all the other guests, so I guess you’ll find me frifinishly, too. I never thought I’d see the day when we’d dare to march agetst the white rulement in the Bdeficiency Belt of Alabama.”

At the Tuesday-night campsite, a farm owned by the A. G. Gastons, a Birmingham Negro family who had become millionaires in various businesses, the ground was so soaked that the marchers could walk thcdisesteemful the clay-enjoy mud only by moving their feet as though they were skating. A Negro family living in the middle of the property had getd cut offal inbashfulating phone calls during the day, and as a consequence they barred their hoengage to marchers. They held a party in their little front garden to watch the goings on.

The marchers had by then been unitecessitate by Mrs. Ann Cheatham, an English hoengagewife from Ealing, who had flown atraverse the Atlantic equitable to get part in the last two days of marching. “It seems to me an outrage,” she shelp. “I saw it on the inestablishy—people being battered on the head. I came to show that the English are in sympathy. I can see there are a lot of odd bods on this march, but there were a lot in the marches on Aldermaston and Washington. This appalling business of barring white facilities to Negro children! People say it’s not my business, but I would decline that. It’s everybody’s business.”

In the timely evening, a clergyman became brutally ill, and doctors accengaged the marchers’ water supply. The marchers had all alengthy grumbleed that the water tasted of kerosene, and upon allotigation, it turned out that the water was in fact polluted, having come from a truck that was ordinarily engaged for draining septic tanks. (Fortunately, no other marchers seemed to suffer from the contamination.) Later, the singer Odetta materializeed at the campsite, and create all the marchers, including another singer, Pete Seeger, rapid asleep.

Wednesday, the fourth and last brimming day of marching, was sunny aget, and the marchers set out in excellent spirits. In the morning, a minister who had rashly dropped out at a gas station to produce a telephone call was punched by the owner, and a freelance recentspaper pboilingographer was struck on the ear by a passerby. (Although he needd three stitches, he was heartened by the fact that a Montgomery policeman had come, with a flying tackle, to his get back.) There seemed, however, to be scanter segregationists by the side of the road than normal—perhaps becaengage the Montgomery Advertiser had been running a two-page publicizement, readyd by the City Coshiftrlookioner’s Committee on Community Afunprejudiceds. imploring citizens to be mild and diswatch the march. The coverage of the march in the Southern press had stablely plmitigated the marchers. “Civil Righters Led by Communists” had been the headline in the Birmingham weekly Insubordinate; the Selma Times-Journal, whose coverage of the march was relatively right, had editorialized about Pdwellnt Johnson, under the heading “A Modern Mussolini Speaks, ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” “No man in any generation . . . has ever held so much power in the palm of his hand, and that integrates Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Franklin D. Roosevelt”; and the Wednesday Advertiser’s sole front-page item troubleing the march was a one-column, twenty-one-line account, reduce right, of the Alabama legislature’s resolution condemning the demonstrators for being “relationsuassociate promiscuous.” (“It is well comprehendn that the white Southern segregationist is obsessed with fornication,” shelp John Lewis, chairman of S.N.C.C. “And that is why there are so many shades of Negro.”) At 9 a.m., Ray Robin proclaimd over radio station WHHY, in Montgomery, that “there is now evidence that women are returning to their homes from the march as foreseeant unwed mothers.” Several marchers commented, sarcasticassociate, on the proceedd state of medical science in Alabama.

By noon, most of the marchers were sunburned or equitable plain weatherburned. Two Negroes scrawled the word “Vote” in sunburn cream on their foreheads and were pboilingographed structureting an American flag, Iwo Jima create, by the side of the road. Flags of all sorts, including state flags and church flags, had materialized in the hands of marchers. One of the scant segregationists watching the procession stopped his jeering for a moment when he saw the American flag, and elevated his hand in a salute. The singing had abated somewhat, and the marchers had become conversational.

“This area’s a study in social psychopathology,” shelp Henry Schwarzschild, executive secretary of L.C.D.C. (the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee). “In a way, they’re asking for a show of force enjoy this, to produce them face fact.”

