At Canaan's Edge

by Taylor Branch

  This work relies heavily on oral history to retrieve firsthand memories. Those who provided interviews are listed throughout the notes in numbers far too great to repeat here, but I want to emphasize my gratitude to them. In this volume, for their generous help in locating witnesses in Lowndes County, Alabama, I am indebted to Catherine Coleman Flowers, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and the late Timothy Mays.

  At my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Jacquelyn Hall offered cooperation and advice in the general discipline of oral history, along with her associates Johanna Clark-Sayer, Melynn Glusman, and Beth Millwood. Timothy D. Pyatt, Rachel Canada, Richard A. Shrader, and Anne Skilton provided archival advice along with primary information from the Southern Historical Collection. Its curator, Timothy West, has agreed to catalogue and preserve all my cumulative source material, including recorded interviews, for the use of future researchers.

  For advice and help beyond contributions cited in the notes, the following people more than deserve public thanks: Roland M. Baumann, Bill Baxter, Agieb Bilal, Philathia Bolton, Franklin Branch, Rosann Catalano, Robin Coblentz, Andrew Foster Connors, Connie Curry, Richard Deats, Jack D. Ellis, Ray English, Dorothy and Nicole Fall, Jo Freeman, Roger and Frances Gench, Lex Gillespie, Lawrence and Monica Guyot, Seymour Hersh, Tom Houck, Martha Hunt Huie, Maurice Hundley, Robert H. Janover, Teresa Johanson, Loch Johnson, Janice Kaguyutan, Laurel Kamen, Randy Kryn, Christopher Leighton, Willy Leventhal, Mary Lilliboe, Jerry Mitchell, Charles F. Newman, Gustav Niebuhr, Jan Nunley, Peggy Obrecht, David Person, Frank Madison Reid, Judy Richardson, Guido van Rijn, John Roberts, Betty Garman Robinson, Howard Romaine, John Rothchild, Lisa Rzepka, Yusuf Salaam, Rose and Hank Sanders, Nuvolina Sherlock, Maria Varela, Levi Watkins, Penny and Kendall Weaver, Susan Weld, George B. Wiley, Curtis Wilkie, Mary Jane Wilkinson, Lawrence Wofford, and Edwin M. Yoder; plus Paola di Floria, Alice Rubin, and Jay Leavy of CounterPoint Films; Mary Ellen Gale, Michael Lottman, Jim Peppler, and Robert Ellis Smith, formerly of the Southern Courier; Bruce Hartford and colleagues at the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement web-site; and Sara Rostolder Mandell and Jane Ramsey of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago.

  Harry Belafonte, who once stalled me for years as a most reticent interview subject, has become a stalwart partner and friend in ongoing efforts to translate the civil rights era into film. Associates on this path of heartbreak and hope have included Jon Avnet, Jonathan Demme, Jed Dietz, Tom Fontana, Susan Lyne, Paul Nagle, Anna Hamilton Phelan, Arnold Rifkin, Carol Schreder, Helen Verno, Paula Weinstein, and Winifred White-Neisser.

  Martha Healy diligently carried out the primary transcription for the Johnson telephone recordings. Dan Hartman of Discount Computer Service kept the machines running, and Jennifer Helfrich of Iseeman, Inc. showed me how to navigate data programs.

  More personally, I want to thank Julian Bond, Pam Horowitz, and Kent Germany for insightful critiques of the early manuscript. They may try to blame me for errors they should have caught, but discerning readers now know better. Examples from the movement always refilled the well of inspiration. My literary agent, Liz Darhansoff, helped keep our family solvent and cheerful through many contract extensions. Through the hardships and joys of her own career, Christy has built our partnership of the heart. Our daughter, Macy, has grown to zestful independence. Our son, Franklin, who was born weeks before my first trip to the Lorraine Motel, finished college in time to help me with final research. I give thanks to my mother, the dear memory of my father, and many loved ones for sustaining me in the blessing of a life’s work.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS USED

  INTRODUCTION

  “every votary of freedom”: Federalist No. 39, in Rossiter, ed., Federalist, p. 240.

