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1963 (Jan-June)
1964
[So much occurred in 1963 that we've had to divide the year into
two separate files. This file covers 1963 from July through December.
See 1963 (January-June) for events
that occurred in the first half of the year.]
St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963
Savannah GA, Movement (June-Dec)
Struggle for the Vote Continues in Mississippi (July-Aug)
Savage Repression in Gadsden AL (Aug)
Kennedys Appease the Segregationists (Aug)
"Seditious Conspiracy" in Americus GA (Aug)
Federal "Jury Tampering" Frameup in Albany GA (Aug)
Man-Hunt in Plaquemine LA (Aug-Sept)
Orangeburg SC, Freedom Movement (Aug-Sept)
March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom (Aug)
Birmingham Church Bombing (Sept)
Freedom March in New Orleans (Sept)
Mary Hamilton and the "Miss Mary" Case (Sept)
FBI's COINTELPRO Targets the Movement (Oct)
Freedom Day in Selma (Oct)
Freedom Ballot in MS (Oct-Nov)
Assasination of President Kennedy (Nov)
SNCC Meets Kenyan Freedom Fighter in Atlanta (Dec)
Saint Augustine Florida — population 15,000 (roughly 75% white, 25% Black) — is still thoroughly segregated in 1963. Founded in 1565 by Spanish colonizers, it claims to be "the oldest city in America" — meaning, of course, the oldest city settled by Europeans because some of the pueblo towns of the Southwest date back to the 11th Century or earlier. Until the Civil War, St. Augustine was a slave trade center, and when the town became a vacation destination in the 1890s the old slave market was turned into a tourist attraction.
Lincolnville is St. Augustine's Black neighborhood and Mrs. Fannie
Fullerwood — who works as a maid for a white
family — is president of the local NAACP. In March of
1963, she sends a letter to President Kennedy and Vice President
Lyndon Johnson asking that they reject a $350,000 grant to the city
for a segregated celebration of its 400th anniversary. With
Greenwood and
Birmingham on front pages around
the world, LBJ replies that: "No event in which I will
participate in St. Augustine will be segregated." But what does
that mean? Does it mean that places and events will be temporarily
desegregated while he is present, or does it mean he will only
participate in locations that have been permanently integrated?
Intense negotiations between the local NAACP, St. Augustine's white power structure, and LBJ's representatives ensue. LBJ comes to town for a banquet, and for the first time in history, Blacks enter the lavish Ponce de Leon Hotel ballroom as guests rather than maids or bus boys (they are seated by themselves at two "Negro" tables). But St Augustine's lunch counters, rest rooms, and other facilities remain segregated, as does the Ponce de Leon after the Vice President leaves. And the next day when NAACP leaders show up for a promised meeting with the City Commision, they are shown to an empty room with a tape recorder. They are told to record their complaints because no white official will meet with them in person.
By early June, the hope that had soared at the time of LBJ's visit is
dying. Nothing has come from the tape-recorded grievances, and so far
as the city is concerned, the 400th anniversary celebations are going
to be on a segregated basis. Dr. Robert Hayling, a young Black dentist
recently arrived in the city, becomes head of the St. Augustine NAACP
Youth Council (SAYC). He announces that unless there is some tangible
progress, the young people of St. Augustine are ready to begin
nonviolent direct-action like the children of Birmingham. A few days
later he leads small groups of pickets at the local Woolworths to
protest segregation. They carry signs reading: "If We Spend
Money Here Why Can't We Eat Here?"
The Klan threatens to kill Hayling. Hayling tells a reporter: "I and others have armed. We will shoot first and ask questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The press, which has ignored the Black community and issues of segregation, seize on his remark, sensationalizing it to mean that Blacks are arming to attack innocent whites. National leaders of the NAACP repudiate Hayling's statement as a provocation. They assure the FBI that they are working to silence Hayling.
In July, sixteen SAYC members sit-in at the segregated counter and are arrested. Seven of them are younger than 17 and thus legally classified as juveniles. Charles Mathis, the local judge, denies them bail. He refuses to release them unless their parents sign a promise that they won't demonstrate until they reach age 21. Four of the families refuse to agree, and the "St. Augustine Four" — JoAnn Anderson Ulmer, Audrey Nell Edwards, Willie Carl Singleton, and Samuel White — are sent to state reform schools. When an NAACP attorney tries to free them, Judge Mathis claims that they are beyond the jurisdiction of the legal system. The young teenagers remain locked up, away from their parents and out of school, until January when pressure on the Florida governor finally wins their release.
Outraged at the indefinite incarceration of the St. Augustine Four and the continued refusal of the city to appoint a bi-racial commission or meet with Black leaders, Dr. Hayling leads a mass march of more than 100 adults towards the Old Slave Market on Labor Day. The police attack, arresting Hayling and 26 others.
Two weeks later, shortly after the Birmingham church bombing, the Ku Klux Klan holds a rally and cross-burning in a nearby field. Rev. Lynch, head of the National States Rights Party, addresses 300 racists, telling them that the four young girls slain in Birmingham were: ".. old enough to have venereal diseases," and were no more human or innocent than rattlesnakes. "So kill 'em all, and if it's four less niggers tonight, then good for whoever planted the bomb. We're all better off!"
Suddenly the cry "Niggers! Niggers!" goes up from the crowd who push forward Dr. Hayling and SAYC activists Clyde Jenkins, James Hauser, and James Jackson who have been caught observing the rally. They are brutally beaten unconscious with fists, chains, and clubs. Only the arrival of Highway Patrol officers prevent them from being burned alive. St. Johns County Sheriff L.O. Davis — a Klan sympathizer — arrests four whites for the beating and also arrests the four unarmed Blacks for "assaulting" the 300 armed Klansmen. Charges against the Klansmen are dismissed, Hayling is convicted of "criminal assault."
Over the following weeks, tension escalates. The home of a Black family whose child has integrated a white school is burned. A carload of KKK night riders races through Lincolnville shooting into Black homes. Blacks return fire, killing one Klansman. NAACP activist Rev. Goldie Eubanks and three others are indicted for murder. Meanwhile, disturbed by Hayling's militancy, the national NAACP removes him as head of the Youth Council. Hayling, Eubanks, Henry & Kathrine Twine, and other freedom fighters leave the NAACP and contact SCLC for assistance.
See St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1964 for continuation.
For more information:
Web:
St. Augustine Movement (1963-1964) (Summary)
St. Augustine Movement (Web Links)
Articles:
"The Hot Summer of 1964: A Warrior In Florida's Struggle For Civil Rights Remembers" FLAVOUR: Black Florida Life & Style Magazine, Spring 2005, Vol. 6 NO. 1
"Rejected by Church to Glorious Ministry" FLAVOUR: Black Florida Life & Style Magazine, Winter 2006, Vol. 6 No. 1
See Savannah Sitins & Boycott for background and previous events.
Unlike most deep South towns, there are some Blacks on the Savannah police force and many Blacks are registered to vote. Black votes help elect racial "moderate" W. L. Mingledorff as Mayor in 1960, and he appoints some Black representatives to city offices. After sit-ins in 1960, lunch counters and some other facilities are integrated, but not restaurants and hotels. Movie theaters are initially integrated, but in the face of rising white resistance, by 1963 they have re-segregated.
Inspired by Birmingham, Savannah demonstrations resume in June of 1963, this time calling for complete desegregation of all facilities. Three key leaders guide the revitalized Savannah Movement:
Starting in June, marches, ralies, sit-ins, wade-ins, and other forms of nonviolent protest become common occurances in Savannah. At the center of the action is First African Baptist Church — perhaps the oldest Black church in North America (founded in 1775 before the Revolutionary War) — a church long in the forefront of the freedom struggle.
There are some incidents of police violence and attack dogs used against demonstrators, but there is no widespread, systematic police repression on the model of Birmingham, Danville, or Gadsden. The Mayor and other civic leaders meet with Blacks including those from the movement. Following a noon protest in Johnson Square on June 11, for example, Ben Clark leads hundreds of marchers to City Hall. Many of them are invited in to meet with the Mayor.
A white woman complains that the protests frighten her and keep her awake at night. Hosea Williams is arrested for this "crime," other whites add similar charges, and his bail is set at the astronomical sum of $35,000 (equivilent to $225,000 in 2006). Unable to raise this outrageous amount, he languishes in jail for 65 days — the longest continuous incarceration of any major Movement leader of the time — until the president of a local bank bonds him out.
In July, 75 protesters are arrested on a night march. The city bans marches, and the Georgia National Guard is alerted. 1,000 demonstrators rally in front of a segregated Holiday Inn, then march towards the jail where previously arrested demonstrators are being held. Police and Georgia State Troopers attack with clubs and tear gas, arresting almost 300. Nonviolent discipline breaks down, and some bottles and bricks are thrown.
In August, the city and the movement reach a new desegregation agreement to be phased in over time. The planned Christmas boycott of white merchants is cancelled. An influential "Committee of 100" is formed of white business and community leaders who accompany Blacks to segregated facilities which soon change their policies. By October, Savannah is largely desegregated some eight months ahead of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dr. King is invited for a New Year's address in Municipal Auditorium where he says: "[Savannah is] the most desegregated city south of the Mason-Dixon line."
King recruits Hosea Williams to the SCLC Executive Staff where he becomes one of SCLC's most important direct-action leaders. Ben Clark also joins the SCLC staff and continues to work closely with Hosea.
For more information:
Book: Weary Feet, Rested Souls... (pages 179-188)
Web: Savannah Movement
See Voter Registration Movement Expands in Mississippi for previous events.
In mid-June, 150 Blacks hold a "Medgar Evers Memorial" voter registration mass meeting at the little Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in rural Itta Bena. This is deep in the heart of the Delta — plantation country, Klan country. Klansmen in cars circle around the meeting, a tear gas bomb is thrown under the church and the noxious fumes rise up through the wooden floor boards. Singing freedom songs, SNCC organizer Silas McGee leads them out of the building where they face rocks and bottles and other missiles hurled at them from the speeding cars.
McGee leads the people on a five block protest march to the town hall, dodging into the roadside ditch when cars try to run them down. The town marshall ignores the Klansmen. Instead he arrests 45 of the demonstrators. The next morning they're given one of Mississippi's famous "5-minute" trials and sentenced to the Leflore County prison farm. Movement headquarters in nearby Greenwood has no money to bail them out. A week later, 200 Blacks show up at the courthouse to try to register and as a show of support for the Itta Bena prisoners. Thirteen Movement activists and leaders, including SNCC field secretaries Hollis Watkins and Lawrence Guyot, are arrested. They are given an instant summary trial, sentenced to four months and a $500 fine, and shipped off to chain-gang labor on the prison farm where they join those arrested in Itta Bena.
Mississippi holds elections in 1963 for state offices such as Governor. In later years, white racists abandon the Democratic Party and become hard-line Republicans out of fury at the Kennedys, Lyndon Johnson, and other national-level Democrats. But in 1963, that sea change has not yet occurred and Mississippi is still a one-party state, Democrats always win, so the real election is the Democratic Primary.
