(Transcript of the talk gil/ e 71 by Bob Moses at the 5th Q/111iversary of SNCC)

What you should suppose about SNCC got up and then murdered, that jury ispeople is that they are not fearless. like them. That's a hard thing to under­You'd have a better idea about them if stand in this country.you would suppose that they were very The only place where they can be triedafraid and suppose that they were very for murder is by a jury, a local jury,afraid of the people in the South that called together in Neshobe County. They­they have to fig f1t and struggle against. 're being tried now, not for murder, butAnd suppose also that they are very afraid for depriving people of their civil rightsof this country. But suppose, then, that in the act of murdering them. That's thethey had no choice, that is they can, through actual charge. People don't understandmany different ways, see that their backs, that.so to speak, were against the wall and That jury, that local jury, if you calledthey had to move within that fear. And it together, would presumably be thethen suppose that what they are trying murderers' jury because the juries into do is explore how to move within the the counties in the South are called to­boundaries of fear and that what they've gether under the auspices of the sheriffsgot to learn about fear is that it paralyzes and the sheriff is pres mably one of theyou so that you don't move -- you don't persons indicted for t Ie conspiracy todo what you think you should, be it ask murder. 1 am fascina'ed with that. It'sa question or take a person down to reg- a very, very clear kinJ of thing. Supposeister. And suppose also about the Mis- the sheriff killed som~body; then to havesissippi people that they're not heroes his trial, he calls the jury together. Soand that we're not heroes, that we're you have the murder(,lr's jury. And thetrying very hard to be people and that problem seems to me to be, how can ais very hard, If anything what'we're try- society condemn itself?ing to do, or have to do, is to see how I think that that question is a questionyou can move even though you are fOr the country in this sense. The coun­afraid. try refuses to look at Mississippi, and

1 have just one thing that 1 would like at the white people down there, as liketo share with you, It's a question, it's a them. So, therefore, they miss the mainproblem, that our country faces tangled point, it seems to me, about the deepup with thousands of other problems. We South and about the people there and, also,suppose that the people who murdered, about ourselves.Micky and Andrew and James were not Life magazine had a picture of thelike us, not like most people in the coun- people who did the murder and they pic­try. And 1 think that that's a deep mis- tured them eating and laughing and jokingtake, that we don't understand the im- and talking as though they were morallyplication of that. People keep asking me, idiots, And 1 think most people in the.. Do you think that they will get con- country reading that got that impression.victed?" and I keep saying, "No." But But you don't put yourself in that classi­I also wonder why they keep asking be- fication so they're other people -- they'recause if you think about that, it seems not like you or like us. The Saturdaythat our experience will tell us that they Evening Post had a picture of a Klu Kll'.ccannot be convicted, that they will not be Klan on the front page just recently andconvicted, that the chance of their being at the end of the article talked about themconvicted is almost zero. For them to as outcasts, as people who are in no waybe convicted would be for society to con- like m'ost Americans, as rejects fromdemn itself and that's very hard for the society. 1 think that's a false inter­society to do, any society. Condemna- pretation which people are getting and,tion seems to have to come from outside therefore, the y analyze the problemor from the ranks within that are not a wrongly and, therefore, they look forpart of it. wrong solutions.

So the jury that votes together to de- The problem is so c..:ep, all you cancide whether or not the people, the 18 do is raise these questions. We feel thator 21 people who eVidently got together if we're going to get to the bottom, ifand sat down and then planned and then CONTINUEO ON LAST PAGE

"

APRIL1965

Vol. INO.4

THEMOVEMENTPublished byThe Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of Ca lifornia

QUESTIONS RAISED BY MOSES

Who Decides?Within the past four years the Negroes' ( I

mass protest movement in fhe Southhas exploded many times - - in areas allover the black belt. The names DanvilleVirginia, Gadsden Alabama, S a van n a hGeorgia, St. Augustine Florida are knownat least to people who' 9re close to themovement as places where some kindof mass action has taken place. And AlbanyGeorgia, Cambridge Maryland, Birming­ham Alabama, and very lately SelmaAlabama are known at least to the gen­eral public in America and in some casesto the entire world.

In these places, thousands of peopleparticipated in protests and in one year,1963, 20,000 went to jail delTIonstrating.An outgrowth of these protests has beenan omnibus Civil Rights Act in 1964 anda pending Voting Rights Bill. But whathas happened to all those people? Whereare the people who marched IS,OOO strongin Birmingham? Where is the AlbanyMovement? Where are all those people(also thousands) who protested and wentto jail in Mississippi since 1::I61?

In Mississippi, there is an active Free­dom Democratic Party wh;ch meets incountry areas usually once a week. Thou­.sands of people participate. The FDP ischallenging the seating of five Mississippicongressmen. There is an active Councilof Federated Organization::, (COT,'O) whichgrew out 'of national civil J/gh t ::, groups.COFO is now many local groups workingto attack local problems. The Missis­sippi Student Union, growing out of t':leFreedom Schools, is one of the mostactive student protest groups in the coun­try. In some counties of the MississippiDelta area, they have suc:::eeded in set­ting up their own school syste'l1. Themovement in Mi t,sissippi h2,s contiI"ledsince 1961. It is constantly crea.':ing, re­evaluating, and growing.'