  “virtue in the people”: Wood, Radicalism, pp. 234–35; Ketcham, Madison, p. 262.

  “Sir, I know just how”: Branch, Pillar, p. 509.

  “rise up and live out”: Washington, ed., Testament, p. 219.

  “as old as the Scriptures”: Branch, Parting, pp. 823–24.

  “I believe that unarmed truth”: Branch, Pillar, p. 541.

  “But what is government”: Federalist No. 51, in Rossiter, ed., Federalist, p. 322.

  1: WARNING

  Haynes spread word: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000.

  hens would not lay eggs properly: Int. Mary Lee King, June 28, 2000.

  plainspoken Hulda Coleman: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 185–89.

  Haynes had confided to Coleman: Int. Uralee Haynes, Sept. 8, 2000; Couto, Ain’t

  Gonna, pp. 89–90.

  last attempt to register: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 120–21.

  Mt. Carmel Baptist on February 28, 1965: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000; int. Uralee Haynes, Sept. 8, 2000; int. John Hulett, Sept. 8, 2000.

  shotguns and rifles: SAC, Mobile, to Director, March 1, 1965, FDCA-442.

  said he had been braced: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000.

  recognized among the Klansmen: Int. Bernice Johnson, Feb. 16, 2001.

  dumped the body of Bud Rudolph: Int. Uralee Haynes, Sept. 8, 2000.

  There was Tom Coleman: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000; int. Uralee Haynes, Sept. 8, 2000; int. John Hulett, Sept. 8, 2000; Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 187–91.

  Sheriff Jesse Coleman: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 100–101, 186.

  barely a fifth of the county’s households had telephone service: Ibid., p. 109.

  the only armed pickup sighted: Int. John Hulett, Sept. 8, 2000.

  fell to deacon John Hulett: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 122–23; Couto, Ain’t Gonna, pp. 84, 94–96.

  slave ancestor was said to have founded Mt. Carmel Baptist: Int. John Hulett, Sept. 8, 2000. A plaque outside Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, Gordonville, Alabama, reads, “Founded 1819—Rev. J. Hullett.”

  led a close convoy: Ibid.

  “If I have to leave, you take it”: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000.

  never again in the twentieth century: Ibid.

  2: SCOUTS

  James Bevel was preaching: Fager, Selma, 1965, pp. 82–83.

  twelfth chapter of Acts: Acts 12:2–3.

  walked with them from this same church in a night vigil: Branch, Pillar, pp. 592–94.

  “a nightmare of State Police stupidity and brutality”: Garrow, Protest, p. 62.

  “Negroes could be heard screaming”: NYT, Feb. 20, 1965, p. 1.

  “is falling kind of hard on me”: Int. James Bevel, Nov. 23, 1997, Dec. 10, 1998; int. Bernard Lafayette, May 28, 1990.

  “go unto the king”: Esther 4:8.

  “We must go to Montgomery and see the king!”: Fager, Selma, 1965, p. 83; Branch, Pillar, p. 599.

  Rev. Lorenzo Harrison burst through the doors: NYT, March 1, 1965, p. 17; SAC, Mobile, to Director, Feb. 28, 1965, FDCA-450.

  “I said you ought not to be crying”: Jet, March 11, 1965, p. 4.

  Then Harrison himself broke down: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000.

  open Tabernacle Baptist for the first church meeting: Branch, Pillar, pp. 81–84.

  “inasmuch as Harris [sic] could furnish”: SAC, Mobile, to Director, March 1, 1965, FDCA-442.

  scouted into Lowndes County along Highway 80: Int. James Bevel, Sept. 6, 2000;

  “Great Day at Trickem Fork,” Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1965, p. 94.

