### INTERVIEWER: Edwin Barce

ALSO present: Blair Hubbard, Blake Lambert (?), Barbara Tagger (?)

**\[00:35\]**

**Q:** \--September 4, 1991 and we\'re in the offices of the Selma
Dallas Chamber of Commerce with Jamie Wallace, the Director of the
Chamber of Commerce, a long-time observer on scenes here in Dallas and
Selma. He\'s going to share his recollections of a very important era in
our nation\'s history.

Other ones present with me today are Blair Hubbard of the Harpers Ferry
Center, Lake Lambert and Barbara Tagger of the Southeast Regional
Office. I\'m Ed Barce, Chief Historian of the National Parks Service.

Jamie, would you tell us a little bit about yourself. Are you a native
of the black belt of Alabama, this area? Just a brief biographical
sketch of your life up to about the early 1960s.

**\[01:35\]**

**A:** Well, I was in elementary school here in Selma and then I left
the area and eventually came back to a couple of years in high school in
the county. And went to University of Alabama and upon graduation was
hired as a reporter by the *Selma Times Journal*, and over a period of
years ascended through the ranks until I was editor of the *Times
Journal* in the early \'70s.

**\[02:01\]**

Since that time, I was in radio for 11 years and then have been with the
Chamber of Commerce for six years.

**Q:** When were you born?

**A:** 1936.

**Q:** So you lived through a long period in the evolution of this part
of the country in civil rights.

**\[02:19\]**

**A:** And especially the evolution from being a predominantly
agricultural area to being a more industrialized area, as well as a
series of political events that have occurred as well.

**Q:** And I believe you said that you were a reporter with\-- what
paper here during the momentous events?

**\[02:41\]**

**A:** Yes. I was city editor of the paper during the 1964-65 years,
which would have been the focal point of the voting rights movement here
in Selma and Dallas County.

**Q:** Now would you give your recollections of civil rights, the amount
of black voting strength, and in the periods before SNCC appeared on the
scene in 1963.

**A:** Well, there had been present in Alabama, of course, a statewide
law that required a poll tax and very extraneous requirements in order
to register to vote. For example, in some boards of registrars would
require you to recite the preamble to the Constitution, which I recall
having to do when I registered to vote in another county.

**\[03:33\]**

And also there was a law that required a verification of the person\'s
character and so forth by a landholder, which became a sticking point in
blacks registering to vote because it was difficult for them sometimes
to get a landholder to stand for them, so to speak. And of course there
was a subject of poll tax and reciting the preamble or whatever was
required in the individual counties.

**\[04:07\]**

#### Here in Dallas County the Board of Registrars basically followed the state law, which they were required to do. And consequently many people were turned away from being registered as a result of the state law. There were about 250 blacks registered to vote at the start in 1963, at the start of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating\--

**Q:** Was that in the county or the seat, or both?

**A:** In both, right, a combination of the two. Because the voting
rules are kept in the county, not by the city. So there was about 250
blacks registered to vote at that time, out of the total population.

**\[04:52\]**

**Q:** In the years\-- I was living in Mississippi at this time. In the
years in the late \'50s and the early \'60s, was there a strong citizens
council movement here in the black belt of Alabama as it was in the
Delta of Mississippi?

**A:** There was a strong movement here, and the person who spearheaded
it, I think, was Ross Barnett(?), who spearheaded the one in Mississippi
that you referred to. And yes, there was a strong citizens council
movement here. However, there was a virtual absence of other groups,
such as the Ku Klux Klan, which later would be a great\-- greatly in the
favor of this community because there was a total lack of involvement of
any strong elements of the fringe groups, like the Klan, in Selma during
that period of time.

**\[05:51\]**

**Q:** So the council was fairly strong here but not the other?

**A:** Extreme, right.

**Q:** Was the council generally here, as in Mississippi, rather strong
in the planter professional classes?

**A:** Right. And political.

**\[06:12\]**

**Q:** Did the county\-- Wallace when he first ran, I believe he said
he\-- and lost\-- he intended not to be out safe(?) the second time. Can
you comment on that?

**\[06:29\]**

**A:** He is credited with making that statement. The first time he ran,
he ran not as a liberal, but I guess in those days it could have been
kind of perceived as at least being a middle-of-the-road conservative.
And John Patterson, the Attorney General of the state, ran against him,
and Patterson was an arch segregationist at that time. And he ran on
that platform and he was elected. And consequently, George Wallace ran
for the next four years full-time, and I think that\'s when he developed
a firm position and stand on segregation, and the next time he ran he
basically ran on that platform and won.

**\[07:19\]**

**Q:** All right, we have 1963, it\'s the summer of the March on
Washington, the Freedom Rides, the arrival of SNCC in Dallas County.
Year after Oxford. Then what were your perceptions on the decision of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. King to be
involved?

**A:** Well, at that time, more attention was given to SNCC because it
was an activist group and they were basically young people who didn\'t
mind going door to door and doing all the other things. Most of our
attention here had been drawn to the NAACP over the years because it was
historically the most recognized civil rights group. And of course, and
historically NAACP had not been an activist group but had been a legal
arm through the courts.

**\[08:30\]**

So in the \'63, more attention was really focused on public
accommodations than anything else. Some lunch counters were closed here
because of the fear that the laws were going to be struck down and we
didn\'t have separate accommodations and so forth. And then of course
the SNCC representatives came into the community and started putting out
flyers, started going door to door, and there was something of a
backlash against them being here in the white community and there was a
fear among some people that they were trying to do other things other
than organize black people and so forth. There was a basic fear because
they\'d been involved in organizations elsewhere, and the power
structure I think contributed to that fear as well, warning people to
watch out for them and all this kind of stuff. And some of them were
arrested.

**\[09:40\]**

**Q:** Do you remember\-- since John Lewis is here, when is your first
recollection of John Lewis, or does he stand out in this early time?

**\[09:48\]**

**A:** John doesn\'t really stand out because he was kind of one of the
soldiers at that time. He wasn\'t\-- he was very young at that time, as
I was. My first recollection really of John was in the bridge incident,
which came later, in 1965. There was not a\-- going back to the \'63 and
\'64 period, there was not always a great deal of appreciation among
established local civil rights organizations, and SNCC at that time,
there was a little bit of feeling that they were going too fast, too
soon, too activist, and there was a little fear, I think, that they
would contribute to an incident that the Dallas County Voters League
didn\'t want. I think there was a little fear there. Of course, Reverend
Reese could address this better than I could. I think you\'ll be talking
to him.

**\[10:45\]**

**Q:** And he had the Voter League.

**A:** He had the Voter League, Reverend Reese had the Voter League. The
Voter League was strong, and of course they were the organization that
invited Dr. King to come into the community. It was their decision. Dr.
King would not go into a community just on his own. He was invited by
local organizations, which was the Dallas County Voters League. And even
that decision I don\'t think was necessarily unanimous at that time, but
that was the vehicle by which Dr. King came in.

**\[11:20\]**

**Q:** How was Ms. Amelia Boynton regarded in the community at that
time?

**A:** Ms. Boynton, of course, had been here for many years. Her husband
had been a county agent here, had worked with 4H people and had
established a camp for black 4H\'ers just outside the city here and so
forth. I, you know, prior to the civil rights movement I really was not,
other than their involvement in those type things, I really wasn\'t
aware of much else about Ms. Boynton at that time. I hadn\'t had contact
with her, so I\-- you know.

**\[12:02\]**

**Q:** Was there some feeling among the NAACP blacks and older blacks
that maybe I knew quite well in Vicksburg, was a friend of Mrs. Evers,
on SNCC, that they had some feeling, maybe call them moral issues,
because this lady I know was very strong in church, on a number of the
SNCC, both black and white, and young people living in the same houses
\...(inaudible) quite pronounced in some of the older blacks in
Vicksburg.

**A:** I\'m not sure. I\'ve not addressed that issue with\-- I just
think there was a fear among some of the older blacks that it would\--
incidents would be created that would impact upon them, because there
was a very real fear among older blacks that they would lose their jobs
or whatever, because there was an economic weapon that could be used
against them.

**\[13:06\]**

**Q:** In addition to the organizations of the white citizens council,
organization\'s strength here, how else did the white community react to
the voting rights? Economic sanctions?

**A:** There was reported to be some of that, unconfirmed reports of
people, some people who had lost their jobs because they participated.
Also there was a\-- by and large, the white community totally stayed
away from any involvement whatsoever. There wasn\'t a great amount of
taunting or standing on a street corner jeering and things that had
occurred in other cities. So in that respect, there was a great amount
of I guess you could call it restraint on the part of the white
community.

