Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  The troopers rushed forward, their blue uniforms and white helmets blurring into a flying wedge as they moved. …

  The first 10 or 20 Negroes were swept to the ground, screaming, arms and legs flying, and packs and bags went skittering across the grassy divider strip and on to the pavement on both sides.

  Those still on their feet retreated.

  The troopers continued pushing, using both the force of their bodies and the prodding of their nightsticks.

  A cheer went up from the white spectators lining the south side of the highway.

  The mounted possemen spurred their horses and rode at a run into the retreating mass. The Negroes cried out as they crowded together for protection, and the whites on the sidelines whooped and cheered.

  The Negroes paused in their retreat for perhaps a minute, still screaming and huddling together.

  Suddenly there was a report like a gunshot and a grey cloud spewed over the troopers and the Negroes.

  “Tear gas!” someone yelled.

  The cloud began covering the highway. Newsmen, who were confined by four troopers to a corner 100 yards away, began to lose sight of the action.

  But before the cloud finally hid it all, there were several seconds of unobstructed view. Fifteen or twenty nightsticks could be seen through the gas, flailing at the heads of the marchers.

  The Negroes broke and ran. Scores of them streamed across the parking lot of the Selma Tractor Company. Troopers and possemen, mounted and unmounted, went after them.

  The Times reported that 57 individuals were injured. Other estimates ran as high as 90 to 100. A volunteer group of doctors and nurses from New York City treated many of them at the Brown Chapel; others received care at the Good Samaritan Hospital and the Burwell Infirmary.

  That evening Young spoke to King in Atlanta for over an hour, and they agreed to take two steps. On Monday SCLC would ask federal Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., in Montgomery for an injunction prohibiting interference with the demonstration. King would lead a second march from Selma to Montgomery on Tuesday, March 9. King sent telegrams to 200 religious leaders across the country urging them to walk with him.

  Selma was now a news sensation. ABC interrupted its Sunday night movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, for a long televised report on the assault. Every major newspaper in the country carried a front-page story under a big headline on Monday. Senators Javits of New York, Yarborough of Texas, and Mondale of Minnesota denounced the attack on the floor of the Senate. It was said that even Governor Wallace was outraged by the lack of control and blamed Jim Clark.

  The White House remained silent because the President was torn. “The most obvious step,” he later wrote, “and the one most passionately desired by citizens in the North who supported equal rights for Negroes was to send federal troops to Alabama.” He heard that advice close by. His aide Harry McPherson wrote him on March 12, “What the public felt on Monday, in my opinion, was the deepest sense of outrage it has ever felt on the civil rights question. I had dinner with Abe Fortas Monday night. That reasonable man was for sending troops at once.” But others disagreed. Humphrey reviewed the options with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “With but minor dissent, the group indicated a strong belief that federal troops should not be used under present circumstances.” The President concurred. A military display might “destroy” the voting rights bill, would make Wallace a martyr, and would undermine southern moderates. “We had to have a real victory for the black people, not a psychological victory for the North.”

  On Monday the civil rights lawyers met with Judge Johnson to ask for an immediate injunction. He refused to issue one without a hearing. He wanted the Tuesday march canceled and would open his hearings on Thursday.

  On Monday night in Selma the civil rights leadership met for 12 hours—King, Abernathy, Young, Williams, the lawyers, James Farmer of the Committee on Racial Equality, and James Forman of SNCC. The initial decision, reached about midnight, with Williams and Forman dissenting, called for accepting the judge’s postponement till Thursday. But they had not counted on the impact of the news, particularly the television footage of the attack at the Pettus Bridge, along with King’s call for volunteers. Hundreds of sympathizers had dropped what they had been doing, hopped on airplanes, and were now reaching Montgomery and Selma.