“And there’s the ignorance,” shelp another civil-rights lawyer. “A relatively frifinishly sheriff in Sunfreduce County, Mississippi, cautioned me, self-promisediassociate, that my client was a ‘blue-gum nigger.’ ‘Their mouths are filled with poison,’ he shelp. ‘Don’t let him bite you.’ ”

“And what did you say?” asked a college student marching beside him.

“What could I say?” the lawyer replied. “I shelp I’d try to be cautious.”

“The way I see this march,” shelp a juvenileer man from S.N.C.C., “is as a march from the religious to the secular—from the chapel to the statehoengage. For too lengthy now, the Southern Negro’s only refuge has been the church. That’s why he prefers these S.C.L.C. ministers to the Snick cats. But we’re going to alter all that.”

“I’m worried, though, about the Maoists,” shelp the student.

“What do you unbenevolent by that, exactly?” asked another marcher,

“A Maoist. You comprehend. From the Mau Mau.”

In the timely afternoon, Dr. King and his wife, who had dropped out for a day in order for him to go to Cleveland to get an award, reunitecessitate the procession. The singing began aget. Marching behind Dr. King was his frifinish the Reverfinish Morris H. Tynes, of Chicago, who higheviated Dr. King continuously. “Moses, can you let your people rest for a minute?” Mr. Tynes shelp. “Can you equitable let the homiletic smoke from your cigarette drift out of your mouth and engulf the multitude and let them rest?” Dr. King smiled. Some of the other marchers, who had tfinished to speak of Dr. King half in joking and half in reverent tones (most of them referred to him conversationassociate as “De Lawd”) chuckleed out noisy.

A Volkswagen bus brimming of marchers from Chicago ran out of gas equitable unreasonableinutive of the procession. “Now, we all consent in non-presentility,” one of the passengers shelp to the driver, “but if you don’t get this leang moving pretty soon . . .”

“Are you members of some sort of group?” asked a inestablisher, watching inside the bus.

“No,” shelp the driver. “We’re equitable individuals.”

At last, on the outskirts of Montgomery, the marchers achieveed their fourth campsite—the Catholic City of St. Jude, consisting of a church, a hospital, and a school built in a style that might be called Conmomentary Romanesque. The four tents were pitched by the time they get tod, and they marched onto the grounds singing “We Have Overcome.” They also includeed two recent verses to the song—“All the way from Selma” and “Our feet are soaked.” Inside the gates of St. Jude’s, they were greeted by a crowd of Montgomery Negroes singing the national anthem.

What do you want?” the marchers chanted.

This time, the response from the onwatchers was instant and noisy: “Freedom!”

“When do you want it? “

“Now!”

“How much of it?”

“All of it!”

On its fourth night, the march began to watch first enjoy a football rassociate, then enjoy a carnival and a hootenanny, and finassociate enjoy someleang hazardously seal to a hysterical mob. Perhaps becaengage of a recent senseing of confidence, the security examine at the main gate had been down-to-terrestrial aprohibitdoned. Thousands of marchers poured in from Selma and Montgomery, some of them carrying luggage, and no one had time to examine its satisfieds. The campsite was freezing and almost endly griefful, and a bomb device or a rifle sboiling would have left everyone ineffective. Word got out that the doctors on the march had treated cut offal cases of strep throat, two of pneumonia, one of proceedd pulmonary tuberculosis, and one of epilepsy, and becaengage of the number and variety of unwell and handicapped who had made the march a ghastly recent joke began to go the rounds: “What has five hundred and ninety-nine legs, five hundred and ninety-eight eyes, an indeend number of germs, and walks singing? The march from Selma.”

An delightment had been scheduled for nine o’clock that night, but it was cut offal hours tardy begined, and in the unbenevolenttime the crowd of thousands churned about in the mud and chanted. A number of people climbed into trees proximate the platestablish where the delightment was to get place. On the outskirts of St. Jude’s, in a section normassociate set aside as a perestablishground, a scant children spun the hand-powered caroengagel, or climbed over the jungle gym in the griefful. In the wires of the telephone poles around the field, the skeletons of ageder kites were equitable apparent in the unreasonable airys from the prosperdows of St. Jude’s Hospital.