**\[14:07\]**

There was a certain amount of fear, I\'m sure, that resulted in people
not going about their normal, everyday activities sometime, in the
commercial section, which at that time, downtown Selma was the chief
commercial district. And the fact that you were having marches and
demonstrations through that area every day cost merchants dearly,
because of their\-- the customers didn\'t come. So there was an economic
impact from that aspect as well as from the city devoting so much
energies to marshalling.

**\[14:45\]**

**Q:** As a young reporter, what were your views, and when did the
national press begin to come in, like Nelson Benton, \...(inaudible) and
those others?

**A:** Well they basically began to come when Dr. King came. We learned
early on when major incidents\-- when major events, not incidents, major
events would occur, was when we\'d see the national media come in, we
knew that they had been advised that Dr. King would be here and so
forth. So we learned early on that nothing really significant would
happen, unless it was spontaneous, without Dr. King being here.

**\[15:28\]**

Because the presence of\-- just face it, the media, there\'s always been
a debate among the media itself, you know, well we used, we used the
movement. Dr. King and his organization very effectively used the media
to maximize their strength in Washington, and very astutely so. And so
on the days when the national media was not here, we knew that it would
be fairly routine, maybe a march to the courthouse, and that was about
it. But they began to come in, I don\'t recall. It was probably early
\'65.

**\[16:11\]**

**Q:** Where was your\-- did you\-- where was your nearest television
local coverage out of\--

**A:** Montgomery.

**Q:** Out of Montgomery?

**A:** Right.

**\[16:18\]**

**\_\_:** How effective was the movement in Selma before Dr. King came?

**A:** Well the Dallas County Voters League was a fairly strong
organization. I think that\'s\-- people ask me a lot of times why Selma
was chosen. You know, Memphis would have been an excellent target or
Jackson, Mississippi, or heaven forbid even Chicago, but there was a
strong professional group in Selma of educators, black educators, who
later became involved. And of course Reverend Reese was an educator.

**\[16:55\]**

The presence of Selma University here, which historically had educated
black pastors throughout the nation, and it was the oldest junior
college in the nation. Forty(?) years ago now, but anyway. It was a high
school, junior college, and a four-year theological school,
predominantly black. And many of the outstanding pastors across the
country had been educated in the school, and it was kind of hallowed
ground to them. Plus the fact that Mrs. King is from Marion, Alabama,
Perry County, which is the adjacent county. Andy Young had pastored as a
young man, had pastored a church in Perry County.

**\[17:42\]**

So there was a natural attachment to the area. Plus Dr. King had been in
Montgomery, was very familiar with it. So I think a lot of those factors
contributed to that, plus the fact that you had a sheriff and a circuit
judge here who they knew would resist. And unfortunately that\'s what
occurred.

**\[18:14\]**

To address your question about as a young reporter here, the newspaper
here took a rather unusual approach as a Deep South daily newspaper. We
took I guess what could probably best be described as a realistic
approach to the fact that it was unfair to keep people from voting and
it was unfair for people not to be able to use accommodations, it was\--
this community had to bring itself together, black and white. The
publisher served on the first biracial committee that was organized in
the city in 1964. One day we were picketed by a white group and the next
day we\'d be picketed by a black group, so I assume that when that
happens to you that you pretty well feel like that you\'ve done what
you\'re supposed to.

**\[19:19\]**

We played it right down the middle as far as reporting was concerned. We
told the truth, and some days the truth may have hurt one group and some
days it may have hurt another group, but we tried to tell it like we saw
it. We didn\'t paint it like we wanted it to be maybe, or whatever. We
just told it like it was. And we were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize,
which we didn\'t win, but we were nominated. And we won the US Steel(?)
award for community journalism that year and several other honors.

**\[19:51\]**

And the national media basically recognized us as a source of
information, which in looking back on my career and everything, I think
that was a tribute to us, because in many communities they could not do
that because they would have had a fear of utilizing that information.
But we had access to sources they didn\'t have access to. They couldn\'t
get to Jim Clark sometimes, they couldn\'t get to other people that we
could. So I feel like that the newspaper\'s position did play a role in
helping this community to face itself and to create an atmosphere,
whereas there wouldn't be an act of confrontation among citizens, which
there was never an atmosphere of confrontation among citizens in the
city at that time.

**\[20:46\]**

**Q:** Did you\-- did your paper, since of its policy and its
straightforward reporting, suffer an economic boycott, like Hazel
Brandon Smith over in Mississippi and Hunting Carter(?)?

**A:** There was an attempt to do that, there was an attempt to start
another newspaper, things like that, but basically those kind of things
don\'t work. For a month or two they might. We made many decisions back
in that period of time, between \'65 and \'70 even, on things like how
you handle the news. At one time a lot of the papers in the Deep South
had separate sections for black news. We had a full-time person who
covered the black community, which to be frank with you, it probably got
more coverage then than sometimes it does not, but it wasn\'t right.
So\--

**\[21:39\]**

**Q:** Did you have that when you came to work for the paper?

**A:** Right. We made a decision to discontinue that and treat all news
the same. And that was what we should have done.

**Q:** The next question is who were Art and Muriel Lewis? Do they still
live in Selma?

**\[22:00\]**

**A:** Muriel Lewis still lives here. Art is deceased. Art Lewis was
early on owner, he and Muriel, of the Ajay(?) Lewis Cigar Factory here.
In fact, Muriel, the cigar, is named after Muriel Lewis, if you\'ve
heard of it. And the cigar factory of course still is operational.
There\'s not many left in the country but it\'s still here. Phillies
Cigars now. But they had operated that and then later he went into
automobile dealership. He was head of the Military Affairs Committee of
the Chamber for many years, was one of the founders, I think, of the
committee of 100+ industrial group that was active at that time.

**\[22:55\]**

So\-- and I would imagine that you could probably classify Art as one of
the resident liberals, if you wanted to put a tag on him, at that time.
And he recognized that there had to be some leadership in the white
community to close the gap, and he was one of the people who helped
provide some of that leadership.

**Q:** So he\'s quite important, to try and bridge the gap?

**A:** Yeah, I think he was. Probably in his death was more recognized
than is in reality, which often happens, as you well know.

**\[23:42\]**

**Q:** What role did the Selma black churches and white churches and
temples play in \...(inaudible) movement?

**A:** Black churches, of course, played an extremely important role.
And I\'m also asked the question, why were they chosen to do that?
Because that was the communications vehicle in the black community. The
church, of course, was very important to them, and the best way to get
information out was through the black churches, and to draw people
together. And I think that was a major reason that the black churches
were used.

**\[24:20\]**

And of course the minister in the black community is looked upon as the
leader, real leader of the flock. And there was an opportunity for\--
the ministers basically had been involved in the movement. Dr. King was
a minister, of course, Andrew Young was a minister, and Reverend L.L.
Anderson here had served with Dr. King in Montgomery at Dexter Avenue,
so they were friends. And the first meeting that was held in Selma of
course was held at Reverend Anderson\'s church, Tabernacle Baptist on
Broad Street here. And they were moved to Brown Chapel because Brown
Chapel was a much larger facility and would accommodate the crowds. So
it was a natural thing for it to be in the churches.

**\[25:15\]**

Now, the white churches, it was basically a, with one or two exceptions
of some pastors that became involved in trying to mediate situations,
basically there was a hands-off attitude by the white churches during
that period of time.

**Q:** No particularly significant leader of a white church that tried
to bridge?

**\[25:35\]**

**A:** None that stand out in my mind. There was a couple that\-- whose
names frankly I don\'t even recall at this time.

**Q:** Since you point out that the KKK was not strong, was there much
in the surrounding counties burning of the small grey(?) and black
churches, such as occurred in certain other rural areas of Mississippi?

**A:** No, I don\'t think we had a problem with that. I don\'t recall
there being any in Dallas County especially, and I don\'t recall there
being many, if any, in other counties in this area. We did not have a
similar problem here that you had in Mississippi. And I\'m not saying
that there wasn\'t a klavern of the Klan here. What I\'m saying is that
they were kind of passive kind of group and if they were going to have a
cross burning outside of the city here they would call FBI and say, do
y\'all want to come out and see us tonight? That kind of a thing. It was
more\-- it wasn\'t a hard core group of people as it was present(?).

**\[26:44\]**

Now, we did have some Klan members of course come from other places here
and try to create some problems, but the city itself had basically kind
of postured itself as not, you know, you\'re not welcome, and they have
since then. Matter of fact, the mayor stood on the City Hall steps one
Saturday afternoon face to face and nose to nose with an out-of-town
Klan leader and told him to get out of town and he didn\'t want to see
him back in town, and you\'re not going to meet here and you\'re not
going to collect funds here, and they left. So since then there has been
none here.

