A COLD SUN BEAMED DOWN. MARSHALS WEARING ARMBANDS encouraged people to get into formation. A military helicopter thrummed heavily in the sky above. And the great march finally stepped off from Brown Chapel on Sunday afternoon, March 21, at 12:46, almost three hours after it had been scheduled to begin.
It was the climax of an extraordinary two days in which sleepy little Selma had abruptly become an absolute ant colony of activity. For two days, the air had crackled with static-filled transmissions from two-way radios as army Jeeps hurried to and from. Green trucks with the letters “U.S.” stenciled on the doors lumbered through town, ferrying soldiers of the Alabama National Guard, which had been federalized by President Johnson. Other trucks hauled giant tents across the Pettus Bridge to prepare the campgrounds. Still others had borne portable latrines to be placed along the highway. Thirteen ambulances, a mobile hospital, and a “healthmobile” had arrived to handle medical emergencies. Food had been shipped in by the ton and a church basement had been converted into a storehouse, stuffed with sacks of oranges, tubs of apple sauce, big cans of peas.
And the people …
Delegations of them had poured in from all over the country, swelling by thousands the population of a tiny city that was home, in normal times, to just twenty-eight thousand citizens. As a result, there was not a motel or hotel room to be had; these had been commandeered by reporters and dignitaries. The clergymen, students, housewives, mechanics, janitors, librarians, and other ordinary Americans who had felt compelled to join the great parade found it necessary to sack out wherever they could find space: on church pews, in storage rooms, on the living room floors of Negro families.
Among the newcomers was a group from Hawaii who marched beneath a banner declaring, “Hawaii Knows Integration Works.” As was the tradition in their state, just before the march began, the Hawaiians had draped garlands of flowers—leis—about the necks of the march leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. And then, one arm linked with his top aide, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and the other with Maurice Eisendrath, head of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, he stepped off onto Sylvan Street, leading the human flow behind him down the ribbon of red dirt that ran like an artery through Negro Selma.
They followed a flatbed truck bearing a group of news photographers and television cameramen. The latter were capturing the event on film that would be flown back to New York City to air on the evening news. One of the cameramen joked grimly that the man who failed to capture the rifle shot that felled King mid-step would never work again. Unbeknownst to that cameraman—and, for that matter, to King—a group of volunteers had been assigned to flank the great man on either side to obscure the sightlines of any would-be snipers.
Not that hateful people were without means of expressing themselves. The procession passed a white boy in a red roadster with his car radio cranked up high. It was playing “Dixie.” Another car drove past the marchers, a message crudely whitewashed on its windows: “Coonsville, USA,” it said.
Adam, clad in denim overalls and carrying a backpack, walked somewhere in the middle of the throng, joined by friends from SNCC who had temporarily put aside their antipathy toward “de Lawd” and his showboating methods in a spirit of solidarity with SCLC and respect for those who had been brutalized on the bridge. Even his friend Jackson Motley had been inspired to join. But the spirit of goodwill had its limits. Silas Norman, the director of SNCC’s Selma project, was studiously ignoring the march and concentrating his energies that day on doing chores around the office.
The purple bruise that had closed Adam’s eye for a week had shrunk and faded to a sickly yellow streaked with patches of violet. It was still obvious he had been slugged, though, and people assumed it was the remnant of an injury he had sustained on the bridge. Adam didn’t tell them differently. The truth was too complicated—and too painful—to get into.
He was elated that morning, energized not just by the fact of standing shoulder to shoulder with like-minded people in a nonviolent army three thousand strong, but also by the fact that a volunteer doctor had, just an hour before, pronounced him fit to march. Under terms of the agreement negotiated with the federal judge, only three hundred marchers would be allowed to participate in that part of the demonstration that passed through rural Lowndes County, where Route 80 narrowed from four lanes to two. It had been said that in deciding who would be allowed to join that leg of the journey, priority would be given to those who had been beaten and gassed in the first attempt to cross the bridge.
Adam had been told he might be one of that three hundred, provided he got a doctor’s approval. He was exhilarated to know there was a chance he would be marching tomorrow. He was also a little frightened. Local people had warned him repeatedly that Lowndes was nothing to fool with, that it was the most virulently racist county in a virulently racist state. Its bogs and swamps were said to provide many excellent places for the easy disposal of a body—a function they had served countless times over the years.
Adam had heard all this, but tried to ignore it. What good was it to think about a thing over which you had no control? All he had—all anyone had—was this moment, here and now. And in this moment, he felt like the crest of some mighty wave as he walked down Sylvan, arms linked with people on either side of him. Someone started a chorus of “We Shall Overcome,” and he sang along joyfully. On this hopeful afternoon, at least, the song’s soaring promise felt as if it just might be within reach.