Lt. Governor Paul Johnson is running for Governor on a staunch segregationist platform that proclaims his efforts to block James Meredith's integration of 'Ole Miss in 1962. His theme is "Stand tall with Paul against those wanting to change Mississippi's way of life." One of his favorite stump speech lines is: "You know what the NAACP. stands for: Niggers, Alligators, Apes, Coons, and Possums." With Blacks denied the right to vote, his racist campaign results in a solid primary victory over former Governor Coleman.
To dramatize denial of voting rights, SNCC organizes Blacks to show up at the polls on August 6th, the day of the primary. There is an old Reconstruction Era law — originally passed to let former Confederate soldiers vote — that says people who claim they have been illegally prevented from registering can cast provisional ballots that are set aside pending appeal of their exclusion. Almost 1,000 courageous Blacks across the state defy cops, Klan, and Citizens Council to cast their protest votes under the old law. Democratic Party officials later reject their claims of illegal exclusion, and none of their ballots are counted.
Under the deal cut between the Kennedys and Greenwood's white power structure earlier in the year, the police promised that they would no longer harass, attack, or arrest Blacks trying to exercise their voting rights. As a result, more than 400 Blacks in Leflore County try to vote in the primary. So many that some polling places are flooded and dozens are unable to get in before the polls close.
Historian and activist Howard Zinn is in Greenwood observing the protest vote. A few days later, those in jail on the prison farm are finally released on bond, Zinn provides the following description:
My wife and I were in Greenwood in August, 1963, when those
fifty-eight people finally were freed [from the prison farm] on bond
money supplied via the National Council of Churches. That night SNCC
headquarters had the eerie quality of a field hospital after a battle.
Youngsters out of jail — sixteen and seventeen years
old — were sprawled here and there. Two of them lay on
the narrow cots upstairs while a few of the SNCC girls dabbed their
eyes with boric acid solutions; some dietary deficiency in jail had
affected their eyes. One boy nursed an infected hand. Another boy's
foot was swollen. He had started to lose feeling in it while in the
"hot box" and had stamped on it desperately to restore circulation.
Medical attention was refused them in prison.
[1]
Young Willie Rogers and Jesse James Glover describe the "hot box."
We stayed in the hot box two nights. It's a cell about six foot square, which they call the hot box. Long as they don't turn the heat on — with three in there — you can make it. There's no openings for light or air; there was a little crack under the door, but you couldn't see your hand before your face less you get down on your knees. When they got ready to feed you they hand the tray through a little door which they close — and then you can't eat unless you get down on your knees by the light comin' in the door — then you can see how to eat. And they had a little round hole in the floor which was a commode. — Willie Rogers. [1]
We were making it okay about thirty miuutes with the fan off, breathing in this oxygen, letting out this carbon dioxide — and the air was evaporating on top of the building, and it got so hot the water was falling off the top of the building all around the sides like it was raining. ... [The guard] came down and told Lawrence Guyot, "I'm going to put these niggers up to this damn bar if I hear any of this racket" [freedom songs] — so they hung MacArthur Cotton and Willie Rogers on the bars — MacArthur was singin' some Freedom songs. ... Altogether, I was thirteen days in the hot box. ... How did I get in the movement? I was at a mass meeting in Itta Bena. I'd been walkin' and canvassin' on my own. Bob Moses asked me, did I want to work with SNCC? I told him yes. ... I'm seventeen. I got involved with the movement back in 1960, when SNCC came up. I was fourteen then. — Jesse James Glover. [1]
Zinn, continues...
The next afternoon we drove in two cars, with Bob Moses, Stokely
Carmichael, and several others, to Itta Bena. People came out of the
cotton fields to meet in a dilapidated little church, welcoming back
the prisoners, singing freedom songs with an overpowering spirit. One
of the returned prisoners was Mother Perkins, fragile and small,
seventy-five years old, who had just spent, like the rest, two months
on the county prison farm for wanting to register to vote. Cars filled
with white men rumbled by along the road that passed by the church
door, but the meeting and the singing went on.
[1]
See Freedom Ballot in MS for continuation.
For more information:
Books: Mississippi Movement
Web:
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Movement
Gadsden AL, a hard-scrabble steel town of 75,000 (60% white, 40% Black), just an hour's drive from Birmingham down Hiway 11. Like Birmingham, it is ruthlessly segregated.
When the wave of sit-ins sweep across the South in 1960, Joseph Faulkner — a union steelworker — and two friends — George Woods and Arthur Young — are arrested for defying segregation by sitting at the front of a bus. They form the East Gadsden Brotherhood which slowly begins to build a movement with sit-ins, protests, and mass meetings led by Rev. L.A. Warren and Rev. H.J. Hoyt.
Inspired by the events in Birmingham and stirred by the murder of William Moore on the outskirts of town, they launch a boycott of white merchants in June and begin protests and marches similar to those in Birmingham. CORE, SNCC, and SCLC send field secretaries to support them.
Enraged by segregation's defeat in Birmingham, Al Lingo, the commander of the expanded Alabama State Troopers, still believes that ruthless police repression can suppress the exploding Black freedom movement. To clubs, dogs, and firehoses he now adds a new weapon — electric cattle prods. Used at slaughterhouses to force cattle into the killing chutes, the prods sear flesh with an excruciating electric shock.
On Tuesday, June 18, hundreds of peaceful, nonviolent marchers are arrested. The next evening, June 19, hundreds more gather on the lawn of Etowah County courthouse to protest the previous day's arrests. A horde of police and State Troopers attack with cattle prods and flailing clubs.
CORE field secretary "Meatball" Douthard later wrote of what he observed from his jail-cell window:
"Vividly I remember the night of June 19, when over 500 Negroes,
men, women, and children, assembled on the grounds of the County
Courthouse and jail, to hold a vigil of prayer in protest of the
arrest of some 600 students and adults the previous day. While
watching from my top floor cell, I saw over 300 law officers of the
city, county and state surround the protesters and begin their
systematic beating of all. As the Negroes broke and ran they were
chased on foot and in cars, overtaken and beaten again.
[2]"
The brutality sparks outrage in the Black community. Demonstrations continue.
On Saturday, August 3rd, a mass march led by Rev Warren is attacked by a phalanx of Lingo's troopers, cops, and posse. The marchers are arrested, and then beaten and cattle-prodded on the way to jail. The women are incarcerated in the city jail and the men in the county lockup, but even after cramming the cells full, there are too many. The overflow prisoners are lined up on the street two by two. Move 'em out! Colonel Lingo shouts like some TV cowboy on a cattle drive. With clubs swinging and cattle prods burning, the prisoners are herded down the street to the Gadsden Coliseum almost two miles away. Lingo wants to provoke violence by the demonstrators to justify even greater brutality and felony charges against Movement leaders, but the East Gadsden Brotherhood holds to its nonviolent discipline, denying victory to the hated troopers. "We won't turn around," vowed Rev. Warren.
At the Coliseum the protesters are ordered to lie down. Again many are beaten. The prisoners are forced aboard big 18-wheel cattle trucks. The convoy of cattle trucks and squad cars heads north on Hiway 431, then halts at an open field. The Ku Klux Klan is holding a rally, complete with white hoods and a burning cross. The troopers laugh, and threaten the prisoners with KKK lynchings and mutilations. Eventually the convoy proceeds to an isolated, semi-abandoned, rural prison camp where the Black freedom fighters are forced to endure six days of inedible food, sleeping on damp concrete floors, and more beatings before the Movement can locate and bail them out.
Though the savage brutality of the State Troopers does manage to temporarily quell the protests in Gadsden, Lingo's broader strategy of suppressing the Alabama freedom movement fails. Demonstrations, integration lawsuits, and other forms of resistance increase around the state — Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, Selma, Montgomery, Tuskegee, Mobile, Anniston, and elsewhere. And from the trial of one of those arrested in Gadsden — CORE field secretary Mary Hamilton — grows a Supreme Court victory in what becomes known as the "Miss Mary" Case, a victory that changes courtroom behavior nation-wide and that endures to this day.
For more information:
Books: Alabama Movement
Web:
Alabama Movement
I'll Never Forget Alabama Law
To win elections, segregationist politicians whip up fear and hatred of Blacks. They also ferociously attack the Kennedys for the tepid support that protests have forced out of Washington — during the Freedom Rides, for example, and the Desegregation of 'Ole Miss and University of Alabama. To these southern "Dixiecrats," Federal court orders, ICC regulations, the use of U.S. Marshalls and troops to defend Black civil rights, and introduction of a new national Civil Rights Act in Congress are all evidence that the Kennedy administration is usurping state's rights and oppressing the innocent white people of the South.
Those Southern whites who are hard-core racists refuse to believe that their "happy & contented colored neighbors" are dissatisfied with the "southern way of life," or that they have any just grievances, or that Blacks are even capable of organizing themselves to effect changes. So to them, Black unrest has to be the result of malignant intervention from Yankee politicians and Communist subversion by "outside agitators." Racist whites come to hate John and Robert Kennedy almost as much as they hate Dr. King and other Black "race mixers."
White fury at the Kennedy "nigger-lovers" is so wide-spread, and so intense in the South, that Democratic Party strategists fear JFK cannot be re-elected in 1964. In the closely fought race against Nixon in 1960, Kennedy would not have won without electoral votes from southern states. In that race, as a harbinger of things to come, Mississippi's 6 electors refused to cast their ballots for Kennedy as did half of Alabama's because he was seen as too liberal on race. By 1963 — with few Blacks able to vote in the South — the electoral math looks grim for JFK if he cannot win back the support of at least some pro-segregation whites.
At the time of Governor Wallace's Stand In the Schoolhouse Door, Kennedy proclaims to the nation his support for civil rights and racial equality. His speech greatly encourages the Black community, and activists are filled with hope that the administration is finally going to step up to the plate and take action. Instead, the Kennedys betray the promise of their rhetoric in a cynical ploy to win back white support in the South by allying with the segregationists in the two most outrageous cases of state repression of Constitutional rights being fought in the courts at that moment — the "Seditious Conspiracy" case in Americus GA and the "Jury Tampering" Frameup in Albany GA. Civil rights attorney William Kunstler sums up the administration's actions as "A bone thrown to the segregationists."
Expanding outward from their base in Albany, SNCC's Southwest Georgia project begins voter registration campaigns in the rural "plantation" counties where Blacks are a majority and a reign of terror maintains white-supremecy with club, gun, jail, and bomb. In the words of SNCC field secretary Peggy Dammond writing from the field:
"In the South, courage is a quite thing. It may be born in a candle-lit farmhouse far back on a cornfield late one night over a pot of greens. Or one morning a man might wake up and decide to go down to the courthouse to register and because he doesn't have a car he might walk the nine miles to town. [3]"
Americus Georgia (pop 15,000) is the seat of Sumter County where Blacks are a majority. (Ten miles down the road lives a white peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter who becomes President in 1976.) In the summer of 1963, Americus is a center of Freedom Movement activity with voter registration and integration campaigns. Over the course of July, almost 100 protesters are arrested for picketing and sit-ins at the town's segregated movie theater.