**\[27:22\]**

**Q:** You\'ve alluded to it already, that one of the reasons that SCLC,
the Southern Leadership, invited King here, that there were certain
ingredients here, particularly personalities that might react in a way
that would give national media increased exposure here. Namely,
Senator\-- namely, Sheriff Jim Clark. Would you relate your
recollections of Sheriff Jim Clark and had he before\-- how had he
tipped his hand that he would be a volatile individual that might react
in the same way as Sheriff Rainy or Sheriff Connor?

**\[28:34\]**

**A:** Well, when Sheriff Clark came on the scene, he wasn\'t from
Dallas County, he was from Elba, Alabama, which is down in South
Alabama. He had a farm outside Selma he had moved onto and he was
appointed by the most liberal governor Alabama had ever had, \"Big Jim\"
Folsom. So when Jim Clark was not the choice of people locally as
sheriff\-- they wanted a local person at that time\-- but he had
supported Governor Folsom and he\-- patronage system, he was appointed
sheriff.

**\[29:09\]**

And at that time, since he was appointed by Folsom, he was somewhat
looked upon in those days as what might be classified as something of a
liberal appointment, because of Folsom\'s record, and had basically done
a fairly good job in law enforcement. But when the segregation suits
started coming in other counties and everything, he became somewhat
active in some of those things. And also he had pretty well made it
known here that he would resist any attempt at quote, unquote, breaking
the law, which is what he said: \"All I\'m doing is upholding the law.\"

**\[29:52\]**

And there was a\-- behind him was Circuit Judge James Hare, who ground
out\-- a very brilliant person but very opinionated person, who had been
known for quite some time to go and speak to groups about the ancestry
of blacks and so forth from Africa and so forth. And Judge Hare would
grind out orders, circuit court orders, circuit court orders, and
they\'d be delivered to the sheriff and the sheriff would be told to
enforce those orders.

**\[30:34\]**

And so it was really a dynamic duo, if you want to call it that, working
with each other as far as the irritant was concerned. And there were
times when the sheriff would be very calm with a situation, and there
were other times that he would be very explosive. In fact, there was a
time during about February of 1965 that Dr. King had almost decided to
pull out of Selma because there had really been no action and the
movement appeared to be dying. We\'ll get into that a little bit later,
the bridge incident and so forth. It revitalized the movement.

**Q:** Would you give a background on Judge Hare? You said he was local.

**\[31:37\]**

**A:** Judge Hare was a planter, meaning plantation type, ancestral
Dallas County person who, as I said, was a very brilliant person, and a
historian of some note, an arch segregationist.

**Q:** Was he a Citizens\' Council member?

**A:** I\'m sure he was.

**Q:** So he would grind out the orders and Clark\--

**\[32:12\]**

**A:** Right. I think he served as a chief irritant for Clark at times.
I\'ve always felt like a lot of Jim\'s actions and reactions were
because of Judge Hare\'s inclination to say, \"You\'re not going to let
this happen.\"

**Q:** But Clark made a better topic for television.

**A:** Sure. He was the guy with the \"Never\" badge on. He was a law
enforcement person. Judge Hare was in a suit and tie and so forth. Jim
was a fairly large man and didn\'t look too much like Andy Griffith or
Barney Fife or anything.

**Q:** So he was the ideal bad guy.

**\[32:54\]**

**A:** Right, he was the ideal resistance, right.

**Q:** Now we\'re moving down toward your reactions first, before we go
to Bloody Sunday, on the shooting up in Marion, 20 miles from here, of
Jimmie Lee Jackson. Did that strike any responsive chord much here?

**\[33:32\]**

**A:** Well, for a long time there was a great deal of confusion over
exactly what happened, and still I don\'t think anybody really knows
what happened. But it created a great deal of concern here because it
set a tone that we feared might lead to violence, because it was\-- when
you get this many people congregated in one place and an incident like
that occurs, you wonder is this going to be the spark that sets off what
had happened in some other cities.

And frankly, we were not in Marion and did not actively cover it,
because we had three reporters and we had about all we could handle
right here in Selma, without branching out to other counties. So we
really were not in a position to have a first-hand view of what
happened, so basically on that one we had to ride with what the national
media indicated.

**\[34:47\]**

**Q:** The relationships now between\-- the sheriff I believe had
jurisdiction in the county, around the courthouse, carrying out the
orders, and then you have the mayor, the city police and the city
commissioner, Mr. Baker. Could you throw in a discussion of the
relationships of the mayor and Commissioner Baker?

**\[35:10\]**

**A:** Well, Mr. Baker was among the first of education law enforcement
people in the nation. He taught in law enforcement schools nationally.
Many of the current police chiefs around the nations and major cities
were his students. He was an academician. He was a professional law
enforcement officer. He was a moderate, even though at one time he had
signed a Klan application form accidentally I think, but they kind of
tried to use it against him in a campaign here.

He had been active in the mayor\'s upset campaign of the previous mayor.
Mayor Smitherman had a timetable for running for mayor and at the
insistence of some people, he had moved that up four years and ran four
years earlier than he had anticipated. And his win in 1964 was really an
upset. And I mean, now looking back on it, the city benefited from the
fact that there were not preconceived notions of the mayor of Selma at
that time, because they didn\'t know how he would react.

**\[36:36\]**

The mayor was a segregationist at that time. He clung to some of those
things. But at the same time, he listened to his advisors, and Wilson
Baker was one of his chief advisors. He was also his Public Safety
Commissioner.

**\[36:56\]**

And another man, who should get great credit for the whole thing, who is
seldom ever mentioned, is Arthur Capelle(?), who was the managing editor
of the newspaper, who we freed up to serve as one of the city\'s chief
negotiators in all items dealing with civil rights activity. He was a
brilliant, perceptive person. He was tough as nails, small guy, but
tough as nails. He would walk in and tell Jim Clark, \"We\'re going to
get you because you didn\'t abide by your agreement.\" I mean, he\'d go
in and tell him.

**\[37:37\]**

So Wilson Baker, Arthur Capelle, were probably the closest confidantes
of Joe Smitherman. And when Smitherman would waver a little bit on
things, they were there to prop him up. And so a lot of what happened in
the city of Selma I think a great deal of credit is due Smitherman
because he was willing to accept their advice, and also the fact that
those two individuals were there at this period of time in our history.

Now, the relationship between Clark and Baker would make a cat-dog fight
look calm. They did not like each other at all. They had had a previous
race for sheriff against each other in which Baker had lost, and Clark
knew that Baker was looming on the horizon to run again, so there was
absolutely no love lost between those two\--

**\[38:41\]**

**Q:** Even if there had not been a civil rights\--

**A:** It would not have mattered if it had never\-- Dr. King had never
seen Selma. They didn\'t like each other. So they did effect an
agreement, and this is misunderstood a lot of times because the city
gets bad publicity out of things that never happened in the city. The
city police would have jurisdiction over the city, the sheriff would
have jurisdiction on the courthouse square, because that\'s where court
met and he was by law charged with the responsibility of seeing that
courts were held in an orderly manner, and the city would have
jurisdiction to the bridge, where the city limits end.

**\[39:34\]**

So demonstrators were handled much differently in the city than they
were handled in the county or on the courthouse square. And it
infuriated Baker to have to sit there and watch what was going on at
times. It just made him\-- I\'ve sat in the car with him for hour after
hour after hour, and he was a very large man, he was about 6\'5\" and
weighed about 300 pounds.

**\[40:00\]**

**Q:** He was even bigger than Clark, then?

**A:** Right. Oh yes, he was\-- cast quite a shadow when he walked by.
And it infuriated him to have to sit there and watch what was going on
and not be able to control it. In fact, on Bloody Sunday when the people
started back across the bridge, city police cars and Baker himself
picked up people and transported them to Brown Chapel and the hospital.

**Q:** In other words, if Baker\'s jurisdiction had extended\--

**\[40:40\]**

**A:** It would never have happened.

**Q:** That\'s what I gather.

**A:** It would have been over his dead body, I guarantee.

**Q:** Is Baker a native of Dallas?

**\[40:50\]**

**A:** No, Baker was from Clemson, South Carolina.

**Q:** Had he been in the area some time?

**A:** He had been in the area a long time. He had worked here as a city
detective at one time. He had also worked for the Southern Railroad as a
special agent in law enforcement of the railroad. So I mean, he was\--
he had been here since the \'40s. So he was very familiar with this
area. And then he had taken time out of law enforcement to teach at the
University of Alabama, their school for law enforcement officers, and
had taught many other schools around the nation, seminars and so forth,
as a professional law enforcement officer.

**\[41:44\]**

**Q:** Now, Baker, with this coming on, was he able with financial
resources made available to him to increase his police force, or did it
stay basically the same strength? Were there any blacks on the force?

