Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles in Mississippi and Selma, Lewis Biography Chapters 8-9

Today we are reflecting on those chapters in David Levering Lewis’ biography of
Martin Luther King covering his continuing civil rights struggles in St Augustine, in
registering voters in Mississippi, and his famous march from Selma to Montgomery,
Alabama.
We reflect on these questions:
Who were the many martyrs, both black and white, who died in the struggle for civil
rights in America?
Why were white supremacists so quick to turn to violence, often murderous
violence, when they knew their actions would be televised for all to see?
Why was President Lyndon Johnson committed to passing Civil Rights legislation?
How did he and Martin Luther King collaborate to further the cause of Civil Rights?

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
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used for this video.
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Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles, Selma

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What were the events leading up to his famous march on Selma?
Previously we have reflected on Martin’s youth and schooling, then the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, when Martin Luther King first gained national
prominence due to the national media attention. Martin then assisted in
the struggles to desegregate first lunch counters with student sit-in
protests, and then the Freedom Rider protests seeking to desegregate
interstate buses and bus stations. Next came the brutality and bombing
in Birmingham, where four children were martyred when their church
was bombed during Sunday School. This was followed by the hopeful
March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech.

https://youtu.be/_64FMZ6AlEg https://youtu.be/TuiyFycWE-U
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Bloody Struggle in St Augustine

In his biography of Martin Luther King, David
Levering Lewis tells us about the civil rights struggle
in the small town of St Augustine, Florida.

“Founded in 1565, St Augustine is the oldest
city in America,” and it was deeply racist.
Lewis tells us: “Since 1959, the courageous
dentist Dr Hayling had struggled almost
alone to compel St Augustine, a city of
nearly 15,000, to desegregate its public
facilities and permit” blacks to register to
vote, he was met with “police intimidation
and Klan violence. In September 1963, Dr
Hayling and three other blacks were
kidnapped by the KKK and rescued by the
sheriff only minutes before they were
incinerated with kerosene. In the following
month, his home was dynamited.” Others
suffered similar fates. Dr Hayling at 1968 ACLU meeting in Cocao, FL

Dr Hayling conferred with Martin Luther King. The SCLC mounted daily
demonstrations in St Augustine, the SCLC representative was knocked
unconscious, and his car windshield was shattered by bullets. Even after
the SCLC obtained a federal injunction forbidding the sheriff from
interfering with demonstrations, both the police and vigilantes attacked
the demonstrators. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were both
jailed for protesting.
Previously, James Brock, the manager of the Monson Motor Lodge, had
denied a room to Martin Luther King to preserve the color line. Later,
when blacks dared to swim in his segregated motel pool, this same
manager poured muriatic acid in the pool to drive the swimmers away.
There were also unsuccessful efforts to break the color line at the whites-
only St Augustine Beach.

James Brock pouring muriatic acid in pool to thwart
protesters / Segregationists trying to prevent blacks from
swimming at a "White only" beach in St. Augustine.

There was some progress, a biracial committee was set up to defuse
tensions. But the Jim Crow system and the KKK remained supreme in St
Augustine. Later, Dr Hayling was compelled to move his practice to a
more prosperous part of Florida after his white clientele dried up. Other
struggles, including the voter registration efforts in Mississippi and the
march in Selma, Alabama, compelled the SCLC to move on.
The failure of Martin Luther King and the SCLC to make lasting
improvements in civil rights in St Augustine demonstrate that court
decisions and legislation are not enough, that in the long run there needs
to be strong community support among both races for social justice, that
loving compassion must prevail over hatefulness. St Augustine was a very
small city, the stakes were simply not high enough to continue the
struggle at that time.

Martin Luther
King attempting
to be served at
the whites only
Monson Motor
Lodge in St.
Augustine,
Florida

Freedom Summer Voter Registration in MS

Mississippi, like many Southern states, was a one-party state. As only
whites could join the Democratic Party, blacks could not vote in the
Democratic primary where all elections were decided. Not only that,
blacks were also prevented from registering to vote. To combat this, the
Mississippi Freedom Party was formed, eventually enlisting 80,000
members, both black and white.
Behind this effort was a new acronym, COFO or Council of Federated
Organizations, which included CORE, NAACP, SNCC, and SCLC. COFO
“preached the gospel of salvation through the ballot,” which was risky,
because in many small towns blacks who attempted to register to vote
were sometimes lynched. In the Freedom Summer of 1964, many
enthusiastic white, and a few black, college students traveled to
Mississippi to assist in these voter registration efforts.

