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~ 23 ~ DARE in Action I still believe that the Albany Movement set back again and again by police power, has done a magnificent service to the Negroes of Albany—and ultimately to the whites who live in that morally cramped town. I still believe that the three hundred Negroes who waited in line near the county courthouse in Selma, Alabama from morning to evening in the shadow of clubs and guns to register to vote, without even entering the doors of that courthouse , accomplished something. But I no longer hold that simple repetition of such nonviolent demonstrative action, which effectively broke through barriers in other parts of the South, will bring victory. I am not convinced that the stone wall which blocks expectant Negroes in every town and village of the hard-core South, a wall stained with the blood of children, as well as others, and with an infinite capacity to absorb more victims, will have to be crumbled by hammer blows. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is a Negro revolt, armed and unswerving . . . which may be hard to avoid unless the second alternative comes to pass; the forceful intervention of the national government, to smash, with speed and efficiency, every attempt by local policemen and politicians to deprive Negroes (or others) of rights supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution. —howard zinn, “the limits of nonviolence” I t was now August, and DARE had yet to launch an attack against any specific business or institution in the District. We had by this time gained the respect and confidence of many black civic leaders and had attended community meetings and sponsored meetings of our own. We were considering several different approaches against local department stores, industries , and banks, but as the summer of brutality continued, our attentions were continually distracted by events in the Deep South. When Attorney General Robert Kennedy initiated prosecutions against dare in action 201 nine civil rights leaders of the Albany Movement in the federal district court in Georgia, we couldn’t ignore it. These nine leaders—eight blacks and one white, including Slater King, president of the movement, and Dr. William Anderson, a former president—were pioneers in protesting discrimination and segregation and among the most outspoken critics of Bobby Kennedy’s failure to act to prevent the gross denials of constitutional rights to Negroes in the South that had characterized the past three years. Three of the leaders were being prosecuted on charges of obstructing justice for picketing the grocery store of a white juror who had voted against a Negro plaintiff in a damage suit. The Negro, Charles Ware, had filed suit against the white sheriff of Albany, charging that the sheriff had shot him after his arrest on July 4, 1961. Ware had sued Baker County sheriff L. Warren Johnson for $125,000, but the jury returned a verdict in favor of Johnson in April. As a result of the Albany Movement’s boycott and picketing, the white juror’s store closed. The remaining six leaders were charged with perjury. Bond ranged from $2,500 to $5,000. Though there had been thousands of extreme violations of federal laws perpetrated against Negroes throughout the southern and border states—mass arrests, brutal and arbitrary violence, and total manipulation and violation of judicial process—in only an infinitesimal number of cases had whites been prosecuted. We believed the nation was not being informed of the extent of police brutality and judicial abuse of Negroes in Albany and the rest of the South. We felt that the media were soft-pedaling the true story of white violence in the South, especially violence by police and government officials. And we felt that both Bobby and John Kennedy were seeking to gain popularity in the polls among moderate northern whites and racist southern whites by prosecuting the nine civil rights leaders. The southern Negroes were comparatively disenfranchised and hence voteless, while northern Negroes and white liberals everywhere were almost irrevocably committed to the Kennedy administration. With the voters and the press, it seemed the Kennedys could do no wrong. But in our opinion, they were doing plenty wrong. Consequently , we decided to picket the Justice Department on August 12. On August 10, we advised the Washington Afro-American of our intentions and began recruiting people to participate in the picketing. We worked up a fact sheet listing our grievances against Bobby Kennedy for his handling of the Albany Movement and printed hundreds...

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