**A:** Baker was the first police chief, if you will, to put blacks on
the force. I\'m not real sure when the first two blacks came on. Seems
like it was 1965. But he did bring the first black officers on the
police force.

**\[42:25\]**

**Q:** Did Clark, since it looks like he has an army at times, did he
deputize a lot of additional people to increase his force to looking as
big as it does at the confrontations? Of course, he has also the Alabama
State Highway Department.

**A:** Right. Jim had formulated back in the late \'50s a group called
the posse. They were first started to help out in times of emergencies,
like we had two 100-year floods, in \'59 and \'61. And they had been
utilized day after day and week after week to pluck people from small
homes on the river of such vast devastation by the floods that older
people would just panic and wouldn\'t leave their houses and they had to
actually go in and almost knock the doors down and forcibly take them
out so they didn\'t drown.

**\[43:28\]**

So they had been used in disasters, and they were well-trained and they
were well-organized, and they had been a force for good in the black
community as well as the white community. But they gradually, as the
temperature of the civil rights movement began to heat up, then they
gradually began to move more into the area of enforcement or back-up for
the sheriff\'s department with crowd control and in making mass arrests
and so forth. They had been, like I said, had been in existence probably
three to five years before the civil rights movement came to this area.

**\[44:21\]**

**Q:** How much training in riot control did they have?

**A:** I\'m not real sure how much they had. They had done some I\'m
aware of, but I\'m not sure, you know, how thorough it had been and in
what manner and everything. I think you probably had\-- Jim probably had
eight sheriff\'s deputies, full-time deputies. That\'s about the usual
contingent that you have in counties like this.

**\[44:49\]**

**Q:** I\'ve heard reports that Sheriff Clark and the posse went to
Birmingham at the request of Bull Connor during those protests. Is there
any truth to that?

**A:** There were some members of the posse along with the sheriff that
traveled in a number of counties. I think they were in Macon County at
one time. And he would be invited in by the sheriffs and so forth to
bring people to come in. But whether or not they were in Birmingham,
I\'m not real sure.

**\[45:27\]**

**Q:** Did Clark try to use this to expand his political base, which he
was unsuccessful, but was he politically ambitious?

**A:** Well I don\'t think he did this to do that, use that as a motive
for doing it. No. Sometimes I got the impression that Jim ran for other
offices like Public Service Commissioner because at that time all the
utilities gave every candidate a certain amount of money. So you could
print up about 200 cards and you could make a little money on the side
by the contributions.

**\[46:07\]**

**Q:** I take it from what you say, in Alabama the sheriff\'s position
was not as profitable as in Mississippi, because it\'s also in
Mississippi this time there\'s a tax collector and received a percentage
of the taxes collected, so it was the best-paid public office in the
state.

**A:** No. There was another office for that here. Sheriff was pretty
well relegated to being a law enforcement and serving civil papers and
so forth.

**Q:** Would you discuss\--

END OF #504

BEGINNING OF #505

**\[00:14\]**

**Q:** We\'re starting on reel two and Mr. Wallace is going to review
with us now Bloody Sunday. Was there any alert? And then describe your
recollection of events.

**A:** Well of course starting point was Brown Chapel, as had always
been the case after the demonstrations ensued. And on this particular
day there was an absence of national media. Dr. King was not here. It
was obvious to those of us in the media, especially in the local media,
that this was to be a symbolic gesture. It was not a serious march to
Montgomery. Ladies had on high-heel shoes, the absence of Dr. King and
the national media and so forth.

**\[01:11\]**

So we felt like it was strictly a symbolic gesture to cross a bridge, go
to a point about 100 yards beyond the bridge and probably turn around
and come back, and be able to say that we did it even though they told
us not to do it.

**\[01:28\]**

Back then, of course, the big argument was that Highway 80 was a federal
highway, it was a US Defense highway, it was heavily traveled. This is
before the days of the interstate system. And it was a major artery in
the South from coast to coast, so there was a lot of interstate traffic
on the highway. So the argument was we can\'t tie up, or you can\'t tie
up a federal highway. And that was the argument used by the state
troopers, is we can\'t let you tie up Highway 80 because we've got a
traffic problem out here with all these trucks and cars, what are we
going to do with them?

But anyway, the march ensued with probably 250 to 300 people, about 2:30
in the afternoon, 3:00.

**Q:** Where were you at this time?

**\[02:17\]**

**A:** I was accompanying the marchers from Brown Chapel across the
bridge. And I felt confident, because Mr. Baker had cleared everything,
and there was\-- a lot of people have trouble understanding this too,
that there was a lot more give and take between authorities and the
planners of the demonstrations than most people realized. It wasn\'t an
adversarial type situation. They\'d get together at night and sit down
and say, \"Okay, this is what we want to do today, we want to march to
the courthouse.\" And Mr. Baker would say, \"Well now, you\'re going to
need to march three abreast so we don\'t tie up the whole street.\" And
they would agree and there would be some give and take.

**\[03:08\]**

**Q:** I think you said your boss was in on that.

**A:** Right. And there would be give and take on this thing. So it
wasn\'t like there wasn\'t communication going on, especially between
Baker and the people, and the city itself, just from a logistical
standpoint. So they basically knew what the other group was going to do
all day. There wasn\'t any surprises most of the time. On this
particular Sunday, Baker had assumed his usual jurisdiction and he could
carry them to the bridge and that was it, and then they were in the
hands of the sheriff and the state troopers.

**\[03:48\]**

Well, when we topped the bridge, I could see that there was a formidable
line of troopers beyond, about a hundred yards beyond the bridge. So
they moved on down to the line and Major John Cloud, who was head of the
state troopers, told them they could not march beyond that point, to
turn around and go back.

**\[04:14\]**

And at some point, pushing and shoving started. And of course the
troopers were masked with billy clubs held about chest high, and they
moved in and started a panic, because people started falling, because
when you pushed against them with those clubs, people started falling,
they started grasping at the clubs and so forth, and then they started
using the clubs in a different sort of way. And then they started firing
tear gas. And of course that really set off a panic then among the
people that were there.

And I was gassed along with everybody else. In fact, a state trooper
intentionally gassed a couple of us for some reason, we never knew why,
because he knew both of us and knew we were reporters. But I had just
gotten out of the service about November of 1964 and had been through
gas drills just before I got out, so I knew how to treat tear gas. But
of course none of these people in the march had ever been through gas
drills; they didn\'t know what to do.

**\[05:22\]**

So then they brought in the horses with the posse and the horses, and
they began riding through the group, and that\'s when injuries occurred.
And it\'s true that some of the injuries were a result of panic and
people running over each other. It was like a scene at a rock concert
now I guess you\'d say, when people kill each other, trying to get away
from a horse running at you and clubs swinging at you and things like
this. And it was just an unbelievable scene that we had hoped would
never occur. It made you sick.

**\[05:58\]**

**Q:** Had you crossed the bridge when you were gassed?

**A:** Oh yes, oh yes. I was probably about 50 yards behind the bridge,
in front of a little Dairy Queen, on the side of the highway, not in the
line of marchers, but on the side of the highway.

It was a panic situation even among us, because anything could have
happened at that point. They had a collection of onlookers over there in
the back of trucks and so forth watching what was happening, and we
didn\'t know how many of those might get involved in it, which
fortunately they didn\'t. But you didn\'t know that. Somebody starts
shooting, firing away, everybody is in danger. You don\'t say, well
that\'s a reporter, we\'re not going to shoot at him. So we were all a
little bit afraid.

**\[06:56\]**

There were very few times during the whole movement that I ever was
afraid. I didn\'t fear it because it just wasn\'t that kind of
atmosphere, but that was one day that I was physically afraid. Plus I
was also very angry.

**Q:** Were most of the posse, Clark\'s posse, mounted?

**A:** I would say probably he had maybe 10 to 12 mounties.

**Q:** Did he mount\-- was he mounted?

**\[07:25\]**

**A:** At that time, I don\'t recall if he was or not. There was so much
confusion, it\'s kind of a blank there with me. I don\'t recall.

**Q:** You said that\'s the first day you met John Lewis.

**A:** That\'s the first day I recall John Lewis. I had heard John\'s
name, of course, in connection with SNCC and so forth, but I don\'t
think I had physically noticed who he was that day. Of course John was
one of the ones that got injured on that day too.

**\[08:09\]**

And as they ran back across the bridge, the organization, the logistics
of the marches were that they would be accompanied by a black ambulance.
At that time, a black ambulance service here, Anderson\'s Funeral Home
had a black ambulance service. And they would always accompany in case
somebody got hurt or sick or something, so they were there and they
began to shuttle people back. Baker began to provide people with
transportation back to the church, and then there were some private
vehicles that were used to transport people back to the church and also
to Good Samaritan Hospital.

