by Jon Meacham
This was the first I’d heard of this news. Later I would learn that there were other factors that had affected Dr. King’s decision, the most serious being a death threat, of which there had been several during the previous two months. Dr. King was initially leaning toward still coming, but his staff talked him out of it.
Or so the story goes. There is still disagreement and speculation today among many people about King’s decision not to march that day. There is still resentment among a lot of people, especially SNCC members, who saw this as nothing but abandonment, a cop-out.
I don’t feel that way. First of all, I can’t imagine anyone questioning the courage of Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond that, in terms of the specific circumstances of that Sunday, no one in SNCC was in any position to criticize Dr. King. As far as I was concerned, they had lost the right to pass judgment of any kind on this march the moment they decided not to take part in it.
After seeing that the march could not be stopped, Andy Young went inside the church and called Dr. King in Atlanta. They talked over the situation, and King instructed Andy to choose one among them—Andy, Hosea or Bevel—to join me as co-leader of the march. The other two would remain behind to take care of things in case there was trouble.
Andy returned with that news, and the three of them proceeded to flip coins to see who would join me. The odd man would march; the other two would stay.
The odd man turned out to be Hosea, and so that little slice of history was settled—by the flip of a quarter.
It was mid-afternoon now, and time to assemble. A team of doctors and nurses from a group called the Medical Committee for Human Rights had arrived the day before on a flight from New York and set up a makeshift clinic in the small parsonage beside the church. We expected a confrontation. We knew Sheriff Clark had issued yet another call the evening before for even more deputies. Mass arrests would probably be made. There might be injuries. Most likely, we would be stopped at the edge of the city limits, arrested and maybe roughed up a little bit. We did not expect anything worse than that.
And we did not expect to march all the way to Montgomery. No one knew for sure, until the last minute, if the march would even take place. There had been a measure of planning, but nowhere near the preparations and logistics necessary to move that many people in an orderly manner down fifty-four miles of highway, a distance that would take about five days for a group that size to cover.
Many of the men and women gathered on that ballfield had come straight from church. They were still wearing their Sunday outfits. Some of the women had on high heels. I had on a suit and tie, a light tan raincoat, dress shoes and my backpack. I was no more ready to hike half a hundred miles than anyone else. Like everyone around me, I was basically playing it by ear. None of us had thought much further ahead than that afternoon. Anything that happened beyond that—if we were allowed to go on, if this march did indeed go all the way to Montgomery—we figured we would take care of as we went along. The main thing was that we do it, that we march.
It was close to 4 P.M. when Andy, Hosea, Bevel and I gathered the marchers around us. A dozen or so reporters were there as well. I read a short statement aloud for the benefit of the press, explaining why we were marching today. Then we all knelt to one knee and bowed our heads as Andy delivered a prayer.
And then we set out, nearly six hundred of us, including a white SCLC staffer named Al Lingo—the same name as the commander of Alabama’s state troopers.
We walked two abreast, in a pair of lines that stretched for several blocks. Hosea and I led the way. Albert Turner, an SCLC leader in Perry County, and Bob Mants were right behind us—Bob insisted on marching because I was marching; he told me he wanted to be there to “protect” me in case something happened.
Marie Foster and Amelia Boynton were next in line, and behind them, stretching as far as I could see, walked an army of teenagers, teachers, undertakers, beauticians—many of the same Selma people who had stood for weeks, months, years, in front of that courthouse.
At the far end, bringing up the rear, rolled four slow-moving ambulances.
I can’t count the number of marches I have participated in in my lifetime, but there was something peculiar about this one. It was more than disciplined. It was somber and subdued, almost like a funeral procession. No one was jostling or pushing to get to the front, as often happened with these things. I don’t know if there was a feeling that something was going to happen, or if the people simply sensed that this was a special procession, a “leaderless” march. There were no big names up front, no celebrities. This was just plain folks moving through the streets of Selma.
There was a little bit of a crowd looking on as we set out down the red sand of Sylvan Street, through the black section of town. There was some cheering and singing from those onlookers and from a few of the marchers, but then, as we turned right along Water Street, out of the black neighborhood now, the mood changed. There was no singing, no shouting—just the sound of scuffling feet. There was something holy about it, as if we were walking down a sacred path. It reminded me of Gandhi’s march to the sea. Dr. King used to say there is nothing more powerful than the rhythm of marching feet, and that was what this was, the marching feet of a determined people. That was the only sound you could hear.
Down Water Street we went, turning right and walking along the river until we reached the base of the bridge, the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
There was a small posse of armed white men there, gathered in front of the Selma Times-Journal building. They had hard hats on their heads and clubs in their hands. Some of them were smirking. Not one said a word. I didn’t think too much of them as we walked past. I’d seen men like that so many times.