Bob Moses, who had a master’s
degree in philosophy from
Harvard, directed SNCC’s
Mississippi voter registration
effort. He advised these
volunteers, “Our goals are limited.
If we can go and come back alive,
then that is something. If you can
go into Negro homes and just sit
and talk, that will be a huge job.
We’re not thinking of integrating
the lunch counters. The Negroes
in Mississippi haven’t the money
to eat in those places anyway.”
Remains of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner on August 4, 1964

Three volunteers, one black and two white Jews,
disappeared when returning from registering voters in
Mississippi. Their car was found, they were not. Federal
authorities became involved, LBJ ordered Navy divers to
search the canals of Mississippi for bodies. They found one
body, then another, then another, of blacks who had been
lynched, but none were the bodies of the three students.
Finally, an informant came forward to tell them where
they had been buried alive with a backhoe. The full
horrifying story is in our Yale Lecture Notes.

https://www.nrm.org/MT/text/MurderMississippi.html
Murder in
Mississippi,
by Norman
Rockwell,
1965

At the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Martin Luther King
initially supported the demands that delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Party
be recognized that than those of the segregationist Mississippi Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party, threatened with the possibility that several Southern state
delegations would boycott the convention, as had happened in the 1948
Presidential Election, possibly handing the election to the Republicans, offered a
compromise that two Mississippi delegates be awarded to the Freedom Party,
which were merely observer seats. This compromise was rejected by the Mississippi
Democratic Freedom Party.
Tensions mounted as Martin Luther King swooped in from out of town. The slim
black professional class of Jackson, the state Capitol, were loyal to the NAACP, and
were wary and uneasy about Martin rocking the boat. Martin was encouraging
voter registration and was planning a massive nonviolent demonstration in Selma,
Alabama.

Mississippi
Freedom
Democratic Party
supporters
demonstrating
outside the 1964
Democratic
National
Convention,
Atlantic City, New
Jersey; some hold
signs with portraits
of slain civil rights
workers Andrew
Goodman and
Michael Schwerner

Bloody Marches From Selma, Alabama

Selma was deeply segregated. Although blacks narrowly
outnumbered whites in Selma, Alabama, only one percent of the
registered voters were black. Sheriff Jim Clark was the Bull
Connor of Selma, firmly determined to preserve white
supremacy.
The newly elected Progressive Mayor of Selma, Joseph
Smitherman, was supported by white businessmen who sought
to attract Northern industry by toning down racial issues. He
appointed Wilson Baker as Chief of Police to undermine the
authority of Jim Clark.

Previous voter registration drives increased black
registrations in Alabama from 6,000 in 1947 to 110,000 in
1964, but 370,000 eligible blacks had not registered to
vote. The SCLC chose to concentrate on Selma to end
barriers to voter registration. Martin Luther King swooped
in to help. Hundreds who had been protesting at the
courthouse were carted in police wagons to jail by Sheriff
Clark, enraging Chief of Police Baker. But the brutality of
Jim Clark, like that of Bull Conner, ensured great television.

Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy led a giant
demonstration towards the courthouse, they and a
thousand others were arrested in two days. As in
Birmingham, many of these demonstrators were
schoolchildren. After being released from jail, Martin
requested that the federal court order the Selma voting
registrars to allow voter registration every day rather than
twice a month. Martin conferred with VP Humphrey and
was assured that a strong Voting Rights Act would be
presented to Congress, which passed in 1965.

There were many brutal incidents, police shot several protestors,
one died from his wounds. Over a hundred young protesters
were forced on a three-mile trot with deputies following in
vehicles with cattle prods. An SCLC official was chained to a
hospital bed when he was hospitalized for a cranial concussion
from a police baton.
On a Sunday afternoon, five hundred disciplined nonviolent
marchers attempted to march from their church in Selma to
Montgomery to present demands for greater civil rights. Sheriff
Jim Clark ordered the marchers to disperse. When they refused,
the police attacked.