**Q:** Did the posse and the state highway patrol try to pursue across
the bridge?

**\[08:54\]**

**A:** The people on horses did try to pursue across the bridge.

**Q:** \...(inaudible) actually cross into Baker\'s territory.

**A:** Right, right.

**Q:** Did any of them interfere in Baker\'s jurisdiction?

**\[09:05\]**

**A:** Right. But the sheriff, you have to realize, the sheriff\-- in
Alabama, the sheriff is the chief law enforcement of the county, and he
could come into the city if he chose to do so. The agreement they had
was strictly a gentleman\'s agreement and the sheriff could\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Right. The sheriff could have done anything he wanted to within
the law I guess in the city, and still could. Because he\'s a
constitutional officer. Police chiefs aren\'t, but sheriffs are
constitutional.

**\[09:40\]**

**Q:** Did following the riot, did it do like Oxford, a bunch of\-- as
well as a number that started pouring in, supporters of the movement
started pouring in after in the evening. Did you have a
counter-outpouring of radical whites on the other side of the area like
there was in Oxford?

**A:** No. That\'s the one thing that we did not have that I think set
Selma apart from some of the other areas. We still didn\'t have\-- we
had a little bit more\-- we had the JB Stoners, George Lincoln
Rockwells. We had a good healthy mix of people here, and of course we
had Malcolm X came in, I mean, from the other side. But\--

**\[10:26\]**

**Q:** They didn\'t come in with hundreds?

**A:** They didn\'t come in with hundreds, no. And fortunately we were
saved that situation. And still by large, 99% of the white population
stayed away. They didn\'t participate from an adversarial standpoint or
anything.

**Q:** Then Dr. King arrives.

**\[10:53\]**

**A:** Right. Well let me describe that night. That night was a
really\-- the leadership, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
had to do an excellent job that night to contain the people because they
were so angry. They re-grouped at Brown Chapel that night for another
meeting and they\-- it was at a point that the anger so welled up until
we really feared that there might be a spontaneous violence that night.
But they did a really good job of talking the temperature down some. And
it didn\'t happen.

**\[11:40\]**

But the national media was not here that day, but WSFA in Montgomery, I
believe, was probably one of the few, if not the only television station
that ended up with the footage that you\'ve seen shown thousands and
thousands of times since then. And somebody probably made a fortune off
of that footage. But anyway, it did make the national news that night
because they were able to feed NBC what happened, and of course
immediately there was an outpouring of support from across the nation
and planes were even chartered to fly into Montgomery to come to Selma
at that point.

**\[12:27\]**

If that incident had not occurred, then Dr. King I\'m told had already
indicated that Selma was dead in the water, that he had not been able to
generate any type of real high-pitch support for what he was trying to
do here, and he was going on to another city. And that reinvigorated the
movement and was a catalyst for the US Voting Rights Act.

**Q:** What is your first recollection of Dr. King?

**A:** Well I had known Dr. King\'s reputation, of course, from the
Montgomery Bus Boycott and from Dexter Avenue, so it wasn\'t like he was
unknown to us. Dr. King was\-- probably early in \'65, because see, I
was in the military in \'63 and \'64, so in the early parts of the
movement I was not physically in Selma.

**\[13:40\]**

Dr. King, of course, was a very eloquent speaker and fascinating
speaker. He controlled a crowd as well as any person I\'ve ever met, I
mean, as far as his speaking ability is concerned.

**Q:** Now moving through Monday till Tuesday, Turnaround Tuesday. Do
you have recollections to that 48-hour period, the attack on Reverend
Reeb?

**\[14:17\]**

**A:** Reverend Reeb? Right. As I said, once the word went out around
the country that what had occurred here on Bloody Sunday, well then many
people began coming in. And Reverend Reeb was along with\-- he was a
Unitarian minister from Boston I believe\-- and a couple of other
ministers were walking out of Walker\'s Café on Washington Street here
in Selma, and\--

**Q:** Does Walker\'s Café still stand?

**A:** No. I don\'t believe so.

**\[15:04\]**

**Q:** The location is there?

**A:** The location, I believe, is there. They had a fire in that block
in recent years and I\'m not real sure\--

**Q:** \...(inaudible) sort of catty-corner to the library?

**\[15:15\]**

**A:** No. Walker\'s was a little farther down the street. The building
is still there but I don\'t think it\'s a cafe now. It\'s right by the
alley in the middle of that block that goes up.

Of course, Walker\'s was a black eating establishment and Reverend Reeb
and a couple of other ministers came out of Walker\'s Café and they were
accosted by three white men who beat then. Reverend Reeb was carried to
Good Samaritan Hospital, a decision was made by the doctors there that
he needed to be transported to University of Alabama Hospital in
Birmingham because of the extent of his injuries. Tragic series of
events occurred from that point on, the fact that the ambulance taking
him to Birmingham broke down, had to get another one in. Of course, he
later died as a result of the injuries he received.

**\[16:14\]**

The three men were arrested and brought to trial. They were local. To my
knowledge, that was the only incident that occurred where local people
were involved in an act of violence.

**Q:** Were they convicted?

**A:** There\'s a gap in my mind there. I\'m thinking they were not
convicted. I don\'t think they were convicted, no.

**\[16:45\]**

**Q:** Will you now focus on Turnaround\-- did you cover that? When they
went to the bridge and turned around.

**A:** There was a symbolic march.

**Q:** Can you give us your recollections of that?

**\[17:02\]**

**A:** At that time I didn\'t really attach that much significance to
the turnaround march. It was kind of a dry run of what was going to
happen later on, several weeks later. And I think it was more to
symbolism than anything.

**Q:** Did you cover the march from here to Montgomery?

**A:** We carried it to the county line. As I said, we had three staff
reporters, and as you can imagine, by that time, working 75 and 80-hour
weeks, we were just about exhausted. So we figured if we could get them
to the county line, that that was about as far as we could go, because
we were just physically exhausted.

**\[17:51\]**

Because it was an emotional thing with us because, you know, I live
here, and I\'m going to live here after everybody is gone, after LeRoy
Collins has gone back to Washington and after Father Hesburgh has gone
back to Notre Dame and after Dr. King is going somewhere else. You know,
we all got to live here.

And so it was an emotional thing, an energy-sapping thing for us, and we
carried the\-- we covered to the Lowndes County line basically. We may
have gone\-- somebody from the paper may have gone the first part of\--
leg of Lowndes, but basically our circulation area and so forth, we did
not go into Lowndes County. *Montgomery Advertiser* basically covered
Lowndes County.

**\[18:33\]**

**Q:** Would you share with us your recollections of that day of the
part of the march you covered, from the time you left Brown Chapel,
across the river, by the air base(?).

**A:** Well it was a logistical nightmare, as you can imagine, to get
that many people out on the highway and marching and provide facilities
for them: restaurant facilities, comfort type facilities and so forth.
But the organizations involved did an excellent job in doing that. They
started probably an hour or two late from Brown Chapel because the crowd
was so large it actually overflowed the normal staging area there.

**\[19:25\]**

But it went off very well. And there was the usual somewhat jostling for
a position on who would be next to Dr. King and who would be in the
front line of the march and who would be in the second line.

**Q:** And who lost and was in the rear \...(inaudible)?

**\[19:57\]**

**A:** \[laughs\] Right. And of course there had been an understanding
that not everybody was going to march all the way to Montgomery. There
would be teams, kind of like relay almost, but the huge crowd would not
march all the way to Montgomery. And I think probably Craig(?) was the
point at which the numbers dwindled from the people who were going to be
here for that Sunday and then go back to Los Angeles or Chicago or
wherever the people that had flown in here, a lot of them. And of course
some of them came back to Montgomery when they got to Montgomery.

**Q:** When they crossed the bridge, they kept the bridge\-- they put
them on one-half of the bridge to keep it open, or how did they get?

**\[20:46\]**

**A:** They put them on one-half of the bridge to keep it open, I
believe. And that\'s basically where most of them had been handled.
There was not a bypass at that time. Now there\'s a bypass from Selma,
of course, that could have been utilized. So there were some logistical
problems.

**\[21:04\]**

In fact, in those days, a portion of the Highway 80 between Selma and
Montgomery through what we call Big Swamp in Lowndes County was not
four-laned, so that created additional problems when they got to that
point, where you could only use half the highway and had to put two-way
traffic in the one lane on the other side. But of course you had the
state troopers and you had the National Guard had been mobilized at that
time. In fact, the president of the city council was one of the
commanders in the guard who was mobilized to serve as marshals in
getting them to Montgomery, which is kind of unusual situation to be in.

