In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

94 SELMA i started ith the Times on February 1, 1965, but I scarcely had time to inspect my office and say hello to my new secretary before taking off for Selma. Dr. King’s voting rights demonstrations, which began officially in January, were red hot, and Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies had already arrested about sixteen hundred demonstrators in the previous few days before I arrived. I arrived with scant background on the situation, but Roy Reed, the Atlanta correspondent for the New York Times, gave me a complete fill on what had been going on, and what the major characters on both sides of the issue had been doing. Reed, who had just been recruited from the Arkansas Gazette, had been snapped up by the Times because he was a superb writer, and, like me, he “talked southern.” I also got help from another outstanding New York Times reporter, Mississippian John Herbers. Reporters from competing newspapers normally are highly competitive when covering the same story, of course. And I was somewhat surprised that reporters from a competing paper would so willingly cooperate with me on a story that was making headlines not only throughout the country, but throughout the world. What I quickly realized was that because the story was breaking out in so many places at once and that reporters considered it so important to get it right, they were helping each other in almost unprecedented ways. In more than a half century of reporting, it was about the only time I experienced such wholesale joint efforts by reporters for rival publications covering a major running story. And they did it enthusiastically, wanting be sure that their competitors’ readers would receive as full and accurate an accounting as their own readers. Chapter 16 selma 95 The cooperation among competing media only extended to breaking news, of course. We all continued to write exclusive profiles, features, and investigative stories involving the civil rights movement. Inevitably, Roy and I became close friends and over the next few years continued to cooperate on other big, breaking civil rights stories. He, I, Gene Roberts, Karl Fleming, John Herbers, Bill Emerson of Newsweek, Arlie Schardt of Time, and others formed tight bonds akin to what happens to soldiers on the battlefield. We knew we were at the center of history-making events that would alter the political and social landscape of the South forever, and it was wildly exhilarating. Not coincidentally, nearly all of us “regulars” were southerners. It was a huge advantage if you could “walk the walk and talk the talk.” “Hey, what do you say, Calvin?” I’d greet Calvin Craig, Georgia’s Grand Dragon of Shelton’s United Klans of America, giving him a hearty handshake. “What’s going on?” Craig, a longtime Klan leader, was always accessible to me by phone, letting me know when rallies were scheduled or some other Klan activity as long as it wasn’t a covert operation. My southern roots were helpful when I covered blacks as well, by whom I was seen as a kind of kindred soul. This was pointed up to me in Selma when Ray Rodgers, who was black, was sent down by the Los Angeles Times to join me. With his New York accent, natty wardrobe, and horn-rimmed glasses, Ray stuck out from most of the other assembled reporters. To the demonstrators he looked like an outsider, and they were reluctant to talk to him until I vouched for him. When Reverend King decided to focus his efforts on Selma, the county seat of Dallas County, it was a shrewd tactical move. Selma had a history of entrenched white supremacy dating back to the early 1800s, when it was a center of slave trade for the cotton economy. At the time of the demonstrations, only about 355 of the town’s 15,000 eligible blacks were registered to vote. Local blacks, joined by SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had been demonstrating for two years in an attempt to increase their numbers. But their efforts had met with threats, arrests, and violence. One of the SNCC organizers, Bernard Lafayette, was beaten so badly he nearly died. King was also attracted to Selma because of Jim Clark, its rabidly racist, made-for-TV sheriff. Clark’s propensity for violence, King knew, could help mobilize public opinion nationwide to support voting rights— his number-one priority at that...

Share