The 1965 Selma March is
represented by a stamp
featuring a 1965
photograph called Youths
on the Selma March, by
Bruce Davidson

Our biographer Lewis recounts, “First,
there was gas, then the posse on
horseback galloped into the swarm of
fleeing blacks with cattle prods and with
clubs they flailed like maniacs. The
marchers were driven back across the
bridge and into the houses” of brave
friends. John Lewis, with a fractured skull,
and Hosea Williams “led many of the
protesters back to the church. At one
point, some blacks retaliated, hurling rocks
and bricks at the police, even forcing Clark
and his men to momentarily retreat.”

“But the combat was unequal. While
the white spectators whooped
approval of the rout and gave the
piercing rebel yell, Sheriff Clark
bellowed: ‘Get those God damn
niggers!’ Protected by masks, the
police and troopers hurled tear-gas
canisters into the panic-stricken mob.”
“At least seventeen of the marchers
were seriously hurt and another forty
were given emergency treatment at
the local black hospital.”

Jim Clark and his men were preparing for more retaliatory
violence when Wilson Baker intervened. Defusing the situation,
he persuaded the marchers to retreat into the church, and talked
Jim Clark into withdrawing his men. Baker likely saved many lives
that day.
“In Atlanta, Martin was stunned.” He promised he would return
to Selma on Tuesday to lead another march. On Monday
morning, a federal Judge Frank Johnson, hearing the pleas of civil
rights attorneys to prevent the police from preventing the march,
instead issued an injunction forbidding the march. For the first
time, Martin prepared to defy a federal injunction.

Bloody Sunday,
Alabama police
attack Selma to
Montgomery
Marchers, 1965.

Lewis described this moment in
history: “The scenario was
perfect: intractable segregation
in a small Southern city,
courageous black common folk
demanding their overdue
minimal rights, and police
officers whose every sadistic act
reified the demonology of the
South.” In short, this was great
television, many who watched
television that night would see
images seared into their memory
they would never forget.
March from Selma.

Lyndon Johnson pleaded with the officials of the SCLC to call off
the Tuesday march. But if Martin had called off the march, the
momentum of the movement would be lost. Martin was torn.
Lewis says that history is unclear whether an informal agreement
was made. Some say that they intended to cross the Pettus
Bridge and disperse. Others say Martin intended to march until
halted by the Alabama police, and in a later court hearing, he
testified he never intended to march all the way to Montgomery.
What history is certain about was that few of the marchers
carried provisions for a fifty-mile march to Montgomery.

But to a crowd of three thousand at Brown
Chapel, Martin Luther King harangued the
crowd: “We have the right to walk the highways,
and we have the right to walk to Montgomery if
our feet will get us there. I have no alternative
but to lead a march from this spot to carry our
grievances to the seat of the government. I have
made my choice. I have got to march. I do not
know what lies ahead of us. There may be
beatings, jailings, tear gas. But I would rather
die on the highways of Alabama than make a
butchery of my conscience.” After a dramatic
pause, Martin ended, “I ask you to join me
today as we move on.”

The large interracial crowd marched from the church
to Broad Street, led by Martin Luther King and other
ministers, white and black, and black civil rights
leaders. Singing spirituals, singing “We Shall
Overcome,” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me
Round,” they marched hand in hand towards the
Pettus Bridge.

Selma March led by the
Abernathy family.

Lewis recounts what they faced. “The
weather was bright, clear, and cold, and
the marchers saw, well ahead of them on
the other side of the Pettus Bridge, the
phalanx of grim-faced troopers standing
with legs apart and braced with clubs at
waist level.” When they crossed the
bridge, when they were fifty feet from
the troopers, Major Cloud barked, “This
march will not continue. It is not
conducive to the safety of this group or
the motoring public.”
Abernathy family leading the Selma march.

Martin asked that the crowd be allowed
to pray, this was granted. After the crowd
knelt and prayed, and the marchers rose
to their feet, Cloud ordered his troopers
to move to the shoulders of the road.
“The road to Montgomery was open to
the nonviolent army.”
At that moment, “Martin turned to his
followers and instructed them to retrace
their steps,” they returned to the church,
singing their spirituals.
Abernathy family leading Selma march.