The Negro communities of Birminghamand Albany are two o~ the most wellarmed in the U.S. Spor~dic poL-e riotsbreak out, particularly in Albany. Theyonly serve to tear the lives of the peoplewho are involved in them. There are noactive civil rights movements, thoughmost of the problems still exist thatgave rise to the. mass demonstrations,In 1962 and 1963 tne eye:;:. of the Deoplewere wide and alive. The! marched andwent to jail and continued to march.Today one can set the E'ame emptinessand hopelessness which exists in Harlemand South Chicago.

There are no great differences betweenthe problem which{affected Danville, St.Augustine, Albany, Birmingham and Mis­sissippi. It is on0 of people simply tryingto live as human beings. But the approachto the solution of the problem was radi­cally different. It centered around leader­ship and decision making.

In Birmingham, the people invited lead­ers in through the church. The ministers

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

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SUNDAY, JUNE g, 1963 THE SELMA TIMES-JOURNAL THREE

SELMA, ALABAMAYOUR MEMBERSHIP IS GOOD FOR 12 MONTHS

Send Your Check ToTHE DALLAS COUNTY

Citizens Council

ASK YOURSELF THISIMPORTANT QUESTION:

What have I personally done toMaintain Segregation?

If the answer disturbs yau, prabe deeper and decide what yau are. willing to do to preserve racial harmony in Selmo and Dallas County.

Is it worth four dollars to prevent a "Birmingham" here? That's whatit costs to be a member of your Citizens Council, whose efforts arenot thwarted by caurts which give sit.in demonstrators legal immun.ity, prevent school boards from expelling students wllo participate inmob activities and wauld place federal referees at the board of voterregistrars.

Law enforcement can be called only after these things occur, but yourCitizens Council prevents them from hoppening.

Why else did only 3S0 Negroes attend a so·called moss voter regis­tration meeting that outside agitators worked 60 days to organize inSelma?

Gov. Wallace told a state meeting of the council three weeks ago:"You are doing a wonderful job, but you should speak with the unitedvoice of 100,000 persons. Go back home and get more members."

Gov. Wallace stands in the University doorway next Tuesday facingpossible ten years imprisonment for violating a federal injunction.

I. It worth four dollars to you to prevent sit· ins, mob marches andwholesole Negro voter registration efforts in Selma?

If so, prove your dedication by joining and supporting the work ofthe Dallas County Citizens Council today. Six dollars will make bothyou and your wife members of an organization which has already giv·en Selma nine years of Racial Harmony since "Black Mondor"

This suppleme'nt to The Movement

is published by The Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee, 584 PageStreet, San Francisco, California

of New York, 2nd and 3rd largest banksin the United States.

Policy control of the Liberty NationalInsurance Co. is exercised by personswho are very much a part of the fabricof the topmost political and economicpower in the US. (ed. note: The Hammer­mill Paper Company announced Feb. 4that it would build a $35 million plantin Selma, because, said the Chairmanof the Board of Directors, of the "char­acter of the community and its people."The Liberty National Life Insurance Com­pany bought $400,000 worth of industrialdevelopment bonds from Hammermill inorder to finance the building of the plant.)

This tangled web of power reachesinto Lyndon Johnson's White House andinto the US House of Representatives(in the person of Congressman HowardCallaway, who sits on the board of theTrust Company of Georgia and GeorgiaPower Company, another operating sub­sidiary of the Southern Company .....

What hope is there for American Ne­groes, and for those who support theirasperations, when the President who ap­points the judges and the US attorneys(who supposedly will enforce the civilrights act) is so closely tied in with theindustrial and financial elite which' seesfit to honor the murderous Alabama Policeminions of Governor George C. Wallaceand Sheriff James Clark?

And do not these honored and esteemedfinancial and industrial leaders hold thewhips and clubs with which Selma Negroeswere driven from the streets on March7, in the same sense that the financialand industrial elite of Germany werefound guilty of participating, by consent,in the massacre of 6 million Jews inNazi Germany?

And what will the American people doabout it?"

Reprints of the supplementare available from this office.

single copies 5¢2 - 10 copies 4¢10 - 100 copies 3¢100 .. 1000 2¢

Individuals willing to send'packagesof food and clothing to the residentsof Selma should mail their packagesto S Nee

31).-2 Franklin StreetSelma, Alabama

{,II pa ckages shou Id be in su red, andreturn requested.

The Movement is the mon'thly newsletter

of Colifornio Friends of SNCC

Other directors of Liberty National are:-- E. A. Camp, Jr., a trustee of the

University of Alabama.F. E. Spain, general counsel of

US Fidelity and Guaranty.-- F. P. Samford, Chairman of the

Liberty National board, and a directorof the Birmingham Trust National Bank,182nd largest in the U.S. He is also adirector of AT&T's southern operatingsubsidiary and of the West Point Mfg.Co. On the West Point board, Samfordsits with directors of the Coca Cola af­filiated Trust Company of Georgia, largeststockholder of which is the First Na­tional Bank of Atlanta. The largest stock­holders of First National Bank of Atlantaare nominees of the two Rockefellerbanks in New York City -- Chase Man­hattan Bank and First National City Bank

CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGEare the Trustees of the MassachusettsInvestment Trust of Boston. These trus­tees include:

- - D. P. Robinson, Jr., of US Smeltingand Refining Co., Illinois Central RR,and Texaco.

-- K. L. Isaacs of Southern PacificRR and Phelps Dodge.

