Civil Rights: Electric Charges

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The plan as proposed reaches to the outer limits of what is constitutionally allowed. However, the wrongs and injustices inflicted upon these plaintiffs have clearly exceeded—and continue to exceed—the outer limits of what is constitutionally permissible. The extent of the right to assemble, demonstrate and march should be commensurate with the enormity of the wrongs that are being protected and petitioned against. In this case, the wrongs are enormous.

Those words, written by Federal District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., galvanized civil rights forces last week into a display that may well become one of the most spectacular events of the Negro revolution. It is this week's 50-mile march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery to dramatize the Negro demands for voting rights, protected by a force of 1,863 Alabama National Guardsmen, 100 FBI men, 100 federal marshals, and 1,000 U.S. Army troops.

Bombast & Scorn. The whole idea was enough to drive Governor George Wallace into paroxysms of rage. He tried appealing for a stay of Judge Johnson's decision, but was turned down flat. He went before the Alabama legislature to rend the air with 20 minutes of bombast; the proposed march, he declared, was Communist-inspired, abetted by a "collectivist press," by "propagandists masquerading as newsmen." He delivered himself of a withering blast against his old Alabama University friend, Judge Johnson, calling him a man who is "hypocritically wearing the robes" of a judge while "presiding over a mock court," one who "prostitutes our law in favor of mob rule."

In two telegrams to President Johnson, he bluntly refused to provide protection to the marchers. He reckoned that it would cost $400,000 and require 6,171 men to police the march route, demanded "federal civil authorities" to do the job because Alabama simply could not afford to. Obviously, Wallace was throwing to the President the onus of having to call out the Alabama National Guard. The President accepted the challenge and from the LBJ Ranch issued the orders that sent the Guard onto the parade route. "Responsibility for maintaining law and order in our federal system properly rests with state and local governments," the President scornfully advised Wallace in a telegram. "I thought that you felt strongly about this."

Through Woods & Marshes. The civil rights leaders planning the march summoned all the skills of a regimental G-4 to get the affair organized and equipped. They assembled mountains of bedrolls and air mattresses, got hold of two huge circus tents and scores of pup tents for four overnight stops, arranged to have hot meals trucked out, lined up 32 portable latrines, a convoy of garbage trucks and a fleet of ambulances.

The marchers were to follow the same route attempted two weeks ago from Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the first march was bloodily halted by helmeted state troopers and mounted possemen, then onto a four-lane, divided stretch of U.S. Highway 80. All but 300 marchers were to drop back at a point 17 miles out of Selma, where the highway narrows to a two-lane, 20-mile strip of piny woods and dismal marshes.