Washington Evening Star, by Haynes Johnson

SELMA, Ala. — Throughout the day and into the night the townspeople have listened to the staccato, dramatic broadcasts about their town. One was typical.

"The racial crisis continued today in turbulent Selma, Ala.," said an announcer, broadcasting out of New York. He then recounted the latest figures of Negro demonstrators arrested.

At the moment he spoke, Selma wore the same look it has for the past few days. The city was calm, almost placid. People, both whites and Negroes, were going about their business.

"I've got relatives all over the country, and they all think we're about to be murdered in our beds," said a housewife who works at the First Baptist Church on Lauderdale Street. "I wish someone would tell the truth."

The truth about Selma is complex. But two facts stand out amid the undercurrent of emotion generated during the last two weeks. They are important to Selma, to Negroes and to the South.

First, Negroes have won a significant victory in the heart of the rural Black Belt of the Deep South. They have tested key provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in one of the last strongholds of the Confederacy to fall, and they have gained new concessions — and new acceptance.

Second, despite what virtually all whites here regard as dangerously provocative actions by Negroes, the massive demonstrations have been carried out so far without violence. 

That second fact may well be the most meaningful of all in terms of the future course of the Negro population in the South. For the absence of violence does not occur by chance.

No matter how distasteful the civil rights law may be to white citizens, individually, they have been determined that law and order must prevail. They have acted cautiously and carefully.

As a result Selma's name has not been added to the roll of cities wracked by racial violence. It has not become another Birmingham, or a St. Augustine, Fla., or a McComb, Miss.

Everyone here is aware, however, that the situation could change overnight.

The real concern in Selma now is that the townspeople here, or in the surrounding rural area, will only take so much. They already feel bitterly that they have been pushed beyond any reasonable point; that they have not been met halfway in their efforts to achieve stability and peace. They feel they are facing not so much a Negro protest movement, but a mob.

And the Negroes have announced they intend to keep up the pressure, with Selma as the focal point of an expanding campaign. In the meantime, city officials are continuing to stress that they do not intend to be provoked.

Essentially Selma is a Southern city that has tried and is still trying. How and why it tried, and what it has learned, is a part of this story. It is also clear now that Selma's good intentions were not enough. While leaders obviously misread the aspirations of the Negroes, and they failed to comprehend why the Negroes were demonstrating, and what they were seeking.

To understand what is happening here, one first has to see what kind of city Selma has become since Union forces burned it one April day 100 years ago. Old brick buildings off the bluffs of the Alabama River still bear the marks of that conflagration.

Selma's metropolitan area today, as officials are quick to point out, has 75 churches, 15 public schools, one university center, a public library, four hospitals, 20 diversified industries employing from 50 to 5,000 persons each, four banks and one savings and loan association, three railroads, two bus and six motor freight lines.

It is the trading center of a rich agricultural section in central and west central Alabama. And it has been growing steadily since the 1960 census showed a population of 28,385.

But the population figures also indicate the scope of the race problem. Negroes comprise half of the city and about 60 percent of Dallas County, of which Selma is the county seat. Selma is traditionally conservative, steeped in State's Rights and the belief that Negroes must be kept in their historically inferior positions.

For a long time, Selma's white citizens lived with the comfortable illusion that they could ignore the race question: That it couldn't happen here. At the same time they went ahead dreaming of an economic boom to come when the U.S. Corps of Engineers completes a series of locks and dams on the Alabama River, directly linking Selma with the prosperous Gulf Coast port trade.

Racial disturbances in other areas of the South, coupled with the knowledge that Selma itself was going to be tested in the civil rights struggle, shattered the illusions.

To the city fathers, racial unrest in Selma might lead not only to bloodshed; it would drive away business.

The first sure knowledge of what lay ahead came last fall when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference planned a campaign to register Negro voters in the heart of the Black Belt.

Selma became the target.

When asked why Selma was selected, King told this reporter yesterday:

"Selma is considered the capital of the Black Belt and we felt we should begin there and work out."

About that same time last fall, city officials learned of King's plans. While no one will say so publicly, this reporter was told privately on good authority that the city obtained what one person called "King's master plan for Alabama." According to that source, the plan included mass arrests in Selma to dramatize voting inequalities.

A principal target was Jim Clark, the burly, controversial sheriff of Dallas County. To register, Negroes must go before the Dallas County Board of Registrars in the courthouse. Sheriff Clark's law enforcement responsibilities include the courthouse.

While these points are a matter of dispute, it has been obvious that Negroes in some instances here have sought to be arrested to arouse nationwide support for their civil rights campaign. Last Sunday in Washington, for example, one of King's assistants said privately that King was going to be arrested Monday. He was, while leading a march on the courthouse.

Selma authorities, and Selma business leaders, began a series of public and private meetings last fall in an attempt to prepare the community for possible trouble.

Led by a new city administration which took office in October, Selma's citizens were told that a new approach was needed. The new mayor, Joe Smitherman, 35, and his new chief of police, Wilson Baker, spoke before civic and business groups twice a week.

"We explained that we must accept this law with dignity," Baker recalls. "There are going to be a lot of changes in the Southern way of living, but the law is a fact, and even if the people don't like it they must live with it.

"The tail had been wagging the dog too long in the South. Too many extremists have been speaking out. That's been the trouble with Mississippi, frankly. You good people get in a situation like that and they're afraid to speak out."

Baker, a heavy-set man who has been on the University of Alabama faculty before returning to Selma as police chief, made it clear from the start that he would not tolerate disobedience of the law.

His handling of a series of incidents involving whites against Negroes reinforced his authority. In each case the whites were arrested and prosecuted.

In one, a white sergeant from nearby Craig Air Force Base was severely beaten by a group of white youths after the sergeant had come to the aid of some Negroes. The youths were arrested and charged with assault to commit murder.

On New Year's Day a canister of tear gas was thrown into a Negro home. That night two whites were arrested, and charged with the offense, and subsequently sentenced to six months at hard labor.

Another incident involved a disturbance in a movie theater led by whites who attempted to bar Negroes from attending. Again Baker stepped in.

"If we raise enough hell, you'll get those niggers out," Baker said one of the whites told him. He replied:

"No, if you raise enough hell I'll get you out."

These events, as Baker said, "let the white elements know we meant business — that we were going to enforce the law against any groups."

The next test came early in January when King publicly announced his Selma campaign. It began with a test of public accommodations in the city.

Restaurant owners met and adopted a resolution saying they adhered to the law, and that their establishments were open to all. King and some of the party stayed at the hotel.

As the pressure of the campaign built up, and Selma became a page one deadline in the nation's news, the city began to attract those who feed on strife. George Lincoln Rockwell and members of his American Nazi Party came to Selma. So did Malcolm X, the former leader of the Negro "Black Muslims." And there were members of the militantly segregationist state's rights parties.

One of those men punched Dr. King when he registered at the hotel.

The focal point of the civil rights campaign remained on voter registration. Alabama law had set aside the first and third Monday of January as days during which the county board of registrars was authorized to accept voter applications.

The board, aware of the campaign, asked for and received 10 additional days during the month. On Christmas Eve the additional days were published in the Selma newspaper.

After the mass arrests had begun, and while emotions were inflamed, the county board issued a public statement on January 21 attempting to place its voting procedures in perspective. The emotional nature of the statement underscored the situation.

"Now," it read, "what happened? On 4th January two (2) Negroes and four (4) white persons appeared and executed applications; on 5th no Negroes but six (6) whites; on 6th four (4) Negroes and one (1) white; on 12 four (4) Negroes and two (2) whites; on 13th seven (7) Negroes and one white.

"Then here, on the 18th, shows up a long line containing such great numbers until it surely was obvious to all no such numbers could hope to be processed in one day. Furthermore, a number of applicants having gained admittance to our office indicating they did NOT want to be there. There also appeared several Negroes would be applicants [sic] who could not read and write.

"This board has made serious effort to be legally fair, courteous and not to discriminate. Certainly we have operated within an atmosphere of justice as attested by court records — therefore, we now must ask:

"1. What is it they want?

"2. Is it really the vote and good of our Negro citizens?

"3. Is it simply to sow discord and stir trouble?

What the statement failed to acknowledge is that voter discrimination has been a fact of life for Negroes in Alabama.

This fact was affirmed Thursday night when federal Judge Daniel H. Thomas of Mobile ordered the board to speed up voter application processing to at least 100 a day and to stop using Alabama's controversial series of questions on civics contained in the registration test.

Judge Thomas further found that the Dallas County registrars have "deprived Negroes of the right to vote — and such deprivations have been pursuant to a pattern and practice.

It was a signal victory for King and his campaign.

But it did not ease the tensions in Selma. 

That goal has been, and remains, the major objective of the community leaders.

At the height of the marches and arrests, for example, the city and county reiterated its purpose in a joint public statement issued by the city council and the Dallas County Court of County Revenues. After stressing the "seriousness of the present situation in this community," they said:

"Each of us strenuously opposed passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, being mindful of the consequences to our community. We are confident that the overwhelming majority of our citizens believe with us that law and order must prevail, and that there can be no other solution to this problem.

"However strong the provocation, calmness and self-restraint by each of us is the greatest protection for all concerned in this time of crisis. We sincerely and earnestly recommend this course to the whole community with the heartfelt conviction that it is the best course at this time for the entire city and county."

Whether such statements will be enough is in doubt. For as King told reporters Friday after he was released from jail:

"We plan to be in Selma until the victory of the right to vote is won. Selma will continue to be our main focal point."