Had this elaborate about-face been choreographed in advance between
the SCLC and state and federal authorities so nobody would lose face?
Did LBJ suggest this choreography? Our biographer Lewis does not say,
and neither does Doris Kearns, LBJ’s biographer.
Martin Luther King was able to restrain the impulses of the rising Black
Power advocates in his own ranks. But white supremacists decided to
attack three white Unitarian ministers who ate lunch in a black
restaurant. When they left, white thugs assaulted these ministers with
clubs, one of them died two days later in a hospital. Chief “Wilson Baker
drove to Brown Chapel to deliver the news.” In response, “the federal
government filed suit to void the march ban.”

Alabama Police
watch Selma
marchers turn
around on Tuesday,
March 9, 1965.

LBJ Passes Historic Voting Rights Act

For this part of the narrative, we will switch to the biography of
Lyndon Johnson by Doris Kearns and her account of the Selma
March and its legislative aftermath. Originally, Lyndon had
planned to pen his memoirs when he retired to his Texas ranch
but was never motivated. He had become close to Doris Kearns,
a Harvard professor whom he chose to write his biography.
During vacations and school breaks, she flew to his ranch, where
she had a room for weeks at a time, taking copious notes as he
retold stories of his life when he woke up in the morning, and as
she bounced around in his pickup truck as he tended to his
sprawling Texas ranch.

After his extreme efforts to pass the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, Lyndon Johnson sensed that the public
needed a break before taking up voting rights
legislation. The public needed a breather, and the
administration would be busy implementing the new
law and setting up the new bureaucracy needed to
enforce and administer the new laws. But the events
in Selma changed this calculus.

The 1965 Voting Rights
stamp is represented
by a 1965 photograph
called Youths on the
Selma March, by Bruce
Davidson

When Governor Wallace initially sent state troopers
to engage those who were marching on Selma, there
was intense pressure on Lyndon Johnson to call up
federal troops, but he resisted. He sensed that
politically this might make Wallace a states’ rights
martyr, he sensed it would be better to let the march
play out on television.

President
Lyndon B.
Johnson signs
the Voting
Rights Act,
1965

Doris Kearns explains, “When Johnson
finally sent troops to Alabama, the act was
generally regarded, not as an imperious
imposition of federal power, but as a
necessary measure to prevent further
violence. By waiting out his critics and
letting the TV clips make their own
impression on the country, he had
succeeded in persuading most of the
country that he had acted reluctantly and
out of necessity, not because he was anxious
to use federal power against a guilty South.”

President Johnson presented his
Voting Rights Act before
Congress in prime time on
national television. He
addressed the American people:
“I speak tonight for the dignity
of man and the destiny of
democracy.” “At times history
and fate meet at a single time in
a single place to shape a turning
point in man’s unending search
for freedom.” “So it was a
century ago at Appomattox,”
where the Civil War ended, “and
so it was in Selma, Alabama.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, 1965

LBJ continues: It is clear that “it
is wrong” “to deny any of your
fellow Americans the right to
vote.” “American Negroes must
secure for themselves the full
blessings of American life. Their
cause must be our cause too.
Because it is not just Negroes,
but really it is all of us who must
overcome the crippling legacy of
bigotry and injustice.” Then he
raised his hand, repeating the
refrain of Martin Luther King,
“We shall overcome!”
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, 1965

In his speech, Johnson
remembers his early years
teaching children of poor
illiterate Mexicans in rural
Texas schools in 1928.
“Somehow you never forget
what poverty and hatred can
do when you see its scars on
the hopeful face of a young
child.” “It never occurred to
me in my fondest dreams that
I might be able to help the
sons and daughters of those
students and to help people
like them all over this country.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks at
the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

LBJ continues, “But now I
have this chance,” “and I
mean to use it.” “I do not
want to be the President
who built empires, or
sought grandeur, or
extended dominions. I want
to be the President who
educated young children,”
“who helped to feed the
hungry,” “who helped the
poor to find their own way,
and who protected the right
of every citizen to vote in
every election.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks at
the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965

Final March From Selma To Montgomery

The SCLC lawyers petitioned the federal court to allow
another march from Selma to finally reach Montgomery.
Two days after Lyndon Johnson’s speech, federal “Judge
Johnson authorized the Selma to Montgomery march,
specifically enjoining Sheriff Jim Clark, Governor George
Wallace,” “and other state officials from interfering with
it.” Judge Johnson’s order only allowed three hundred to
march the distance. Four thousand federal troops and
many FBI agents were also dispatched.

