The South: Crisis in Civil Rights

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The crowd retreated temporarily, but kept up a fusillade of bottles, rocks and paving stones. Inside, Martin Luther King took the pulpit to say: "The ultimate responsibility for the hideous action in Alabama last week must be placed at the doorstep of the Governor of the state. We hear the familiar cry that morals cannot be legislated. This may be true, but behavior can be regulated. The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me."

"Have Him Call Me." Back at the white mansion on South Perry Street, John Patterson and his family had finished an informal dinner of charcoal-broiled steaks on the terrace. The Governor was following the progress of the riot by telephone. When Public Safety Director Floyd Mann phoned that the mob was growing, Patterson declared martial law, ordered Adjutant General Henry Graham, a National Guard major general, to lead his troops to the church. Then Patterson called Bobby Kennedy to report that the Guard had gone into action, but that the general could not guarantee the protection of Martin Luther King.

Kennedy exploded. Earlier he had seriously considered sending in federal troops, had reassured King by phone that he was safe in the church. Kennedy's voice rose as he worked over Patterson: "Have the general call me. I want him to say it to me. I want to hear a general of the U.S. Army say he can't protect Martin Luther King." Patterson backed down, admitted that it was he, not the general, who felt that King could not be protected. As it turned out, General Graham was capable of protecting King and everyone else. He kept the Negroes in the stifling hot church until the mob was dispersed, then escorted them home early in the morning.

Yale's Revenge. After the church riot, Bobby Kennedy urged the Freedom Riders to go slowly. But the Freedom Riders in Montgomery were determined to push on to New Orleans by way of Mississippi, a state ruled by Governor Ross Barnett, who had once declared: "The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him." Barnett, noting well what had happened in Alabama, assured Attorney General Kennedy that Mississippi would protect the students from violence. Kennedy was deciding to trust Barnett and withhold federal forces from Mississippi when he got word that still another integrated bus contingent, led by Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr., was starting out for the South. Cracked Harvardman Kennedy: "Those people at Yale are sore at Harvard for taking over the country, and now they're trying to get back at us."

On Wednesday morning the student Freedom Riders appeared at Montgomery's Trailways bus terminal—ready to head for Mississippi. Alabama National Guardsmen lined both sides of the street in front of the terminal, surveyed the area from the second level of a garage across the street. At 7:15 the first bus pulled out for Jackson carrying twelve Freedom Riders, six National Guardsmen and 16 newsmen. Once out in the countryside, the bus was convoyed by three planes, two helicopters and 17 highway patrol cars. Bobby Kennedy followed the progress of the convoy by a special telephone rig that let him monitor police radio messages.