  James J. Reeb was a Unitarian minister working for the American Friends Service Committee on housing for low-income blacks in the Roxbury ghetto in Boston. He learned of King’s plea about noon on Monday. That afternoon he arranged to leave his job and his family (over the protest of his wife). He was on an Eastern Airlines flight to Atlanta at 11 p.m. and caught another to Montgomery, arriving around 8:00 Tuesday morning. A rental car had him in Selma about 9:00. Reeb was one of scores of clergymen arriving from all corners of the country. Their presence created enormous pressure on King to go forward with the march that day.

  On Monday night and early Tuesday morning the Johnson administration pushed King to comply with Judge Johnson’s request for delay. John Doar of the Civil Rights Division and Fred Miller and James Laue of the new Community Relations Service urged him to wait. At 4 a.m., however, the leaders decided to proceed. Within the hour Katzenbach phoned to press King to reverse the decision. LeRoy Collins, the former governor of Florida and now head of the Community Relations Service, joined the meeting and was also unsuccessful.

  Collins, as good mediators with tough cases must, had an inspiration. He went to Lingo and Clark and told them that King was determined to march. They said they would not allow him to go beyond the Pettus Bridge. Collins asked whether they would forgo force if the marchers stopped before they reached the line of troopers and then turned back. Lingo and Clark said they would not attack. Collins returned to King and explained the ploy. Collins and his staff were convinced that King agreed, though others said that he merely smiled.

  In mid-morning Judge Johnson converted his request for delay into a formal restraining order. It was served on the SCLC staff members. Now a march would be in defiance of a federal court order. Shortly before 3 p.m., as the lines were forming, Collins approached King, told him “everything would be all right,” and handed him a piece of paper.

  The march moved down Sylvan to Water and then onto Broad to the foot of the bridge. There a U.S. marshal read the restraining order to King. The marshal stepped aside and the marchers proceeded up onto the bridge and down the other side where the troopers at the ready were in full view. When only 50 feet separated them, King halted. Prayers were recited and the marchers sang “We Shall Overcome.” Simultaneously King turned the march around and led it back across the bridge as the troopers, evidently on telephoned orders from the governor, withdrew from the roadway, leaving the road to Montgomery seemingly open. But King continued back through Selma to Brown Chapel. SNCC was outraged by this “sell-out” and its already strained relations with SCLC snapped.

  That afternoon the President finally spoke out. He deplored Sunday’s “brutality,” denying citizens the “precious right to vote.” He promised that the voting rights bill would be ready by the next weekend. The government, he said, was following events in Selma closely and was trying to lessen the tension. In Washington hundreds protested outside the White House and the Department of Justice.

  There were about 50 Unitarian Universalist clergymen who had walked in the aborted march. A friend of Reeb’s said he was driving to Atlanta that evening and offered to take him to the airport; Reeb accepted. But another friend urged him to stay another day and he changed his plan. Reeb and two others walked into town to find a place to eat supper. They stopped at the SNCC office to get advice. A tall Negro asked, “Would you prefer a place of your own?” They said they preferred a black restaurant and were told to go to Walker’s Cafe. It was crowded with civil rights marchers and they had to wait. By the time they left it was 7:30 and dark.

  As they started down the street Reeb was on the outside near the curb. Almost immediately four white men, shouting
, “Hey you niggers!” moved in on them. One with a three-foot club, swinging with all his might, struck Reeb in the head above the left ear and he went down. The two others were assaulted by fists and also fell to the pavement.

  Reeb was taken to Burwell Infirmary. But the doctors were unable to handle so serious a case and suggested the Birmingham University Hospital. It was four hours before he arrived there. He had sustained a massive skull fracture which had shattered his brain and had caused cardiac arrest. He died at 6:55 p.m. on Thursday. The preceding day Wilson Baker had arrested four white men for the murder. Three were indicted and were tried in December. Despite firm identifications by the ministers, they were acquitted by an all-white jury.

  The Johnsons were hosting a congressional reception at the White House when the President was handed a note informing him that Reeb had been clubbed. He excused himself and phoned Mrs. Reeb. “No matter what I could find to say to her,” he wrote later, “I had no answer to the one question that kept turning over and over in my mind. How many Jim Reebs will die before our country is truly free?” He did provide Mrs. Reeb with an airplane, which allowed her to be with her husband when he died.