After a mass meeting at Friendship Baptist Church on the evening of August 8, more than 200 young people begin an exuberant, spontaneous march through the Black neighborhood. The unplanned protest catches the police by surprise, only a few officers are present. Sheriff Fred Chappell blocks the march with his handful of deputies. There are not enough lawmen to arrest everyone so they pull their guns and fire shots to disperse the demonstrators.
Led by SNCC field secretary Don Harris, many of the marchers sit down on the sidewalk and continue singing freedom songs. The cops wade in with clubs swinging and the Sheriff tortures Harris with a cattle prod to make him to stop singing and flee. Harris writhes in agony at the electric shocks, but holds his ground. Enraged at the police violence, some of the marchers and bystanders hurl rocks and bottles. The Sheriff summons reinforcements and they arrest 77 demonstrators. State Troopers break a marcher's leg with a baseball bat, and a Black man discovered walking in a white neighborhood is killed by a cop who shoots him in the back. A total of 7 police and 28 protesters require medical attention.
The Sumter County Solicitor (prosecutor) Steve Pace Jr — who is campaigning for his father's seat in Congress and courting the segregationist vote — charges four Movement activists (one Black, the other three white) with "Seditious Conspiracy" — SNCC workers Don Harris, John Perdew, and Ralph Allen, and CORE activist Zev Aelony. No police are charged for brutality or murder. Seditious Conspiracy is a "capital" crime, and because it can result in a sentence of death there is no bail. This means that the four can be kept off the streets and in jail for months while awaiting trial.
Defense lawyers ask the Department of Justice to intervene. U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy tells the press on August 31st that the FBI saw no police brutality or misconduct, and that the department would not challenge the Seditious Conspiracy prosecution. Movement activists see this as a cynical political ploy by the Kennedys to curry favor with segregationists in anticipation of the 1964 election.
The freedom fighters remain in jail under threat of death from August to November when a Federal appeals court overturns the Seditious Conspiracy charges as an unconstitutional abuse of police power.
But holding activists in jail on death-sentence charges does not stop the Movement. Demonstrations and voter registration continue through August and into September. Many more are arrested. The jails overflow. Teenage girls arrested in July and August — some as young as 13 — are moved to the Lee County stockade where they are held incommunicado without charges filed against them. Conditions are abysmal, inedible food, no working toilet, no running water, no beds. Eventually, SNCC locates them, photographer Danny Lyon manages to sneak in and record pictures. His photos are entered into the Congressional Record and pressure is applied to the authorities in Americus. The girls are finally relased in September. (See Leesburg Stockade for photos and more information.)
For more information:
Books: Georgia Movement — Atlanta — Albany
Web: Albany, Americus, & SW Georgia Movements.
The origins of this case go deep to the roots of the southern system of racially-biased injustice. Back in 1961, Charlie Ware, a 45 year old Black field hand, was arrested by Baker County Sheriff L.W. Johnson on a charge that he had been drunk in public earlier that day. When they arrive at the jail in the Sheriff's car, the Sheriff shoots Ware three times in the neck, alleging that the slightly-built Ware had attacked him with a knife that Johnson had somehow overlooked when he searched Ware at the time of the arrest.
Movement activists close to the case believe that Johnson was trying to kill Ware as a favor to the white overseer of Ichuway Plantation who was jealous of Ware over a woman. Ichuway is owned by the Woodruff family of the Coca Cola company. The Woodruffs are political players who host Kennedy, Humphrey, and other officials on bird-hunting trips.
Somehow, Ware survives the shooting. He is charged with attempting to murder Sheriff Johnson. Ware is tried and convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to prison. He files a civil suit against Sheriff Johnson for the shooting and violating his civil rights. The suit is tried in April of 1963, and an all-white jury rules in favor of the Sheriff. Ever since the protests of 1961-62 the Albany Movement has been boycotting many of the white merchants, including picketing their stores. Shortly after the civil suit verdict, the Movement briefly pickets a store owned by one of the jurors who ruled in favor of the Sheriff.
The Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy sends a swarm of FBI agents to Albany to investigate whether the store was picketed in retaliation for the owner's jury vote — which might be construed as a form juror intimidation as a result of a verdict. This large Federal intervention contrasts sharply with the marked lack of interest the FBI had shown over the past two years in the systematic violations of Black civil rights, the denial of basic Constitutional rights of free speech, and the vicious police assaults on nonviolent Movement activists in Southwest Georgia. The small army of FBI agents question, probe, investigate and subpoena 60 people to testify before a special Federal grand jury.
Despite the best efforts of the FBI and Federal Prosecutors, the grand jury cannot find enough evidence to indict anyone for jury-tampering on the picketing issue. But on August 9th, Attorney General Robert Kennedy has 9 Movement activists indicted on felony "perjury" charges. The flimsy basis of this charge is that Elizabeth Holtzman, a summer volunteer law clerk (and later U.S. Congresswoman and Brooklyn NY District Attorney), met with some of the subpoenaed witnesses to explain to them what a grand jury is, how it functions, and to brief them on their rights and obligations. During testimony, the prosecutor asks an ambiguously worded question about meetings regarding the investigation. Suspecting some kind of trap, the Movement activists answer that they cannot recall. They are then charged with perjury. Antioch College student and SNCC summer volunteer Joni Rabinowitz is also indicted for perjury because she truthfully told the grand jury that she had not picketed the store (the cops had confused her with another white civil rights worker). During the red-scare days of the McCarthy era, the FBI had alleged that her father, attorney Victor Rabinowitz, might once have been a Communist. Joni is then portrayed in the media as the Moscow-directed mastermind behind the entire Albany Movement.
Within the Department of Justice there are deep divisions over these charges. The Criminal Division which is handling the case is confident that they will easily win a conviction because an all-white Georgia jury will convict civil rights activists of any charge at any time regardless of evidence. But the Civil Rights Division opposes bringing such flimsy charges, particularly when the Department had taken no action against the white jailer who had beaten Movement leader Slater King, or the cops who beaten his pregnant wife causing her to lose her baby, or the Dougherty County Sheriff who had brutally beaten attorney C.B. King with a cane for daring to sit up front with white lawyers. Attorney General Kennedy chooses to procede, sending in senior U.S. Prosecutors who use their peremptory challenges to knock all Blacks off the jury. In November of 1963, the Albany 9 are convicted in Federal court by an all-white jury. On appeal, the convictions are eventually overturned by the Fifth Circut for jury discrimination in 1966.
Movement activists see Kennedy's actions as an attempt to appease segregationist politicians in the forlorn hope that they will not oppose his brother's re-election in 1964. The stark contrast between the Department of Justice's response to beatings, jailings, and murders of Blacks — slow, begrudging, and ineffective — and its energetic prosecution of nine freedom fighters on the flimsiest of trumped up charges evokes deep bitterness within the Movement. A bitterness that SNCC Chairman John Lewis tries to express in his March on Washington speech, only to face censorship for daring to challenge the Kennedys.
For more information:
Web: Albany, Americus, & SW Georgia Movements
Plaquemine is the main town of Iberville Parish. It sits on the west bank of the Mississippi River about a dozen miles downstream from Baton Rouge. In 1963 segregation is still the norm and the town boundaries are gerrymandered to exclude the main Black neighborhoods from municipal elections and deny city services to Blacks.
In June of 1963, the Black community demands that the city annex the excluded neighborhoods, end job discrimination, desegregate facilities, and form a biracial committee to address ongoing grievances. Their demands are ignored. A boycott and picketing of white merchants commences, and in mid-August CORE begins protest marches. The white power structure refuses to negotiate.
On August 19, CORE Executive Director James Farmer leads more than 1,000 marchers to City Hall. When the demonstrators refuse to stop singing We Shall Overcome the police arrest Farmer and three of the local leaders. They then attack the march and arrest 200 more. With the local jail filled to capacity, Iberville Sheriff Songy disperses the prisoners to lockups in neighboring parishes. Farmer is scheduled to speak at the upcoming March on Washington, but bail is set at $500 each (equal to over $3,200 in 2006) and CORE does not have $100,000 to bail out all of those arrested. Farmer refuses to bond out while others remain in prison, so CORE Chairman Floyd McKissick speaks in his stead.
Farmer and the other protesters are released from jail on August 31. Later that day, cops mounted on horses attack a march by 200 young students. The brutal assault on their children enrages the Black community, uniting them behind CORE and the demonstrations. On the following day, Sunday, September 1, local ministers lead their congregations to Rev. Jetson Davis' Plymouth Rock Baptist Church for a spirited mass meeting. Outside the church, 500 demonstrators line up two-by-two for a silent protest against the previous day's police brutality.
Movement leaders Rev. Davis, Ronnie Moore, Bill Harleaux, and Tolbert Harris are served with an illegal injunction forbidding the march. Knowing that the illegal injunction has already been stayed by a higher court, the march proceeds. The leaders are arrested. Cops and hastily deputized white civilians attack the marchers with tear gas, cattle prods, and clubs. State Troopers on horses charge into the line, trampling men, women, and children.
The protesters retreat to Plymouth Rock church. Police wearing gas masks break into the church, tossing tear gas into the pews to drive people out. Then they bring in high-pressure fire hoses to destroy the sanctuary and smash the windows. The police and troopers surround the parsonage where women and children have taken refuge. They shoot tear gas through the windows to force them out, then club them back inside again when they try to escape.
More than 400 are arrested. With the Plaquemine jail filled, they are incarcerated in an animal stockade at the county fairgrounds and then dispersed to jails in other towns the next day.
James Farmer tries to phone the Department of Justice, but the phone operators block all long-distance calls coming out of the Black neighborhoods. The State Troopers, sheriffs, police, and vigilantes rampage through the Black community hunting for Farmer. House by house they smash in the doors, overturning furniture and emptying the closets, "Come out Farmer! We're going to get you!" Two protesters hiding under the church hear one trooper tell another, "When we catch that goddamned nigger, Farmer, we're gonna kill him."
As night falls, James Farmer and hundreds of others take refuge in a Black funeral home. The State Troopers surround the building, "Come on out, Farmer. We know you're in there. We're gonna get you." To save the others, Farmer tries to give himself up, but men restrain him, "That's a lynch mob. You go out there tonight, you won't be alive tomorrow morning."
The woman who owns the funeral home steps forward to confront the troopers who are forcing their way inside. She demands to see their search warrant, "You're not coming into my place of business without a search warrant." Her bold courage confounds the troopers. She prods them in the chest with her finger, demanding to see their warrants as she forces them back outside.
Two Black ex-Marines sneak into the funeral home. They report that roadblocks have been set on every road leading out of town, and that the cops who had been guarding the rear of the building have gone back to the police station, presumably to obtain a search warrant. The Movement leaders have to escape before the cops return with a warrant. Farmer, Rev. Davis, and Ronnie Moore are concealed in a hearse. A second hearse acts as a decoy to pull the guards away from one of the roadblocks. The two ex-Marines in a lead car followed by the hearse drive at high-speed through the back streets and then smash their way through the wooden saw-horses at an unmanned roadblock. Both the ex- Marines and the hearse drivers are armed, their instructions are, "Don't stop for anything and, if forced to stop, shoot."
