Bloody Sunday 119warning, the president dispatched former Florida governor Leroy Collins,
head of the federal Community Relations Service, to delay the march until it
was legal. Collins negotiated a face-saving deal in which Clark and Lingo
agreed not to use force if the marchers walked to the bridge and then
retreated. Without telling the marchers of the agreement that spared him a
contempt citation, King told them he would march regardless of the cost:
‘There may be beatings, jailings, and tear gas. But I would rather die on the
highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience by compro-
mising with evil.’
As agreed, major Cloud stopped 1,000 blacks and 450 whites and, upon
King’s request, allowed them to pray. A white Methodist bishop compared
the marchers to the Israelites fleeing Egypt and asked God to open the Red
Sea to let them through. The bishop’s prayer was miraculously answered as
the troopers wheeled out of the way, leaving the highway unobstructed.
Unbeknownst to King, Wallace’s press aide hatched a plan to have the
troopers step aside as the unprepared demonstrators approached the bridge,
makingthem ‘the laughing stock of the nation and win for us a propaganda
battle.’ Suspecting a trap, King stuck to the agreement and asked his flab-
bergasted followers to return to Brown Chapel. As the marchers retreated,
they sang, ‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round.’ Infuriated SNCC
leaders labeled King’s retreat the ‘Tuesday Turnaround.’
A mob unintentionally reenergized the protest that evening. Several
whites carrying baseball bats went after three white northern ministers who
were lost after dinner in Selma’s tough white section. ‘You want to know what
it’s like to be a real nigger?’ the toughs snarled, before bludgeoning James
Reeb, a 38-year-old Unitarian clergyman from Boston’s slums. Two days later,
Reeb died of a blood clot in his brain, the second casualty of the Selma cam-
paign. Sheriff Clark circulated rumors that the ‘so-called minister’ was drunk
and had his skull crushed by civil rights workers to create sympathy for the
movement. Reeb’s assailant – whose rap sheet included twenty-six arrests for
assault and battery – was quickly found not guilty, to the cheers of the
packed courtroom.
The outcry over the white minister’s death far exceeded that for Jimmie
Lee Jackson. Thousands of clergymen, teachers, and students headed to ‘Hate
City, USA’ to demand black voting rights, the cause for which Reeb sacrificed
his life. Although president Johnson had not intended to push for more
civil rights legislation soon, this new wave of outrage forced his hand. In a
three-hour White House meeting, Johnson at first empathized with Wallace
and then scolded the governor for not letting ‘the niggers vote.’ When
Wallace hemmed and hawed, Johnson grew stern: ‘Don’t you shit me, George
Wallace!’ Having easily dispatched the Alabama governor, Johnson gave a
stirring address to Congress and 70 million Americans watching by television.
Reeb, James(1927–65):
White clergyman beaten
to death in Selma.