-- Thomas D. Cabot of Cabot Corp,First National Bank of Boston and Har­vard University.

-- Paul F. Clark of Armour and Sea­board Airlines RR.

-- W. H. Claflin of United-Carr FastnerCorp and United Fruit.

The Southern Company President, Har­lee Branch, J r., is also a director ofUnited States Steel, Alabama's largestsingle employer.

QUESTlON

former SNCC Coordinator who worked in Selma­

reprinted from the Frederick Dou~lass Free Press

Where am iin our history books

ERRATUM

To the quote"families thatpray togetherstay together"

W. W. Long

so where

and nursedyour babeswith blackmilk laughtereverywhere

trial, political and financial elite mustbear the major portion of the guilt, forthey were the ones who could have stop­ped the massacre, and didn't.

We shall make no attempt to do a def­initive analysis of the structure of eco­nomic power which lies behind, aids,abets, and approves such police brutalityin Alabama. The evidence is so near thesurface of everyday life in America thatno definitive analysis is required.

On December 4, 1964, in the MunicipalStadium in Selma, "law enforcement of­ficers from the state, city, and county...were guests of honor at a barbeque givenby the Liberty National Insurance Com­pany." -- Selma Times-Journal, 12/6/64.

These guests who were honored bythe insurance company included "lawenforcement officers" from Al Lingo'sState Police, Sheriff Clark's deputies andPosse, and the Selma police department.Offici'9.ls and employees of Liberty Na­tional, ... stood behind the serving coun­ter's and loaded the plates of the hungry"law officers."

Who and what is the Liberty NationalInsurance Company? Our records do notindicate who owns the stock of the com­pany. But we do have a list of the mem­bers of the Board of Directors, the gov­erning body of the corporation, whi c hdetermines all policy matters and mustapprove, ultimately, all expenditures, in­cluding the cost of paying tribute to the"law officers" of Alabama...

The Liberty National Board of Directorsincludes:

-- Walter Bouldin, President of theAlabama Power Co. and a director ofBirmingham Trust National Bank. Ala­bama Power is a wholly-owned subsidiaryof the Southern Company. The largeststockholders in the Southern Company

i built theark thatsaved youfrom the sun

meeting in Atlanta that day and Saturday,many members expressed their opposi­tion, but it was decided that in view oftheir concern for and commitment tothe local people, SNCC would prOVidethe services already agreed on - radios,the WATS line, and the services of theMedical Committee on Human Rights.SNCC staff members would participatein the march on an individual basis.

Events in Selma were approaching acrisis. Wallace had ordered the troopersto use "every necessary measure" tostop the march. Martin Luther King wasin Atlanta. The march, when it began,was led by John Lewis, SNCC workerRobert Mants, SCLS's Hosea Williams,and Albert Turner, head of the DallasCounty Voters League.

The facts are well known.Two to three thousand people were

marching.At a few minutes past 4 in the after­

noon all hell broke loose in Selma. SNCCworker Lafayette Surney was at a phonebooth near the bridge:

"4: IS p.m. State troopers are throw­ing tear gas at the people. A few arerunning back. A few are being blindedby tear gas. Somebody has been hurt-- 1 don't know who ... They're beatingthem and thrOWing tear gas at them.4: 16 p.m. Police are beating peopleon the streets. Oh, man, they're justpicking them up and putting them inambulances. People are getting hurt,pretty bad. There were two people onthe ground in pretty bad shape ... I'mgoing to leave in a few minutesPeople are running ack this way.4: 17 p.m. Ambulances are going bywith the sirens going. People are run­ning, crying, telling what's happening.4: 18 p.m. Police are pushing peopleinto alleys. I don't know why. Peopleare screaming, h 0 11 e r i n g. They'rebringing in more ambulances. Peopleare running, hollering, crying ...4:20 p.m. Here come the white hood­lums. I'm on the corner of one of themain streets. One 1a d y screamed,"They're trying to kill me."4:26 p.m. They're going back to thechurch. I'm going too ..... "

Who Is Responsible ForAlabama Police Brutality?

This question is raised in a SNCCSpecial Report issued Monday, March 8.We quote in part:

"A clue to the answer is prOVided,ironically, on the same evening, March7, The ABC network presented theirSun da y Night Movie, "Judgement inNuremburg." The movie is the story ofthe war crimes trials held in Germanyafter World War II. The trials attemptedto fix the blame for the murder of 6million Jews in the Nazi gas chambers.The movie points out that the best edu­cated, most respectable, most prestigiousand most powerful of Germany's indus-

Bloody Sunday'As seen through the reports coming

from the South, events moved quicklytoward Sunday, March 7, 1965. SCLCcame to Selma as an organization inDecember 1964 and began to work withSNCC in voter registration. A FreedomDay was planned for four days inJanuary.John Lewis and Martin Luther King wereboth in Selma for Freedom Day January18, and led 500 Negroes to the court­house. They were forced to stand in analley all day, and then no one was reg­istered. King was punched; Lewis pinnedthe attacker's arms to his side.

On January 19, Lewis, John Love, andLafayette Surney of SNCC were arrested,together with SCLS's Hosea Williamsand Mrs. Amelia Boynton. Day after daythe people came back to the courthouse,on February 10, 600 students, on the 15th2000 adults and 1000 students.