As was the case in Gadsden, this state terrorism suppresses large-scale direct-action marches in Plaquemine. But acts of courage, defiance, and resistance continue. In the aftermath of the repression, a cafeteria worker at the Black high school is fired because her children had participated in the marches. Kenny Johnson, a 16 year old student, organizes a boycott of the cafeteria. He and 34 other students are suspended. The students picket the white high-school, demanding an end to segregated schools. On October 7, the cops use tear gas to disperse the pickets. Johnson is sent to the State Reform School for Colored Youth. It takes three months of political and legal action before CORE can get him released.
For more information:
Books:
Louisiana Movement
Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement
Web:
Louisiana Movement
"Letter From Port Allen Jail"
See Mass Arrest of Student Protesters, Orangeburg, SC. for previous events.
In January of 1963, new governors in three deep-south states take office. In Alabama, George Wallace was elected on an extreme segregationist platform (and in Mississippi Lt. Governor Paul Johnson is running an equally anti-Black, pro-segregationist campaign for Governor). But in Georgia, Carl Sanders, a racial moderate takes office, as does Donald Russell — another moderate — in South Carolina. Russel invites Black leaders, including NAACP leaders, to his inaugral celebrations in Columbia South Carolina where they socially mingle with members of the white elite — an act of conciliation that is unthinkable in Alabama and Mississippi.
Taking the lead from their new governor, the white power structures of many South Carolina communities — Charleston, Florence, Greenville, Spartanburg, and even to some degree Rock Hill — begin to meet with local Black leaders and integrate some facilities. But not in Organgeburg. The white power structure of Organgeburg city and county is extremely conservative, the area is a stronghold of the John Birch Society and billboards demanding the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren are common.
In August of 1963, the Organgeburg Freedom Movement (OFM) renews the struggle. Governed by a steering committe of 25 community leaders chaired by Dr. Harlowe Caldwell of the NAACP, the OFM submits 10 demands to the Organgeburg Mayor and City Council:
Repeal of ordinances requiring segregation.
Removal of "White" and "Colored" signs from munciple buildings, and businesses licensed by the city.
That Blacks be included in city and community programs such as the United Way.
That government employment opportunities for Blacks be upgraded.
That city training centers be open to all qualified persons regardless of race.
That the City Council use its influence to see that equal employment opportunities are provided for Blacks in businesses patronzised by Blacks.
That the City Council use its influence with the South Carolina Employment Agency to end discriminatory practices.
That the City Council use its influence to open facilities in the county-owned hospital to all, regardless of race.
That recreational facilities be open to all regardless of race.
That the City Council use its influence with the school board to comply with the Supreme Court's Brown v Board of Education school desegregation ruling.
The Organgeburg's Mayor, City Council, and civic leaders refuse to budge. After fruitless efforts to meet and negotiate, and with Claflin and South Carolina State College students returning from summer vacation, the OFM initiates large-scale direct-action protests. Close to both schools, Trinity United Methodist Church under Rev. J.W. Curry becomes movement headquarters.
Protest marches and picketing continue through September and into October. In one week, 1,350 students from the two colleges and Wilkinson High School are arrested. So many of the college students are in jail that classrooms are almost empty. But the white power structure remains intransigent — there will be no integration in Organgeburg. Protests continue at a lower level throughout 1963 and into 1964 when passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 finally ends overt, legally-enforced, segregation.
See Orangeburg Massacre for continuation.
For more information:
Book: Freedom & Justice: Four Decades of the Civil Rights Struggle ....
Web: Orangeburg SC Movement & Orangeburg Massacre
Photos
See also March on Washington
for additional details, background material, and personal memories.
Contents
Origins of the March
Coalition Politics
The March Demands
Building the March
Fear and Hysteria
The Buses Roll
Censoring SNCC
Marching for Jobs & Freedom
Media Coverage
Effect of the March
For more than two decades, A. Philip Randolph dreamed of a massive march on Washington for jobs and justice. As President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, President of the Negro American Labor Council, and Vice President of the AFL-CIO, he is the towering senior statesman of the Black struggle for equality and opportunity. Back in 1941, with the support of Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, Randolph had threatened to mobilize 100,000 Blacks to march on Washington to protest segregation in the armed forces and employment discrimination in the burgeoning war industries. To forestall Randolph's march, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (also known as the Fair Employment Act) which outlawed racial discrimination in the national defense industry. This was the first Federal action ever taken against racially-biased employment practices.
Today, when mass marches in the nation's capitol are commonplace (five in 2007, for example), it is hard to imagine how radical (and ominous) was Randolph's idea of 100,000 Black protesters descending on Washington. The largest previous event had been a racist march by 35,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1925. The suffragettes had managed to mobilize 8,000 marchers in 1913 for womens' voting rights, and in 1957 Randolph, Rustin, and King mobilized close to 30,000 for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Civil Rights. In 1932, in the depths of the Depression, soldiers under General Douglas MacArthur had used tear gas, bayonets, and sabers to brutally disperse 20,000 World War I veterans pleading for their promised bonus (killing two and wounding hundreds). But no one had ever brought 100,000 protesters into the streets of DC.
In the closing days of 1962 as the Freedom Movement intensifies across the nation, Randolph asks Rustin to draw up plans for a large jobs-oriented protest in Washington.
After Birmingham, direct-action protests flare across the country, but the Kennedy administration is still unwilling to commit its energies to passage of new civil rights legislation. Dr King begins to consider the need for national-scale action in Washington to push for an effective civil right bill. "We are on a breakthrough," King tells his staff, "We need a mass protest ... to unite in one luminous action all of the forces along the far flung front."
On June 11, 1963 — the same day as President Kennedy's address to the nation on civil rights — SCLC leaders announce plans to demonstrate in Washington for new civil rights legislation. They call for: "Massive, militant, monumental sit-ins on Congress..." and "Massive acts of civil disobedience all over this nation. We will tie up public transportation by laying our bodies prostrate on runways of airports, across railroad tracks, and in bus depots." (Later that night Medgar Evers is assassinated.)
King, Randolph, and Rustin join forces. Their calls for large-scale direct-action in Washington disturb the Kennedys and annoy members of Congress. On June 22nd, President Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders at the White House to get them to call off the march (which still has no date or formal plan). Attending are: A. Phillip Randolph, Jim Farmer (CORE), Dr. King (SCLC), John Lewis (SNCC), Roy Wilkens (NAACP), and Whitney Young (Urban League). The press dubs them the "Big Six" of civil rights. Though Wilkins and Young are undecided about the march, the direct-action wing of the Movement — Randolph, Farmer, King, and Lewis — refuse to cancel it. After the meeting, JFK tells his aides:
"Well, if we can't stop it, we'll run the damn thing." [4]
On July 2nd, Randolph and King convene a summit meeting in New York of the "Big Six" to plan a united action in Washington for "Jobs and Freedom."
Roy Wilkens makes it clear that the NAACP — the largest and best funded of all the civil rights organizations — will not participate in any event that includes any form of civil disobedience. Nor is he willing to allow any criticism of, or risk any break with, the Kennedy administration. The call to mobilize 100,000 protesters has inevitably created a numbers game in which success or failure will be judged in large part by turnout. To get that many people to Washington requires chartering, and filling, more than 2,000 busses. But that cannot be done without the NAACP's financial resources and its hundreds of chapters across the country. Therefore, thoughts of sit-ins and civil disobedience have to be set aside. It is agreed that the event will be a legally- sanctioned march in cooperation with authorities — a march in Washington, not a march on Washington.
The Kennedys are uneasy at thought of thousands of Blacks protesting in the streets of Washington. Though JFK publicly supports the March, behind the scenes his administration moves to limit and control it. To reduce the numbers who can participate they demand that it be held on a weekday — a working day — rather than on the weekend. Nervous at the thought of young Blacks loose on the streets at night after the march, they require that all marchers arrive in the morning and be gone from the city by dark. Politically, they want to prevent any placards or banners critical of the administration — only officially approved signs can be carried. Wilkens insists on acceptance of all these restrictions as the price of NAACP support, and the March is scheduled for Wednesday, August 28 — just 8 weeks away.
The March is intended to be the largest mass protest in American history (up to that time). Only a master organizer can successfully pull it together in just 8 weeks. Everyone at the July 2nd meeting knows that Bayard Rustin is the best man for the job — perhaps the only one who can do it. But Wilkens and Young oppose appointing Rustin to head the March. Rustin, a Quaker, served prison time during WWII as a Conscientious Objector and to them that makes him a "draft dodger;" as a Socialist, Rustin is political anathema; and as a homosexual who had once been arrested on a "morals" charge, they view Rustin as a social pariah and fear that opponents will use Rustin's past to smear the March. Randolph, King, and Farmer defend Rustin — he's the one who can get it done and both Randolph and King have worked successfully with Rustin on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Prayer Pilgrimage to DC for Civil Rights, and the two Youth Marches for Integrated Schools. The debate is hot and bitter. Finally, a compromise is reached, Randolph will be the titular head of the March and Rustin will be his "deputy." Everyone understands that Rustin will do the actual work of organizing the March.
SNCC is ambivalent about the march. Deeply suspicious of Kennedy and
the traditional, conservative Black leadership, many SNCC activists
fear the March is an effort to co-opt and contain rising Black
militancy. Others fear it will be an empty gesture — a
demonstration without organizing — that distracts and
undermines their grass-roots efforts in the Deep South; to them,
change does not come from the top by appealing to a government that
cares nothing for those at the bottom of society, but rather by
building up political power from below. Some SNCC organizers such as
Stokely Carmichael refuse to go to Washington at all. On the day
before the March, twenty or so SNCC activists led by Bob Moses picket
the Department of Justice. He carries a sign reading: "When
there is no justice what is the state but a robber band
enlarged?" All Tuedsay night they hold vigil and on Wednesday
morning some of them participate in the March, others do not.
Yet many in SNCC support the March, believing that any form of direct-action, especially large-scale action, helps break down the fear and isolation that play such a large role in the South's culture of oppression. To them, the March is also a chance to educate the nation about the issues, the Freedom Movement, the courage of people in struggle, and the suffering that Blacks are forced to endure. (To some extent, this disagreement continues the Direct-Action vs Voter Registration debate of 1961.)
In the Black communities where SNCC is working, the idea of the March has caught the imagination of local people, many of whom are eager to participate. Unwilling to break the unity of the Freedom Movement, and committed to supporting the aspirations of the local folks who form the base of the struggle, SNCC as an organization agrees to join the coalition. But the NAACP's restrictions against civil-disobedience and militant direct-action rankle.