Beyond the test over the right to vote lies the even more explosive issue of school integration. And beyond that is the intensive campaign throughout the Black Belt extending into Mississippi.

For Selma, the difficult period is just beginning. 

In the face of this situation, one of the remarkable aspects about Selma is that its citizens seem — at least to this observer — to be taking what is admittedly a difficult situation in stride.

Out of a score of interviews, the dominant impression is one of confidence that Selma's belief in a rational approach will succeed. 

"Everybody recognizes that the law has to be observed," said M. L. Miles, general manager of the Chamber of Commerce. "We think we're being eminently fair. Of course, it's axiomatic that the problem becomes more acute as you have a higher number of Negroes in the population.

"But I don't know that anybody in this town has ever been against law and order. Our transition probably will be more intricate here, because we are facing a problem that you don't find in too many communities.

"I think it's been a disappointment to some people that we haven't had the difficulties, or the holocaust, that some communities have had."

Earl Edwards, 20, who manages a shoe repair store, expressed a common view. 

"It's bad business all the way around," he said. "It's costing untold money to the merchants. Just like everybody else, we new there was going to be trouble as soon as they passed the Civil Rights Act. It's coming. It's bound to come.

"But I think everybody in Selma's intelligent enough to know that battling in the streets is not the way to win, if it's going to be won. You can't change the law because you don't like it. I really don't think anybody in Selma's really worried about what's going to happen.

Around the corner, at a hot dog stand, the man behind the counter was saying:

"You can't fight city hall — or at least you can't fight the federal government. It's the law and all they're doing is trying to go the restaurants and the movies and vote — and it's the law. So I don't guess they're doing anything wrong.

"I think most of the people in Selma feel that way. There's a small group that doesn't. Some of those young fellows who live outside of town and drop out of school, their grandparents keep telling them how inferior the Negro schools are. And they keep talking about intermarriage.

"Now, I'm not for romance with Negro girls. But if somebody wants to that's their business. I think some of those people who talk the most about it have something to hide. They're the kind that go out and sleep with Negro women in the country. I think maybe they're afraid people are going to find out.

"I'll tell you one thing: I'm glad Martin Luther King's the kind of man he is. He believes in nonviolence. Now if they were following those Moslems (Black Muslims) we'd really be in trouble.

"I was born in Selma, and I love this land. I love the Spanish moss and the magnolia trees. But I've traveled. I've been to Florida and Chicago and Texas. And I don't want to fight the Civil War over again."

SELMA, Ala. — Even on Broad, the main street, no one was in sight. Selma was silent, its lights dimmed, its streets deserted, its homes seemingly uninhabited.

It was deceiving.

Five blocks away, in the midst of the George Washington Carver housing development, there was movement — and tension. The tension could be felt by whites and Negroes alike as Selma waited for the next act in its racial drama.

The center of activity last night was Brown's Memorial Chapel, an old brick church built in 1869.

Car after car drove up and stopped in front of the church discharging white ministers, rabbis and priests from across the country. One minister carried a sleeping bag. They kept arriving throughout the night.

At 11:12 p.m. Washington time an old Negro woman with a white scarf over her head jumped up and clapped her hands and began saying, "Glory, Glory" as a door in the rear of the church opened.

Soon the entire throng of Negroes and whites, who were packed to the very rafters, stood and cheered; then they sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

They were signaling the arrival of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

King walked to the center of the platform in front of the organ and the large cross formed with light bulbs and began to speak. He did not disappoint his followers.

"I come here tonight still deeply shocked over the brutality that took place in Selma yesterday," he said. "I am sure in a situation like this one is tempted to ask, 'How long?'"

"Yes," the crowd shouted back.

"When will wounded justice lying prostrate on the streets be lifted from the dust of Alabama? ..." King asked. "How long will justice be crucified and truth buried?"

"I came here to say to you that in spite of yesterday, in spite of man's terrible inhumanity to man ... in spite of all the brutality we have no alternative but to keep moving forward. ... We have gone too far to turn back. ... We must let them know that nothing will stop us, not even the threat of death itself."

He gestured toward the white clergymen seated in front of him and said: "They're going to walk with us until the sagging wall of segregation crumbles."

Roars of approval filled the church.

King pleaded with the crowd not to resort to violence when the time came to face once again the state troopers and the armed and mounted posse of Sheriff James G. (Jim) Clark on the road toward Montgomery.

"We must meet violence with non-violence," King said.

His point did not require great elaboration. The Negroes here and throughout the deep South have been demonstrating their capacity to endure attacks — and to turn the other cheek.

The latest incident in Selma on Sunday, when the Negro marchers were clubbed, flogged and gassed as they attempted to march 50 miles to the state capital, underscored one essential lesson in the civil rights struggle in the South: The futility of trying to halt this Negro revolution with force.

If anything, the Negroes in Selma are more determined than ever. That was the emotion which dominated the meeting last night in preparation for today's attempted march in Montgomery.

Speaker after speaker sounded the same theme: The Negroes, in the words of their own spiritual, "Ain't Going to Let Nobody Turn Us Around." As the Rev. James Abernethy [sic?], one of King's lieutenants, told the crowd:

"They've used tear gas and made us cry, but the Negroes in the Black Belt have been crying a long time. We're going to cross that Alabama River again and go to the state capital. We're not afraid. We are willing to be bruised. We are willing to be persecuted. ... All they got to do is dish it out. We are willing to receive it.

SELMA, Ala. — Negroes and whites kept up today their long vigil for the Rev. James J. Reeb, who lay near death in a Birmingham hospital.

As dawn broke, about 350 civil rights demonstrators were sitting dozing in the street, wet after a light rain. A few hours later their ranks dwindled to about 100.

"We intend to stay until they arrest us or he (Selma Public Safety Director Wilson Baker) beats us like Al Lingo," said the Rev. C. T. Vivian.

As the day went on, the ranks of the demonstrators again grew. Shortly before noon, the 17th hour of the vigil, about 250 were standing in a drizzle in the street near the Brown's Chapel A.M.E. church. State police cars continued to block both ends of the street.

During the night they knelt and prayed in the lights and shadows of the Negro section. State troopers, county and city police and the civilian "posse" of Dallas County stood guard around them. Then they lay down on Sylvan Street in front of the church and tried to sleep.

As they kept their watch, spotlights played across the Negro homes and the chapel. Lights from parked police cars were turned on and off, illuminating the crowd.

Clouds obscured the half-moon. A chill breeze swept across the street.

They did not sing as many freedom songs as usual. Instead, they sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "America, The Beautiful," "Faith of Our Fathers," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

As the night wore on, it became more difficult to get in or out of the Negro section. White men in civilian clothing stopped cars as they approached within a three-block radius.

If you walked out later in the night you were subjected to a stream of profanity and verbal abuse from the same white men who had stopped your car.

The vigil began shortly after 7 p.m. yesterday, when demonstrators, some 78 of whom were clergymen of all faiths, were stopped from marching half a block after they had left the church. They had been stopped at the same spot earlier in the afternoon when they attempted to march to the courthouse.

At 7:40 p.m., police received an anonymous telephone call from what authorities said was a "white female voice" warning that a bomb was hidden inside the church.

The church was cleared and searched. The Negroes and whites who had been meeting there returned.

The Rev. James Bevel, a Negro civil rights leader, told those inside what they might expect — and how to react to it — during the night.

"If they arrest them (the demonstrators in the street), take their places. If they beat them, take them to the hospital. If they kill them, take them to the funeral home."

In the back of the church women were making coffee, carrying it outside and passing paper cups to the demonstrators. Others went to their homes to bring blankets.

The vigil came 24 hours after James Reeb and two other white ministers were clubbed to the ground after they walked out of a Negro restaurant several blocks away. Reeb was taken to Birmingham with multiple skull fractures. The ministers were among hundreds who came to Selma to stand beside the Negroes in their attempted march on Montgomery, the state capital, Tuesday night. 

There were numerous references to the beating last night.

"I hear his heart stopped two times," said a Negro woman standing in the line. Her companion shook her head slightly.

Four white men have been arrested in the case on charges of assault with intent to murder. All the men are from Selma.

The arrests were announced after a day in which Negroes and whites bore witness to their beliefs.

It was also a day in which Negro leaders struggled to maintain control over their civil rights movement. A sense of restlessness and frustration seemed to affect many of the younger demonstrators, both white and colored.

After eight straight weeks of demonstrations the racial situation in Selma has reached the point of explosion. Each carried with it the increasing threat of violence. 

In the white community, the climate has degenerated into open hostility and hatred. The cleavage between the whites and Negroes is far greater, for instance, than it was five weeks ago when this reporter was last in Selma. There are no communications between the two sides.

Negro leaders yesterday continued to stress the necessity of adhering to the principle of non-violence.

"Nothing can be more dangerous to this movement than an uncontrolled quest for freedom. That's what happened in Harlem," said the Rev. Andrew Young, one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's chief assistants, at a meeting in the church.

An incident during that meeting was illustrative of the feeling of many. Young was explaining that they were going to march on the courthouse when someone stood up and asked:

"If we meet them are we going to turn around as we did yesterday?"

Shouts of "no" and "keep pushing" came from the crowd. Young asked what they proposed to do. More shouts: "Sit down." "Kneel down." "Have a mass meeting."

"We're not trying to beat the hell out of Jim Clark (the sheriff). That's not our program. In America a bad political situation has developed because Negroes can't vote."