The marchers were treated to
the finest of Martin Luther
King’s oratory. “Walk together,
children; don’t you get weary,
and it will lead us to the
Promised Land. And Alabama
will be a new Alabama, and
America will be a new
America.”

There was spotty harassment by state troopers, but they were mostly left
alone as they marched for four days, camping at farms along the way.
This was another March on Washington, except it was a much smaller
March on Montgomery. They stopped on a field on the outskirts of
Montgomery, where again they were entertained by Peter, Paul and
Mary, Joan Baez, Tony Bennett, and many more star performers. When
Martin shouted to the crowd, “What do we want?” The crowd
responded, “Freedom!”
The next day they marched to the state capitol with their demands
forGovernor George Wallace, “who closed his office and nervously
squinted through the slats of his venetian blinds.”

Third Selma Civil Rights
March, from left: John
Lewis, an unidentified
nun; Ralph Abernathy;
Martin Luther King Jr.;
Ralph Bunche; Rabbi
Abraham Joshua
Heschel; Frederick
Douglas Reese.

Martin Luther King delivered another rousing speech.
“They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were
those who said we would only get here over their
dead bodies, but all the world together knows that
we are here and that we are standing” in “Alabama
saying, ‘Ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around.’” “Our
whole campaign in Alabama has been centered
around the right to vote.” “The threat of the free
exercise of the ballot by the Negro and white masses
alike resulted in establishing a segregated society.
They segregated Southern money from the poor
whites; they segregated Southern churches from
Christianity; they segregated Southern minds from
honest thinking, and they segregated the Negro from
everything.”

Martin launched into a ringing refrain:
“My people, my people, listen! The battle is in our
hands.” “I know some of you are asking today,
‘How long will it take?’ I come to say to you this
afternoon that however difficult the moment,
however frustrating the hour, it will not be long,
because truth pressed to earth will rise again.
How long?
Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long?
Not long, because you will reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arm of the moral
universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

The actions of white supremacists helped ensure the
passage of the voting rights bill. Three houses were
dynamited, though nobody was injured, and several
bombs at the mayor’s house were disabled. Most
tragic was the death of a white Detroit mother and
housewife who had volunteered to drive protestors
home to Selma from Montgomery. As she was driving
to Selma, white thugs drove up beside her and shot
her in the head.

Wreckage at
the AG Gaston
Motel in
Birmingham
following
bomb
explosion in
1963

President
Obama, First
Lady Michelle
Obama, George
Bush, and John
Lewis, and their
families,
marching across
the Edmund
Pettus Bridge on
the 50th
Anniversary of
Bloody Sunday
March at Selma,
2015, official
White House
Photo by Pete
Souza

The final chapters in David Levering Lewis’ Biography
of Martin Luther King cover the problematic struggles
of his final years, including his quixotic and counter-
productive protests against the War in Vietnam, his
futile attempts to combat economic inequality for
blacks in Northern cities, including Chicago and New
York City, and his final efforts to support the black
sanitation workers strikes in New York City and
Memphis before his assassination.

The author, David Levering Lewis, was planning to write the biography of
Martin Luther King when he was assassinated. It was initially published
sixteen months later and quickly became the classic biography of this
Civil Rights icon. We discussed his biography in greater depth in our
reflection on his youth and school years, and also in our reflections on
Martin’s last years.
We also reflected on Doris Kearn’s excellent biography of Lyndon
Johnson, the American Dream, showing his perspective of the civil rights
struggles, since he was more proactive in the Civil Rights struggles than
was JFK, his predecessor.
Lewis also wrote the definitive biography for WEB Du Bois.

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