The Freedom Fever

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was abed with a bad cold. Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Ala., was down with "exhaustion." But both men arose last week to renew their bitter civil rights struggle.

King got off to a good start. In Selma, he was joined in a march on the county courthouse by some 1,400 Negroes, armed with a parade permit for the first time since their voting registration drive began five weeks ago. Ninety-one Negroes were permitted to apply--by far the biggest single-day total in Selma's history. The drive was going well in nearby Marion too, and King was obviously elated. He cried to his followers there: "You all really have the freedom fever here."

"An Evil Man." Next day Clark had his own sort of inning. About 25 Negroes were kept waiting outside the courthouse in a drenching rain. Clark appeared, read a court order forbidding demonstrations. The Rev. C. T. Vivian, a close King associate, berated Clark! "Maybe you're not as bad as Hitler," he shouted, "but you are an evil man!" Whereupon Clark knocked him, mouth bloodied, to the ground. Said Clark later: "If I hit him, I don't know it. One of the first things I ever learned was not to hit a nigger with your fist because his head is too hard. Of course, the camera might make me out a liar. I think I have a broken finger."

It was in Marion, three days after King's departure, that some of the worst civil rights violence in months broke out. About 400 Negroes started to march from the Zion Methodist Church to the town jail, protesting the arrest of a fellow worker. Waiting outside the church were eight Marion cops, 50 state troopers, a bunch of redneck bums--and Selma's Sheriff Clark, in civilian clothes but carrying a billy club.

"Nightmare of Stupidity." Using a bullhorn, Marion Police Chief T. O. Harris told the Negroes: "This is an unlawful assembly. You are hereby ordered to disperse. Go home or go back in the church." Some Negroes kept walking. The cops surged forward. Some Negroes ran, tried to take refuge in Mac's Cafe, about a block from the church. State troopers crashed in after them. One Negro, Jimmy Lee Jackson, made a break for the door, was shot in the stomach, taken to a hospital in critical condition. In all, more than a dozen Negroes, including six women, were treated for injuries.

Next day, Montgomery's Alabama Journal called the violence in Marion "a nightmare of state police stupidity" and "the worst outrage since the church bombing in Birmingham." Said the paper: "Alabama is, once again and worse than ever before, disgraced by mindless 'police work' and blood."

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