He added: "You can't preach love while you hate people. It just won't work."

A few minutes later Rabbi Bernard Lipnick, representing the St. Louis Rabbinical Association, stood up from the middle of the congregation and said: "We are here to walk where you walk, to take what you take, and to bear witness with you."

Soon the clergyman and the others began their march on the Dallas County courthouse from the steps of the church. They got only s far as an alley halfway down the block.

There, they were stopped by Police Chief Baker and Selma's Mayor Joe Smitherman, who were backed up by 17 city policemen carrying nightsticks.

Behind them were Sheriff Clark and his deputies and possemen. Backing them up was the State Police detachment headed by Maj. John Cloud. A half a block away were masses of state troopers and more than 50 patrol cars. 

When asked how many troopers were there, Cloud smiled, slapped his thigh and said, "not many." Sheriff Clark was equally amiable. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt with a button down collar, a light blue tie, a white helmet and sunglasses. A tear gas canister hung from his belt. He, too, was carrying a nightstick.

A button reading "Never" was in the Sheriff's lapel. He explained that the button was his answer to the Negro freedom song, "We Shall Overcome."

The confrontation between the police and the marchers began when the city officials said all civil rights demonstrations had been banned in Selma under the city's emergency police powers.

Thirty-six marchers, representing various religious faiths and from states across the nation, gave brief statements in support of the civil rights movement in Selma.

After they knelt and recited the Lord's Prayer in unison and sang "We Shall Overcome," they turned and walked back to the church at 2:45 p.m. (Washington time).

It seemed then as if the day would pass peacefully. But a group of young Negroes and whites began running past the church away from the police down Sylvan Street. The demonstrators followed them.

The race touched off an immediate response. Some 10 state patrol cars parked a block away raced off around another block to cut off the marchers.

A white man standing on a corner shouted as the cars sped past him: "Maybe we'll get some of them sons of bitches and buzzards yet."

Ministers and civil rights leaders joined hands in front of the chanting, clapping young demonstrators to restrain them while police ordered them to disperse.

It took several minutes before Negro leaders were able to bring them under control. Then they straggled back to the church to hear more about the need to remain non-violent.

"I've got to measure what I get for what I give," said Andrew Young. "You've got to decide how many knocks on the head it is worth."

SELMA, Ala. — The news of the Rev. James J. Reeb's death in Birmingham came to the small group of demonstrators here at 8 o'clock last night.

They were standing in the rain, facing the police in the same place where they had begun their prayer vigil for Reeb 25 hours before.

Those who had marched with the Boston minister spoke their eulogies in the glare of police car lights and the floodlights of the television cameras.

The street was littered with coffee cups and pieces of plastic wrapping the demonstrators had used to protect themselves from the rain during the long vigil.

"Each one of us has faced death in the past three days," said the Rev. Richard Leonard of the Community Unitarian Church of New York. "We have walked where we walked."

He spoke in a low voice. The sound of the car motors in the background made his words difficult to hear. 

He said they must be true to Reeb's faith. They must not cross the rope separating them from the police until it was voluntarily taken away. 

A Negro minister then spoke:

"Here was a man truly endowed with the milk of human kindness," he said. John Lewis, the Negro civil rights leader, said: "We must resolve that the death of our brother must not be in vain ... all of us are caught up in the midst of history ... in a non-violent revolution.

"I ask all of you to resolve that the death of our brother must not be in vain ... all of us are caught up in the midst of history ... in a non-violent revolution.

"I ask all of you to bow your heads in a moment of silence.

For a moment it was completely still. Then Lewis spoke again.

"We pray that the very heart of our country, the very conscience will be aroused. We pray, oh God, to forgive his attackers and those who have bitterness in their hearts ... as we struggle, the forces of good struggle with us. Somehow, when one of us dies, each one of us is dead...."

"Let us all rise up with high hopes and a heavy heart."

Those in the front row — a Negro boy, a white Baptist minister from New Jersey, a white Presbyterian minister from California, a white minister from Houston and a Negro from Birmingham — joined hands and began to hum softly the freedom song, "We Shall Overcome."

They rocked slowly from side to side while the rest of the crowd of some 50 persons standing behind them began to sing the words slowly, rising in crescendo there on the rain-swept Selma street.

A young white man, his head swept in bandages, was helped to the front of the line by a Negro. The white man was Tom Wright, 20 years old, a ministerial student at Valparaiso University who has been working with a social work group in Chicago. He came to Selma Tuesday.

Wright had been struck in the left temple and knocked to the ground only 40 minutes before when a piece of lead was thrown out of the darkness. He had just been treated at the Good Samaritan Hospital when he heard of Reeb's death.

"They wanted me to come back and get off my feet," Wright said, "but after being here all night, I couldn't go without saying something to all of you here."

"The people on the other side of this barricade are sick. I don't hold them responsible. We can't if our movement is going to succeed."

While the young white man was speaking, the crowd was beginning to grow. Soon the ranks of the demonstrators had increased fourfold and the mood of the crowd changed. It became noisier. The clapping and chanting rose in volume and emotion.

Within 20 minutes the shouts and chants from the crowd carried far beyond the Negro section in which they were standing.

Off to the side, near the spot where Wright was struck, a Negro man, who said he had been in the Korean War, glared toward the police cars and muttered — "One tank. One tank. That's all I want. I'd clear 'em all out. I don't believe in this here" — he tapped his left cheek and then his right cheek.

He was silent a moment and then said:

"That preacher died a few minutes ago. You hear that? Alive one minute. Gone the next."

From Clark School, you can see and hear the civil rights demonstrators.

The Negro elementary school, one of five in Selma, is on a dirt road in the George Washington Carver housing development. The children of school age who live there are supposed to enter Clark School.

But each morning many of them are walking in the opposite direction — toward the daily demonstrations at Brown's Memorial Chapel. They have been doing this for the last eight weeks.

At this point they are far more interested in the "movement" than they are in school.

Attendance is sporadic in all of the Negro schools in Selma these days. At the Negro high school, only about 200 of the 1,300 students are attending regularly, school officials say. The absentee rate is not as high in the elementary schools, but it presents a problem nevertheless.

The Negroes have been chanting for days now a series of questions — what do we want? Freedom! Where do we want to go? To the Courthouse!

At the moment, education as an avenue to the courthouse is not being stressed. 

In the sixth grade class at Clark School, there were 17 students — and 17 empty chairs. The teacher had written out the morning geography lesson on the blackboard ending with "mountains that are not very high."

On the wall were pictures of Winston Churchill, President Johnson's inauguration, a panel of pictures entitled "faces of Lincoln" and news clippings about Negroes.

Across the hall, Mrs. A. J. Wills was drilling her third grade students on the "new" arithmetic. She was standing at the blackboard beneath a picture of John F. Kennedy. On the door, a poster asked the question, "Do You Measure Up?"

When she finished the lesson, Mrs. Wills came to the back of the room to talk about the civil rights movement and its impact on her class.

"This is not the best atmosphere conducive to study," she said, "but," and she smiled.

She said that before Christmas she had a full class of 33 students. At the moment there were 18.

Mrs. Wills said the students have been asking questions nearly every day about what is happening in Selma.

"Just like this morning," she said. "They asked, 'Mrs. Wilis, why did they sleep in the streets last night?' and I told them we're not sleeping on the street to make people let us vote, but to let the world know that we can't vote."

She said the students also asked why their parents can't vote, and why they should come to school when their older brothers and sisters do not.

"I say they have to come to school to learn to read and write," she said.

Mrs. Wills was not too concerned about the effect of the demonstrations on students. On the contrary, she said, "I think they have grown from this experience."

She herself has been participating in the demonstrations after school and she was among those who had stayed up the night before. In this, she is typical of many Negro teachers here.

As Percy Gardner, Clark School's principal, said later:

"We have some teachers who are very active — very active — in the movement. They are taking the lead."

Gardner said there had been "very cordial relations" in the past with the all-white Selma Board of Education. He does not believe this condition necessarily will change.

Asked about the problem of absenteeism, he said that the day before he and the other Negro principals had been summoned to a special meeting with the superintendent of schools.

"Since this situation was so acute, we discussed ways and means of getting students back in school," he said.

But, he conceded, relatively little could be done while the demonstrations continued. The problem lies in the students themselves.

They are so thoroughly swept up in the emotional — and exciting — atmosphere of what is happening that they have no desire to go back to school.

A group of five young high school students standing in the demonstration line outside Brown's chapel was typical.

Mattie Arnold, 18, who said she wants to be a registered nurse, said she had gone to school that morning. She was one of six students in her class. She said she has been attending school "usually every other day or so."

"We talk about the situation and how we feel about the beatings that Clark gave us and things of that nature," she said. Asked how long she thought the demonstrations would continue, she replied, "Indefinitely."

All of the students said they were not concerned about missing classes. As one said, "If we miss this semester, we'll make it up next year."

They discussed their movement and what they thought it was accomplishing.

"I hope we get what we're looking for," said Doloris Brackin, 17. "For my opinion, I think they're getting tired. I think we're proving to them that we are determined, that we aren't going to turn around."

Gwendolyn Colls, 18, had this comment about white people in Selma:

"Most of the white people — well, it isn't the young ones. It's the old ones. They're bound to slavery. All the white people in Selma aren't against Negroes. There are some that are for us, but they are afraid to speak out."

She and the others rejoined the demonstrators.

SELMA, Ala. — It is too much to say that Selma has been searching for its soul. But it has been searching for a way out.