  “Dr. King asked us to come down here”: Alvin Adams, “SCLC Organizing in Lowndes County, Alabama,” JMP.

  no church yet dared to open its doors: SAC, Mobile, to Director, Feb. 16, 1965, FDCA-345.

  others warily had gauged: STJ, Feb. 26, 1965, p. 1.

  “My few days here are a refreshing”: LAHE, Feb. 26, 1965, p. B-1.

  death threats from callers: Ibid. Also SAC, Los Angeles, to Director, Feb. 23, 1965, FK-914; SAC, Los Angeles, to Director, Feb. 24, 1965, FK-980; Los Angeles LHM dated Feb. 26, 1965, FK-NR.

  News stories tracked a manhunt: LAT, Feb. 27, 1965; BAA, March 6, 1965, p. 1.


  Reporters pressed King: Transcript of MLK press conference at L.A. Airport, Feb. 24, 1965, A/KS.

  In his sermon at Victory Baptist: CDD, March 1, 1965, pp. 1, 10.

  “the biggest hypocrite alive”: Branch, Pillar, p. 598.

  “pitifully wasted”: NYT, Feb. 22, 1965, p. 20.

  I flunked on you, Sully”: Int. Jean Jackson, May 27, 1990.

  one of Coretta King’s music teachers: Ibid.

  Bevel himself claimed to hear voices: Int. James Bevel, Dec. 19, 1998.

  denounced Bevel to King as unstable: Int. Hosea Williams, Oct. 29, 1991; int. Willie Bolden, May 14, 1992.

  King refused his insistent demands: Branch, Pillar, pp. 76, 196–97.

  King had indulged Bevel: Branch, Parting, pp. 753–54; int. Andrew Young, Oct. 26, 1991.

  King was in Selma largely on a quixotic leap: Branch, Pillar, pp. 138–40, 165, 524.

  discovered wandering Selma’s streets: Ibid., pp. 598–99; Fager, Selma, 1965, p. 81.

  Hotspur and Joan of Arc: Branch, Parting, pp. 424–25, 559; Branch, Pillar, pp. 54–57.

  “How dare you, lie to me”: Int. James Bevel, Nov. 23, 1997; int. Diane Nash, Dec. 8, 1998.

  “rise up and live out the true meaning”: Washington, ed., Testament, p. 219.

  “how worthy I’m going to try to be”: LBJ phone call with MLK, 9:20 P.M., Nov. 25, (the day of President Kennedy’s funeral), Beschloss, Taking, p. 39.

  Then Johnson had turned suddenly coy and insecure: Branch, Pillar, pp. 452–54.

  “That will answer seventy percent of your problems”: LBJ phone call with MLK, 12:06 P.M., Jan. 15, 1965, Cit. 6736-37, Audiotape WH6501.04, LBJ.

  “That’ll get you a message that all the eloquence”: Ibid.

  When a haggard King placed an ad: Branch, Pillar, pp. 580–84.

  FBI agents overheard his call: Branigan to W. C. Sullivan, Feb. 28, 1965, FK-983.

  “a return to Reconstruction”: Horace Busby to Bill Moyers and Lee White, “The Voting Rights Message,” Feb. 27, 1965, Legislative Background, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Box 1, LBJ.

  Katzenbach himself strongly opposed: Int. Nicholas Katzenbach, June 14, 1991.

  “leave control of voting machinery”: Katzenbach to Moyers and White, March 1, 1965, Moyers Papers, Box 6, LBJ.

  “The game now is in the fourth quarter”: LBJ phone call with Robert McNamara, 9:10 A.M., Feb. 26, 1965, Cit. 6887, Audiotape WH6502.06, LBJ.

  bleak reality that guerrilla armies were defeating: Cf. Bundy to LBJ, Feb. 7, 1965

  (“…defeat appears inevitable…prospect in Vietnam is grim….”) in FRUS, Vol. 2, pp. 174–81; Logevall, Choosing, pp. 330–32; Branch, Pillar, pp. 306–10.

