Martin Luther King, Jr., on Leadership by Donald T. Phillips

Author:Donald T. Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

On Bloody Sunday national television networks broke into regularly scheduled programming and flashed across the country the violent and bloody scenes from Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Almost immediately, the public’s wrath came down on local government and the state of Alabama. A defiant George Wallace, however, responded by banning night marches and labeling the SCLC staff “professional agitators with pro-Communist affiliations.”

The SCLC’s response was to send out a call to people of good will asking them not only to show up in Selma but to deluge the federal government with telegrams asking for intervention. Then Martin released a statement, which said, in part: “In the vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random, we have witnessed an eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America.”

As people from all over the nation, led by hundreds of white clergymen and nuns, began converging on Selma, the SCLC laid plans for another Selma-to-Montgomery march to commence on Tuesday. Martin King then gathered the entire SCLC executive team together for support and counsel. It was clear that a decision had to be made as to whether or not to march. Everyone agreed that it was Martin’s decision alone to make. While he consulted with both his staff and leaders in the SNCC, the pressure not to march became intense. A court order banning the march was issued by a federal judge, and President Johnson lobbied King to alter his plans. When Assistant Attorney General John Doar visited Selma to personally express the president’s wishes, Martin recalled the conversation: “He very strongly urged us not to march. I listened attentively. I explained why I felt it was necessary to seek a confrontation with injustice on Highway 80. I asked them to try to understand that I would rather die on the highway in Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience.” And Martin later wrote that “[I] held on to my decision despite the fact that many people were concerned about breaking the court injunction issued by one of the strongest and best judges in the South.”

On Tuesday, March 9, more than two thousand marchers gathered together outside Brown Chapel to begin the march to Montgomery. Martin led the group in prayer. “We have no alternative but to keep moving with determination,” he said. “We’ve gone too far now to turn back. We cannot afford to stop because Alabama and our nation [have] a date with destiny.”

Then the huge throng set out toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge—only this time there were both white and Black demonstrators—and they were comprised of politicians, labor and church leaders, entertainers, and people who had been beaten just two days earlier on Bloody Sunday. Martin was strategically positioned at the head of the column, along with Ralph Abernathy and other SCLC and SNCC leaders. When the crowd reached the bridge, they were again met by sheriff’s deputies, mounted police, and state troopers who shouted orders to cease and desist.

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