That chance for a graceful solution came and went yesterday. Now the situation is more difficult than ever.

Symbolically, Selma has hardened into the battleground of the South, the Old South of master-servant, pride and prejudice. The tragedy of Selma is that it did not have to be this way.

The events of yesterday brought the problem into even sharper focus.

For yesterday, the path had been cleared for a temporary settlement and a desperately needed respite from the confrontation in the street. 

Marchers and policemen had been facing each other through one cold night and into the rain of a second when LeRoy Collins, director of the Federal Community Relations Service came to Sylvan Avenue in front of Brown's Memorial Chapel late Thursday.

Collins, who had played a key role earlier in easing the tensions of the second attempted march on Montgomery Tuesday, came to the scene of the confrontation to help reach a rapprochement.

In a number of informal conversations on the rain-swept streets and inside the church parsonage, Collins, the Negro civil rights leaders and Selma's Police Chief Wilson Baker reached what appeared to be an acceptable compromise.

The marchers would be permitted to go to their destination — the Dallas County Courthouse — in small groups of four or five. There, they would conduct a 15-minute prayer session and return to their church. The marchers agreed not to block the entrance to buildings and to observe traffic regulations.

Local officials, in turn, would open the protest area to access and remove al but a token police force there.

Collins, according to those who participated in the negotiations, said he was concerned about people standing so long in the inclement weather. And he also said both sides were being worn down.

After approximately an hour of conversation, ending sometime after midnight, the tentative agreement was announced to the small group of demonstrators.

The key to the agreement hinged on the ultimate acceptance of Selma's Mayor Joe T. Smitherman and the City Council. Collins is reliably reported to have thought Smitherman was agreeable.

What was said between the mayor and the former governor of Florida is a matter of conjecture, but Collins at least obviously thought a solution had been found. He was widely quoted yesterday morning as announcing the agreement in specific terms.

On the street yesterday morning the tension of preceding days had lifted noticeably. To everyone, it seemed as if that phase of the Selma story had ended.

Then, at 10 o'clock, Mayor Smitherman unexpectedly arrived at the scene. He walked up to the rope across the street separating the demonstrators from police and curtly announced: "There will be no march today." He said reports of any agreement were incorrect.

Two hours later Smitherman returned. This time he was accompanied by Carl Morgan, the City Council president. Smitherman then read a prepared statement in which he said he had just returned from a special meeting of the council.

The council, he stated, "has unanimously voted to back me in my order that there will not be any marches permitted in Selma during this period in the interest of safety and the welfare of all citizens of the community. This action was taken to clarify many conflicting reports that a compromise had been made to the contrary and that there is disagreement in our city during this period of crisis..."

A colloquy between a Negro leader, the Rev. L. T. Anderson, and Smitherman virtually ended hope for a truce.

Anderson asked the mayor if he would grant us the courtesy of escorting us to the courthouse for a 15-minute vigil and end all this confrontation. I feel you can end this, sir, if you will just escort us."

Smitherman emphatically rejected the proposal.

"This community has been harassed enough," he said, adding: "I will not lead any group to the courthouse." He also said: "It's time you acted in good faith," and commented that it was "senseless to stand out here in the rain."

Anderson turned to the demonstration and said:

"We are not going to back down. We are too close to the promised land. If we cannot march with dignity to the courthouse, we're going to march inch by inch."

The distance between the two sides had been lengthened immeasurably.

The tension returned. The rope dividing the two sides became more of a visible symbol. Soon Negroes and whites were singing and talking about the Berlin wall and the Berlin rope.

Five hours after the mayor first addressed the demonstrators in the morning, a second unexpected development occurred. Wilson Baker, who had been sitting in a patrol car, suddenly got out, walked purposefully toward the rope and cut it in two with a knife.

"I just got tired of looking at it," he said.

For a moment it seemed as if a second opportunity to end the impasse had arrived. But the police chief quickly made it clear the cutting of the rope had not changed anything. With the patience and good humor he had displayed all during the eight weeks of demonstrations, Baker explained that he was still obligated to keep the demonstrators from marching.

A minute later he explained his sudden action to this reporter in these words:

"I just decided to cut it. I put it up on my own and I took it dow on my own. I didn't put it up as a barricade; I put it up for their protection. But they didn't seem to take it that way. It was just a piece of sash cord and a pretty dull knife cut it."

Rev. Anderson addressed the marchers again. "If it were left up to Mr. Baker," he said, "I believe he would let us march." But the events in Selma yesterday made it clear that Wilson Baker is not in charge.

Police cars are the Berlin Wall, Berlin Wall, Berlin Wall,

Police cars are the Berlin Wall,

In Selma, Alabama.

We're going to stand here till it falls, till it falls, till it falls,

We're going to stand here till it falls,

In Selma, Alabama.

Love is the thing that'll make it fall, make it fall, make it fall,

Love is the thing that'll make it fall, make it fall, make it fall

In Selma, Alabama.

SELMA, Ala. — With their gift for expressing their problem in song, the Negroes have reduced their difficulty in Selma to these words while they stand in the street shoulder-to-shoulder with whites facing their opponents.

The problem of the police cars is real enough, but the words sung to the tune of "The Walls of Jericho" oversimplify the complex nature of the civil rights struggle here.

In Selma today, however, the words are appropriate. They do center on the immediate problem: How to get the struggle out of the streets.

This report is an attempt to place in perspective some of the events that have forced the demonstrators into the streets — and to illustrate how difficult it has become to get them out gracefully.

Four incidents, three of them this week and one of them four weekends ago, are illustrative of the problem. They highlight the mixture of miscalculation, misunderstanding, pride ambition, prejudice and clash of personalities that have affected Selma.

Among those who figure in the incidents are the slender young mayor, Joe T. Smitherman; his chief of police, the burly, amiable and efficient Wilson Baker; the state police commander, Al Lingo; and James G. (Jim) Clark of Dallas County, who has given the appearance of a man who enjoys notoriety. 

A second group of about five Negroes and five whites also figure in the incidents. They are anonymous, and it is with them this part of the Selma story begins.

About four Saturdays ago those whites and Negroes gathered in Room 209 of the Hotel Albert for a three-hour meeting. They were the leading representatives of the white and Negro communities in Selma.

The meeting had been arranged by the Federal Community Relations Service headed by LeRoy Collins, the former governor of Florida, in the hope that a way could be found to calm the civil rights disturbances in Selma. One of Collins' representatives was present.

"It was a friendly meeting," said one of the Negroes who was there. "One of the things we discussed was the absence of a channel of communications, and I pointed out that that was a most tragic element in our town.

"It was a good meeting. Everyone agreed that it was good to get it off our chests. We were even actually shaking hands when we left the Hotel Albert."

A second Negro who was there said the Negroes stressed to the whites that the focal point of the Selma civil rights drive was voter registration.

"The main thing that came out of the meeting," that man said, "was that they thoroughly understood the Negro's position. We also made it clear that these people they call outside agitators had been invited in here by us."

When the meeting ended, it was with the mutual understanding that both groups would meet again and maintain communications.

It was the last time they met; it was the beginning and the end of direct communication.

Undoubtedly there are many reasons for the failure. Perhaps the most important is that each side seemed to distrust the other. And as the demonstrators continued to build up momentum, the problem of Selma increasingly became a test of will in the streets.

That was the situation when more than 600 Negroes prepared to march 50 miles to the state capital in Montgomery last Sunday.

The second incident, which helps to explain what has happened here, involves an agreement made by Mayor Smitherman.

The mayor privately agreed to let Col. Lingo and Sheriff Clark handle the policing of the march when the demonstrators crossed the Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River. But that area was still within Selma's city police jurisdiction.

Chief Baker disagreed with the mayor and said he was going to resign. Baker told the mayor that he wanted to halt the marchers as they left the city, and arrest them if they did not return to the church.

Smitherman asked him not to interfere in the state's plans to halt the march with force if necessary.

When members of the city council learned of Baker's threat to resign, they persuaded him to stay on duty. Baker agreed after reaching an understanding that in the future city law enforcement planning and supervision would be left in his hands.

The chief also understood that when the marchers were moved back across the bridge city police would be in charge of them while they returned to the church.

But on Sunday after the Negroes were clubbed, flogged, gassed and driven back into their city, Sheriff Clark and his heavily-armed "posse" followed them to their homes. They did so over Baker's protests.

At one point Baker and Clark clashed verbally. The police chief said order already had been restored in the Negro community, and he saw no need for the further use of force.

Clark is reported to have replied, "I've already waited a month too long about moving in."

Chief Baker confirmed the foregoing account when asked by this reporter in the middle of the week. But he declined to comment other than to say, "That's all over now. Everything's been worked out."

On Friday, however, Baker was involved in another situation which appeared to bring him unwillingly into conflict with the mayor. The night before, Baker, LeRoy Collins and Negro civil rights leaders had held a number of informal conferences on the rain-swept streets of Selma in an attempt to end the impasse in the street.

All parties reached an understanding of what they thought could be an acceptable compromise.

The demonstrators would be permitted to march to the courthouse in small groups of four or five persons. There, they would conduct a 15-minute prayer vigil. They would observe the traffic regulations and not block the entrance to any buildings. Then they would be free.

The authorities, in turn, would remove all but a token police force from the scene around Brown's Memorial Chapel, the center of the civil rights activity. Free access would be permitted to the area.

