King: A Biography

9. Crisis and Compromise—The Walk to Selma Bridge

9 Crisis and CompromiseThe Walk to Selma Bridge There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty. There's a Department in Washington caned Justice. SIGN IN A SNCC HEADQUARTERS OFFICE "You SEE, MOST of your Selma Negroes are descended from the Ibo and Angola tribes of Africa," Circuit Court Judge James Hare told a visiting journalist by way of explaining the city's history of terrible racial oppression: "You could never teach or trust an Ibo back in slave days, and even today I can spot their tribal characteristics. They have protruding heels, for instance." The heels of Selma's blacks were a costly anatomical peculiarity indeed. Fourteen thousand four hundred whites, by legal ruse and naked force, had limited the number of black voters to 1 per cent of the registration rolls, although the nonwhite population amounted to more than fifteen thousand. Selma was a Black Belt city over which the stench of slavery hung densely, as yet undisturbed by the winds of change that were sweeping through other parts of the South and even Alabama. James "Jim" Clark, the "best-dressed sheriff in the Black Belt," forty-two years old and tipping the scales at 220 pounds, was exceedingly able in maintaining Selma's apartheid. Blacks suffered their economic exploitation stoically, addressed their superiors obsequiously, tried to avoid trouble with the law, and spawned children whose lot, it seemed, would never be better than their parents'. 264 Crisis and Compromise For all this, Selma had begun to change, barely, imperceptibly , although, for its blacks, almost irrelevantly. Cotton and agriculture no longer provided adequate revenues for the wealthy. The new administration of Mayor Joseph T. Smitherman , thirty-five, represented the interests of the "Progressives ," a coalition of businessmen and enlightened old families whose aim was to attract Northern industry by modernizing the style of Selma's racism. One of Mayor Smitherman's first acts was to appoint Wilson Baker to the post of chief of police, to undermine the authority of Sheriff Clark. Baker was out of the mold of Laurie Pritchett, a highly professional law officer whose distaste for excessive police brutality was capable of evoking the sympathy of Northern journalists. Returning from Scandinavia by way of Paris, Martin's party deplaned in New York, where its leader received an extraordinary welcome. Mayor Wagner, Governor Rockefeller, and Vice-President-elect Humphrey attended a monster reception for Martin at Harlem's 369th Artillery Armory on December 18, 196+ More tributes and receptions followed in the days ahead. On January 2, Martin was in Selma to announce the voter-registration drive that would center on that city. During the following ten days, he journeyed West, to address religious and civic organizations, stressing the need for additional guarantees of black voting rights and outlining the immense task still remaining in the South of obliterating racism. On January 18, 1965, he was in Selma again, registering at Hotel Albert, the first black man ever to enter the antebellum replica of the Venetian Doge's Palace as a guest. This symbolic event was dramatized by an assault upon Martin by a local white tough in the hotel lobby. SNCC's John Lewis pinned the assailant, and an angry Wilson Baker dragged the man off to the police station. Battered but still resolute, Martin and his friends took lunch at Hotel Albert and then led a crowd of four hundred in freezing weather to the Selma courthouse to register. For the first time, he came 266 King face-to-face with his most brutal future adversary, Jim Clark, who announced that no local registrars were on duty and instructed the assembly to return later. Both men knew that there would be another such rendezvous shortly. The voterregistration campaigns of the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP had tremendously increased the number of black voters. In 1947, there were only 6,000 in the entire state of Alabama. By 1964, there were 110,000. But 370,000 eligible blacks still were not registered. The SCLC had decided to use Selma as the fulcrum for a final thrust to move Alabama and the federal government to end barriers to registration. Before the Selma campaign shifted into high gear, Martin returned to Atlanta to receive the tribute of that city's notables . Perhaps the finest editorial that the Atlanta Constitution 's Ralph McGill did not write-yet it would have been in character for him...