  “forgive you for anything except being weak”: LBJ phone call with Richard Russell, June 11, 1964, Cit. 3680-81, Audiotape WH6406.05, LBJ.

  “this is a terrible thing”: LBJ phone call with McGeorge Bundy, 11:24 A.M., May 27, 1964, Cit. 3522, Audiotape WH6405.10, LBJ.

  “makes the chills run up my back”: LBJ phone call with Richard Russell, 10:55 A.M., May 27, 1964, Cit. 3519a, Audiotape WH6405.10, LBJ.

  approved secretly on February 13: Logevall, Choosing, pp. 343–44.

  another military coup by South Vietnamese allies: NYT, Feb. 19, 1965, pp. 1, 10; Karnow, Vietnam, pp. 392–402.

  six chronically unstable governments: Ibid. The nature of South Vietnamese politics made regimes difficult for Americans to count, and the Times put the number at nine. NYT, March 3, 1965, p. 10.

  “Now we’re off to bombing those people”: LBJ phone call with Robert McNamara, 9:10 A.M., Feb. 26, 1965, Cit. 6887, Audiotape WH6502.06, LBJ.

  President transfixed by a report: Robert Kleiman, “U.S. Said to Plan Limited Air War as Lever on Hanoi,” NYT, March 1, 1965, p. 1. Datelined Saigon, the story reported that the “highest American and South Vietnamese officials” were “virtually certain” of Johnson’s approval for a sustained air war that would be “neither announced nor officially admitted.” The story quoted a high official that the goal of the new campaign was not to bomb North Vietnam into submission but to “do something we could stop doing to them, in return for equivalent concessions.”

  “Am I wrong in saying”: LBJ phone call with Robert McNamara, 10:46 A.M., March 1, 1965, Cit. 7002-03, Audiotape WH6503.01, LBJ.

  mountainous doubt and brutally frank pessimism: Ambassador Maxwell Taylor to the Department of State, 11:00 A.M., Jan. 6, 1965, FRUS, Vol. 2, pp. 12–19. On February 22, 1965, opposing General William Westmoreland’s request that same day for Marine combat units in Vietnam, Ambassador Taylor cabled Washington as follows: “White-faced soldier, armed, equipped and trained as he is not suitable guerrilla fighter for Asian forests and jungles. French tried to adapt their forces to this mission and failed; I doubt that US forces could do much better.” Gravel, ed., Pentagon Papers, pp. 418–19. See also McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 146–74; Langguth, Our Vietnam, pp. 333–48.

  “Somebody ought to be removed, Bob”: LBJ phone call with Robert McNamara, 10:46 A.M., March 1, 1965, Cit. 7002-03, Audiotape WH6503.01, LBJ.

  “We are going to bring”: NYT, March 2, 1965, pp. 1, 10.

  one surprise dispersal: Branch, Pillar, p. 586.

  around the Lowndes County courthouse: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 120–21; “Great Day at Trickem Fork,” Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1965, p. 94.

  “Who is that little fella”: Int. John Hulett, Sept. 8, 2000.

  “refused to know their own selves”: Int. Elzie McGill by Robert Wright, Aug. 4, 1968, RJBOH.

  spoke with an odd accent: Int. Rocena Haralson, Feb. 16, 2001.

  Emma and Matthew Jackson: Int. Matthew Jackson and int. Emma (Mrs. Matthew) Jackson by Robert Wright, Aug. 4, 1968, RJBOH.

  “In the name of humanity”: NYT, March 2, 1965, p. 1.

  people managed to finish: Ibid.

  Wilcox County seat of Camden: McCarty, Reins, p. 20.

  “too small to be a republic”: Applebome, Dixie, p. 103.

  “2,250 whites registered”: McCarty, Reins, p. 137.

  no electric lights: Ibid., p. 97.

