Escape Velocity

by Charles Portis

  “I am Gen. Graham, and it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside, on order of the President of the U.S.”

  “General,” the Governor said, reading from a crumpled piece of paper at a lectern set up just for the occasion, “I wish to make a statement first.

  “But for the unwarranted Federalization of the National Guard, I would be your commander-in-chief. In fact, I am your commander-in-chief. I know this is a bitter pill to swallow for the National Guard of Alabama.…

  “We must have no violence…the Guardsmen are our brothers…God bless all the people of this state, white and black.”

  After a final vow to “continue this fight on the legal questions involved,” the Governor got into his car and drove off in a roar of motorcycle police. Several students cheered.

  And that was it.

  Mr. Hood, who wants to study psychology, and Miss Malone, a business administration student, walked in minutes later with several Federal marshals and registered. A group of white students watched with no comment.

  “This is our first and final news conference,” Mr. Hood said afterward to part of the 400-man press corps that almost outmanned the 500-man state trooper contingent called up by the Governor. “We are very happy our registration has taken place without incident. We hope to get down to our purpose—study.”

  Both obviously looked forward to a procession before caps and gowns, not helmets and rifles.

  So, too, did Deputy Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, who directed the desegregation moves on the scene for the government, faced up to Gov. Wallace and his troopers in the morning and wore a broad grin and a ringlet of sweat beads as he came back at 5:17 p. m. for the final moves of the game. It was when Mr. Wallace saw 100 Federalized guardsmen—first of a contingent waiting a few blocks away on University Ave.—that he gave in.

  Even when the day started, Mr. Wallace was under court order “not to interfere in any way” with the enrollment of the two Negroes. Under a carefully contrived technicality, he may not have done so, since he never actually confronted them.

  In the early morning, before the two Negroes first came to the doorway of Foster Hall to register, President Kennedy issued a proclamation ordering the Governor to stop impeding the course decreed by the courts.

  Ironically, it was countersigned by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who must put the seal on all such proclamations, but who is particularly concerned at the propaganda picture the situation presents abroad.

  The dramatic morning confrontation between state’s rights and the Federal government took only 13 minutes.

  It was 12:45 and the would-be students arrived in a three-car convoy. They had driven over earlier from Birmingham. Each had a $500 scholarship check from Negro organizations. Mr. Hood was prepared to pay his $280 to register in the college of arts and sciences, Miss Malone $205.20 to register for courses in the business school.

  Around the building where the registration was to take place, a ring of state troopers stood in tight formation. Newsmen were clustered at the entrance, many of them wearing newspaper hats to ward off the sun. It was deadly hot.

  A few students had been drifting in and out of the building all morning, but now none were to be seen.

  Gov. Wallace was just inside the doorway, waiting, with a phalanx of state troopers behind him.

  Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach, accompanied by U.S. Attorney Macon L. Weaver and U.S. Marshal Peyton Norville, both Southerners and graduates of the university here, got out of the lead car and walked the 20 or 30 steps to the entrance. Miss Malone and Mr. Hood remained in their car.

  Gov. Wallace stepped forward to the lectern that had been set up and raised his hand to stop Mr. Katzenbach, actually touching Mr. Katzenbach’s chest with his fingertips.

  “I am here for the Attorney General of the U.S. and I have a proclamation here signed by the President of the U.S.,” said Mr. Katzenbach. He then introduced Mr. Weaver and Mr. Norville, read the proclamation, explained that he was there to enforce a court order and asked the Governor to step aside and allow the Negro students to register.

  Mr. Katzenbach said, “All they want is an education…”

  “We don’t need you here to make a speech,” the Governor broke in. “Just make your statement.”

  Mr. Wallace then launched into his remarks, a five-page speech.

  He used as his text the State’s Rights Amendment of the Constitution—the 10th Amendment—and he spoke of “unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and forced, indeed intrusion, upon the campus…by the might of the central government.”