**Q:** What was his name?

**A:** Carl Morgan. He\'s still president of the city council.

**\[21:52\]**

**Q:** Still president?

**A:** Right. He and Smitherman basically\-- he and Smitherman basically
have been there together for 27 years. In fact, he was mayor one year
when Smitherman decided he\'d step aside, and then Smitherman ran and
was reelected.

**\[22:08\]**

**Q:** There was a reflection of afterthought when we\'re talking to
Congressman Lewis on the incongruity of the bridge as a symbol being
named for a Confederate General and a United States Senator from
Alabama. Was that widely realized at the time or is that something
that\'s grown?

**A:** It\'s grown since then more. Little, if any, significance was
placed on it at that time. Senator Pettus, of course, had been one of
the political leaders in the black belt in the state of Alabama, so I
think it was a natural that the bridge would be named for him.

**\[22:47\]**

But another thing that has occurred since then is the fact that the
architecture of that bridge is somewhat unique in itself, and it wasn\'t
recognized until we started using the bridge as a symbol across the
country and people began to look at it all over the country and say that
bridge is kind of unique, it\'s not a normal bridge.

So the bridge\'s notoriety has increased, Senator Pettus\'s notoriety
has increased, and the significance of the bridge as a symbol in the
voting rights movement certainly of course has contributed to all of
that.

**\[23:25\]**

Let me just mention one thing about Bloody Sunday that probably hasn\'t
been mentioned before. It was never supposed to have happened. A young
attorney, Cecil Jackson, Jr., who was the governor\'s legal advisor, was
from Selma and was a very close friend of Mayor Smitherman. And there
were times that Mr. Jackson actually ran the state of Alabama, because
Governor Wallace\'s strong point was not day to day operation of the
state. I mean, he loved politics, he was a consummate politician, but
running the state every day was just not part of his plan. But he
surrounded himself with some people who ran the state fairly well, and
one of them was a young attorney from Selma.

**\[24:16\]**

And the agreement, the understanding, I should say, was that the
troopers would meet them over there and that they would tell them they
couldn't march and that they would have to turn around and go back, but
that they would not advance on them. Well somewhere along the way
between Al Lingo, who was head of the state troopers at that time, head
of the state Department of Public Safety, and Major Cloud, well the
signals got garbled. But it was never supposed to have happened as far
as the Governor\'s office was concerned.

**\[24:50\]**

Well mysteriously, several weeks later Mr. Lingo was back in private
life and was no longer head of the state troopers. It was never
indicated that that was the reason, but the feeling among us always was
that Colonel Lingo lost his job because of what occurred here. And of
course the governor couldn't afford to get up on the podium and say, \"I
have fired the state trooper because of what happened in Selma,\" but in
my mind I have always felt like that\'s what happened.

**Q:** Was Al Lingo present?

**A:** No, he was in Montgomery. He was in the command post in
Montgomery.

**\[25:28\]**

**Q:** And Major Cloud?

**A:** Major John Cloud was representing him on the scene here, along
with\-- of course, they probably forgot to tell Sheriff Clark that that
wasn\'t going to happen too. But as far as the governor\'s office is
concerned, it was not supposed to have happened that way.

**\[25:52\]**

**Q:** You have pretty well described on the next question the press
coverage events in Selma and was it fair, you\'ve answered that for us.
How would you say on the national press?

**A:** Well there were days when we\'d be angry about the way things
were covered but we never blamed the guys out in the field with it.
Somebody back who is editing film and would edit out things that were
significant portions of\-- well, for example, the attack at the court
house of Sheriff Clark and Mrs. Cooper. There was always a great deal of
dispute over what actually happened before the picture of Sheriff Clark
standing over Ms. Cooper with a club or something. There were some
things edited out of that film that probably made the sheriff look in a
much worse light than he really was in that particular incident. Of
course, Ms. Cooper would certainly dispute that, but there was a feeling
at times that film was edited to place the city in a light that it
should not have had.

**\[27:08\]**

And it was, like I said before, you know, we live here and we\-- I\'m
prejudiced toward this city and its well-being. Nobody likes to see
their city portrayed in that light, when you know that there are good
people here too that you never really got to see sometimes, and people
who were working very, very hard to hold the city together, like the
biracial committee and things like that, that had ongoing talks and ha
actually made visits to businesses and so forth to talk to them and try
to get them to make certain accommodations.

**\[27:50\]**

**Q:** The next one is how has Selma changed since the march?

**A:** Well, if you look at a political scene, it\'s very clear and
evident that there\'s been a great deal of change. City Council has four
blacks and four whites. County Commission now is predominantly back.
Appointment of blacks to very prominent positions of responsibility in
the community. Residential patterns in the city. There\'s only one
subdivision in the city that does not have a fairly significant black
residency yet and that is an economic factor, not a racial factor there.

**\[28:43\]**

So there have been many, many changes as a result of the Voting Rights
Act and the ballot box power that citizens have acquired. Blacks
actually have voting strength that outnumbers whites in the city of
Selma and Dallas County at this time. White politicians learned early on
that they probably would not be elected unless they got black votes, so
they went out and spoke in black churches and campaigned in black
neighborhoods.

**\[29:26\]**

It has been a little harder for black politicians to do the same. That
became an issue in the federal court case here during the longstanding
county commission redistricting suit. And I think that we\'re beginning
to see more and more of political candidates campaigning, period. Not
campaigning just for black votes but for white votes.

Mayor Smitherman, of course, has always bragged about the number of
black votes that he gets, even running against, for example, against
Reverend Reese for mayor. Mayor\'s estimate was he got 12% of the black
vote. Other estimates were that he got about 8%. But he did get some
black vote. Of course some of them were people who were politically
obligated to him because he has black department heads and people who
have been his friends over the years.

**\[30:30\]**

But I think if I were teaching political science at a major university
in this country I would bring my class to Selma, Alabama for field work
in looking at how the emerging political system in a multiracial society
is working. It\'s very interesting, because you\'ve got Deep South
politics involved, and then you have an emerging political system that
defies all the imagination of forefathers of the black belt.

**\[31:07\]**

**Q:** I noticed in the papers, though, there is some resegregation of
the schools, isn\'t there?

**A:** There is. We were, up until three years ago, we were making what
I consider significant strides at having a truly integrated school
system. We had some incidents that occurred, very unfortunate, that has
now led to a resegregation of the school system.

**\[31:34\]**

We\'re the only county in the black belt that has a basically integrated
school system, only city. Most of the counties that surround us are
99%\-- the public school systems are 99% black. And we had been very
proud of that. We had been very proud of our schools, because they had
been\-- we had students at Harvard and Yale and Auburn and Alabama and
all over the country who had done very well, black and white.

And the incidents which occurred, which are still in debate over why
they occurred, were very unfortunate. And a lot of the white flack this
time boiled down to a feeling of parents that it was not a learning
environment in the schools and so they left.

**\[32:23\]**

My own daughter graduated from Selma High School, which was 75% black,
25% white, but each year we were increasing the white involvement in
schools 2-3% each year. We felt like that by 1991 that we would be about
60/40. But that has now jumped to about 90/10, or 85/15, which is
unfortunate. The city cannot exist without a strong public school
system.

**Q:** Because these people, they have to go to a private academy then,
so they\'re paying\--

**\[33:01\]**

**A:** We\'ve got kids all over the country in private schools, and
it\'s a financial drain on people.

**Q:** What do you consider the march\'s legacy and its place in
history?

**A:** Probably the most significant piece of social legislation that\'s
ever been written was a result of Selma, Alabama, the Voting Rights Act.

**\[33:25\]**

The Voting Rights Act wasn\'t just for black people, it was for
Hispanics, Chinese, Japanese, because there was a lot of\-- even though
some areas of the country aren\'t covered by the Voting Rights Act,
still as a result of that, I think there has been a change in attitudes
toward people attempting to vote. Some of it was intimidation, they were
on the rolls(?), but they still felt intimidated. So I think, you know,
for us, we think it\'s the most significant piece of social legislation
that\'s come down the pike.

**Q:** So you think it qualifies as an actual historic trail?

**\[34:04\]**

**A:** Right.

**Q:** Would you, insofar as your memory enables you, sketch the sites
in Selma, and as far as you\'re familiar, going toward Montgomery, that
should be included in the trail, with your remarks on their present
integrity vis-à-vis their integrity in 1965, for instance, the
restaurant out of which Reverend Reeb and his two colleagues emerged?

**\[34:58\]**

**A:** Well, if I started in a milepost numerical order, I would start
on Broad Street with Tabernacle Baptist Church, which is near Minner (?)
Avenue on Broad Street. From there I would include Good Samaritan
Hospital, which was the medical facility that\-- and in the same
adjacent vicinity is the Fathers of Saint Edmunds, which is the Catholic
order that basically had been active in the civil rights movement in
Selma and Dallas County for many years. That was\-- I should have
included this in earlier. The fathers being here also was another
presence that contributed to selecting Selma, I think, because there was
a feeling in the education circles of what they had done for the
community and that they were advocating change in voting rights and so
forth.