Most of the parties involved thought an agreement had been made. But at 10 o'clock the next morning, Friday, Mayor Smitherman finally rejected the proposal.

Smitherman had figured in a third incident last week. More than anything else it helped to underscore how far the situation had deteriorated in Selma.

That incident occurred Wednesday afternoon, some minutes after the mayor had halted Negroes and whites from marching toward the courthouse, thus initiating the long, direct street confrontation between police and marchers.

Smitherman and a reporter from the local newspaper, the Selma Times-Journal, were leaning against a car, talking, at the intersection of Lawrence Street and Jeff Davis Avenue while a short, stocky state police trooper directed traffic there.

The trooper was issuing crisp orders to motorists, and once wrapped on the side of a passing car with his night stick. There was a lull in the traffic and the trooper turned and saw the mayor and newspaperman chatting behind him.

The Times-Journal reported what followed next in these words:

"The trooper turned and swaggered toward the pair. When he was within a few feet of the mayor, he barked, 'Move out of here.'

"The surprised mayor was at a momentary loss of words, and the newsman said, 'He's the mayor, officer.'

"Almost at the same instance, the trooper was standing within reach of the mayor and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with his nightstick.

"'Move on, I said,' the trooper commanded.

"'I've got identification,' the mayor said while withdrawing and fumbling for his billfold. He took a step toward the trooper and displayed the gold police-type shield bearing his credentials.

"With hardly a glance at the mayor's badge, the trooper responded:

"'I don't care who you are, get out of here.'

"The newsman and mayor halted temporarily on the street corner and another trooper stepped from a second patrol car parked nearby.

"'You heard him,' the second officer said. 'Get out of here. You, too,' he said to the newsman who was wearing a press pass on his coat.

Later, when he learned of the incident, Maj. John Cloud of the state police apologized to the mayor. Mayor Smitherman was quoted as saying:

"I thought that the way I was dressed and all, that I looked like a pretty decent citizen. But I reckon with all those outsiders downtown there are a hundred people in the demonstrations who look like I do."

It was Mayor Smitherman who has on several occasions asked Gov. George B. Wallace to send state police to Selma to help local officials, and it was Mayor Smitherman who has on several occasions publicly supported the governor's use of police force in quelling disorder.

SELMA, Ala. — Demonstrators carried their protest on civil rights to face-to-face confrontations with police scattered over a wide area in the city last night.

Nuns, ministers and other whites and Negroes — about 1,000 in all  — stood facing long lines of state, county and city police throughout the Negro section after two attempts to march earlier yesterday were balked.

Wilson Baker, director of public safety, pleaded repeatedly with the civil rights demonstrators to form an orderly line so police could give them protection.

"I have done everything possible to warn these people of the danger in Selma tonight," Baker told newsmen.

The tension eased noticeably after police lines were moved closer to their original position of the past three days, and the demonstrators, followed them.

Later, the Rev. C. T. Vivian, a Negro aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King, conferred with Baker.

Vivian said after the conference that the demonstrators would not attempt to march to the courthouse, but said they would continue demonstrating throughout Saturday night.

Baker said he was not going to permit the continuance of "an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, as some people are calling it."

Baker said he would be unable to give the demonstrators sufficient police protection if they try to go to the courthouse downtown.

"If they go, gentlemen, pray for them," said Baker, who has been virtually without sleep the past three days.

Baker was asked if Selma had reached the point where U.S. marshals or troops should be sent in. He said not if people kept their heads.

Then he asked:

"Did you go uptown this afternoon? Ask some of the newsmen what they have to say about it."

As he spoke, bands of white toughs were surrounding an area in the Negro section where the demonstration has been centered this week. They shouted obscenities at anyone who passed.

The evening itself was clear with a three-quarter moon. Demonstrators sang, chanted, jumped up and down, clapped their hands. They seemed exuberant.

Earlier in the evening, Baker met with civil rights leaders and clergymen in an attempt to smooth the tense situation.

Among those attending were Mr. Vivian and Mr. Bevel, both Negroes; Fred Miller, a representative of the federal Community Relations Service; Malcolm Endicott Peabody, brother of the former governor of Massachusetts, and Msgr. Daniel Cantwell of Chicago.

In a statement for the group after the meeting, Mr. Bevel reported they were going to send a telegram to President Johnson saying, in effect, that they were pleased with the President's statement earlier yesterday afternoon at his press conference, endorsing peaceful assembly and demonstration.

Mr. Bevel said they also would invite the President to "walk with us."

Later, the Rev. James Bevel told the demonstrators on the street that students should stay out of school Monday and adults should stay away from their jobs that day, to attend funeral services for the Rev. James J. Reeb. Their services tentatively are set for Monday.

The latest development in Selma came during the afternoon when clergymen and Negroes altered the pattern of their demonstrators, which had been stalemated by police in one spot for three days.

The marchers suddenly veered off sharply in all directions, forcing policemen to come forward to block them.

Citing President Johnson's remarks at the press conference as their authority for the right to demonstrate peaceably, some 450 persons mounted a second march late yesterday afternoon on police lines in the midst of Selma's Negro section.

They were stopped by Baker as they had been in their first attempt yesterday.

Baker told them that he could not let them go uptown "in any group like this" for their own safety and well-being.

Shouts came from the crowd, "We have the right to march. We have the right to protest. The President has already said that.

Baker replied, "The President gave me no such statement."

The President at one point said in Washington that he had urged Alabama's Gov. George Wallace "to assure that the right of peaceful assembly will be permitted in Alabama so long as law and order is maintained."

In answer to a question about his feelings on the demonstrations, Johnson said:

"I believe that people have the right to demonstrate. I think you must be concerned with the rights of others.... But I think that people should have the right to peacefully assemble and to demonstrate their views and to do anything they can to bring those views to the attention of people, provided they do not violate laws themselves and provided they conduct themselves as they should."

The marchers then split into small groups and began moving through the George Washington Carver housing development.

There were screams and shouts from onlookers. Heavily armed state, county and city police raced to block them wherever they marched.

Soon the marchers were literally surging in all directions away from Sylvan Street, which has been the center of the civil rights movement all week.

These marches come after a strategy meeting in a Baptist church following a tense confrontation two and one half hours ago.

When the ministers and civil rights demonstrators emerged from the church they announced that they were going to demonstrate throughout the night and on until a break occurs.

A number of clergymen commented that they have the right to assembly that they feel they must continue to demonstrate to point out that this right is denied in Selma.

The first attempt to march ended suddenly and dramatically when the marchers turned and went back to the church about 4 o'clock Washington time.

They had been physically pushed back when they tried to walk to the courthouse to conduct a memorial service for the Rev. James J. Reeb.

Only the presence of Baker averted what threatened to turn into a violent demonstration.

The confrontation began about 1:30 of an overcast afternoon when a long line of clergymen and demonstrators marched toward the police lines.

The marchers came from a meeting at the Negro First Baptist Church a block away.

Baker told them, "You are here to create trouble apparently," and added if there were any trouble it would be the marchers' responsibility.

The marchers, still walking with arms linked five abreast, turned sharply toward the right and began walking rapidly between the rows of homes in the housing development.

Police began racing after them to cut them off. When they reached the front line, police moved into the marchers and pushed them back.

Baker placed himself before the marchers and said they would have to push him back to proceed.

During the confused situation and shuffling, Baker cried out several times, "A man of God doing this. I can't believe it."

Msgr. Cantwell stepped forward and read a prepared statement. 

"We're here today with the people of Selma to honor the memory of James Reeb," he said.

The tension was broken momentarily by laughter from the crowd when a television newsman asked Msgr. Cantwell three times to repeat his name and spell it.

Baker, standing in the midst of the crowd, said, "Monsingor, we, too, deplore the use of violence. We have nothing to do with voting rights. Those can be better resolved in the halls of Congress and not out here in the streets pushing while wearing the cloth of the holy father, our God."

Baker continued to talk to those in the front line.

"Now we cannot have further violence in Selma," he said. "I would give anything on earth not to have violence in Selma, Ala. I am asking you as men of God to return to your church."

A few moments later, Baker for the first time nearly lost his self-control.

"I declare this group to be an unlawful assembly," he said, and threatened to arrest Mr. Vivian if they did not disperse within 60 seconds.

Police formed a line of 18 men in front of the marchers and for the next hour the group stood, singing such songs as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the National Anthem, and "Onward Christian Soldiers."

During that interval a small plane circled the area and dropped yellow leaflets.

One was an appeal for money to defend the four men who have been charged with murder in connection with Reeb's death. The leaflet described those men as being accused of "beating three agitators." The leaflet asked that money be sent to a post office box in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Shortly after 3 o'clock, news of the President's press conference came to the crowd when a Negro opened a second story window and shouted out that the President had said they had the right to demonstrate for their freedom.

A great cheer went up from the crowd.

Mr. Vivian said he thought the demonstrators had won a moral victory after hearing that the President had declared that people have the right to assemble peaceably and demonstrate for their cause.

SELMA, Ala. — On the second Sunday in Lent, a day when spring was in the air in Selma, ministers and worshippers were turned away when they tried to attend services at Presbyterian, Episcopal, Baptist and Methodist churches.

Some of the incidents were conducted politely, some were ugly and one threatened to become violent. Taken together, they symbolized the hardened attitude within Selma toward "outside" demonstrators.

These were the incidents:

At 11 a.m., the Rev. Don Schilling, 32, a Presbyterian minister from Marin City, Calif., walked up the steps to the First Presbyterian Church. Mr. Schilling, who is white, was accompanied by Dr. Robert R. Cooper, 32, a Negro politician from Berkeley, Calif.