  People in the North, already enraged, became enflamed by the murder. It was, of course, the top story in the media. Thousands marched in sympathy in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other cities. In Detroit, Michigan’s governor, George Romney, and Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh led 10,000 people through the downtown area.

  Judge Johnson’s hearings opened in Montgomery on Thursday, March 12, and continued on Friday, Saturday, and the following Monday. On Wednesday he issued his decision, a total victory for the SCLC: Governor Wallace’s prohibition of a march was unconstitutional; the judge gave the SCLC an injunction against either the state or the county interfering; and he approved a detailed plan for the 54-mile walk. Hosea Williams announced that it would begin on Sunday, March 21.

  Wallace must have sensed that this was coming. After all, Frank Johnson was a firm supporter of civil rights and the governor had repeatedly called him “a low-down, carpetbaggin’, scallawagin’, race-mixin’ liar.” Wallace’s options were closing. He could not order Lingo’s troopers to beat up King’s marchers again, this time with many white people involved. This would defy a federal court order and he himself might wind up in jail. It would also wipe out the already severely tarnished reputation of the state of Alabama. But, if he complied with the injunction, he would sell out his rabid redneck constituents. His only way out was to dump the problem on the federal government.

  On Friday afternoon, March 12, the governor held a strategy session with his key advisers. They agreed that he should ask the President for a meeting to discuss Selma, and he immediately sent a telegram to the White House. Johnson, who was anxiously trying to avoid sending troops to Alabama in the face of growing public demand, wrote that his “hopes were realized.”

  They met the next day in the Oval Office for three hours. The President considered Wallace a “runty little bastard” and “just about the most dangerous person around.” He kept his eyes on Wallace’s face the whole time. He saw “a nervous aggressive man; a rough, shrewd politician who had managed to touch the deepest chords of pride as well as prejudice among his people.” Burke Marshall said,

  The President handled Wallace very well, very well. He really had Wallace impressed, sort of cowed and pliable. … He kept telling him we have to view ourselves and view this problem as history will view it in the future. Wallace ate all that stuff up, and it was very effective. It didn’t last, but it was very effective for the time being.

  The governor complained, the President told a press conference immediately afterward, that the demonstrations constituted a threat to the peace and security of the people of Alabama. Johnson answered, “I am firmly convinced … that when all the eligible Negroes of Alabama have been registered, … the demonstrations … will stop.” He asked Wallace to support universal suffrage, to assure the right of peaceful assembly, and to call a biracial conference to improve relations between whites and blacks. When asked Wallace’s reaction, he said, “We are not in agreement on a good many things.” A reporter inquired whether he intended to send troops; Johnson deflected the question. Lee White had warned him against giving Wallace the press after the meeting. Johnson handled it alone. Thus, the governor returned to Alabama empty-handed. As politicians do in such situations, he attacked the press.

  Monday, March 15, was a notable day. During the morning Wilcox and Lowndes counties registered a total of 12 black voters, their first in the twentieth century. After a battle led by LeRoy Collins and Wilson Baker, Selma that afternoon allowed a memorial service for James Reeb on the courthouse steps before a crowd of 2000. King preached and a number of national figures were present. Most important, that evening President Johnson presented the voting rights bill to a joint session of Congress before an enormous television audience, which will be recounted shortly.

  But on Tuesday there was a vicious incident in Montgomery. About 600 demonstrators, mostly white and from the North, gathered near the state capitol. Some of the officers supposedly maintaining order—city, county, and state police—suddenly rode their mounts into the crowd and beat the marchers mercilessly with their batons.