**\[35:55\]**

From there, you would go to First Baptist Church, Martin Luther King
Street, Jeff Davis Avenue. And of course the focal point of the entire
area has to be Brown Chapel, which is probably a hundred yards from
First Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Street. All of that area
remains totally intact, physically and otherwise. All of those buildings
I just mentioned are totally intact.

I probably never really thought about Walker\'s Café as having a
significant\-- the Reverend Reeb\'s assault there of course was very
important in drawing attention from other pastors across the country
perhaps to somewhat. I never really thought that that was the impetus
that pushed it over the hump, so to speak. I think that came from Bloody
Sunday. But if there were an inclination to include that area, then it
would have to be in a circumferous route and not long the normal routes
that the march took every day. There might be that\--

**\[37:16\]**

The normal route, then, for most of your marches was from Brown Chapel
down Selma\-- down Alabama Avenue, well down Martin Luther King onto
Alabama Avenue by the, what we call now the Cecil Jackson Public Safety
Building, which at that time housed\-- the third floor housed the county
jail, second floor housed the police\-- Selma\'s police department, the
city police department, and the city jail. And the first floor had the
mayor\'s office and the city offices at that time, in that building, so
it was a significant building at that time.

**\[37:59\]**

And westerly along Alabama Avenue to the Dallas County courthouse, which
is of course across the street from the federal building where Judge
Johnson and Judge Daniel Thomas and so forth held court in many of these
cases, and it was also something of a haven for demonstrators at times
because that was federal property and Clark didn't have jurisdiction
inside that building. Federal marshals did, not Clark. So that area
would certainly\-- those facilities would certainly be part of it.

**\[38:44\]**

But the march itself, Selma to Montgomery march, went from Brown Chapel
down Martin Luther King Street, which at that time was known as Sylvan
Street, to Water Avenue, where is presently located the Old Depot
Museum, which has quite a bit of civil rights history in it. Right on
Water Avenue and to the bridge and then of course left across the
bridge.

If you were mapping out a trail without side trips on it, then the Broad
Street Tabernacle to First Baptist to Brown Chapel to Water Avenue to
the bridge would be easily \[sic\] to map, but if you pick up the
courthouse, the federal building, and Cecil Jackson Public Safety
Building, then you have a little tentacle running out from there, or
Walker\'s Café, where it was located at that time.

**\[39:49\]**

Now across the bridge, the first point of significance of course is at
the traffic light after you cross the bridge at Old Montgomery Highway
and Highway 80. That was of course where the incident occurred. Beyond
that would be the stations where the overnight stops were made. I guess
it was three nights that were laid along the way, I believe Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday \...(inaudible) four nights. I
believe they got to Montgomery on Thursday.

**\[40:34\]**

Once you\'re into Lowndes County, those would be some points of
significant interest. The spot where Ms. Liuzzo was killed certainly
would be one in Lowndes County. There again, you know, when you talk
about Ms. Liuzzo\'s death we always say Selma, but it was closer to
Montgomery than it was Selma. We always had a little problem with that
because three guys from Birmingham were involved in it. We never had
heard of them before. So we kind of got tagged with that one
unfortunately, and certainly we were devastated by the fact that anybody
lost their life, but from a public relations standpoint never figured
out why they figured that that site was closer to Selma than Montgomery,
but that was my own personal thing. That site of course is certainly\--
is part of it.

**\[41:32\]**

In Hayneville itself, if you get off of 80 there\'s some\-- I\'m not
familiar enough with Hayneville to start to try to tell you where that
would be. Somebody from there would have to tell you that, but in the
same way in Montgomery, of course the city of Saint Jude would be the
first stop, I\'m sure. There was entertainment that night from
nationally-known entertainers and so forth.

**\[42:06\]**

I think basically those would be the significant points that I would
think of along the way.

**Q:** Is there considerable local and regional support for that?

**A:** I feel there is. The Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors
endorsed the idea last year and we sent that endorsement on to
Congress\-- our congressional delegation at that time. We are very
active in promoting civil rights tours, the Chamber is. We do quite\--
both public and privately do tours.

**\[42:45\]**

We do lectures at Brown Chapel. We have the opportunity to have people
tour Brown Chapel. We have access to the building. We try to get someone
from the church to always host those tours, but if they\'re not
available then we have access to the building ourselves. We\'ve been a
conduit, the Chamber has, through which the governor was able to give
some money to help with the restoration of Brown Chapel. He couldn't do
it through other organizations, so we acted as a conduit out of his
discretionary fund to funnel the money to Brown Chapel.

**\[43:23\]**

So I mean, you know, we\'ve in recent years, historically, we\'ve been
involved in those kinds of things. I think Senator Shelby was a
cosponsor and incented(?) of the measure initially.

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Right.

**Q:** The final question I have here, until we get off on some other
thoughts you may have, describe the previous efforts to commemorate the
march.

**\[43:51\]**

**A:** Of course we\'ve had a lot of commemorative marches. I know at
the hearing here last week somebody suggested that we have one every
year. We about had one every year. It is difficult at times for us to
become involved in anything like that because there is a fierce feeling
of proprietorship toward that type thing in the black community,
especially by some leaders that for the better part of community
cohesiveness, sometimes you have to back off on things like this.

**\[44:39\]**

So I know we had attempted in the 25th anniversary march to put together
a broad-based committee to commemorate it and we finally backed off on
it because there was a feeling that we were trying to capitalize on it
commercially and this sort of thing. Of course, when you bring an
additional two to three thousand people into a community to stay
overnight it certainly is going to be economic benefits that accrue from
it. And I admit to that. I admit to advertising in *Ebony* and other
predominantly black circulations, magazines, to come to Selma and see
the civil rights shrines, museums, and so forth. I mean, sure that\'s
economic, but it\'s economic for everybody, not just for me. I don\'t
get an extra dollar out of it. I make the same salary if people come or
not come.

**\[45:32\]**

There is a feeling at times that people are trying to take that role
away from the black community, which is not true, but there is a
perception, and I can understand that, in commemorative-type marches. So
it becomes difficult at times to be involved in those things, so what we
do is we support\-- we have a supporting role. For example, in the 25th
anniversary march we did a reception for the media and things like that
that we could do in the periphery and not jump out front on. Of course,
we had done that in the \'60s too. Some young reporter said, you know,
if y\'all had done this in 1965 maybe none of this would have happened.
I said, but we did.

**\[46:29\]**

**Q:** Commissioner Baker is dead.

**A:** Right.

**Q:** Did he continue to live here?

**\[46:37\]**

**A:** Well he was elected sheriff after that, with the support of the
black, newly enfranchised black voters and with a pretty solid core of
white voters that he had amassed. He was elected sheriff.

**Q:** Did he succeed Clark as sheriff?

**A:** Right. He ran in the primary and defeated Jim Clark in a very
controversial election in which ballot boxes disappeared and all kind of
things happened, and they were impounded. It was riotous. I mean, it was
wild. Counting went on until 5:30 in the morning and one ballot box
ended up at the county jail. It was wild. Ballots were found on the
floor, been tromped on and all this kind of stuff.

**\[47:22\]**

But anyway, Clark won the primary and then Clark in the general election
initiated a serious write-in campaign against him, but Baker still won
in the general election too, and then he was subsequently reelected
sheriff another term, and during that term he had bypass surgery, and
also he had diabetes and they had to amputate his leg in the aftermath
of that, and his health deteriorated from that point. His
right-hand-man, who had been with him\--

END OF #505

BEGINNING OF #506

**Q:** Then after Sheriff Clark is defeated, what happens to him?

**\[00:13\]**

**A:** Well, he ran for Public Service\-- I think he\-- at some point in
there he indicated he might run for governor, but that never really\--
wasn\'t much to that. Then he ran Public Service Commission and was not
elected, so just kind of generally left Selma and has been\-- he was
later involved in a drug situation in which he was convicted and served
some time in federal prison. Has been out\-- since that time has been in
private business.

**\[00:51\]**

**Q:** Judge Hare.

**A:** Judge Hare served until his\-- until he died.

**Q:** He died in August?

**A:** Right. Circuit judges have I believe six-year terms. I\'m not
sure about that, don\'t quote me on that. But anyway, he served until he
was dead. I believe I\'m right. I believe I\'m right on that one. I\'m a
little hazy on that.

**\[01:18\]**

**\_\_:** I just have one. You had told us sort of a little bit about
the style differences between Andrew Young and Hosea Williams before.
I\'d like for you to maybe share that again with us.