Though the "Big Six" try to present a united front to the public, behind the scenes significant divisions remain. To the NAACP and the Urban League, the purpose of the March is to support the President's civil rights bill. "We see this as an all-inclusive demonstration of our belief in the Presidents' program," Young tells a national TV audience on Meet the Press. For Randolph, Rustin, and King, economic issues — unemployment, employment discrimination, raising the minimum wage — are as important as supporting strong, effective civil rights legislation regardless of Kennedy's stand. "[The March seeks] to arouse the conscience of the nation over the economic plight of the Negro," King counters on the same TV show. SNCC and CORE, while agreeing with Randolph and King on the importance of economic issues and the need to go beyond the Kennedy bill, see the March as a protest of, and challenge to, the administration's shameful civil rights record of inactivity, neglect, and collaboration with Southern segregationists.
Eventually, a set of 10 demands for the March is agreed upon:
The 10 Demands of the March on Washington
- Comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress — without compromise or fillibuster — to guarantee all Americans:
Access to all public accommodations
Decent housing
Adequate and integrated education
The right to voteWithholding of Federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists.
Desegregation of all school districts in 1963.
Enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment — reducing Congressional representation of states where citizens are disfranchised.
A new Executive Order banning discrimination in all housing supported by federal funds.
Authority for the Attorney General to institute injunctive suits when any Constitutional right is violated.
A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers — Negro and white — on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.
A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living. (Government surveys show that anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this.)
[The minimum wage at the time of the March is $1.15/hour.]A broadened Fair Labor Standards Act to include all areas of employment which are presently excluded.
A federal Fair Employment Practices Act barring discrimination by federal, state, and municipal governments, and by employers, contractors, employment agencies, and trade unions.
Rustin sets up headquarters in a Harlem walk-up tenement at 170 W. 130th Street near 7th Avenue. Tom Kahn, a veteran activist and one of the few white graduates of Howard University, becomes his chief of staff. The sponsoring organizations assign one or more staff members to the effort. Norman Hill and Blyden Jackson from CORE, and from SNCC Cortland Cox and the Ladner sisters Joyce and Dorie work with Rustin in New York, while SNCC members Ed Brown, Bill Mahoney, and Cleveland Sellers work in DC.
Rachelle Horowitz of the Workers Defense League takes on the enormous and critical task of coordinating the buses, trains, planes, and auto caravans that will carry marchers across the country. Local Movement organizations nationwide — NAACP and CORE chapters, SCLC and SNCC affiliates, labor unions, church and student groups — charter and pay for transportation to DC. Because few southern Blacks have money for long-distance travel, funds have to be raised nationally to bring marchers up from Movement centers in the Deep South. But northern Movement groups are focused on raising money to get their own members to the March, so while some funds are raised it is not enough to bring to Washington all those from the South who want to participate. Thousands of protesters who had braved the KKK, police, gas, dogs, and jails are left behind.
Randolph is a Vice-President of the AFL-CIO and he asks that body to endorse the March. While some AFL-CIO member unions have long and honorable histories of multi-racial struggle, others are still "white-only," some maintain segregated Black and white locals, and some discriminate against Blacks and Latinos in regards to apprenticeship, training, and access to higher-paid skilled jobs. Randolph and AFL-CIO President George Meany have often clashed over Meany's "gradualist" approach to ending racism in organized labor. Randolph supports preferential hiring and promotion programs to redress past discrimination, but Meany supports the seniority system which leaves past inequities uncorrected. And Meany is furious at Randolph for organizing the Negro American Labor Council in 1960 as a forum for pressuring the AFL-CIO on racial issues. Meany does support new civil rights legislation, but he opposes all forms of direct-action, including marches of any kind. After a bitter debate, the AFL-CIO Executive Council refuses to endorse the March. Despite the lack of AFL-CIO endorsement, some individual unions such as the Sleeping Car Porters, UAW, ILGWU, TWU, District-65, and others support the March, and ultimately tens of thousands of marchers are brought to Washington on buses chartered and paid for by unions. Walter Reuther of the UAW is added to the March committee as a labor representative.
To broaden the base of the March — both numerically and financially — representatives of the major faiths are added to the committee in July: Rabbi Joachim Prinz of the American Jewish Congress, Dr. Mathew Ahmann of the National Catholic Conference, and Eugene Black of the Presbyterian Church. While the Black church has been a foundation stone of the Freedom Movement in the South, it is with the March on Washington that national-level religious bodies and inter-denominational organizations in the North begin to play expanded roles.
Women form the backbone of the Freedom Movement, and though men get most of the publicity women play key leadership roles. But not a single woman is asked to speak from the platform at either the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial. Singers Marian Anderson, Eva Jessye, Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, and Joan Baez are included as performers, but women such as Ella Baker and Dorothy Height (whose National Council of Negro Women is more active in the struggle than Whitney Young's Urban League) are not invited to speak on substantive issues. When Randolph agrees to address the all-male National Press Club (no female reporters allowed), Anna Hedgeman and other women on the March staff protest to the committee. The leaders refuse to add any women to the speakers list, but in a minor concession they agree that Myrlie Evers can briefly acknowledge Daisy Bates, Diane Nash, Mrs. Herbert Lee, Rosa Parks, and Gloria Richardson from the platform (Myrlie is unable to attend, so Daisy Bates substitutes for her).
The Movement-related violence of recent years has been perpetrated by white racists and white cops against peaceful, nonviolent, demonstrators. Nevertheless, the Kennedy administration, the mainstream press, and the white establishment are obsessed by fears of Black protesters erupting into looting and violence on the streets of Washington.
"The general feeling is that the Vandals are coming to sack
Rome," states the Washington Daily News. According to
Business Week, "One small disturbance could set off a
wave of mob violence." And on Meet the Press, host
Lawrence Spivak challenges Wilkens and King, citing "numerous" (but
un-named) authorities who "believe it would be impossible to bring
more than 100,000 militant Negroes into Washington without incidents
and possibly rioting."
A "State of Emergency" is declared. All DC liquor stores and bars are
ordered closed on August 28th — apparantly in the
belief that Blacks who come to march for freedom will seek out the
nearest booze to get drunk and disorderly. Federal employees are told
they don't have to come to work on march day and the majority stay
home. Store owners remove merchandise to safe storage out of town and
hospitals cancel elective surgery so as to be ready for riot
casualties. The Washington Senator's baseball game against the
Minnesota Twins is cancelled. Some Southern Congressmen caution their
female staff to avoid the city rather than risk gang rape by the Black
horde, and the San Francisco Chronicle reports: "The deep
concern of husbands and bosses for the safety of their wives and
secretaries was expressed from one end of the city to the
other."
The entire DC police force is mobilized along with 500 reserves and 2,500 members of the National Guard. Some 4,000 Army soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets are stationed across the Potomac at Fort Myer, and 15,000 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division are placed on alert. March organizers know such fears are irrational and racist, but all direct-action protests need leadership and coordination, so they recruit and train some 2,000 parade marshals. Half of them are Black police officers from New York and other cities who belong to the Guardian, a fraternal organization of Black cops. The other half are Movement activists trained by Julius Hobson of DC CORE. (In the event, none of this presence is needed, both police and marshalls spend their time handling traffic and giving directions.)
On Saturday, August 24th, chartered buses from the West Coast begin the long cross-country journey to Washington. From San Francisco they head east up over Donner Pass and through the shimmering heat of the high desert, from Los Angeles they traverse the Mojave on Route 66 — the "Mother Road" of the Depression and the Dustbowl. From Portland and Seattle they begin rolling east across the dry lands. On Sunday, buses hit the long-distance highways of the mountain west, and on Monday & Tuesday bus after bus after bus departs from the states and cities of the heartland — Minneapolis and Kansas City, Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis.
On Tuesday morning a crowd gathers in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park to squeeze aboard six buses — all they can afford to charter. Hundreds have to be left behind for lack of funds. Up from other freedom battlegrounds of the Deep South buses begin rolling north, from Plaquemine and New Orleans Louisiana, from the Mississippi Delta, from the embattled communities of Alabama, from Atlanta and Southwest Georgia, the buses roll towards Washington. A "Freedom Special" train pulls out of Florida, traveling up the East Coast, picking up marchers as it goes. By the time it reaches DC, it's 22 cars long. With no money for buses, a caravan of 200 autos loaded with marchers moves up out of North Carolina, headlights pointing north through the night.
As the hour approaches midnight, they begin boarding buses in Boston, Hartford, and New Haven. In the dead of night more than 40,000 protesters assemble at pickup points around New York City and then head south on 600 buses and 11 chartered trains. 85 buses depart from New Jersey and 100 from Philadelphia. From Detroit and Cleveland and Pittsburgh, from Louisville and Cincinatti, the buses roll towards Washington. Through the dark night they roll east on Route 40 and south on US-1.
In the morning hours of August 28, more than 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered aircraft, and uncounted autos converge on Washington. The regularly scheduled planes, trains, and buses are filled to capacity. And in DC itself — "Chocolate City," at that time the only major metropolis in America with a Black majority population — tens of thousands, young and old, step out of their front doors and head for the gathering point — the towering spire of the Washington Monument.
But behind the scenes there is bitter controversy. Newly elected SNCC Chairman John Lewis drafts his speech with input from many SNCC activists — Julian Bond, Cortland Cox, Jim Forman, Prathia Hall, Eleanor Holmes (Norton), Joyce Ladner, Sheila Michaels, Gloria Richardson, Avon Rollins, Ruby Doris Smith (Robinson), and others. It evolves into a collective SNCC statement rather than the personal remarks of Lewis. It is a strong, powerful condemnation of racism and government complicity.
The evening before the March, Washington's Archbishop O'Boyle — who is scheduled to give the invocation at the main rally — sees a copy of SNCC's speech. A staunch Kennedy supporter, he is disturbed by its forthright criticism of the administration and what he feels is "inflammatory" rhetoric. He alerts the White House, and tells Rustin he will pull out of the event if Lewis is allowed to proceed. Rustin meets with Lewis who agrees to a few minor cosmetic changes that they hope will placate O'Boyle and the Catholic Church.
The next day, as the marchers flow towards the Lincoln Memorial, behind the stage controversy flares again over SNCC's speech. Burke Marshall of the Justice Department objects to its condemnation of the administration, Walter Reuther of the UAW is irate at criticism of Kennedy's proposed civil rights bill, and O'Boyle is still upset over "inflammatory" language. Lewis and Wilkens argue, voices raised, fingers shaking in each others' face. Rustin manages to get O'Boyle to start the program with his invocation while an ad-hoc committee battles with SNCC over language. To gain time, Fred Shuttlesworth is asked to give an impromptu speech, and more music is added to the program.
SNCC is furious that those who have done so little for the struggle want to blunt their heartfelt criticism of administration failures and emasculate their call to militant struggle for justice. SNCC did not join the March to support the Kennedys, but to challenge them. Finally, Randolph, the beloved and admired elder statesman of the Movement makes a personal appeal: "I have waited twenty-two years for this. I've waited all my life for this opportunity. Please don't ruin it. John, we've come this far together. Let us stay together."