  He concluded with a “solemn proclamation” saying: “Now, therefore I, George C. Wallace, Governor of the State of Alabama, have by my action raised issue between the central government and the sovereign State of Alabama…and do hereby denounce and forbid this illegal and unwarranted action by the central government.”

  “I take it from that statement that you are going to stand in the doorway,” said Mr. Katzenbach.

  The Governor, who had stepped back to block the double doorway with two troopers on either side, said simply, “I stand on my statement.”

  “Governor, I’m not interested in a show,” said Mr. Katzenbach. “I don’t know what the purpose of the show is. I’m here to enforce an order of the courts.…These students have a right to be here.…It is a simple problem. I ask you once more to step aside. It is your choice.”

  But the Governor had nothing more to say. Mr. Katzenbach asked him twice more to “step aside,” and then said of the Negro students in his charge, “They will register today, they will go to school tomorrow and they will attend this summer session. They will remain on the campus.”

  And with that he, Mr. Weaver and Mr. Norville turned and went back to the car. The Governor had made his stand, and now the only thing to do was to bring in troops.

  Miss Malone got out of the car, and three marshals escorted her to Mary Burke Hall, her dormitory, directly behind the auditorium. Mr. Hood was driven to his dorm, Palmer Hall, on the other side of the campus, a half-mile away. No troops were posted at the dorm entrances, and they had no trouble getting in.

  The word “show” used by Mr. Katzenbach was a good choice. It was a well-staged pageant from start to finish.

  Asked afterward if there was any plan to arrest the Governor, Edwin Guthman, Justice Department spokesman, said, “None whatsoever.”

  The troops will remain on the campus indefinitely, he said, but the Justice Department considers the campus under civil patrol. State troopers and Tuscaloosa police remained on duty at the university after the Governor left, and apparently will stay, with security under the dual control of Gen. Graham and Col. Al Lingo, head of the State Highway Patrol.

  Personal guardians for Miss Malone and Mr. Hood will be the 30 U.S. marshals and border patrolmen brought in for the enrollment yesterday.

  The president of the university, Dr. Frank A. Rose, was delighted with the way things turned out. “We could not have hoped for more exemplary conduct than that displayed by all those present for the crucial hours this morning and afternoon,” he said. “We confidently expect that the University of Alabama soon will be able to return to normalcy, and we look forward to resuming fully our dedicated mission.”

  June 13, 1963

  Murder in Mississippi

  JACKSON, Miss.

  Medgar W. Evers, the respected 37-year-old field director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was driving home.

  He had been at one of those countless NAACP rallies he had attended during the nine years he led the crusade for civil rights in Mississippi.

  It was shortly after midnight yesterday (about 2:30 a.m. New York time) when he got out of the station wagon in front of the house. He picked up a pile of NAACP sweatshirts, emblazoned “Jim Crow Must Go,” and started into the house where his wife and three small children were waiting up for him.

  He never made it. Lying in ambush, apparently in the fragrant honeysuc
kle bushes about 155 feet away, an assassin squeezed the trigger of a high-powered 30-30 rifle.

  Mr. Evers, his white shirt forming an easy target in the porch light, was shot in the back. He died 50 minutes later in a hospital.

  The rifle blast touched off a wave of shock across the nation. President Kennedy, who had made an appeal to the nation for an end to racial discrimination only a few hours before, was described as “appalled by the barbarity of this act.”

  Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett, a staunch segregationist, called the killing of the Negro leader “a dastardly act.”

  Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson said the citizens were “dreadfully shocked, humiliated and sick at heart” and announced that the city was putting up a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

  The killing seemed to be the main conversational topic of everyone, from groups of idlers on Capitol Ave., the city’s main street, to Southern belles in big white hats drinking iced tea in the dining room of the Heidelberg Hotel. Many feared it would trigger further violence.

  A man in a beer joint at the edge of town seemed to represent the tougher elements of the city when he commented: “Maybe this will slow the niggers down.”