They were stopped from entering by the ushers.

"They said the church was private property and I was not welcome in the church," Dr. Cooper said.

"This was not a planned thing," Mr. Schilling said. "Mr. Baker (Selma's police chief) told us in the midst of demonstrations yesterday afternoon about going to church. Someone asked him if the churches were integrated and he said, 'Yes, indeed.'

"When they stopped us this morning, we said that we meant no harm, that we were here sincerely to worship God. They said if we were really sincere we would go away.

"I told them I was a Presbyterian clergyman and it seemed awfully incongruous for a Presbyterian clergyman not to be permitted to worship in a Presbyterian church. I asked them if they would be good enough to join us in prayer, and they would not.

"Then, one of them made the comment: 'Do you know what the Bible says about praying in the street? I laughed and I had to admit I hadn't seen that verse, and he said the Bible says to pray in your closet, not in the street.

"So we left. I would really like to have attended."

The ushers also had told them that they "really weren't sincere in wanting to worship God"; that they had come only to create trouble.

A block and a half away at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 29 persons, five of them Negroes, were standing outside the church. They, too, had been turned away. The white ministers among them were told they would be permitted to worship, but not the others.

The ministers elected to stand outside with the rest.

One woman came forward and identified herself as a member of the church. She said she was sorry for what was happening. If she had her way, she told them, they would have been permitted to enter.

Three other parishioners refused to go in their church when they saw what happened.

The Rev. Morris Samuel of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, a white man, said: "I asked one of the ushers if they were turning us away as children of God and he said yes."

A white theological student from Cambridge, Mass. turned and said:

"We asked for bread and wine and they said they were locked up and they wouldn't give it to us. I still can't believe it."

"Jesus is locked up," Father Samuel said.

The group talked about a meeting they had earlier in the week with the pastor of St. Paul's, the Rev. T. Frank Matthews. They said they asked him what he would do if he showed up with Negroes to attend church. According to them, the pastor said he would leave it up to the ushers.

Mr. Matthews was not in the church yesterday. He had left town with his family to rest while being treated for an ulcer.

On the church bulletin board a message to the congregation from Mr. Matthews explaining his absence:

"On the insistence of my doctor and the demand of the vestry, my family and I are taking my ailing 'gizzard' away for a few days from the continual harassment of belligerent and unscrupulous newspaper reporters from across the nation and the equally frustrating interrogations of outside demonstrators — some of whom were quite courteous and polite, others of whom are impossibly antagonistic and argumentative."

He referred to an article in a Southwestern newspaper reporting details of his meeting Wednesday with the visiting Episcopal ministers as being "absurdly dishonest ... and blatantly inaccurate," and commented:

"My only indiscretion lay in willingness to speak openly before out-of-state newsmen, assuming their integrity, and naively anticipating impartial coverage. I'm not making that mistake again, nor, I'm sure, will several of my fellow clergymen of Selma."

His place in the pulpit was taken by Carl C. Morgan Jr., a lay reader in the church. Morgan also is president of the Selma City Council and thus one of the key leaders in the community during the current racial disturbances.

Morgan spoke on Lent. He made no reference, directly or indirectly, to the Selma situation.

The group outside knelt, were led in the Lord's Prayer by Malcolm Peabody Jr. of Cambridge, Mass., and held a prayer service for 15 minutes before marching back to the Negro church.

Peabody, a neighborhood and race relations expert for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, is a brother of former Gov. Endicott Peabody of Massachusetts. His father is a retired bishop of the Central New York Episcopal Diocese.

A group of five persons, four whites and one Negro minister from Cleveland, tried to go to the Church Street Methodist Church on the corner of Church Street and Dallas Avenue.

Chris Smith, 18, a white freshman from the University of Florida, described their walk to the church:

"I was just astonished at the hate and anger in these people's eyes all the way downtown as we were passing the churches. People dressed up for church, standing out front calling us the worst kind of names. As we approached the Methodist Church, a man came running at us across the street from the church. He was real angry."

Those in the group stated that the white men physically pushed them back and told them: "We don't let any white scum in our church."

They said he threatened, "I'll kill you if you come any closer. You're messing with the wrong person, because I'd just as soon kill you."

At the first Baptist Church, a group of eight, three of them Negroes, tried to attend services. They were stopped by about a dozen white men lined up on the steps before them.

The Rev. Lemuel Peterson, executive director of the Greater Seattle Wash., Council of Churches, said they were told that if they entered there might be violence. He also said they were advised to return to their homes and to stop trying to preach and pray in the street.

"Christ preached on the highways and byways," Mr. Petersen replied.

The group then walked back behind the police barricades in the Negro section.

When the service was over at the Baptist church, a group of men stood talking on the corner about the demonstrators.

One well-dressed middle-aged man said to a woman who was passing:

"Oh, there's been a mess here this morning. Crowd of agitators tried to take over the church. Didn't let them through, though."

Negroes and out-of-town clergymen attended services at both the Catholic churches here — St. Elizabeth Church and Church of the Assumption. No segregation policy is practiced in either of the Catholic churches.

EN ROUTE TO MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The long-awaited, and long dreaded, civil rights march on Montgomery went into a second peaceful day today.

At dawn, after a night in below-freezing temperatures, the marchers were up and ready to move. They huddled around makeshift fires, stamped their feet, clapped their hands and sang freedom songs.

They broke camp at 8 a.m. (Washington time), following breakfast and a prayer service. By 8:30 a.m. they were back onto Route 80 heading east toward Montgomery. They were led again by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For the second straight day, the marchers, whose ranks had decreased to 300 to meet the stipulation of a federal judge's order, were protected by federal troops. The troops routed traffic around the marchers giving them access to the eastbound lanes.

As the marchers trudged along, a light plane flew over them and dropped yellow leaflets.

The leaflets called on white citizens to join "Operation Ban." This was described as "selective hiring, firing, buying, selling." The leaflets said: "Unemployed agitator ceases to agitate."

They bore the name of White Citizens' Action, Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and announced that "this message was brought to you by the world's smallest air force — Confederate Air Force."

Dr. King and his weary marchers reached the end of the wide, four-lane portion of the highway, 13 miles out of Selma about noon.

The marchers now walked two abreast along a narrow stretch of 2-lane highway carrying them through rolling farm country with thick pine, tangled underbrush and swamps where trees are festooned with Spanish moss.

By early afternoon Dr. King led the small but exuberant group of marchers across the Dallas County line and passed the official jurisdiction of one of their chief opponents, Sheriff James G. Clark. The demonstrators were singing "We Shall Overcome" as they crossed the county line.

Asked how he felt, Dr. King replied:

"My legs are a little tired, but my soul is resting," he said.

The marchers stopped twice during the morning and early afternoon for rest breaks. The first lasted 10 minutes, the second about 50 minutes.

The second stop was made shortly before they reached the Dallas County-Lowndes County line.

Sheriff Clark, still wearing the button saying "Never" in his lapel, arrived on the scene in good humor and remarked with a smile that "the only thing that worries me are the people left behind in Selma. I wish they had taken all of them with them."

[Ahead of them lay 8 miles of 4-lane highway. With that behind them, the marchers will begin walking two abreast along a narrow stretch of 2-lane highway which will carry them through rolling farm country with thick pine, tangled underbrush and swamps where trees are festooned with Spanish moss.]

The weather again today was perfect for marching — bright sunshine, clear skies, temperatures in the mid-50s. The marchers expect to go about 15 miles.

The march began yesterday, two weeks after it had been halted by violence.

Dr. King and U.N. Undersecretary Ralph Bunche, two American Negros who have won the Nobel Prize for Peace, led the marchers yesterday along the Jefferson Davis Highway toward the old capital of the Confederacy.

Along the way, Route 80, whites and Negroes turned out in the crisp, sunny weather yesterday to stare, wave, cheer and jeer as whites, Negroes, nuns, priests, ministers, rabbis, students, children and civil rights workers passed several abreast in a line that stretched for more than a mile. Estimates of the number of persons ranged from 4,000 to 8,000.

By 6 p.m. Washington time, the marchers turned off the highway onto a country road and made their way to a farm owned by a Negro. They had arrived at what Dr. King had told them earlier was the first "great camp waiting in the promised land."

In the pasture land, next to the stalks of corn, 300 of the 4,000 or so marchers spent the night in canvas tents which had been pitched earlier in the day.

The remainder of the marchers returned to Selma by bus and car, thus adhering to the number specified for today's march by Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson in Montgomery.

The first day's march covered exactly 7.3 miles after leaving Brown's Memorial Chapel in the Negro section of Selma at 1:45 p.m.

The march, said Dr. King, will help turn Alabama "into a state with a heart of brotherhood and freedom....

"We shall reach our goals," he said. "Alabama will be a new Alabama. Its children will finally enter the promised land."

The goals, he said, are protest denial of Negro voting rights, discrimination and police actions against demonstrators.

The march itself was leisurely, and relatively uneventful. At times, it seemed more of a Sunday stroll than a determined demonstration of the spirit of Negroes protesting on behalf of their rights.

The marchers did not seem to be affected by the martial presence of the troops President Johnson had ordered into the area to protect them. There were long gaps in the lines and there were many stragglers.

The federal presence was everywhere. The marchers were protected by more than 3,000 armed federal troops and Alabama National Guardsmen.