  Ben Miller took a cow: Ibid., p. 104.

  sixty-eight families of Negro sharecroppers: Callahan, Quilting Bee, pp. 35–36.

  never had seen a water faucet: Ibid., p. 74.

  “Well, how about you acting”: McCarty, Reins, p. 144.

  “Don’t even carry a hair clamp”: Callahan, Quilting Bee, p. 166.

  fifty wet Alabama state troopers: Fager, Selma, 1965, p. 84.

  two riflemen intended to shoot him: Branch, Pillar, pp. 591–97.

  “This is a magnificent thing”: NYT, March 2, 1965, p. 19.

  named for Robert Y. Hayne: Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 90.

  William Lowndes Yancey: McCarty, Reins, pp. 34–35.

  sell Marlboro cigarettes or Falstaff beer: Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 113.

  refused to give his name or title: NYT, March 2, 1965, pp. 1, 19.

  “You are damned dumb”: Fager, Selma, 1965, p. 84; Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 120–21.

  Photographers snapped a picture: WP, March 2, 1965, p. 8.

  fired from his regular job: Int. Lorenzo Harrison, Sept. 8, 2000; Rev. Maurice McCrackin pamphlet, “Operation Freedom Helps in Selma,” April 1965, RSP1.

  “revealed no incidents throughout”: Teletype, Mobile office to Director, March 1, 1965, FDCA-453.

  he hesitated for six minutes: Teletype, Mobile office to Director, March 1, 1965, FDCA-454.

  3: DISSENT

  PAGE

  In full academic regalia: CDD, March 3, 1965, p. 1.

  reprise on his Nobel Peace Prize lecture: Branch, Pillar, pp. 542–43.

  “The war in Vietnam is accomplishing nothing”: Garrow, Bearing, p. 394; “MLK on

  Vietnam/Washington, DC,” misdated March 6, 1965, A/KS.

  brought the number of Americans killed: NYT, March 7, 1965, p. 3.

  no formal announcement of the new bombing policy:
FRUS, Vol. 2, p. 390.

  Air Force jets, six of which were lost: Ibid.; Logevall, Choosing, p. 363.

  forty policemen who stood guard: Garrow, Bearing, p. 394.

  seeking counsel about his dilemma: Hoover to Marvin Watson, March 9, 1965, FK-971.

  Bad weather delayed: Teletype, Mobile office to Director, March 3, 1965, FDCA-460.

  two thousand mourners filed past: Fager, Selma, 1965, p. 85.

  the afternoon funeral procession: BAA, March 13, 1965, p. 13; Mendelsohn, Martyrs, pp. 148–49.

  “a tear glistened”: NYT, March 4, 1965, p. 23.

  Recycling the text: Ibid. Also Branch, Pillar, p. 600; Fager, Selma, 1965, pp. 85–86.

  “What time they be marchin’?”: Webb and Nelson, Selma, Lord, Selma, p. 71.

  rain rinsed its blue dye: Ibid., p. 81.

  He set the starting date for Sunday, March 7: NYT, March 4, 1965, p. 23.

  To give himself some wiggle room: STJ, March 4, 1965, p. 1.

  At a crisis staff meeting: Int. Fay Bellamy, Oct. 29, 1991; int. Frank Soracco, Sept. 12–14, 1990; int. Silas Norman, June 28, 2000.

  Bellamy had introduced herself to Malcolm X: Branch, Pillar, pp. 578–79.

  an opposing war council: Lesher, George Wallace, p. 319; Carter, Politics, pp. 246–47.

  “laughingstock of the nation”: Jones, Wallace Story, pp. 355–56.

  Stanley Levison rode an elevator: Hoover to Marvin Watson, March 9, 1965,

  FK-971.

  “We cannot afford to lose him”: SAC, New York, Teletype to Director, March 4, 1965, FK-963.

  warning to President Johnson: Hoover to Marvin Watson, March 5, 1965, FK-931.