Out of respect for Randolph, SNCC leaders Lewis, Forman, and Cox
reluctantly agree to make some changes in language, but not in
essential substance. In regards to Kennedy's proposed legislation they
cut the phrase, "too little and too late," but retain,
"In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the
administration's civil rights bill. There's not one thing in the bill
that will protect our people from police brutality." They make
a few minor cosmetic edits, and agree to drop, "We will march
through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman
did." And they delete the pointed question, "Which side
is the Federal government on?"
Writing years later in Walking With the Wind, John Lewis sums up:
I was angry. But when we were done, I was satisfied. So was
Forman. The speech still had fire. It still had bite, certainly more
teeth than any other speech made that day. It still had an edge, with
no talk of "Negroes" — I spoke instead of "black
citizens" and "the black masses," the only speaker that day to use
those terms. We all agreed — Forman, Cox, and
I — that our message was not compromised.
[5]
And in his own book, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Jim Forman concluded:
"The speech John Lewis finally delivered, despite its concession on the phrase about support [of the Kennedy bill], was still a strong indictment that could not have made the bosses of the March very happy. [6]"[
See Original Speech of John Lewis and Actual Speech of John Lewis to compare the two versions.]
Lewis gives his speech to great applause, particularly from those marchers up from the Deep South who have personally experienced the brutality, injustice, and Federal indifference that he so strongly condemns. Writing later, he describes how he felt:
"This speech itself felt like an act of protest to me. After
going through what I'd been through during the previous sixteen hours,
after feeling the pressures that had been placed on me and finally
stepping out and delivering these words, it felt just like a
demonstration, just like a march. It felt like defiance. ... defiance
in every direction against the entrenched segregation of the South;
against the neglect of the federal government; and also against the
conservative concerns of the establishment factions, black and white
alike, that were trying to steer the movement with their own interests
in mind rather than the needs of the people.
[5]"
After Lewis finishes giving his address to the assembled crowd, he
walks back to his seat. One observer notes that, "Every Black
speaker on the platform shook his hand and patted him on the back, but
every white speaker on the platform stared vacantly at the
horizon."
The Kennedys, the media, the Movement leaders, all try to define and control the March. But in the end, it is the marchers themselves who take over and forever stamp the event as a mass peoples' protest, a peaceful expression of their deepest aspirations of human freedom, and a joyous celebration of unity.
The marchers gather in their thousands at the Washington Monument. The March is supposed to start at 11:30am, but the "Big Six" leaders are still meeting with members of Congress. Everyone can see the Lincoln Memorial just a mile distant and they don't need anyone to tell them what they are there for. People spontaneously begin singing freedom songs, then start flowing down Constitution and Independence Avenues towards the Memorial.
"My God, they're going!" shouts Rustin from the steps of the
Capitol, "We're supposed to be leading them!" As they try to
catch up, John Lewis later recalls, "I remember thinking, there
goes America. We were supposed to be the leaders of this march,
but the march was all around us, already taking off, already
gone." In the crush, the Big Six are unable to overtake the
front. Marshals manage to clear a space in the middle so that they can
pose for pictures side by side as if they are at the head of the
remaining marchers now dammed up behind them.
No one can accurately count the number of participants, and estimates vary. The police say 200,000, but that number is given out to the press before the rally begins, while people are still marching, and it does not include late arrivals. Most reliable observers place the number at more than 300,000, though for some reason history texts usually use the figure of 250,000. Roughly one quarter are white, and one sixth are students. Most marchers, regardless of color, are from the urban North. Southern Blacks are represented — their spirited singing evident to all — but far too many who wanted to come have been left behind.
At the Lincoln Memorial, Marian Anderson is supposed to begin the program with the National Anthem, but the jam of people is so great she is unable to reach the stage in time. Carmilla Williams of Danville VA stands in for her and Anderson sings later in the program. Movie stars, entertainers, celebrities, and a few politicians appear. They are all seated in special reserved sections. Some of them are introduced from the stage.
In sad counterpoint it is announced from the platform that a giant has fallen — news just arrived from Ghana reports that W.E.B. DuBois has passed on at the age of 95. Author of seminal work such as The Souls of Blackfolk, one of the founders of the NAACP, editor of Crises magazine, a socialist and Communist, an opponent of nuclear weapons, the "Father of Pan-Africanism," he had been driven into African exile during the red-baiting witch-hunts of the McCarthy era.
Proudly wearing the Croix de Guerre and Legion d'Honneur awarded for her courage as an underground courier in the French Resistance during WWII, expatriate jazz singer Josephine Baker briefly speaks to great applause, "I am glad that in my home this day has come to pass ... The world is behind you."
Mahalia Jackson electrifies the crowd with "I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned." Lerone Bennet, editor of Ebony, later writes of her performance:
There is a nerve that lies beneath the smoothest of black
exteriors, a nerve four hundred years old and throbbing with hurt and
indignation. Mahalia Jackson penetrated the facade and exposed the
nerve to public view... The button-down men in front and the old women
in the back came to their feet screaming and shouting. They had not
known that this thing was in them and that they wanted it touched.
From different places, in different ways, with different dreams, they
had come and now, hearing this sung, they were one.
[7]
Each of the 10 sponsoring organizations has a speaker on the program. To ensure that the event ends on time and all the marchers are out of town before dark, each address is limited to a maximum of seven minutes. Dr. King is the last of the organizational speakers. Deeply rooted in the rhythm and cadence of the Black church, he is one of the great orators of the 20th Century. To the disappointment of the Kennedys and their supporters on the platform, he completely ignores the President's civil rights bill. Instead, he reaches for a higher truth that transcends the specifics of any single piece of legislation or the role of one man, or one administration.
Today, Dr. King's address is famous as the I Have a Dream speech. But the dream section, which is forever repeated in TV sound-bites and classroom recordings, was not part of his original draft. When King nears the end of his seven minutes of prepared text — the metaphor of the bounced check and the echo of Amos that "... we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream" — he senses — as do others on the platform — that something more has to be said. That the March itself requires some summing up, some articulation of the vision that moves the Movement, some expression of the aspirations, pride, determination, and courage of not just these marchers, but the Freedom Movement as a whole.
Sitting behind him, Mahalia Jackson leans forward, "Tell them about the dream, Martin." She had heard him speak the dream at recent rallies. And with that, he steps over the seven-minute limit and off his prepared text to soar, speaking from the soul of the struggle to the heart of oppressed people everywhere, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, ... go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, ... Let us not wallow in the valley of despair ... And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! ..." As he rolls on with his majestic cadences towards his ringing conclusion, ""Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, free at last," Mahalia and others on the platform can be heard over the loudspeakers backing him up with the traditional affirmation of the Black church, "My Lord! My Lord!"
Deeply rooted in two cherished gospels — the Old Testament and the unfulfilled promise of the American creed — King's 19 minute address indelibly positions the Freedom Movement in faith and history.
Following Dr. King, Randolph and Rustin read the 10 demands, asking the marchers to affirm each one and pledge to carry on the struggle, which they do in a thunder of 300,000 voices. Benjamin Mays of Morehouse College gives the benediction, and the organ plays We Shall Overcome. The marchers in their thousands stand together, hands clasped in stranger's hands, and sing the Movement anthem.
As the crowds disperse back to their buses, SNCC activists form a song-circle and raise up their voices. SNCC member Bob Zellner recalls:
SNCC, CORE, SCLC, and NAACP kids, mostly SNCC, joining hands in
a huge circle just below the speakers stand, and singing our hearts to
the heights. The "event" itself had been controlled with a heavy hand
and even what singing there was — Mahalia Jackson, the
freedom singers, etc — was doled out sparingly so as
not to incite the "mob." Breaking the rules by singing was our feeble
attempt to protest the forced changing of our Chairman John Lewis's
speech because it was too fiery and militant.
[8]
SNCC organizer Joyce Ladner recalls a photo of that defiant song-circle:
Today, some forty years later, that picture reminds me of the
loneliness of the battle, the small number of people who were really
in the thick of the war against American apartheid, and the almost
desolate landscape around us. [9]
Media coverage of the March is extensive and world-wide. There are roughly 1,200 accredited journalists and reporters in Washington, and most of them cover the March. In addition, 1,600 special March-related press passes are issued. The result is the most extensive media coverage of any event in Washington since the funeral of President Roosevelt. CBS broadcasts live coverage of the entire Lincoln Memorial program, the March is the lead story on all 3 network news shows, and it's on the front page of every major newspaper the next day.
But rather than focus on the issues, most stories in the northern press focus on the amazing (to them) fact that thousands of Blacks engaged in peaceful protest without getting drunk and running riot. The San Francisco Examiner begins its description of the March with:
"The freedom march on Washington yesterday turned out to be a
profoundly moving demonstration — so big, so orderly,
so sweet-singing and good-natured, so boldly confident and at the same
time relaxed, so completely right from start to finish, that America
was done proud beyond measure."
Many papers in the South take a different tack, they condemn the March, the Kennedys, and the entire Civil Rights Movement. The Chattanooga Free Press writes:
"The marchers were not primarily seeking to gain civil rights
for themselves but to deprive others of their civil rights so that the
demonstrators might have what belongs to others."
International interest in the March is high. There are sympathy demonstrations in Berlin, Munich, London, Amsterdam, Kingston, and elsewhere. BBC broadcasts the March live — one of the very first live telecasts beamed across the Atlantic by the Telstar satellite. TV and film crews from Canada, France, Japan, and Germany, record the event. The major London papers fly in special correspondents, as do papers in Canada, Cuba, and cities in Europe, and Asia. The March is the front page story in the Soviet Union's Isvestia.
Effect on those who marched. The people most strongly affected by any direct-action protest are those who participate in it.
Many of the marchers, particularly those mobilized by labor and northern churches, have never before participated in a civil rights protest. After years of violent images of police and racist violence and a week of hysterical media hype, some of them are nervous on the buses coming down, fearful of what might occur. Others are excited and empowered by being part of something larger than themselves. For most, the dedication and discipline, unity and solidarity, of the March is a revelation, an awakening, and for some a life-altering epiphany that moves them into social reform for years and decades to come. Lerone Bennet writes:
The participants knew that [even] if the March had changed no
votes in Congress or no hearts in America that it had changed them...
men and women would look back on this day and tell their children and
their grandchildren: "There was a March in the middle of the twentieth
century, the biggest demonstration for civil rights in
history — and I was there.
[10]
Somewhat over half of the Marchers have been previously active in the Freedom Movement, most of them in the North, some in the South. For those up from the lonely, desperate battlegrounds of the South, the March is a powerful antidote for isolation, and an affirmation that not only are they not alone, but that they are part of a powerful nation-wide struggle. And for most, North and South, the March is an inspiration that rededicates them to the struggle. One marcher recalls:
"For six months before the March I had been active with CORE in the West. But fear of consequences — from parents, from school, for future employment — held me back from courting arrest with acts of civil disobedience. When I returned from Washington that was all changed. In the following months I dropped out of school and became a full-time activist. I was arrested a number of times. Then I went South and served as an SCLC field secretary in Alabama and Mississippi for two years." [11]
But for SNCC and CORE's dedicated field staff — the organizers in the South who daily confront danger and death — the March and its aftermath are deeply disappointing. They are angry and bitter at the heavy hand of the Kennedys and the censorship of SNCC's statement. And after the vast outpouring of energy they see no change — no change in segregation, no change in denial of voting rights, no change in police brutality, no change in racist violence, and no change in Federal appeasement of southern racism.