  In all, rewards totaling $21,000 were posted, including $10,000 from the NAACP, $5,000 from the city of Jackson, $50 from Jackson District Attorney Bill Waller, $1,000 from The Clarion Ledger and Jackson Daily News, and $5,000 from the United Steelworkers.

  Shock and anger spread through Jackson’s Negro district. At midday, 13 Negro ministers and a church layman staged a “mourning march” to the downtown area. They were arrested. A short time later Negro youths started a march to protest the slaying and 146 were arrested immediately by no less than 200 officers of the law.

  Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy offered the full services of the FBI to track down the killer, but by nightfall about the only solid clue was the murder rifle, which was found in the bushes not far from Mr. Evers’ house. A friend of the NAACP leader said he saw a “tall white man” running through a lot near the scene of the killing. Investigators also had a report that three men ran from the scene immediately after the shooting.

  Threats and violence were not new to Mr. Evers, who has been in the forefront of the long drive for integration in Mississippi—a drive that has resulted in 804 arrests, including yesterday’s, since May 28.

  Only two weeks ago, a soft-drink bottle filled with gasoline was tossed into the carport next to Mr. Evers’ house. It did not explode.

  In an interview last summer with a CBS television reporter, Mr. Evers was asked about threats. This was his answer:

  “I’ve had a number of threatening calls—people calling me saying they were going to kill me, saying they were going to blow my home up and saying that I only had a few hours to live.

  “I remember distinctly one individual calling with a pistol on the other end, and he hit the cylinder and, of course you could hear that it was a revolver. He said, ‘This is for you.’ And I said, ‘Well, whenever my time comes, I’m ready.’

  “And, well, we get such pranks pretty frequently. But that does not deter us from our goal of first-class citizenship and getting more people registered to vote and doing the things here that a democracy certainly is supposed to espouse and provide for its citizenry.”

  Early yesterday the bullet which fatally wounded Mr. Evers smashed through a window pane, pierced a wall and hit the refrigerator in the kitchen. It bounced off the refrigerator onto a counter near the sink and rolled under a watermelon.

  A trail of blood in the driveway showed that Mr. Evers staggered 30 feet through a carport and alongside a bed of red petunias before he fell by the back steps.

  His wife, Myrlie, and the three children, aged three to nine, rushed out to him. Mrs. Evers became hysterical. The children were crying and pleading with their father to “get up.”

  Neighbors quickly picked up Mr. Evers, put him in his own station wagon, and raced off to the hospital. Houston Wells, one of the neighbors, said:

  “On the way to the hospital he said, ‘turn me loose.’ He said that a number of times. That’s all he said.”

  At last night’s rally, several ministers called upon the Negro community of Jackson to boycott downtown stores for 30 days and to wear black for 30 days in mourning for Mr. Evers.

  And another mass meeting was called for 10 this morning at the church—meaning more demonstrations.

  Mrs. Evers, the Negro leader’s widow, addressed the meeting briefly and tearfully. “I come to you tonight with a broken heart,” she said. “But I come to make a plea that all of you here will be able to draw some of his strength, some of his courage. Nothing can bring him back, but this cause can live on.”

  June 14, 1963

  Fires of Hate in Jackson

  JACKSON, Miss.

  Things are ripe here for another Birmingham riot. A Negro woman stood on her front porch yesterday afternoon and simply screamed and cried in the summer afternoon, expressing the angry frustration of Jackson Negroes.

  The police are tired and equally frustrated, but they seemed to draw some relief yesterday by clubbing a Negro girl on the head and a white “nigger lover.”

  The trouble, of course, runs deep, but now it is at the boiling point and has been since the ambush-slaying Wednesday of Medgar Evers, 37-year-old Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. And it is getting worse.

  At 12:20 p.m. yesterday, 80 young Negroes and four whites emerged from the Pearl Street A.M.E. Church and marched in a column of twos for one block, down Rose St. to Deer Park St. A good many of them were waving small American flags. Police stopped them at the intersection.