Helicopters circled overhead. Trucks and jeeps filled with armed soldiers — with bayonets fixed in their scabards — were behind and alongside.

Every intersection along the route of march was guarded by soldiers.

The crowds lining the highway were quiet most of the time, although occasional insults were shouted at the marchers. White women seemed to take the lead in name-calling.

As the procession reached Craig Air Force Base five miles outside of Selma, a white woman standing with four or five children around her, shouted: "Look at all them black things. Whee!"

A white man, driving a car filled with children, yelled out the window: "Go to hell, Johnson." One of the children in the back seat called out: "Look at them niggers."

Many of the white people who turned out to watch and heckle expressed their emotions with signs and posters. One car was painted in white with the slogan: "Go home scum. We're rebels. Peace in Selma." There were a number of "Yankee Go Home" signs and one that read "Coonsville."

At one point, a Negro woman marcher noticed a sign tackled to a utility pole. It read: "Communists and white trash go home."

The Negro woman read it, pointed toward several whites standing in that yard, and said loudly:

"White trash is at home."

Despite the emotional character of the day, no incidents of violence were reported to the police. Trucks carrying portable toilets and emergency first aid equipment accompanied the caravan.

Originally, the march had been scheduled to take place two weeks ago on Sunday. It was broken up when state and local police used tear gas and clubs to beat the Negroes back across the Alabama River to Selma.

A second attempt to march to Montgomery was made two days later — but it too was stopped by police after Judge Johnson had ordered the march not to be held.

The march is scheduled to end Thursday on the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery. Negro leaders have announced they will try to seek a conference with Gov. George C. Wallace, who initially had given the orders banning the march across the Alabama highway.

EN ROUTE TO MONTGOMERY, Ala. — From the side of the road the procession passes in the warm spring sunshine with a blur of color and sound.

There are pennants and flags, songs and laughter, the confusion and drama of troops, helicopters, trucks and jeeps.

There are the picturesque people — the former boxer, a white man who is nearly blind, tapping his way down the road assisted by a former football player who is a Negro; the white man with one leg, hobbling intently along on crutches; the commanding figure of a Negro who played De Lawd God Jehovah in a road production of "The Green Pastures"; the bearded fugitive from an H. Allen Smith plot who hops on and off a truck wearing only shoes and a brief pair of shorts.

Then there are the ranks of marchers, the lines of young and old in slacks, sweaters, skirts, plodding along in sandals, sneakers and books, carrying their packs, suitcases and blankets.

These are the sights that will be remembered long after the caravan has passed.

No one will remember it more, or regard it with more personal significance, than the Negroes who have been lining the roadside these past two days as the civil rights marchers move on toward Montgomery.

In a sense, the Negro onlookers have been the last to join the "movement." They are sharecroppers, living in wooden shacks with tarpaper or tin roofs on a patch of ground that is not their own.

Until now, they have not participated in civil rights activity. Either because of apathy — or fear — they have stayed on the outside. Now that is being swept away by the force of the Negro's present drive toward equality.

One incident along the route succinctly summed up what is happening.

As the marchers passed a typical Negro shack, there were hand waves from the ranks of black and white toward the large Negro family gathered on the porch. At first, the waves were not returned or acknowledged.

"They're afraid to wave," said a young Negro in a tone of disgust.

Then, moments later, a flutter of hands was seen from the porch.

"There... They've got their courage," a young Negro woman said with obvious pride.

Farther down the narrow highway, Mrs. Florence Rose stood alongside a cotton field on a dirt path leading to her home. Her seven children were beside her, watching. Her husband was in Selma, working at the gas station where he earns $42 a week.

For their house, which has four small rooms, no toilet facilities indoors or out and no plumbing, they pay rent of $8 a week to a white man.

Mrs. Rose was saying that she and her husband owe debts "from here to yonder." Then she talked about the march.

"It means a whole lot," she said. "I'm just glad they did it."

A mile or so beyond, Arch Givner, 66 , was standing with his son, grandchildren and neighbors in front of his farm which he rents for $500 a year.

Like so many Negro sharecroppers, Givner was born and raised in this black belt section. He, too, has a definite opinion of the value of the march.

"What good?" he asked. "A whole lot of good. Freedom, freedom."

He said that when the civil rights movement began to generate increasing emotion in Dallas County and the plans for a march were announced, the man from whom he rents came to see him.

"The white man let me know he didn't want no march," Givner said.

"If you march, you ain't got no home," he said.

Despite the threat, Givner was out there in plain view, lending his support to those who walked before him.

At a way station in Benton, Ala., a crowd of surly and angry whites stood watching grimly as the caravan moved into view.

Standing next to the whites was a group of Negroes. They were all old men leaning on canes; they all said they were in their 70s.

It was the beginning of a typical spring day in Bogalusa, La.

Overnight a heavy rain had fallen, and thick gray clouds still hung over the city. Roosters were crowing. The azaleas, the redbuds, the lilacs and the dogwood were in full bloom. In the Negro section on the outskirts of town s man was standing in front of his small wooden house.

"You walk around here and you won't feel a thing," the Negro said. "It's calm. You don't think anything's wrong. But it's tense. Everybody's on edge. Everybody's got a feeling something's lurking out there."

A few yards from where he stood was the place where a cross had been burned. A few blocks away two meetings had taken place during the night. One was a gathering of the White Citizens Council. The other was a joint meeting of three union locals at which the Mayor pleaded with white members to be calm and "to think and don't emote."

And all over town that morning white citizens found leaflets on their doorsteps calling on them to "Join us in our flight for freedom, and leave a Christian America to your children like your parents left for you."

At the top of the leaflet were the words: "Published by the Original Ku Klux Klan of Louisiana."

"Contrary to what the liberal element would have you think," the message read, "this little letter is not the product of rabble-rousers and troublemakers. We are God-fearing people, dedicated to the preservation of our American Heritage.

"We have friends and members in very high positions, and the information we receive and transmit to you in this manner is factual, as you have seen. It is intended to forewarn and prepare you to take the necessary action to keep our formerly tranquil little city as peaceful as possible. So far. we have been successful. However, the Little Leopard and his fellow conspirators will determine by their future activities how long our community will be allowed to remain peaceful."

The "Little Leopard" and the "fellow conspirators" are local white men — three ministers, a lawyer, an editor, and a radio station manager — who have taken a stand for moderation in the racial issue. As i result of their activity, they have been subjected to profane and abusive phone calls, to threats on their lives, economic boycotts, and a continuing campaign of intimidation designed to drive them from the community.

What has happened to them and to Bogalusa is a part of a pattern throughout the South today. The center of the problem is the Ku KIux Klan.

The Klan in the South is, by any reliable estimate, a very small part of the population — but it is the dangerous part, the part that feeds on fear and frustration.

The Klan has always been this way. It has always acted in secrecy, hidden by masks and darkness. What is new and especially dangerous in the present situation is that the Klan is fighting what may wall be its last battle, and knows it. Consequently, it reacts with increasing recklessness.

Opposition from the President, the Congress, the FBI, national organizations and the overwhelming majority of Americans in all sections of the nation are only a part of the battle.

An even greater problem for the Klan’s racial fanatics is the realization that the South today is in the process of genuine racial evolution, if not revolution. In the face of this, the Klan more and more is aiming its weapons at the whites who are leading the South out of the past.

That is what is happening in Bogalusa and other Southern communities.

This two-part report surveys Klan activities in some of those areas, and assesses Klan strength, weaknesses and prospects.

Bogalusa's present difficulties began last December when six white men, all of them civic leaders, invited Brooks Hays, the former Arkansas Congressman and Baptist Church leader, to speak an compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The speech was to be given before an Integrated group, the first in the city’s history.

"This is a Baptist town, and I really thought people of this town would listen to him," said a minister. "He was twice president at our congregation, you know."

Immediately, organized Klan pressure began — handbills, calls in the night, threats and cross burnings. The invitation to Hays was canceled on January 5.

The six white men issued a statement denouncing the Klan threats, and saying "It is a shame and we are ashamed that fear should so engulf our community that it strangles free speech and the right of peaceful assembly." Hays himself said his own feelings were "nothing compared to the tragedy at a town in the grip of the Ku Klux Klan."

But the cancellation did not stem the unrest. Once unleashed, it fed on itself. Rumors swept the town, rumors about communists, integrationists and the motives at the men who stood at the heart of the controversy.

"How can he drive a '64 car if he's not a member of the NAACP?" was one type of remark. There were vicious stories about the private lives of anyone who spoke out.

"The people are frightened by lies," said one man, "and when you hear them long enough you begin to wonder if there isn’t some truth in them."

Tires were slashed. Roofing nails were placed in driveways of moderates to puncture their tires. Attendance dropped at the three churches — two Baptist, one Episcopal — whose ministers had been among the six moderates.

Adding to the inflammatory situation were the developments in Selma, Ala., and word that James Farmer, the head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the Negro civil rights groups, threatened to lead a protest movement to Bogalusa.

City leaders became concerned over the impact a demonstration would have. At the end of March a Community Affairs Committee was formed consisting of 25 persons representing a cross-section of community life. The committee issued a statement urging citizens to "maintain a feeling of calm and a dedication to law and order."

But the statement was issued only because "published reports of possible racial demonstrations in Bogalusa are a source of grave concern to each of us."

It was silent about the Klan and the Klan-inspired acts of intimidation throughout the city.