John Lewis later writes:
"In the days that followed, too much of the national press, in
my opinion, focused not on the substance of the day but on the
setting. Their stories portrayed the event as a big picnic, a
hootenanny combined with the spirit of a revival prayer meeting. Too
many commentators and reporters softened and trivialized the hard
edges of pain and suffering that brought about this day in the first
place, virtually ignoring the hard issues that needed to be addressed,
the issues that had stirred up so much trouble in my own speech. It
was revealing that the quotes they gathered from most of the
congressional leaders on Capitol Hill dealt not with the legislator's
stand on the civil rights bill but instead focused on praising the
'behavior' and 'peacefulness' of the mass marchers.
[12]"
Effect on the Country. Millions of Americans, Black and white, watch the March and rally on TV. For most of them, this is their first direct exposure to the Freedom Movement beyond brief sound-bites and newspaper interpretations. While it is unlikely that the March changes the minds of committed segregationists, for the rest of the population the dignity, strength, purpose, and discipline of the freedom marchers has a positive affect.
A national poll reports that more than 75% of white Americans support ending segregation in public facilities, equal job opportunities, "good" housing for Blacks, and integrated schools. Two-thirds of them support passage of Kennedy's civil rights bill. But, 97% of whites oppose preferential hiring of Blacks to make up for past discrimination, the great majority oppose any Federal legislation against housing discrimination, and 56% oppose any further protests by Blacks.
In 1963, fear of Communism dominates the political thinking of a great many white Americans. Most Blacks have long since dismissed "red menace" and "Communist plot" smears against civil rights activists by racists such as Hoover of the FBI, and segregationist Senators such as Eastland and Thurmond. But red-baiting attacks on the Freedom Movement still influence a large number of whites. Now, at least for some of the millions of whites who watch the March and King's entire 19-minute speech live on national TV — and hear for the first time, not just a few sound-bites but the full content of a freedom sermon — those slanders of foreign-subversion and secret plots begin losing credibility.
Effect on Congress. Before, during, and after the March, members of Congress vow in strident chorus that it will not influence or affect their votes in any way, shape, or form. But as the elders teach us, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." In the 86 years since the end of Reconstruction, not a single piece of effective, race-related civil rights legislation is signed into law. In less than two years following the March on Washington, the two most effective civil rights bills ever enacted, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are passed. It is the Freedom Movement as a whole that forces passage of these acts — not the March alone — but the March does make clear to legislators from rural states and suburban districts outside the South that at least some of their constituents, Black and white, do care about civil rights, and that those constituents are watching how they vote in Congress. Since the crucial votes to overcome the Southern filibusters against the two bills are extremely close, a shift of even one or two votes makes a critical difference.
But while the March does affect Congress in regards to basic civil rights, it has little affect on the economic issues that form a key portion of the 10 demands. There are no Black Senators, and only five Black Representatives in the House. They and their progressive allies are unable to move federal legislation on open housing. Segregated, "separate but equal," school systems are slowly being integrated, but adequate education for all remains an unfulfilled dream. Unemployment remains high — doubly so for non-whites — and the call for dignified jobs at decent wages falls on deaf ears, as do demands to increase the minimum wage to a living wage.
~ ~ ~
Looking back on the March later, Evelyn Cunningham, New York Editor for the Pittsburgh Courier, recalls:
"I must've cried for an hour and a half at one point during the March. Part of it was sheer happiness, part of it was pride, and part of it was my family. I'm steeped in my respect for my people. After the March, I thought, 'Oh my God, we're almost there — God, was I wrong." [13]
For more information:
Books: March on Washington & "I Have a Dream" Speech for partial list of books.
Web:
The March on Washington (CRMVet articles)
March on Washington Documents (CRMVet)
March on Washington 1963 web links (additional websites)
On September 15th, eighteen days after the euphoria of the March on Washington, the Ku Klux Klan shatters the short-lived hopes and dreams of freedom with an act of savage barbarity.
Wednesday, September 4th, is school integration day in Birmingham. Under Federal court order, five Black children are to integrate three white schools. This is the first grade-school integration in Alabama and it occurs nine years after Brown v Board of Education (see "Massive Resistance" to Integration). Whites furiously oppose the court order with rallies, car caravans, and threats of violence. "Moderate" Mayor Boutwell asks the court to delay integreation in order to consider evidence of the "inherent differences in the races." The court refuses. A violent mob led by the National States Rights Party (NSRP) roams from school to school, creating a pretext for closing the three integrated schools in order to preserve "public safety" — the same strategy used to keep Autherine Lucy out of the Univ. of Alabama in 1956.
After dark, a KKK bomb explodes at the home of NAACP attorney Arthur Shores. Neighborhod Blacks surge into the streets, throwing rocks and bottles at the hated police, who respond with gunfire and an armored vehicle. A cop beats a wounded Black man with a rifle butt, shouting "All you black bastards need to be dead!" John Coley — who looks like Fred Shuttlesworth — is gunned down in the street. Ku Klux Klansman Gary Thomas Rowe — a paid informant of the FBI — "happens" to be driving by the melee. He shoots a Black man in the chest and reports doing so to the Birmingham police. The cops congratulate him on his marksmanship and tell him to "forget about it." The next morning, Governor Wallace tells a New York Times reporter: "What this country needs is a few first-class funerals, and some political funerals too." The three schools are closed and surrounded by Alabama State Troopers.
Though some whites, including some courageous white students, support integration, most whites furously defend segregation, flying confederate battle flags from their cars and homes to signify their continuing committment to racism. As the various parties maneuver in the courts and on the streets, Governor Wallace and other politicians inflame white rage with exhortations to oppose Federal "tyranny" and resist "race-mixers."
16th Street Baptist Church is the church most prominently identified with the Freedom Movement. Late Saturday night the police car usually patrolling around the church goes elsewhere. Four Klansmen then plant a large dynamite bomb timed to go off during services. Sunday, September 15th, is "Youth Day" to honor the heroic young freedom fighters of the The Birmingham Campaign. The blast shatters the brick wall, instantly killing four young girls — Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). More than 20 others are wounded and maimed.
Amid the smoke and carnage, frantic parents search the rubble for their children, and ambulances rush the injured to hospital. Governor Wallace sends in 300 Alabama State Troopers, notorious for their racist violence against Blacks, to "keep order." Furious Blacks throw stones at the cops, and also at whites driving through the Black neighborhoods. Roving bands of white vigilantes attack Blacks on the streets. Armed with shotguns and rifles, the Troopers ally with the racist whites. They shoot 16-year old Johnnie Robinson in the back — killing him — as he flees after throwing a stone at a car with the slogan "Negroes, go back to Africa" painted on the side.
Two white teenagers — both Eagle Scouts — attend a segregationist rally. After leaving the rally they see two Black boys riding on a bicycle far from the scene of any turmoil. One of the teenagers pulls out a pistol and shoots 13-year old Virgil Ware dead on the spot. For this cold-blooded murder he is sentenced to 6 months in Juvenile Hall. His accomplice gets probation.
Eventually the Justice Department and Federal Court succeed in enrolling the five Black children in school. Armed guards in the Black community prevent further bombing. More than 8,000 people, including Movement activists from across the South, and also some of Birmingham's white clergymen, attend the funerals of the slain girls. The services are surrounded by rifle-toting State Troopers and harrased by gangs of white racists.
In the aftermath of this heinous crime, increasing numbers of Movement activists turn away from philosophical, "love-your-enemy" type nonviolence. Some reject nonviolence altogether, others remain committed to tactical nonviolence aimed at building political movements capable of forcing change. Diane Nash and her husband James Bevel respond to the bombing by drawing up a plan to drive George Wallace, Al Lingo, and their segregationist allies from office by winning voting rights for Blacks in Alabama. To achieve this they envision large-scale, disruptive, nonviolent direct-action in Montgomery. Calling it the "Alabama Project," she presents the idea to Dr. King. SNCC Chairman and SCLC board member John Lewis supports her proposal, but Dr. King is skeptical. Over the following year she continues to advocate massive, nonviolent demonstrations in Alabama for the right to vote. In August of 1964, the betrayal of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Atlantic City Convention proves the futility of relying on the good will of liberal politicians. In November, Dr. King agrees to support her plan which evolves into the Selma Voting Rights Campaign.
The Birmingham cops claim they will hunt down and apprehend the bombers. But Bull Connor's police force is riddled with Klan members and KKK supporters, and they have solved none of the many previous bombings. They know who the bombers are, but their investigation is stymied by internal resistance, and also FBI misconduct.
Public and media outrage over the bombing is intense. Though in the past the FBI has always claimed it has no jurisdiction to become involved in racist crimes against Blacks, it procliams it is taking up this one case. But FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is himself a racist opposed to equality for Blacks (under his rule there are no Black FBI agents). Hoover sees the Freedom Movement as a Communist plot, and his intense, visceral hatred of Dr. King amounts to a personal obsession. His focus is investigating, discrediting, and destroying the Black Freedom Movement, not solving the brutal murder of four Black girls. He orders that evidence regarding the bombings be concealed from both Alabama and Justice Department prosecutors. One of the hidden pieces of evidence is a tape recording of a bomber telling his wife that he built the bomb. Although the FBI agents on the case gather enough evidence to prosecute, Hoover does not allow them to meet with U.S. Attorneys.
In 1971, Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopens the case. But without the FBI's concealed evidence little progress can be made. Eventually, he uses the media to force the FBI to release some of the hidden evidence, and in 1977 he is able to convict KKK member Robert ("Dynamite Bob") Chambliss of murder. Chambliss dies in prison in 1985.
But the FBI continues to hide evidence about the other bombers. Years later Alabama Attorney General Baxley writes:
For more than two decades, Mr. Blanton and Mr. Cherry evaded
indictment and prosecution because the FBI held back these recordings.
This was evidence we desperately needed in
1977 — evidence whose existence FBI officials had
denied. Had it been provided in 1977, we could have convicted all
three of these Klansmen. [14]
In 1980, a US Department of Justice report confirms that Hoover blocked evidence that could have been used to arrest the bombers.
In 1997, filmaker Spike Lee releases "4 Little Girls" a film about the bombing which reawakens public interest in the case. With Hoover now dead and the Clinton administration in office, the FBI finally releases the hidden evidence and U.S. Attorney Doug Jones reopens the case. In 2000, Klansmen Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry are arrested (Herman Cash, the 4th bomber, had died in 1994). Blanton is convicted of murder in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Cherry is convicted in 2002 and dies in prison two years later.
