Marching on Montgomery
Plastrik, Stanley
The twenty - five thousand Americans who converged upon Montgomery on March 25th surely did not represent the "best" of America in terms of wealth, status or power, but—in the words of...
...Some were veterans of the movement (SNCC, Catholic Inter-Racial Youth Council, etc...
...Before long we were entering the southern outskirts of the city, walking through an all-Negro section of the city...
...Finally the emotional peak of the long afternoon came after King's peroration when 25,000 people, swayed back and forth singing "We Shall Overcome...
...The South will never again be the same...
...The point is that the power of this demonstration came as a surprise to him and his fellows in the state legislature...
...behind an equal number of people stretching to the very outskirts of the town...
...Coming from New York in a hastily arranged flight, one first became aware of the approaching tension upon reaching the comparatively moderate city of Atlanta...
...It was met with smiles of contempt...
...This was the road on which Jefferson Davis, one hundred years ago, walked to be sworn in as president of the Confederacy...
...No one who went through that exhilarating day will ever forget it...
...most were behind the windows of the somewhat seedy office buildings and stores that lined the street...
...Few whites lined the main street...
...There, waiting for the Montgomery plane connection, one encountered the first curious and hostile stares...
...but this was risky business...
...to find oneself linked on either side with two pretty, young Negro high school girls who shyly looked out of the corners of their eyes, was worth the long hours of standing in the sun...
...Who will ever forget his first view of the Alabama capitol building, flying the state flag and underneath a huge flag of the Confederacy...
...The restaurant waiter was openly aggressive, the groups of older whites in the lobby were abusing the newspaper and TV men staying in the the hotel...
...If the March on Washington may be likened to a declaration of purpose on the part of the American Negro, the March on Montgomery was his declaration that henceforth he will walk without fear...
...Martin Luther King, in my view, is easily the most powerful and impressive public speaker in America today...
...The passengers on the Montgomerybound plane broke up into two groups —the "invaders" (how many times were we to hear that word) and the white Southerners, hostile, confused, angry...
...Do not underestimate the significance of the Montgomery March...
...As the marchers gathered closer together to form one solid, disciplined, and orderly meeting, the only onlookers were knots of soldiers and state employees staring out of the buildings...
...There is no need to repeat here the speeches of the meeting...
...Not only does he find the tone, rhythm and words of the popular orator...
...His speech contained a concise and clear summary of the best American historical thought on the cause and role of supremacist doctrine in social and economic terms...
...The main street dips down toward the center of Montgomery at a slight slope, flattens out, then rises toward the state capitol on a similar slope where, around a bend, stands the capitol building itself...
...The March was already underway...
...In a few moments we were rolling along the now famous Route 80 toward the complex of red brick buildings making up St...
...The noisiest expression of hatred came from the office buildings in which insurance companies, auto sales stores, etc., were located—whitecollar sales people, insurance salesmen, clerks...
...It was the most natural thing to approach them, introduce oneself, and exchange notes...
...Only the marchers carried the American flag...
...more importantly, there were the people who, like oneself, were Montgomery bound...
...we came by the thousands, and stand ready to come again...
...he also understands the need to raise the level of his audience...
...We marched, white and black, Northerners and Southerners, into the very bastion of racism...
...Jude, the previous night's camping site, from which the March would be completed...
...Later, as evening came, I found myself at an integrated hotel in downtown Montgomery...
...The highway leading into the city was packed with an orderly, impressive, moving crowd...
...Many of these protectors had sewn small confederate flags onto their uniforms...
...The most impressive view of the afternoon was at the bottom of this dip—ahead were ten or more thousand people, marching six abreast and singing freedom songs...
...As we swung onto the broad street that leads downtown through the center of Montgomery and then upward to the capitol building itself, the first heckling from white bystanders began...
...others, like myself, were veterans of past movements and peripheral participants in this one...
...Jude...
...Stationed along the line of march were hundreds of the federalized Alabama state guard, a hostile, sloppy group of soldiers, many smoking, drinking coke and shuffling around...
...That this confrontation took place in the heart of the unreconstructed South only underscored its drama...
...But by now the March was so massive, its tone and spirit so high, that this heckling meant nothing...
...It was the most powerful, confident, and dramatic civil rights confrontation ever held in America...
...Gangs of young white toughs were already out on the streets looking for "strays...
...It dealt a smashing blow to the worst illusion of the hard-core South: that it can live along on myths of the past, that it can escape the harsh scrutiny of the rest of America...
...At the airport chartered busses were ready and rolling, to carry the new arrivals to the City of St...
...Governor Wallace handled himself in a confused manner throughout the day, now agreeing to see a delegation, then rejecting a meeting...
...My decision to leave abruptly was reinforced upon reading a bronze placard at the hotel's entrance announcing that upon this sacred spot Jeff Davis had been first proclaimed as head of the Confederacy...
...The twenty - five thousand Americans who converged upon Montgomery on March 25th surely did not represent the "best" of America in terms of wealth, status or power, but—in the words of Bayard Rustin—"all the best in America" was there...
...still others (most of the nuns and sisters) were experiencing the excitement of their first "witnessing" and mass action...
Vol. 12 • April 1965 • No. 2