  Late Tuesday afternoon the President met with Moyers, Katzenbach, Clark, Marshall, and Buford Ellington, former governor of Tennessee and director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. Cyrus Vance, Secretary of the Army, was also consulted. The President insisted that he wanted an “adequate” troop level: “if you haven’t enough you will wish you had.” He added, “I want professionals there, not drugstore cowboys.” Vance proposed putting a military police battalion into the Selma area and another near Birmingham, along with federalization of the Alabama National Guard. He also suggested “a good man” for the command, Brigadier General Henry V. Graham of the 31st Infantry (Dixie) Division. He had led a similar force in 1963 when George Wallace had tried to prevent black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama.

  Katzenbach pointed out that, according to the Constitution, the President could not act on his own: “The only way to get federal troops in is for the Governor to say that he is unable to maintain law and order.” Ellington phoned Wallace to tell him to request federal assistance and he immediately agreed to do so. The President asked, “How do you explain the change in Wallace’s attitude?” Ellington replied, “He had confidence in you. He needs help. He has been an entirely different person.” Wallace, of course, had no choice.

  Thus, the governor did as he was told, but in his own way to save his political face in Alabama. On March 18 he wired the President that the state was unable to provide security for the “so-called march” from Selma to Montgomery. This would require “6,171 men; 489 vehicles; 15 busses, not including support units.” The state had only 300 troopers and 150 alcohol control officers. “I respectfully request that the United States provide sufficient federal civil authorities or officers to provide for the safety and welfare of citizens in and along the proposed march routes and to provide for the safety and welfare of the marchers.” The governor then got his legislature to pass a resolution declaring that Alabama was asking for federal help because it did not have the funds to pay for the mission.

  Lyndon Johnson could also play at the game of dissembling. He sent the following telegram to Wallace on March 20:

  Responsibility for maintaining law and order in our federal system properly rests with state and local governments. On the basis of your public statements and your discussions with me, I thought that you felt strongly about this and had indicated you would take all necessary action in this regard. I was surprised, therefore, when … you requested federal assistance. … Even more surprising was [the statement] … that both you and the Alabama legislature, because of monetary considerations, believed that the state is unable to protect American citizens and to maintain peace and order … without federal forces.

  Because the court or
der must be obeyed and the rights of American citizens protected, I intend to meet your request by providing federal assistance to perform normal police functions. …

  The President issued Executive Order 11207 nationalizing the Alabama National Guard on March 20. General Graham was placed in command of the initial forces, consisting of an infantry battalion (1,837 men) from his division in Alabama along with the 503rd military police battalion from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, (500 men) and the 720th military police battalion from Fort Hood, Texas (509 men). An infantry battalion of the 20th Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia, was put on alert.

  In addition, the Department of Justice established its own emergency organization in Alabama with Ramsey Clark in charge. He would be in a radio car between Selma and Montgomery. John Doar was assigned to General Graham and was also in a radio car. Burke Marshall was in Selma. Almost 100 U.S. marshals were brought into the area.

  On the eve of the march Bill Moyers phoned the substance of a long memorandum, obviously from the FBI, to the President at his ranch. King, deeply disturbed, had called his advisers, Bayard Rustin and Harry Wachtel, to report a serious rift with SNCC. Forman at a recent church meeting had called for violent overthrow of the government. SNCC, King understood, was going to provoke a race riot in Montgomery in order to “get a martyr in Alabama.” They wanted to have “somebody from SNCC killed.” Rustin told him that he must “divorce himself from SNCC publicly” when the march was over. The Bureau reported that people from all over the country were pouring into Alabama and expected more than 5000 by March 21. King estimated that 9000 marchers would leave Selma and that 25,000 would enter Montgomery.

  In fact, the numbers at the outset were much smaller and the march itself was a bit of an anti-climax. Joe Califano, the aide to Secretary McNamara, transmitted the Army counts for the four days of the march to the White House and the Department of Justice. The first day, as they left Selma, there were 392 marchers, approximately 45 white. On the last day, as the procession entered Montgomery, the numbers swelled dramatically to 1200 and that evening to 5000. The next day in the city there were about 10,000.