For more information:
Books: Birmingham Movement
Web:
Birmingham Movement
Martyrs of the Movement
See New Orleans Merchant Boycotts & Sit-ins for background and previous events.
By mid 1963, many of the Canal Street lunch counters and stores have been desegregated by a combination of direct-action protests and selective buying campaigns by CORE and the NAACP Youth Council (NYC), and negotiations & public pressure led by Rev. A. L. Davis and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. But promises made by white business leaders to hire Blacks for non-menial jobs have remained largely unfulfilled, and the city itself still practices segregation and job discrimination.
Despite opposition from some of the more conservative Black leaders and organizations, CORE, led by Rudy Lombard, Oretha Castle, and Jerome Smith, and the NYC led by Raphael Cassimere, remain committed to direct-action. After Birmingham, they threaten mass action unless progress is made. Heavily dependent on tourism and northern investment, New Orleans' white business leaders fear large-scale civic disruption and negative publicity on the Birmingham model. They are the real power behind the politicians and they negotiate an agreement which Mayor Victor Schiro has to sign on August 9, 1963.
Under this agreement, the "Colored" and "White Only" signs are to be removed from public buildings, the city will not appeal court desegregation orders, the city civil service will no longer discriminate against "qualified" Blacks and will hire Black firemen and garbage collectors, and the city will not harass or retaliate against private businesses who agreed to desegregate. But the Mayor and other politicians are elected by white segregationists who oppose any progress by Blacks. The agreement is not fully implemented, Blacks are not hired and the City Hall cafeteria is not integrated. After the Birmingham Church Bombing, the Black moderates can no longer hold back the demand for a massive protest in New Orleans.
On Monday evening, September 30, some ten thousand Blacks and three hundred whites march to City Hall. Led by boycott leader Rev. Avery Alexander, A. J. Chapital (NAACP), Oretha Castle (CORE), and Rev A.L. Davis (SCLC), they demand full implementation of the August 9 agreement and creation of a bi-racial committee to address continuing issues of inequality. Known as the "Freedom March," this is the largest Black demonstration of the era in New Orleans. Neither the Mayor nor any other white politician is willing to meet with the marchers who rally in front of the building.
Following the Freedom March, Rev. Davis delivers a petition to the City Council demanding repeal of all segregation ordinances, desegregation of schools, elimination of police brutality against Blacks, elimination of segregated trade unions, allowing Blacks to join professional organizations, appointment of Blacks to government commissions and boards, and desegregation of all public accomodations, hospitals, and civic venues. The Mayor and City Council drag their heels and have to be pushed every inch of the way. It is only after sit-ins, arrests, and widely-publicized police brutality against Rev. Davis in the fall and winter of 1963 that the City Hall cafeteria is finally desegregated. CORE and NYC continue direct-action protests through 1965 when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 begins to have its effect.
For more information:
Book: Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana (Book)
Web: A House Divided (Southern Institute ~ Tulane Univ.)
See Savage Repression in Gadsden AL for preceding events.
In June of 1963, CORE Field Secretary Mary Hamilton (28) is one of many protesters arrested in Gadsden Alabama. At a habeas corpus hearing on June 25th, NAACP lawyers demand that the demonstrators be released because their arrests violate the Constitutional right of free-speech to peacefully protest. As is customary throughout the South (and most of the North as well), white prosecutors and judges address all white witnesses and defendants with courtesy titles and surnames such as "Mr. Jones" and "Mrs. Smith," but address all non-whites — Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans, not just Blacks — by their first name only. Mary Hamilton is called to the witness stand:
Prosecutor: "What is your name, please?"
Witness: "Miss Mary Hamilton."
Prosecutor: "Mary, who were you arrested by?"
Witness: "My name is Miss Hamilton. Please address me correctly."
Prosecutor: "Who were you arrested by, Mary?"
Witness: "I will not answer a question until I am addressed correctly."
Judge: "Answer the question."
Witness: "I will not answer them unless I am addressed correctly."
Judge: "You are in contempt of court." [15]
Judge Cunningham sentences her to five days in jail and a $50 fine for contempt of court. Without any trial or opportunity to defend herself on the contempt charge, she is immediately hauled off and thrown into the cells. For five days she endures threats, intimidation, and abuse as they try to break her. They tell her the abuse will stop if she agrees to answer questions without being addressed as "Miss." She does not break.
She refuses to pay the $50 fine. After five days the Movement is able to bail her out and appeal her case to the Alabama Supreme Court on the grounds that omitting courtesy titles when addressing non-whites violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The Alabama court rules against her. NAACP lawyers appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in Hamilton v. Alabama, 376 U.S. 650. In March of 1964, the Supreme Court summarily over-turns the contempt citation, ruling that all those brought to the bar of justice must be addressed equally with titles of courtesy, regardless of race or ethnicity — a ruling that governs every court in the land to this day.
Contrary to the media image of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a heroic defender of truth, justice, and the American way, Freedom Movement activists of the 1960s know that the FBI they encounter day-to-day is a deeply racist organization and an outright enemy of civil rights. FBI agents (all of whom are white males) work hand-in-glove with state and local police to prevent Blacks from achieving political, economic, or social equality with whites; and the Bureau has a long history of opposing anyone who advocates progressive social change — be it civil rights, labor, peace, academic freedom, or any other liberal cause.
Time after time in the 1950s and 60s, FBI agents stand idly by as cops, Klan, and White Citizens Council brutally trample the Constitutional rights of Blacks, suppress peaceful and legal free speech, and blatantly violate Federal court orders. When challenged, the Bureau claims that as an "investigative" agency is has no law-enforcement power. But when they see (or can manufacture) an opportunity to arrest and indict Movement activists, they leap into action, as for example in the Federal "Jury Tampering" Frameup in Albany GA. And FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's personal racism and obsessive hatred of Dr. King are well known.
Red-baiting — also known as "McCarthyism" — is a favored method for attacking the Freedom Movement. To the FBI and other segregationists in the 1960s, racial equality and integration are "Communist plots." One example of the smear tactics used by red-baiters against the Movement are the many billboards put up across the South by the White Citizens Council. Titled "Martin Luther King at Communist Training School" they show a photo of Dr. King and Rosa Parks at a public meeting hosted by the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Highlander supports justice and equality, and its events are integrated, so by the twisted logic of racism not only is Highlander "Communist" but so is anyone who participates in one of their functions — such as Dr. King who visits Highlander one time to give a speech on the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Back in 1956, Hoover established the FBI's COunter INTELigence PROgram
(COINTELPRO) to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or
otherwise neutralize" the activities of organizations that do
not meet Hoover's political approval. This occurs at a time when the
Communist Party in the U.S. has totally collapsed, it's influence is
nil, and many of its few remaining dues-paying members are actually
FBI agents. Yet to Hoover and the FBI, all forms of progressive social
change are inherently "subversive," and "Communist" is a convenient
label for justifying political persecution of dissidents who question
the existing social order.
Though it proclaims itself as the nation's premier crime-fighting agency, COINTELPRO and other forms of political repression are the FBI's real priority. For example, in the 1950s, New York is the center of organized crime in America (the "Five Families," the "French Connection," political corruption, mob-run unions, and so on) yet in 1959 the FBI's New York office assigns 400 agents to "internal security" operations and only 4 to investigating organized crime.
On October 1, 1963, Hoover approves a COINTELPRO attack on the civil rights movement. Over the years that follow, first the Freedom Movement and then the entire new left, become the primary targets of COINTELPRO persecution. In December of 1963, the FBI holds a conference to plan its campaign to destroy King and discredit the civil rights movement.
One typical example of COINTELPRO's vicious tactics are the lies the Bureau spreads about Freedom Movement volunteer Viola Luizzo. While participating in the March to Montgomery in 1965, she is shot to death by four Ku Klux Klansmen — one of whom is a paid FBI informant. COINTELPRO then leaks utterly false stories to the press that she was a member of the Communist Party and had abandoned her children in order to have sex with Blacks involved in the Movement. The sexual slander against Mrs. Luizzo is not an isolated abberation, the FBI seems obsessed with sex, and COINTELPRO agents frequently tape-record lovers in their bedrooms, pass on "salacious" misinformation to the press, and attempt to break up marriages with anonymous allegations of infidelity.
Year later, in 1975, a committee of the U.S. Senate (the "Church Committee") issues an official report on COINTELPRO:
"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, ..."
"The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. ... Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. ... Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed — including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths.
Governmental officials — including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law — have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law. [16]
Despite the best efforts of the Church Committee's investigation, the full extent of the FBI COINTELPRO attack on the Movement and Dr. King is still hidden. To this day, many Freedom Movement activists are convinced that Hoover and the FBI played a significant role in Dr. King's Assasination.
For more information:
Books: Repression and Opposition Against the Movement for partial list of books.
Web: FBI Against the Movement
See Selma — Cracking the Wall of Fear for preceding events.
The Lafayettes are joined in Selma by SNCC organizer Prathia Hall — a courageous freedom fighter and fiery orator — who becomes the Black Belt project director when Bernard and Colia return to school in September. SNCC sends more staff to Selma. Increasing numbers of Dallas County Blacks come to the courthouse to register — they are denied. Thirty-two Black school teachers gather their courage and try to register. They are immediately fired. SNCC organizer Worth Long is beaten senseless by a deputy sheriff.
In Birmingham, 120 miles to the north, the 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed on September 15th, and the young people of Selma decide it's time for them to step up. Chuck Bonner recalls:
[At this point in time, SNCC's Selma staff had temporarily gone up to Birmingham in response to the bombing.]The bombing happened and it was all in the news, and Cleo and Terry and I got together, decided we should respond to this, we should take some action in response to this bombing. And we talked to students, we all got together at the Tabernacle Church, and we decided we should have a demonstration. We called the SNCC office, ... in Atlanta, and we tried to ... get someone to come down, some adult, to help us carry out what was going to be our first demonstration — we had never had a demonstration.
We couldn't get anybody to come down — so we did it anyway. And that's the occasion when Willie C. Robinson went in to Carter's Drug Store along with the other group of demonstrators, and Carter — the owner of the drug store — hit him with an axe handle or something like that, busted his head, and he had to have seven stitches. Four students were arrested, and then the Movement was on. We immediately organized some other demonstrations, we didn't want those students to be lonely in jail and we sent down another brigade of students, and they were arrested. [17]
Protests continue on the following days, many more students are arrested, over 300 in two weeks. SNCC Chairman John Lewis is thrown in jail for picketing the courthouse in support of voter registration. A teenage girl is knocked off a lunch counter stool and viciously burned with an electric cattle prod as she lays unconcious on the floor.
October 7 is the next voter registration day. SNCC and the local Movement leaders decide to organize a major mobilization, an all-out effort to get as many potential Black voters as possible down to the courthouse. Outside supporters are called to Selma, SNCC sends in reinforcements, and the national press is alerted. They call it a "Freedom Day."
Comedian and activist Dick Gregory and his wife Lillian come to Selma. She is arrested on a picket line. At mass meeting the night before Freedom