And so, they proceeded down Sylvan Street, then turned right on Alabama Avenue, a motley parade of ponchos, letterman jackets, cassocks, fedoras, nun’s habits, blue jeans, suits, church hats, sweatshirts, and fur-lined coats. One young couple pushed a baby in a stroller. Military police stood guard between the procession and small knots of white people who congregated on the sidewalks taunting and jeering.
“Look at all the white niggers!” one woman said to another in loud, mock amazement.
“You ever seen so many white niggers in all your life?” another replied.
Other women singled out a clutch of nuns walking together. “Hey, sister, how many of those niggers can you take on at one time?”
“Hey, sister, which one of those bucks will you be spreadin’ your legs for?”
Adam saw a white nun walking near him go pale at the insults. But she pursed her thin lips, lifted her patrician jaw, and affected not to hear the abuse.
Then they turned left onto Broad Street and there it was again, the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Adam swallowed. He had to fight an urge to just stop there on the sidewalk and take it in. After everything that had happened beneath its tower, the bridge seemed to demand that reverence. But the line kept moving and he stayed with it.
“Third time’s the charm, right?” said Jackson Motley.
“I sure hope so,” said Adam.
At the sound of his voice, a girl in the row ahead of him turned to look back. “It’s you,” Emma said. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the freedom song—“Ain’t gonna let Sheriff Clark turn me around, turn me around, turn me around …”—“Been lookin’ all over town for you. You saved my life on this damn bridge. That’s what people told me, anyway, ’cause I was knocked out cold. I never got a chance to thank you.”
Adam shook his head. “They give me too much credit,” he said. “I just tried to move you out of harm’s way. Then I got clobbered myself.”
She shook her head. “Hell of a thing,” she said.
He nodded. “Hell of a thing,” he agreed.
They approached the bridge. Some white man had set up speakers and Peggy Lee serenaded the marchers, her voice meditative and mournful against a feathery cushion of guitar and piano, the drummer keeping time with soft brushstrokes.
Motley arched an eyebrow. “They playin’ ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ for us? That’s our send-off? Hell, that song’s a hundred years old, ain’t it? Least they could do is play us somethin’ hip.”
“Ray Charles,” suggested Emma.
Motley pointed a finger. “There you go,” he said.
And as if on cue, the three of them started singing “Hit the Road Jack.”
They broke up laughing, but laughter wilted under the gimlet glare of one of the marshals who materialized without warning at the end of their row. He spoke only one word, raising his voice to make it heard above the tumult.
“Dignity,” he said.
The three young people fell into an embarrassed silence at that and a line of humanity half a mile long climbed the span. At the apex, where two weeks before he had found himself facing a line of possemen on horseback and blue-helmeted state troopers, Adam saw that the road was clear. The moment struck him with an emotional force for which he was not prepared.
“My God,” he said.
Motley glanced at him but knew enough to say nothing. And so the great march crested the bridge. As they passed under the span of metal with the Confederate hero’s name on it, the Alabama River rushing beneath them, Adam felt something exuberant running through his chest like electric current. He wanted to pump his fist the way you do when your football team scores a winning touchdown, but refrained—“Dignity”— from doing so. He could not help smiling, though.
Emma looked back at him. “Maybe the third time really is the charm,” she said. She was smiling, too.
“Maybe it is,” replied Adam.
As the procession came down off the bridge, they were met by scattered jeers from white onlookers. Some waved Confederate battle flags. One drove past in a car with another message whitewashed onto its windows: “Martin Luther Koon!” Someone held up a sign that said, “I hate niggers.” Someone else lofted a sign that said, “Too Bad Reeb.” A tow-headed white boy no older than six paced back and forth along the line screaming, “Good-bye, niggers! Good-bye, niggers!” His voice was raw, his cheeks bright pink.
Adam was stunned that a child could have packed so much hatred into so few years. But it seemed to have possessed the boy, the words spewing out of him like some benediction of evil.
“Good-bye, niggers! Good-bye, niggers! Good-bye, niggers!” White men and women behind him laughed in tolerant amusement.
Adam caught Emma’s eye. He shook his head, disbelieving. She returned a palms-up gesture. And on they walked.
He had made it across the patch of pavement where he was clubbed senseless just two weeks before, the same spot where Martin Luther King had led his forces into a humiliating turnaround just a few days later. Now the highway stretched open before him, before all of them, and the possibilities—and the threats—seemed endless.
Adam plunged doggedly ahead, telling himself that he was prepared to meet either. The little white boy never stopped his awful screeching, but with each step it grew fainter. After a few minutes, it could no longer be heard at all.