A boycott of downtown Selma merchantswas begun, individually and spontaneouslyby local people, when they saw some ofthe merchants serving on the sheriff'sposse. The latest report from John Love(March) says that the boycott is effectiveand spreading.

On February 20, the Dallas CountyWhite Citizens Council held its annualbarbecue, at which Ross Barnett spoke.The place for the barbecue was the Na­tional Guard Armory in Selma. A tele­gram of protest was sent to Washingtonby SNCC over the use of Governmentfacilities for the racist meeting.

On February 22, another march led byLewis and King. The people were putthrough the process of si gning an "ap­pearance book" and were then told ifthey came back on March 1 they wouldbe registered; if not they would be con­sidered ineligible.

The following evening, 60 students,led by John Lewis, left Brown's Chapel(the headquarters of the demonstrations)to march to the courthouse in protestagainst Wallace's ban on night marches.They marched six blocks to the CocaCola plant, where they were confrontedwith three times their number of citypolicemen. They knelt to pray, sang, andreturned to the Chapel.

On March 4, high school students ex­pelled for leaving school to attend thefuneral of Jimmy Lee Jackson, murderedby State Troopers, urged their fellowstudents to boycott the school. The firstday of the boycott was 99% effective.(On absence notes signed by their par­ents, the reason given for their absencewas "brother's funeral").

At a meeting between the staffs ofSNCC and SCLC in Selma on Friday the5th, the SNCC staff expressed its op­position to the planned march from Selmato Montgomery. SNCC workers thoughtthe danger to the people involved' wasgreater than the objectives and any pos­sible achievements of the march war­ranted. At the SNCC Executive Committee

As word of the SNCC project spread,acall for help came in from a group offarmers in Wilcox County, where therehas not been a registered Negro voterin 50 years. James Austin left DallasCounty to aid them: a number were suc­cessful in filing applications, but nonewere registered. Wilcox County still hasno registered Negroes.

Before it was necessary for the La­fayettes to leave Selma a year later,Bernard was successful in organizing apowerfully functioning youth organiza­tion, working with the students of HudsonHigh School. These students took overthe job of canvassing the city for voters.In September, 1963, it was the high schoolstudents who spearheaded the street dem­onstrations. These demonstrations or­ganized by SNCC and led by the DallasCounty Voters League were the first inthe county's history. Sit-in demonstra­tions against local downtown establish­ments met with stiff and often brutalresistance from municipal, county, andstate law enforcement officials. SNCCChairman John Lewis came to Selma toparticiplate in the operations, which werecontinuing hard and fast, and which brokethrough the fear and apathy that wasprevalent at that time among 10 calNegroes.

Sheriff Clark, with a federal suit pend­ing against him, was understandablynervous. He called for and received aidfrom State Public Safety Director, thenotorious Colonel Lingo, in the form of150 state troopers. He also organizedwhat is now called "Clark's Posse," aband of 300 tocal citizens to help inquelling demonstrations.

A Freedom Monday was scheduled forOctober 7, 1963 (at that time the Reg­istrar's Office was open only every otherMonday), and the demonstrators pressedharder to arouse as many Negroes toregister as possible.

Street by street canvassing was car­ried on. The week before Freedom Mon­day, Jim Forman arrived to join in theorganizing, John- Lewis and other SNCCworkers being in jail. On the afternoonof October 7, 450 Negroes were linedup in front of the Court House. SheriffClark issued orders that no one couldleave the line for any purpose. Two SNCCfield secretaries were beaten and ar­rested when they attempted to pass outsandwiches and water to people on theline. Clark and three deputies droveaway Forman, James Gildersleeve, presi­dent of the Dallas County Voters League,and the state senator from Maryland,Mrs. Welcasne, when they attempted tospeak to people on theJine.

About 14 Negroes were processed thatday, but the events had shaken Selma,and work was accellerated, high schoolstudents canvassing in the city, and SNCCworkers in the rural areas.

The fear and apathy had been enormous,but the break-through was equally great.By November, 1963, Bruce Gord9n, SNCC

worker in Dallas County was able to

add at the end of his fiJld report, "Whiledriving through a rural area returning toSelma after a day cif canvassing I passeda Negro farmer, on a mule drawn wagon,singing 'We Shall Overcome' to himself."

A Few Words About$heriff Clark

One of the strongest forces operatingagainst the movement in Dallas Countyis Sheriff Clark and his Posse. (which,he claims, is used only for floods, fires,and civil defense). The Posse is not nec­essarily more brutal than the s tat etroopers - it was the troopers who beatthe movement to death in Gadsden, usingcattle prods on people, beating womenon the breasts, and men on their testi­cles. But Dallas County is the only countywith such a posse, and it provides aconcentration of brutality unexcelled else­where.

In December, 1963, Sheriff Clark, to­

gether with County Soliciter BlanchardMcLeod and fqur policemen, raided theSNCC office - striking a SNCC worker,confiscating the office files and rippingthe telephone from the wall. They thanraided the SNCC Freedom House andarrested 9 persons.

Clark has attended every mass meet­ing held by SNCC, the Dallas CountyVoters League, or the Dallas Countylmprovem~nt Ass ciation, with his handon his hip and frequently a cattle prodder(which he describes as a "most humaneinstrument") in hi hand. In September,1963, SNCC wo:rke Worth Long reported:

"Selma is in a tate of siege. Every­where you look you see state policemenor members of the special posse bran­dishing clubs and cattle prods."