Mayor Jesse H. Cutrer Jr., an affable and articulate man, emphasizes that Bogalusa has had a history of good race relations; that the city has taken steps to comply with the Civil Rights Act; that he has been meeting with Negroes and has attempted to do something about their grievances. He, and others, say that they are determined they will not have another Selma on their hands.

"I'm not trying to intimate that we've done great things," he said. "We recognize they have not had things they should have had. I say they deserve them. It is only fair, just and right."

The Mayor has been opposed to the Brooks Hays invitation. "Here is why I didn't want things stirred up at that time," he said. "I had planned a quiet test of public accommodations and I felt the town and its citizens would benefit more from that at that time."

Asked about the Klan, the Mayor said:

"I readily admit we have a Klan. Everybody knows it. To try and deny it is to kid yourself.

"We've got a city here of 23,500 people and we have an organized group of men here. How many I can’t tell. I think I know, but I don’t know definitely. I could tell you 200 men who might be members, but actually I don't know.

"What physical evidence do we have that we do have a Klan? Crosses have been burned here, and little mimeographed sheets put out, some of them containing distasteful statements that are definitely not in order. And then we had an actual demonstration within the city limits (last spring) on private property sponsored by a rural church. 

"As far at assessing how big and what the Klan influence is and so forth — it's something I can't assess. You don't know. My feeling is it's not a large influence in this community. This community is segregationist, but in my opinion it's strictly law abiding."

Others in town give a harsher assessment of the Klan's influence.

"It's strong, and the older and more moderate Klansmen have a hard time controlling the younger ones," said one person, who asked that his name be withheld. He said the Klan meets regularly on a farm outside of town and at a skeet range.

Estimates of the membership range from about 200 to 400. Even the Mayor believes the Klan may have as many as a thousand members.

The actual numbers are not at important as the suspicion and fear that beset a community where an active Klan organization exists. Bogalusa today is an unmistakably hostile and suspicious town.

In restaurants, people can be heard talking in low voices about the leaflets, or the "wizard," or the radio station. There are known Klan gathering places in the town, and the stranger is warned to be careful what he says over the phone.

Tension continued to build last week, culminating in an exchange of shots Thursday morning between civil rights workers and white men identified by Negroes as Klansmen. There was more trouble Friday between civil rights marchers and white citizens.

Townspeople are guarded when they speak. As a Negro said, "One thing: our names can't be mentioned, 'cause you be up there when you publish and we're still down here. And that's where the trouble is."

The greatest evidence of Klan power and coercion involves one of the two radio stations.

The manager, Ralph Blumberg, 44, was one of the men who invited Brooks Hays. When the Hays invitation was canceled, Blumberg broadcast an editorial saying that no matter how distasteful, the civil rights law had to be obeyed. After that his station, WBOX, became the target of an intensive Klan boycott.

"We received phone calls from merchants," Blumberg said. "They would say, 'Ralph, I'm worried to death about these phone calls. They say they're going to boycott us if we advertise with you.'"

Blumberg tried to compromise. He avoided mentioning the racial issue and things quieted, but not for long.

"Around the 7th of March they started in or us hard," Blumberg said, and merchants were showered with calls. “They got us down to about 10 clients and that's when we started to do something. We decided to bring this thing out into the open locally. You’d be amazed, but a lot of the people didn't know what was happening.

"We went on the air and said we were taking off our commercials because WBOX was being forced off the air by a vicious Ku Klux Klan boycott. We said one question would be resolved: whether Bogalusa businessmen could run their own businesses or whether their businesses will be run by fear and intimidation."

Three days later, as a test, he put hack the 10 commercials. "Within a matter of hours we lost four of them.

"Then I drew up a statement saying, in essence, 'We, the merchants of Bogalusa, intend to run our businesses as we wish without intimidation,' and I wanted to get every merchant to sign it. I had to, or it wouldn't work.

"I got one-third through the list and got a bunch of 'no's and that broke it. They’d say, Ralph, I'd be happy to sign it if you can get everyone else to sign it.'

"It was like being in quicksand. The harder we struggled the deeper we went and everybody standing there on sidelines with their hands in their pockets shaking their heads and saying Tisch, tisch.'

"So I decided to ask the outside broadcasting interests to come in and help us with this fight. We didn't want the Klan to drive us out of town with our mouths closed and tail between our legs. Because. you know, if the Klan wins there isn't a news media in America that is invulnerable."

The situation in Bogalusa hardened. The acts of harassment increased. Blumberg's and his wife's car winshields were smashed overnight. Six shots were fired at night into the radio station. No one was injured.

"The scars are pretty deep," Blumberg said. "We can never heal these wounds."

At one point his attractive wife, Jerry, took their two children to her parent’s home in St. Louis, but she returned to stay until the fight is over.

"I don't like to give out the story," she said, "because I’m more bitter than Ralph. It's been awful. It's been a nightmare, but this is going to prove something."

As she talked in her living room he was opening the mail. She cut open one letter and called out to her husband:

"Let me be the first to inform you that your insurance for the station has been canceled. I guess they didn't like the look of those bullet holes." 

The strain was showing on both Blumberg and his wife. He talked about going to sleep at night worrying "about the little nut who might be getting drunk and come over here and put a bomb under our house."

They had just come back from a day in New Orleans, he said. "Susan, (their daughter), started running for the door, and I had to stop her. It's stupid, but you’ve got to worry about booby traps."

In the morning, before driving their cars, they check under the hoods for potential sabotage. "And what worries me now is all these bombings going on in Alabama — that gives these guys ideas.

"You know they are smart. They know what they're doing. They're using the culmination of years and years of experience. These are grandsons and great-grandsons of KIansmen, and human nature doesn't change. And it doesn’t take much to put a human being on edge."

He observed that, "the Klan activity increases whenever we have a problem. In some ways they're like the Negroes — they've got to have some agitation to keep their movement going."

A basic problem, as Blumberg and others point out, is that too often substantial citizens, either through fear or prejudice, look the other way when the Klan rides. "This is a tragic thing," Blumberg said. "Some of the moderates are willing to let the Klan do the dirty work for them."

There is another way of expressing the situation: moderates are driven toward accepting the Klan.

"Someone speaks out and someone burns a cross and the man joint the Klan," one man commented.

The moderate position is consistently eroded when "good citizens" countenance, either tacitly or overtly, the acts committed in their town.

"I'm thinking of pulling out," one person said in confidence. "It's doing something to my spirit. I've never been bitter before, and I don’t like it now."

One person who continues to be outspoken is the Rev. H. Bruce Shepherd of St. Matthews Episcopal Church, at 224 Hoppen Pl. Mr. Shepherd was one of the white persons who invited Hays.

Mr. Shepherd, 50, tall, balding, said that he has preached sermons on race relations ever since he came to Bogalusa 11 years ago. He is a native of Kentucky.

He said that one of his parishioners told another, "he preaches hate every Sunday." 

"If you couldn't laugh about this," he said, "you’d go stark raving crazy. We have to be able to live with the problem and go ahead and face the situation.

"We're having an unhealthy quiet right now. It’s too quiet. And when it gets to this point you begin to wonder when something’s going to break out again."

A second minister involved in the original invitation has also been beset by problems.

The Rev. Jerry Chance, 33, of the Main Street Baptist Church, told of the telephone calls and insults he and his family have received. Mr. Chance, who is quiet and dark-haired, said his oldest child, a girl, 4, vividly remembers coming home with the family from a church meeting last summer to find a cross burning in the front yard.

She asked her father: "Why did they burn that cross, Daddy?"

The incidents against Mr. Chance and his family continued, and the congregation dwindled. Sunday school membership dropped from about 180 to 106 in the last six months. The young minister concluded that he was not helping his congregation by staying.

Last Sunday morning Mr. Chance began the worship service in a church about two-thirds empty. He opened the service with a prayer in which he talked of "the fears that beset us."

He took as his scripture lesson the 14th Chapter of Mark, with the verses describing Jesus going alone to pray at the Mount of Olives after telling His Disciples at the Last Supper:

"All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written. I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered...."

After his sermon, Mr, Chance stepped down from the pulpit and walked to the table in front of the congregation where the bread and wine for the sacraments of Holy Communion had been placed. He faced the congregation, and in a quiet voice said:

"This is the last time that I will stand with you at the Lord's table. I am offering my resignation as the pastor of this church effective the 25th of this month."

He said he wished to offer his heartfelt apology if I have been a source of embarrassment to you." But he added that: "You understand I am not apologizing for my ministry, for I have no regrets in that respect."

There was complete silence in the church as he spoke. When he finished and the congregation recited the Lord's Prayer in unison, Mr. Chance said that if any member had anything to say to him or to the congregation to come forward during the singing of the hymn, "Out of My Bondage, Sorrow and Night."

On the third verse, as the congregation sang "Out of unrest and arrogant pride," a woman suddenly moved forward from the back of the room and walked quickly down the aisle.

She laid her head on Mr Chance's shoulder and whispered to him. She walked back with her bead down, wiping her eyes.

A teenage boy followed. He embraced the minister, and walked back to his pew sobbing softly.

A girl, in her red choir robe, stepped down from the choir loft. Her body shook in sobs while Mr. Chance gently patted her shoulder. She returned to the choir red-eyed from crying.

Another girl followed, and then another. Men came and shook hands. One of the ushers standing behind the minister took out a large white hand kerchief and unashamedly wiped his eyes. Mr Chance himself was swallowing hard and blinking back the tears.

As the communion service ended, and the minister left, there were no dry eyes in the congregation.

It was a victory for the Klan. It was a defeat for the South.