  “Everybody stop. This is a police order,” Deputy Chief J. L. Ray told them through a bull-horn.

  He told them to disperse or they would be arrested. They stopped, but refused to disperse and police began to herd them into paddy-wagons and trucks, snatching the flags angrily from their hands. Some of the youngsters threw the flags on the pavement in disgust rather than let the police take them.

  More and more police began to arrive, and in a few minutes there were about 125 on the scene, the city police in blue, the deputy sheriffs in brown, all with helmets.

  While the Negroes were being hustled into the trucks, a large number of Negro bystanders began to chant, “We want freedom, we want freedom, we want freedom.” Most of them were on the porch of a frame house at 608 Rose St., and among them were two white men, John R. Salter, 29, who teaches at a Negro college here, and the Rev. Ralph Edward King Jr., 27, Methodist chaplain at the college.

  Chief Ray told the group to stop chanting or he would arrest them for disturbing the peace. They refused, and about 25 police charged the porch, swinging billy clubs. Two policemen grabbed Mr. Salter and held him while another beat him on the head. Another one knocked down a 15-year-old Negro girl, Carol Myles, and three more jumped her brother, 17-year-old Tommy Earl Myles, and slugged him.

  The crowd scattered, and there being no one else to threaten, the police turned on a group of newsmen. A deputy sheriff shoved one reporter to the ground and raised his club and shook it at another one and said, “Get back before I bust your head open.”

  The Jackson police do not like to have people taking notes when they are going about their business.

  Mr. Salter, his head bleeding, was hustled away by two policemen, and Mr. King shouted angrily at the milling policemen from the porch. “What’s wrong with you cops! You beat a woman on her own front porch…she’s lying in here bleeding. I know you’re white and how you feel, but will you please call an ambulance?”

  Eventually an ambulance came. Mr. King is a native of Vicksburg, Miss., and is chaplain at Tougaloo Southern Christian College where Mr. Salter is assistant professor of social sciences. Mr. Salter is from Flagstaff, Ariz.

  A half dozen or more barking police dogs were brought to the scene, but it was all over
before they could be used. When the dust had settled, the Negro woman stood on her porch and screamed hysterically at the police. Words failed her.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Mrs. Ruby Hurley, southeast field secretary for the NAACP, who has taken over the operation here since Mr. Evers’ death. “Washington needs to do something before another outbreak. I can’t think of another instance in NAACP experience when things have been so dangerous.”

  She and the rest of the leaders are trying to channel the Negro anger into controlled demonstrations, she said, “But these young people are getting harder and harder to hold down. Just the presence of Federal troops nearby would be a help. The Federal presence in the South has a strong psychological effect.”

  “Some people are ready to shoot, they’re going around buying guns,” said the Rev. G. R. Haughton, Negro minister of the Pearl Street Church. “We’re trying to keep them under control, but I just don’t know.”

  City police, deputies, state detectives and FBI men are still working around the clock in the search for the killer of Mr. Evers. A suspect was questioned yesterday, but was cleared after the questioning. Rewards for the identity of the killer now stand at $22,350.

  Later in the afternoon, 11 Negro ministers called on Mayor Allen Thompson to ask for bread, and he gave them velvet-wrapped stone. They gathered in the handsome white antebellum City Hall and had a friendly but profitless discussion.

  “We want peace, too, and we love the city of Jackson,” said the Rev. R. L. T. Smith. “You don’t love it any more than we do, Mayor. All we want is a fair chance before the courts, a fair chance for jobs, just a fair chance. We just want what every other American has, that’s all.”

  They had eight requests, involving the desegregation of public facilities and downtown eating places and establishment of a bi-racial committee.

  But, as he has done in the past, the congenial Mr. Thompson turned them down with a smile. He did renew his offer to accept Negro applicants for the police force, but the Negroes did not consider this much of a trade.