That's fall, 1963 - a year and a halfbefore things erupted in Selma.

The Posse, used to hinder union ac­tivity as well as harrass voter registra­tion efforts, is a specially deputizedgroup, empowered to carry weapons andmake arrests. At least 100 wear oldarmy fatigues, helmets, and boots. Theywork closely with the state troopers,and have travelled as far away as Birm­ingham, Tuscaloosa and Gadsden to quellcivil rights activity.

Just before the events of Bloody Sun­day, March 7, 1965, John Love reported,

"There seems to be some confusionand uncertainty in the white communityover how to deal with us, and a possiblesplit between the supporters of the brutalSheriff Clark and the more moderateCommissioner of Public Safety, Baker.The old administration(which was in officeuntil October, 1964)

~. at .... '----

completely free reign. and made no vis­i.ible elfqrts ·t9 .restraIn him. 'fhe presentadministration seems more anxious to

control him - though it is questionablewhether this is possible ... (Ed. note:At 7 p.m., March 7, 1965, SNCC's La­fayette Surney reported from the GoodSmaritan Hospital in Selma: "I just fin­ished talking to Police CommissionerBaker. He said that State Troopers tookover and just took it out of their hands. ")

At this point it doesn't seem that thepeople of Selma have been turned aroundby Clark's brutality. The 300 people whowere active in the first Freedom Dayin October of 1963 are still with us."

Sheriff Clark's terror has served notonly to keep the Negro in constant fear.As one white citizen of Selma' said, "Thetrouble is, too many of 'our people fearthe white man more than they do theNegroes."

The Eye Of H~rricaneBy summer of 1964 things had subsided:"The county got an injunction prohibit­

ing assemblies of three or more personsin any public place. Named in the injunc­tion were fourteen organizations, includ­ing SNCC and SCLC, and forty-one in­dividuals.

The combination of arrests, intimida­tion, violence and the injunction broughtcivil rights activity to a temporary haltin mid-July. But it did not bring to ahalt the determination to create changein this old Southern city, although thepast as well as the present in Selma hasnot created a situation in which changeis easy." -- Jerry oemuth, "Black Belt,Alabama. "

An important step was taking place dur­ing this time of calm. At the same timethat Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Mrs.Victoria Gray and Mrs. Annie Devinewere challenging the regular Democraticofficeholders in Mississippi, a Selmawoman, Mrs. Amelia Boynton, qualifiedto oppose veteran Representative KennethA. Roberts in Alabama's May primary.

She was the first Negro to run forCongress from Alabama since the Re­construction, and the first woman everto try for the office. An insurance agentand employment office operator, and res­ident of Selma since 1930, Mrs. Boyntonran a vigorous campaign, and of courselost. There are 860,073 white voters inAlabama, and 66,009 Negro voters.

One problem was made clear to SNCCworkers after the Boynton campaign: theywould have to dig deeper into the com­munity with their work. Their own ex­perience, combined with the nearby Mis­sissippi model, indicated to the SNCCstaff that they had much work to do beforethe Dallas County movement would reachthe poorest Negroes in the area. At thispoint the movement was led by only afew 'local people; the full participation ofmany local Negroes in every level ofdecision-making remained an unrealizedgoal.

MA CHING THROUGH SELMAA SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT OF DOCUMENTS AND ANALYSIS

The White CityThe county seat of Dallas County, Ala­

bama, lying on the bluffs of the AlabamaRiver, an important Confederate militarydepot in the Civil War, today the birth­place and stronghold of the Alabama WhiteCitizens Council, is an ordinary town, afriendly, ordinary town. Listen to thepeople who should know:

"Selma is now a little country townthat is typical of most small Southerntowns." - Alabama Historian, M.B. Owenin Our State Alabama.

"The white and Negro races have livedtogether in Selma and Dallas County formany generations in a state of peace andtranquility ... We have enjoyed mutualconfidence and trust between the races,and this will again prevail regardless ofcurrent unrest." - 23 Dallas County Busi­ness Leaders in a full page ad.

"There hasn't been a lynching aroundhere for 50 years." - A Citizen.

, 'You can walk any place in Selma atany time of day or night without fear ofbeing clubbed, which is more than you cansay for Washington, D.C." -- The Mayor,Chris B. Heinz, also president of theSelma Citizens Council,

There is no Klu Klux Klan in Selma"because people put their trust in lawen­forcement." -- The Sheriff, Jim Clark.

The industries in Selma are small andbased mainly on cotton. There is also theCraig Air Force Base, three miles away,the home of the Jet Qualification Courseand Basic Instructors School. The finan­cial and business ties of Selma to theNorth are important and will receive at­tention later.

The Negro CityThere are also some Negroes in Selma.

They account for over half of the urbanpopulation and 58% of the county's popula­tion. Of those eligible to vote, less thanone percent are registered.

"Did the Shriff strike at you?""He did.""Did he miss you or hit you?""He hit me.""How many times?""He hit me over the head three times,

punched me in my stomach two times,punched me in my side once, and thenkicked me in the chest." -- Testimony ofBosie Reese, registration worker, ar­rested at Dallas Co. courthouse. Quoted inJohn Fry's "The Voter Registration Drivein Selma, Alabama," Presbyterian Life,1/15/64.