As we turned onto the bridge, we were careful to stay on the narrow sidewalk. The road had been closed to traffic, but we still stayed on the walkway, which was barely wide enough for two people.
I noticed how steep it was as we climbed toward the steel canopy at the top of the arched bridge. It was too steep to see the other side. I looked down at the river and saw how still it was, still and brown. The surface of the water was stirred just a bit by the late-afternoon breeze. I noticed my trench coat was riffling a little from that same small wind.
When we reached the crest of the bridge, I stopped dead still.
So did Hosea.
There, facing us at the bottom of the other side, stood a sea of blue-helmeted, blue-uniformed Alabama state troopers, line after line of them, dozens of battle-ready lawmen stretched from one side of U.S. Highway 80 to the other.
Behind them were several dozen more armed men—Sheriff Clark’s posse—some on horseback, all wearing khaki clothing, many carrying clubs the size of baseball bats.
On one side of the road I could see a crowd of about a hundred whites, laughing and hollering, waving Confederate flags. Beyond them, at a safe distance, stood a small, silent group of black people.
I could see a crowd of newsmen and reporters gathered in the parking lot of a Pontiac dealership. And I could see a line of parked police and state trooper vehicles. I didn’t know it at the time, but Clark and Lingo were in one of those cars.
It was a drop of one hundred feet from the top of that bridge to the river below. Hosea glanced down at the muddy water and said, “Can you swim?”
“No,” I answered.
“Well,” he said, with a tiny half smile, “neither can I.
“But,” he added, lifting his head and looking straight ahead, “we might have to.”
Then we moved forward. The only sounds were our footsteps on the bridge and the snorting of a horse ahead of us.
I noticed several troopers slipping gas masks over their faces as we approached.
At the bottom of the bridge, while we were still about fifty feet from the troopers, the officer in charge, a Major John Cloud, stepped forward, holding a small bullhorn up to his mouth.
Hosea and I stopped, which brought the others to a standstill.
“This is an unlawful
assembly,” Cloud pronounced. “Your march is not conducive to the public safety. You are ordered to disperse and go back to your church or to your homes.”
“May we have a word with the major?” asked Hosea.
“There is no word to be had,” answered Cloud.
Hosea asked the same question again, and got the same response.
Then Cloud issued a warning: “You have two minutes to turn around and go back to your church.”
I wasn’t about to turn around. We were there. We were not going to run. We couldn’t turn and go back even if we wanted to. There were too many people.
We could have gone forward, marching right into the teeth of those troopers. But that would have been too aggressive, I thought, too provocative. God knew what might have happened if we had done that. These people were ready to be arrested, but I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
We couldn’t go forward. We couldn’t go back. There was only one option left that I could see.
“We should kneel and pray,” I said to Hosea.
He nodded.
We turned and passed the word back to begin bowing down in a prayerful manner.
But that word didn’t get far. It didn’t have time. One minute after he had issued his warning—I know this because I was careful to check my watch—Major Cloud issued an order to his troopers.
“Troopers,” he barked. “Advance!”
And then all hell broke loose.
The troopers and possemen swept forward as one, like a human wave, a blur of blue shirts and billy clubs and bullwhips. We had no chance to turn and retreat. There were six hundred people behind us, bridge railings to either side and the river below.
I remember how vivid the sounds were as the troopers rushed toward us—the clunk of the troopers’ heavy boots, the whoops of rebel yells from the white onlookers, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves hitting the hard asphalt of the highway, the voice of a woman shouting, “Get ’em! Get the niggers!”
And then they were upon us. The first of the troopers came over me, a large, husky man. Without a word, he swung his club against the left side of my head. I didn’t feel any pain, just the thud of the blow, and my legs giving way. I raised an arm—a reflex motion—as I curled up in the “prayer for protection” position. And then the same trooper hit me again. And everything started to spin.
I heard something that sounded like gunshots. And then a cloud of smoke rose all around us.
Tear gas.
I’d never experienced tear gas before. This, I would learn later, was a particularly toxic form called C-4, made to induce nausea.
I began choking, coughing. I couldn’t get air into my lungs. I felt as if I was taking my last breath. If there was ever a time in my life for me to panic, it should have been then. But I didn’t. I remember how strangely calm I felt as I thought, This is it. People are going to die here. I’m going to die here.
I really felt that I saw death at that moment, that I looked it right in its face. And it felt strangely soothing. I had a feeling that it would be so easy to just lie down there, just lie down and let it take me away.
That was the way those first few seconds looked from where I stood—and lay. Here is how Roy Reed, a reporter for The New York Times, described what he saw:
The troopers rushed forward, their blue uniforms and white helmets blurring into a flying wedge as they moved.