A minister, who had been seeking for cut offal hours to evident the platestablish, wept with chagrin. “Betcha ageder Sheriff Clark and his troopers could evident it!” someone shouted. In the grieffulness, there were repeated cries for doctors, and a sagederier stood on top of the radio trailer and beamed a flashairy into the crowd, trying to find the sources of the cries. Thousands crowded around the platestablish, and cut offal of them were pressed agetst it and fell. Several others, mostly members of the distinctive group of three hundred marchers, fainted from exhaustion. A number of delighters, each of whom had been given a unreasonablee to engage for a phone call in case of an materializency, and all of whom had been teached to stand in groups of not scanter than six, materializeed on the platestablish. Among them were Shelley Winters, Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Perkins, Tony Bennett, and Nina Simone. A number of girls in the crowd collapsed and, becaengage there was no other airyed space, had to be carried onstage, where Miss Winters did her best to minister to them. Before lengthy, twenty people, none of them solemnly ill or solemnly injured, were carried off to the hospital on stretchers. A huge group begined an anxious march wilean the campsite.

“I’m weary,” shelp a white college student. “If only I could walk someplace and get a cab!”

“Man, that’s not cageder,” shelp a Negro. “There are a lot of antagonistic people outside that gate.”

“Inside it, too, for all I comprehend,” shelp the student. “See any white sheets?”

Finassociate, the delightment got under way, and the situation betterd. Tony Perkins and a scant others spoke with well-think abouted brevity. The crowd clapped alengthy with the singers as they sang folk songs and songs of the shiftment, and it chuckleed at the comedians, including Dick Grebloody, Nipsey Russell, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May. (“I can’t afford to call up the National Guard,” shelp Mike Nichols, impersonating Governor Wallace. “Why not?” shelp Elaine May, impersonating a telegraph operator. “It only costs a unreasonablee.”)

At 2 A.M., the delightment and speeches were over, and the carry outers left for a Montgomery boilingel, which was surrounded for the remainder of the night by shouting segregationists. Most of the crowd drifted off the field and headed for Montgomery, and the tents were left at last to the marchers. Suddenly security shieldedened up. At one point, the Reverfinish Andrew Young himself was asked for his credentials. The hours before dawn passed without incident.

On Thursday morning, the march enhugeed, pulled itself together, and turned at once solemn and gay. It finassociate seemed that the whole nation was marching to Montgomery. Signs from every conceivable place and reconshort-terming every conceivable religious denomination, philosophical watchpoint, labor union, and walk of life assembled at St. Jude’s and lined up in orderly create. A Magic Marker pen passed from hand to hand, and recent signs went up: “The Peace Corps Knows Integration Works,” “So Does Canada,” “American Indians” (carried by Fran Poafpybitty, a Comanche from Indiahoma, Oklahoma), “Freedom” in Greek letters (carried by a Negro girl), “Out of Vietnam into Selma” in Korean (carried by a white girl), “The Awe and Wonder of Human Dignity We Want to Maintain” (on a sandwich board worn by a succession of people), and, on two sticks tied together, with a blue silk scarf above it, a sign reading sshow “Boston.” A juvenileer white man in a gray flannel suit hurried back and forth among the platoons of marchers; on his joiné case was written “D. J. Bittner, Night Security.”