"MAlDS""With the minimum wage per hour be­

ing $1.25, there are still hundreds ofmaids here in Selma working for $15 perweek. With hours varying from 7 am to5 pm." -- Frederick Douglas Free Press,1/15/65.

"Median family income in Dallas Countyis $2,846 (compared to $3,937 for thestate), but median family income for Ne­groes is only $1.393. Median school yearscompleted in the county is 8.8 (comparedto 9.1 for the state), but median schoolyears completed for Negroes is 5.8" -­Jerry Demuth, "Black Belt, Alabama,"Commonweal, 8/7/64.

Selma is an ordinary town in the BlackBelt of America, whose counties areeconomically and socially among the worstin the nation.

Washington WindsSlowly O'er T e Lea

The Justice Depart ent has been activein Alabama since 1 57. In April, 1961they filed suit again the Dallas CountyBoard of Registrars, eekingan injunctionagainst discriminatio in voter registra­tion. The US District Court denied the in­junction. The case was appealed to theAppellate Court, Judge Cameron presid­ing. In November, 1963, 30 months afterthe filing of the suit, the injunction wasgranted: it does not, however, touch themajor varieties of discriminatory prac­tice.

In June, 1963 the Department attemptedto get the Federal District Court to keepthe County officials and Sheriff Clarkfrom intimidating Negro applicants. JudgeThomas refused to grant an injunction.The appeal failed. The Department finallygot a hearing in October, 1963, but no in­junction resulted. The case is still onappeal.

This sketch of legal redresses suggeststhe legal state of affairs in Selma andDallas County: the impotency of the courtsto relieve an inevitable situation.

"As early as 1961 ... the Justice De­partment filed suit against the Board ofRegistrars of Dallas Co. Four years andfive more suits later effective relief isyet to be forthcoming, and the first votingreferee is yet to be appointed. The ex­traordinary concentration of the legal re­sources of the Justice Department hasbeen to no avail" -- Congressman Resnickof NY in the Congressional Record.

In nearby Perry County, where SNCChas also been conducting a voter regis-

tration drive, the Justice Department wassuccessful in obtaining a federal votingreferee. However, between November 3and December 18, 1964, the refereeregistered only 2 of 61 Perry CountyNegroes who tried to register. The JusticeDepartment has challenged his rulings.

"Perhaps we need to charge the JusticeDepartment with something more than amindless mechanical approach to a vitalproblem. On January 21, 1965, JudgeThomas was petitioned by NAACP lawyersto issue an injunction against SheriffClark's repressive acts. Thomas grantedthis relief on January 23, saying:

Under the guise of enforcement thereshall be no intimidation, harrassment,or the like, of the citizens to regiS­ter to vote, nor of those legally at­tempting to register to vote, nor ofthose legally attempting to aid othersin registering to vote, or encouragingthem.

On the scene was US Deputy MarshalFountain, policing the Federal Judge's rul­ing for the Justice Department. He choseto enforce the ruling to its strictest letter,even denying registration drive leaders theright to speak to applicants in line orbring them food and water. Inspection ofthe statement of Judge Thomas' rulegiven above indicates this Justice Depart­ment man's sudden zeal for enforcementexceeded the bounds of court order. Therewere no complaints from Sheriff Clark, atwhom the injunction was aimed.

And there have been no complaints fromhim since then." -- "Justice DepartmentActivity in Selma, J\labama," SpecialSNCC Report, 2/25/65.

It should be noted that most of theJudges who frustrate Justic..:l Departmentefforts at gaining voting rights were ap­pointed by Democratic Presidents. JudgeJohnson, whose recent order cleared theway for the Selma-Montgomery march,is an Eisenhower appointee.

The Agitators"You're an agitator: that's the lowest

form of life." -- Sheriff ClarkSNCC workers bernard and Colia La­

fayette, Frank Hulloway and James Austincame to Selma in the early fall of 1962to begin a voter registration drive. Theyset up a voter registration class in thehouse across the street from the countyjail, then in some of the churches. Theyalso made contact with the Dallas CountyVoters League, which has been operatingin that area for 20 years. OVER

... differences in means can sometimes be as important as differences in ends.The defect of the traditional NAACP approach is not that it is ineffective butthat, in (Louis) Lomax's phrase, it achieves its goals by "doing the job for thepeople, rather than having the people do the job themselves." ...

Important as the demonstrations have been to Negro morale. however, it wouldbe a mistake to exaggerate their impact. They have contributed a great deal toNegro self-pride -- but not enough to conquer apathy, not enough, certainly, tostir the great bulk of slum dwellers into action on their own behalf. Indeed, LouisLomax, the chronicler of "the Negro revolt," occasionally seems puzzled atthe superficiality of the results to date. Writing about Montgomery, Alabama,for example -- the birthplace of the "revolt" -- Lomax asks why "such a deep­rooted movement as the Montgomery boycott resulted in nothing more than theintegration of the buses." In fact, the boycott did not do that, either. Integrationcame as a result of an NAACP suit filed six months after the boycott began. Norwas the movement as deeply rooted as it appeared at the time; as soon as theoriginal leaders left the scene, the movement dissipated. In 1962, for example,less than a year after Rev. Ralph Abernathy had left his Montgomery church fora pastorate in Atlanta, the SCLC held a state-wide conference in Montgomery.The leaders hoped to climax the three-day meeting with a mass rally in one ofMontgomery's Negro churches. Not a single church was willing to lend its fa­cili ties for the rally - - not even the church Reverend Abernathy had headed,where a year before a group of Freedom Riders had spent the night besieged bya white mob outside. And by 1963, most Negroes in Montgomery had returnedto the old custom of riding in the back of the bus.

(Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in Black & White, Random House, N. Y., pp. 140-2)

CONTINUEDwere the leaders. The leaders decidedto push for a single objective (employ­IDent of Negro policemen and cit yworkers). The leaders then told peoplehow to solve the problem. The leadersmade decisions and the people followed.

The leaders said march and the peoplemarched. The marches got publicity be­cause the leaders were going to jail.The people went to jail too but little wassaid about them. The leaders spoke forthe people on TV, articulating what thepeople wanted. But in "high level" meet­ings, the leaders only met with otherleaders, not with people involved in thelocal area. So after a while the leadersgot a Civil Rights Act and the peoplestopped marching.

The people in Birmingham trusted lead­ers just as we all do. We trust peopleto do our job for us when we don't wantto take on our own responsibilities. Fur­ther still we are taught that it takesqualifications like college education, or"proper English" or "proper dress" tolead people. These leaders can go beforethe press and project a "good image"to the nation and even to the world. Butafter a while the leaders can only talkto the press not with the people. Theycan only talk about problems as theysee them -- not as the people see them.And they can't see the problems any­more because they always are in newsconferences, "high level" meetings ornegotiations. So leaders speak on issuesmany times which do not relate to theneeds of the People. And leaders ne­gotiate with leaders of a town (the mayoror sheriff) for the people. Sometimesamong themselves the leaders reach po­litical agreements but the prohlems ofthe people are not solved. So the leaderleaves -- to spe"-k up North or to leadother people. And what of the peoplewho stay? They played no played no partin deciding what took place and sincetheir energies were used for demonstrat­ing and getting beaten and going to jail,since they nevL'r discussed why theyshould do these things but were told whyby the leaders and since they did nonegotiating or even talking about whetheror not they wanted to negotiate, they areacting in a vacuum. And many timesthey are worse off than before the leaderscame in because they have no other wayof attacking the-'problem. That's Birming­ham and St. Augustine and soon, probablySelma.

In Mississippi ther? were also peoplewith common problems. A leader camewhom the people trusted. But the leadergot the people toget) ~r and said, "Youdecide, you make decisions about yourlife." "You decide about voting. Youdecide about demonstrating. Just as youare. You don't have to be articulate orpolitically developed. You know your con­ditions better than 1, better than anyone."It took a while. There were no marchesthe first week or, even sometimes the

first year. But people began to do things,to act, and to decide and they marchedand formed their own political party andcommunity organization. Everyone led.Everyone got a chance to speak. Theyare writing their own voting bill. MFDPsays that the people who can say bestwhat it means to be denied the right tovote are the people who aren't allowedto vote because it has happened to them.

Mississippi, through people like FannieHamer from Ruleville, Susie Ruffin fromLaurel and Hartman Turnbow from HolmesCounty, shows that maybe the most im­portant thing is that they came from in­side rather than outside. They are al­ready the people. They are by no meansproper by outside standards. They splitverbs and flatten phrases. And they areleaders.

Maybe the most important thing abouta leader is his personality -- his self­confidence, the way he walks and talks.He knows he can lead and likes it. Whatwould happen if there was a completereevaluation of leaders who know theycan lead. The role of a leader couldchange so that he would use his dynamismto project other people -- tell them theycan lead -- ask people questions ratherthan give them answers. Maybe the pres­ence of a leader reaches the point wherethe best thing he can do is withdraw -­just leave. The leader would work him­self out of a jo . (This is the reason alarge number of the staff of the StudentNonviolent Coo. dinating Com mit tee(SNCC) are leavin$!;Mississippi after near­ly four years wotk to expand organizingin other states.) If he continues to pro­ject people he'll oon find that he's need­ed less and less as a leader even ifmore and more as a person and this

WHAT MEANS TO WHAT ENDS?

will probably be hard to take. The spot­light is gone and self satisfaction mustbe derived a completely different way -­that of seeing people do things them­selves. Maybe at this point the leadercan raise the question of rotating leader­ship pOSitions in and out (like MFDP)so that the person not the position ismost important. This rotation might bemade effective if it's projected that lead­erShip can change as tactics or issueschange. The same may be done withstructures. In this context structureshave to be such that they are molded tofit people's needs rather than the usualcase of the structure becoming so im­portant that people have to fit into them.(in a large sense like the U.S. Govern­ment and a smaller and sometimes moretragic sense civil rights groups.)

In negotiations this is more difficultbecause the only people who can reallynegotiate about people's lives are thepeople themselves. Also with news re­porting more people should be able tospeak. Newsmen are very much orientedto seeking out leaders. Maybe that ori­entation has to be reevaluated so thatthey talk to more people. The idea is tobroaden leadership roles.