The wedge moved with such force that it seemed almost to pass over the waiting column instead of through it.
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.
I was bleeding badly. My head was now exploding with pain. That brief, sweet sense of just wanting to lie there was gone. I needed to get up. I’d faded out for I don’t know how long, but now I was tuned back in.
There was mayhem all around me. I could see a young kid—a teenaged boy—sitting on the ground with a gaping cut in his head, the blood just gushing out. Several women, including Mrs. Boynton, were lying on the pavement and the grass median. People were weeping. Some were vomiting from the tear gas. Men on horses were moving in all directions, purposely riding over the top of fallen people, bringing their animals’ hooves down on shoulders, stomachs and legs.
The mob of white onlookers had joined in now, jumping cameramen and reporters. One man filming the action was knocked down and his camera was taken away. The man turned out to be an FBI agent, and the three men who attacked him were later arrested. One of them was Jimmie George Robinson, the man who had attacked Dr. King at the Hotel Albert.
I was up now and moving, back across the bridge, with troopers and possemen and other retreating marchers all around me. At the other end of the bridge, we had to push through the possemen we’d passed outside the Selma Times-Journal building.
“Please, no,” I could hear one woman scream.
“God, we’re being killed!” cried another.
With nightsticks and whips—one posseman had a rubber hose wrapped with barbed wire—Sheriff Clark’s “deputies” chased us all the way back into the Carver project and up to the front of Brown’s Chapel, where we tried getting as many people as we could inside the church to safety. I don’t even recall how I made it that far, how I got from the bridge to the church, but I did.
A United Press International reporter gave this account of that segment of the attack:
The troopers and possemen, under Gov. George C. Wallace’s orders to stop the Negroes’ “Walk for Freedom” from Selma to Montgomery, chased the screaming, bleeding marchers nearly a mile back to their church, clubbing them as they ran.
Ambulances screamed in relays between Good Samaritan Hospital and Brown’s Chapel Church, carrying hysterical men, women and children suffering head wounds and tear gas burns.
Even then, the possemen and troopers, 150 of them, including Clark himself, kept attacking, beating anyone who remained on the street. Some of the marchers fought back now, with men and boys emerging from the Carver homes with bottles and bricks in their hands, heaving them at the troopers, then retreating for more. It was a scene that’s been replayed so many times in so many places—in Belfast, in Jerusalem, in Beijing. Angry, desperate people hurling whatever they can at the symbols of authority, their hopeless fury much more powerful than the futile bottles and bricks in their hands.
I was inside the church, which was awash with sounds of groaning and weeping. And singing and crying. Mothers shouting out for their children. Children screaming for their mothers and brothers and sisters. So much confusion and fear and anger all erupting at the same time.
Further up Sylvan Street, the troopers chased other marchers who had fled into the First Baptist Church. A teenaged boy, s
truggling with the possemen, was thrown through a church window there.
Finally Wilson Baker arrived and persuaded Clark and his men to back off to a block away, where they remained, breathing heavily and awaiting further orders.
A crowd of Selma’s black men and women had collected in front of the church by now, with SNCC and SCLC staff members moving through and trying to keep them calm. Some men in the crowd spoke of going home to get guns. Our people tried talking them down, getting them calm. Kids and teenagers continued throwing rocks and bricks.
The parsonage next to the church looked like a MASH unit, with doctors and nurses tending to dozens of weeping, wounded people. There were cuts and bumps and bruises, and a lot of tear gas burns, which were treated by rinsing the eyes with a boric acid solution.
Relays of ambulances sent by black funeral homes carried the more seriously wounded to Good Samaritan Hospital, Selma’s largest black health-care facility, run by white Catholics and staffed mostly by black doctors and nurses. One of those ambulance drivers made ten trips back and forth from the church to the hospital and to nearby Burwell Infirmary, a smaller clinic. More than ninety men and women were treated at both facilities, for injuries ranging from head gashes and fractured ribs and wrists and arms and legs to broken jaws and teeth. There was one fractured skull—mine, although I didn’t know it yet.
I didn’t consider leaving for the hospital, though several people tried to persuade me to go. I wanted to do what I could to help with all this chaos. I was so much in the moment, I didn’t have much time to think about what had happened, nor about what was yet to come.
By nightfall, things had calmed down a bit. Hosea and I and the others had decided to call a mass meeting there in the church, and more than six hundred people, many bandaged from the wounds of that day, arrived. Clark’s possemen had been ordered away, but the state troopers were still outside, keeping a vigil.
Hosea Williams spoke to the crowd first, trying to say something to calm them. Then I got up to say a few words. My head was throbbing. My hair was matted with blood clotting from an open gash. My trench coat was stained with dirt and blood.