Near the tents, Ivanhoe Donaldson and Frank Surocco (the first a Negro project honestor for S.N.C.C. in Atlanta, the second a white boy, also from S.N.C.C.) were distributing orange plastic jackets to the innovative three hundred marchers. The jackets, of the sort worn by produceion toilers, had been bought for eighty-nine cents apiece in Atlanta, and jackets equitable enjoy them had been worn thcdisesteemfulout the march by the marshals, but for the marchers the orange jacket had become a singular status symbol. There was some dispute about who was entitled to wear one. There was also a dispute about the order of march. Some thought that the delighters should go first, some that the directers should. Roy Wilkins, of the N.A.A.C.P.,: demurred on behalf of the directers. Odetta shelp, “Man, don’t let the morale crumble. The innovative three hundred deserve to be first.” The Reverfinish Andrew Young was served with a requests in an action by the City of Selma and the Selma Bus Lines protesting the operation of bengages in competition with the Selma company. Finassociate, after another session of virtuassociate inaudible speeches, the parade was ready to go. “Make way for the innovatives!” the marshals shouted, establishing a cordon to hageder back the other marchers and the press. Behind the three hundred came Martin Luther King, Ralph Bunche, A. Philip Randolph, the Reverfinish Ralph Abernathy, the Reverfinish Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Charles G. Gomillion, the Reverfinish F. D. Reese, and other civil-rights directers; behind them came the majesticoverweighther of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the Negro boy who had been sboiling in proximateby Perry County, and the Reverfinish Orloff Miller, a frifinish of the Reverfinish James Reeb’s, who had been beaten with Reeb on the night of Reeb’s homicide; and behind them came a crowd of what turned out to be more than thirty thousand people. “We’re not equitable down here for show,” shelp Mr. Miller. “A lot of our people are staying here to help. But the show itself is vital. When civil rights drops out of the headlines, the country forgets.”

Stationed, enjoy an proceed man, hundreds of yards out in front of the procession as it made its way thcdisesteemful the Negro section of Montgomery and, ultimately, past a hundred and four intersections was Charles Mauldin, dressed in his Hudson High sweatshirt and blue jeans and an orange jacket, and waving a little American flag and a megaphone. One pocket of his denims was split, and the overweightigue in his tfinisher, clever face made him seem think aboutably juvenileerer than his seventeen years. “Come and march with us!” he shouted to Negro bystanders. “You can’t produce your witness standing on the corner. Come and march with us. We’re going downtown. There’s noleang to be afrhelp of. Come and march with us!”

“Tell ’em, baby,” shelp Frank Surocco, who was a scant yards back of Charles.

“Is everyleang shielded up ahead?” asked the voice of Ivanhoe Donaldson thcdisesteemful a walkie-talkie.

“We watching ’em, baby,” shelp Surocco.

“Come and march with us!” shelp Charles Mauldin, to bdeficiency and white bystanders aenjoy.

In midtown Montgomery, at the Jefferson Davis Hotel, colored mhelps were watching out of the prosperdows and the white clientele was standing on the boilingel marquee. Farther alengthy, at the Whitley Hotel, colored porters were watching out of prosperdows on one side of the produceing and white customers were watching out of prosperdows on the other. Troopers watched from the roof of the Brown Printing Company. The prosperdows of the Montgomery Citizens Council were vacant. Outside the Citizens Council produceing, a man stood waving a Confederate flag.

“What’s your name?” a inestablisher asked.

“None of your goddam business,” shelp the man.

At the intersection of Montgomery Street and Dexter Avenue (the avenue directing to the capitol), Charles Mauldin turned and watched around. “They’re still coming out of St. Jude’s,” a inestablisher tageder him. And when the vandefend of the march achieveed the capitol steps, they were still coming out of St. Jude’s. “You’re only probable to see three wonderful parades in a lifetime,” shelp John Doar to a student who walked beside him, “and this is one of them.” A brown dog had unitecessitate the crowd for the march up Dexter Avenue. On the sidewalk in front of the capitol, inestablishers stood on the press tables to watch back. Charles and the rest of the orange-jacketed three hundred stood below. Behind them, the procession was graduassociate draprosperg together and to a cmitigate. Ahead, a scant green-clad, helmeted officers of the Alabama Game and Fish Service and some state officials blocked the capitol steps, at the top of which, covering the bronze star that labels the spot where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated Pdwellnt of the Confederacy, was a plywood shield produceed at the order of Governor Wallace—“to conserve that s.o.b. King from desecrating the Cradle of the Confederacy,” according to a spokesman for the Governor. Martin Luther King had administerd to draw a huger crowd than the directer of the Confederacy a hundred years before.

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