The question of leadership and it'srole in the Movement is one which willvery soon have to be dealt with or thedestruction of people will continue. Usingpeople as a means to an end cannot con­tinue. Perhaps even if the ends justifythe means what justifies the ends? Ifwe destroy people for an objective thenwhat good is the objective? Who does itserve: No one has the right to go intoan area to lead people and not allowthem to decide in which direction theywant to go. JIMMY GARRETT

MOSES CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE HUAC AND BIGOTRY ARM IN AR~~

"House Un-American Activities Committee: Bulwark of Segregation," Anne Braden.

we're going to go down there and tryand create anything new, then we have todo <his because it seems that right withinour country you have that problem whereeverybody can focus on it and say whatare the conditions which create a societyin which people sit down and plan andkill and then pat themselves on the backas patriots. Because they're defendingtheir liberties and what they hold mostdear and their civilization?

That, it ~seems to me, is the pointabout us as a country where we are withthe bomb and what we do in terms ofVietnam. We are not over there killingpeople primarily but defending libertyand defending our concept of what isdemocracy, civilization and so forth.There's no forum to raise those ques­tions.

1 raise them because 1 don't thinkwe're going to escape that easily, be­cause they're going on killing in Mis­sissippi. At the same time that everyoneknows about the three who were killedand the people who are on trial for that,no one asks about the two Negro boyswhose bodies were severed in half, whowere found while they were looking forthe other three, because nobody knowsabout them. And nobody asks why didthat grand jury let those people off whowere indicted for that crime, on thesal7le day that they indicted the peoplewho were supposed to have killed theother three. And nobody asks because,again, nobody knows about it.

1 have one other thing that I'd like toshare. What we have begun to learn andare trying to explore about people is howthey can come together in groups, smallgroups or large groups, and talk to eachother and make decisions about basicthings,tabout their lives. 1 think that thathas application everywhere in the country.Whatever we currently mean by democ­racy,- we don't mean that people shouldcome together, discuss their main prob­lems that they all know about and beable to do something about themselves.That was what the Free Speech Movementmeant, as 1 understand it, as it un ')ldedin part.

One problem with people who mightwant to try to do this, say in S.. F. oranyplace, is that they would first thinkthat in order to go to people and getthem together, they would have to have

All this does not mean that HUACand its counterparts alone originated thecommunist charge against integrationists.Civil rights groups are challenging so­ciety as it is, and all through historythose who want to keep things as theyare have labeled advocates of change as'subversives,' 'outsiders,' and 'traitors,'To the white man. on the street in theSouth, the word 'communist' means justthose things. Thus, long before HUAC,Southerners who feared change were call­ing all who questioned the South's racialpatterns communists.

What HUAC and the other committeeshave done, however, is to give weight tothose reckless charges by placing uponthem the stamp. of approval of a govern­ment committee. They have provided theofficial national and state legislative re­ports which can be quoted with immunityto libel. They have enabled the segrega­tionist to tie his kite to the national issueof communism and thus pose, not as thedefender of a corrupt Southern statusquo, but as a guardian of the nationalsecurity .....

It would be almost impossible for aperson to have done anything constructiveto right the world's wrongs' and not havea 'citation' in HUAC files. These hugefiles are available to any member ofCongress and through them to variousindividuals, organizations, and state of­ficials. The helter-skelter citations thusbecome lethal smear weapons in thehands of segregationists, both official andunofficial .....

THE STATE COMMITTEESRegular users of HUAC files are the

various investigative committees in theSouthern states which sprang up after1954. These committees have had various

something for them to talk about. Sothey would have to have a program tocarry to them or they would have to havesomething to organize them around. Butit doesn't turn out to be true, from ourexperience. You could in the North, inthe ghettoes, get together 10 or 20 peo­ple and out of their getting together andgiving them a chance to talk about theirmain problem would come some pro­grams. that they themselves decided on,that they thought about. If that happened

names - from the Legal EducationalAdvisory Committee established in Mis­sissippi in 1955 to the Committee onOffenses Against the Administration ofJustice in Virginia to the more opencopying of the HUAC name in Louisiana'sJ 0 i n t Legislative Committee on Un­American Activities. But all have similaraims, chiefly to preserve segregation,and their method is to pounce upon thosewho oppose it. Sometimes the same func­tio'n is pE;rformed by a state sovereigntycommission, and some states - Missis­Sippi for example - have had both asovereignty commission and commit­tee .....

As the various little state HUAC'shold their hearings, they issue their ownreports, which then also become 'au­thoritative' sources and are in turn quot- .ed by agencies of other states - or bythe congressional committees as further'evidence' of the subversive nature ofthe integrationists .....

GRIST FOR VIGILANTE MILLSA new technique t hat has recently

emerged is the use of HUAC-documentednewspaper articles as the basis for legalaction against integrationists by localofficials.

For example, when the Danville, Va.,affiliate of SCLC launched direct-actionprotests against segregation in 1963, localnewspapers began a series of attackscharging that communists were behindthe movement; authority for the chargeswere citations of HUAC and the Floridainvestigating committee. Later, when cityofficials went to court to stop the demon­strations by injunction, the clippings ofthese articles were presented as 'evi­dence' that the demonstrations were com­munist-insoired.' ,

and began to happen around the country.that would be the key to spreading someof the things that have happened in theSouth to the rest of the country. Thatnot only goes for poor people but forthe professional people as well. The lastmeeting where I was, where I was par­tially hooted down, was at a doctors'meeting in L. A. when I asked them aboutMedicare. The concept that doctors shoulddiscuss Medicare. pro and con, in theirmeetings seems to be alien to democracy.

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