Judgment Days by Nick Kotz

Author:Nick Kotz [Kotz, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

King's Balancing Act

His spirits lifted by his White House visit, King returned to Alabama to face a serious problem: disunity in the ranks of his forces in Selma. In keeping with the SCLC's pressure tactics, King lieutenant Jim Bevel had thumbed his nose at an innovation by Dallas County officials. The county, hoping to discourage the daily marches to the courthouse, had provided an "appearance book." Would-be voters could sign the book, reserving one of the hundred slots available for the next date on which the registrar would take applications. Contemptuously ignoring the appearance book, Bevel and a group of fifty demonstrators instead demanded immediate access to voter application forms, even though Monday, February 8, was not a designated day for the registration office to be open. For Bevel, the appearance book was one more "white man's trick," another delaying tactic, a meaningless charade. After five weeks of demonstrating in Selma, not a single black citizen's name had been added to the list of eligible voters.

Sheriff Clark responded to Bevel's disdain for the appearance book as SCLC strategists had expected he would—by first jabbing Bevel in the stomach with his billy club, then pushing him down the steps, shouting, "You're making a mockery out of justice!" When Bevel refused to retreat, the sheriff commanded two deputies, "Lock him up!" In short order, Bevel and all of his companions were in the county jail.* In the five weeks since King launched the campaign, more than three thousand protesters had been jailed in Selma and the surrounding area.33

Bevel's tactic of ignoring positive gestures by local officials did not sit well with the leaders of the Dallas County Voters' League. Fred Reese, the group's president, thought that the appearance book innovation offered hope that some of Selma's black citizens might actually become registered voters, not just foot soldiers in the SCLC's daily marches to confront Sheriff Clark at the courthouse.

King arrived back in Selma just in time to witness the Bevel-Reese dispute expose a divergence of motives and goals among the groups taking part in the campaign. Reese's priority was to win Selma's black citizens the vote so they could exert some influence on matters as mundane as paving the streets in their neighborhoods. "This is our movement," he told King. "You are our guests." For King and the SCLC, however, Selma was a stage on which to dramatize how jurisdictions throughout the Deep South had disenfranchised black citizens. Registering another two hundred or three hundred black voters in Selma was not their paramount consideration. Without continued confrontation and resistance by local authorities, King was convinced that the media would lose interest. SCLC leaders acknowledged to officials from the new Federal Conciliation Service that if Selma did open its voter rolls, the campaign would move to a county where officials had not permitted even a handful of blacks to register.34

As usual, King listened quietly for more than an hour to the respective arguments as Reese called for using the appearance book and SNCC organizers demanded that the boycott continue.

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