**A:** Hosea was a cheerleader. He could work a crowd into a frenzy. And
then Andrew\'s job was to deflate them a little bit so that they
wouldn\'t walk through the walls or something.

**\[01:40\]**

But Hosea was a cheerleader and he would get people really motivated to
go out and march. And then the joke was that you couldn\'t find Hosea
after they went out the door, you know, he\'d get them in the back of
the room. Because he had suffered from very serious injuries in Saint
Augustine as a result of the march there, but he was a real motivator in
getting the crowd worked up fever pitch.

**\[02:05\]**

I think all of us who were involved fairly closely with him realized at
that time that Andrew Young had a future as a negotiator. We loved to
see Andy come because we felt like the temperature would be level at
that time, because he had a settling effect on everybody. Plus he was
recognized as the number one confidante of Dr. King and you knew that he
represented Dr. King and what Dr. King would want done, even though he
was not here. So you felt very comfortable when Ambassador Young was
around, much more so than you might when say Andrew\-- when Hosea, I
mean, was in charge.

**\[02:53\]**

**Q:** Do you have any recollections of Stokely Carmichael?

**A:** Yes, just in passing.

**Q:** Not vivid ones like you do\--

**A:** I have more of a recollection of Malcolm X than I do Stokely
Carmichael, because when Malcolm X came in, the day he came in there was
a great reluctance on the part of SCLC to let him appear, because they
really had different ideologies. Plus, he was usually accompanied by a
rather well-armed security group, and there was a great fear that just
any small incident might set them off, and that would not be what they
were looking for.

**\[03:40\]**

So they let him come in with the understanding that he would not speak
but he could hold a press conference. Well, somehow or another he
managed to get up on the podium anyway and he made a very brief speech,
and Mrs. King was ushered in to get up on the podium with him, and that
kind of short-circuited his appearance before the mass meeting.

**\[03:58\]**

And then he held a press conference in the room at Brown Chapel, which
got to be\-- we were all packed in there, a lot of people in the small
room. This one particular individual began asking some very irritating
questions and everybody was looking at him, wondering who is this guy.
We finish and we come out and we get through it without anybody getting
in trouble and police detective captain grabs me as I come out the door
and he says, \"What are you trying to do in there?\" I said, \"What do
you mean? I didn\'t ask any questions. I didn\'t say anything.\" He
said, \"Well one of the national media reported that you were in there
asking questions that had gotten Malcolm X very incensed and his body
guards incensed. I said, \"Man, I didn\'t ask any questions.\" He said,
\"Well I knew that wasn\'t\-- didn\'t sound like you.\"

**\[04:52\]**

So eventually the story, later that day, that night, they arrested this
person, who happened to be an escaped mental patient who had stolen a
Birmingham *Post-Herald* reporter\'s credentials. \[laughs\]

So I guess what I\'m saying is in the mix of all the media that was here
and all of the JB Stoners, George Lincoln Rockwells, James Ray
Robinsons(?), the State Rights Board, in the midst of all that sometimes
you really didn\'t know who the guy was that was standing next to you.

**\[05:28\]**

**\_\_:** Did Malcolm say exactly why he was here? Why did he come?

**A:** I think he came because he knew that he would get a tremendous
amount of national media. This was the\--

**\_\_:** But he didn\'t say so in his interview?

**\[05:41\]**

**A:** I don\'t really\-- you know, a historian working on Malcolm\'s
history called me about two weeks ago to talk to me about that and I
really can\'t recall, even though I covered the press conference, I
can\'t recall the content of it. I just don\'t recall. I admit I was
scared. I mean, I really was worried more than scared. I was worried the
volatility of the situation, and the fact that SCLC had no control over.

**Q:** I believe Malcolm X was killed about three days after he was
here.

**\[06:16\]**

**A:** In New Orleans, right. And the fact that they were armed kind of
made people nervous. The fact that his bodyguards were armed. And that
situation kind of made both law enforcement and the SCLC people nervous.

**\_\_:** How did the black community react to him?

**A:** Well he was a very fiery speaker and\-- I want to say like Hosea
Williams, but I mean, you know, he\--

**\[06:48\]**

**\_\_:** Did he appeal more to the young people, more so than the older
people? So can you say with his presence radicalism in the young black
community was much more prevalent, more so than in the middle-aged
community? \...(inaudible) Stokely Carmichael being developed in
instigating the young people to go to a more radical?

**A:** There was a fear that that was what his intentions were. I think
that was a major fear of SCLC.

**\_\_:** Just having his presence?

**\[07:27\]**

**A:** Right.

**\_\_:** I\'m going to have to go make a telephone call \...(inaudible)

**Q:** Do you have any more questions?

**\_\_:** No.

**Q:** I guess I don\'t have any more, if you don\'t have any.

**\[07:45\]**

**A:** I guess our\-- personally our fear\-- and when I say our, meaning
from the community standpoint, was that here we had another ingredient
in a city that already had so many ingredients that we didn\'t need
another one, another volatility.

**Q:** Did Rockwell and Stoner do any speaking or did they just appear?

**A:** They more or less appeared and the police monitored their actions
very, very closely.

**\[08:14\]**

**Q:** I guess Stoner is still alive, isn\'t he?

**A:** Yeah.

**\_\_:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Yeah. In fact, in those days we referred to him as the mad
bomber. That\'s before they ever, you know\--

**\[08:27\]**

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Right. We referred\-- he was referred to as the mad bomber, so he
was watched very, very closely. And his every move was monitored by the
police. Baker knew him, knew his history, and he knew George\-- of
course George Lincoln Rockwell, he had several of his people with him.
And so their actions were watched every minute to make sure they didn\'t
have an opportunity to do anything.

**Q:** Did Ross Barnett come over here?

**\[09:00\]**

**A:** Ross came over to speak several times. Off the record, I lost a
very good friend because of Ross Barnett. They had a big barbecue out
here and they were going to give away barbecues. We covered it and we
reported that less than a hundred people came to hear Ross Barnett
speak, which in those days was a pretty insignificant group of people.
My friend came and told me that he was tired of us underestimating the
crowds and this kind of thing and said that they\'d served barbecue to
over a thousand people. I said, \"Well we didn\'t say that a thousand
people didn\'t come to eat free barbecue, we said that there was only
around a hundred people to hear Ross Barnett speak.\" And that guy never
spoke to me from that day until he died. \[laughs\] He must not have
been too good a friend. But I had always\-- he and I had worked on a lot
of projects together and I always got\--

**\[10:07\]**

**Q:** But he never spoke to you again after that?

**A:** But he never spoke to me. And his sons, one of his sons on my
board now, we\'re just good friends and so forth, but their daddy never
spoke to me after that. That was sad and I hate that it happened. But
there was only about a hundred people there, I mean. \[laughs\] You can
draw a big crowd if you go and give away free steak dinners. I\'m not
going to guarantee they\'re going to stay and hear somebody speak.

**\[10:35\]**

But just, I guess what I\'m saying, is sometimes just little things like
that would trigger certain people. You never really knew sometimes.

**Q:** Did Governor Wallace come over here during the height of the
crisis?

**\[10:52\]**

**A:** I don\'t recall him being there during that time. Maybe once, but
that\'s it. I can\'t recall him being here. He came over here once, and
I don\'t remember if it was during the height or after that, and spoke.
But I believe it was during one of his presidential campaigns. Really
jumped on the national media with both\-- well he jumped on the media
with both feet, and got his crowd worked up. And we\'re sitting up on
the front row, you know, and I\'m getting worried, because he had those
people in\-- I mean, Hosea couldn't have done it any better. They\'re
talking about the national media and all this, or the media period.

**\[11:43\]**

As he\'s walking out he turns to me and he says, \"Jamie, I wasn\'t
talking about you fellows now, I was talking about the national media.\"
And I wanted to say, \"Well, Governor, why don\'t you tell all these
folks back here you got worked up at us?\"

**Q:** \...(inaudible)

**A:** Right. But George would\-- the four years after he was defeated
he would travel around and just ride, and he\'d stop by the paper about
once a month and just put his feet up on the desk. And we\'d all sit in
there and just talk, just visit. And he loved to do that, just touching
base with everybody. So we got to know him fairly well, and it wasn\'t
like we wasn\'t on a first-name basis, certainly most of us.

**\[12:24\]**

Of course he had a remarkable recall anyway until he was shot, of names.
I mean, if he ever saw Barbara one time he could next time he saw her,
if it was in Milwaukee he could probably walk up and call you by your
name. He just had a remarkable recall like that.

But then that was kind of an angry situation that night and I was kind
of worried.

**Q:** Thank you so much.

## 

## END OF INTERVIEW