hundred ordinary citizens, armed them with clubs and cattle prods, and stated that he was convinced that all this voting activity was part of a world communist conspiracy. In May, when Jim Forman came to Selma to address the first mass meeting at the Tabernacle Baptist Church, the posse surrounded the church. Those inside waited, long after the meeting was over, until they felt it safe to go home.
"Do you know any white man in Selma—just one even—who is sympathetic with your cause?" I asked three young Selma fellows as we talked in Mrs. Boynton's home. "Not one," they said. "Well, maybe one," one of them added. There was a Jewish storekeeper for whom his mother worked, and the man would sit and talk with the boy in the back of the store, telling him, "Keep up the good work." Later that night, I saw a list of Citizens Council members who signed a proclamation in the local paper; the storekeeper's name was near the top of the list. There are over a hundred Jews in Selma, many of them businessmen, many of them— through conviction or through fear—members of the Citizens Council.
The only white man who openly helped the Negro movement was Father Maurice Ouillet, a thirty-seven-year old Catholic priest in charge of St. Edmonds Mission in Selma. Father Ouillet was called in once by a group of white leaders of the city and advised to leave town for his own protection, told he might be killed. He received abusive phone calls. Once, he told Texas Observer editor Ronnie Dugger, as he visited demonstrators at the jail, someone called him an "adjective, adjective nigger-lover."
With John Lewis and seven others still in jail in October, 1963, with Sheriff Clark's posse armed and on the prowl, with people afraid to go down to the courthouse, SNCC decided on a large-scale offensive. They had discovered elsewhere that fear decreased with numbers. It was decided to set October 7 as the day to bring hundreds to the county courthouse to register. As Freedom Day approached, mass meetings were held every night, and the churches were packed.
On October 5, Dick Gregory came to Selma. His wife, Lillian, had been jailed in Selma while demonstrating. He spoke to a crowded church meeting that evening. It was an incredible performance. With armed deputies ringing the church outside, and three local officials sitting in the audience taking notes, Gregory lashed out at white Southern society with a steely wit and a passion that sent his Negro listeners into delighted applause again and again. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform, ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. It was a historic coming of age for Selma, Alabama. It was also something of a miracle that Gregory was able to leave town alive. The local newspaper said that a "wildly applauding crowd" listened that night to "the most scathing attack unleashed here in current racial demonstrations."
Gregory told the audience that the Southern white man had nothing he could call his own, no real identity, except "segregated drinking fountains, segregated toilets, and the right to call me nigger." He added, "And when the white man is threatened with losing his toilet, he's ready to kill!" He wished, Gregory said, that the whole Negro race would disappear overnight. "They would go crazy looking for us!" The crowd roared and applauded. Gregory lowered his voice, and he was suddenly serious: "But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them."
He called the Southern police officials "peons, the idiots who do all the dirty work, the dogs who do all the biting." He went on for over two hours in that vein; essentially it was a lesson in economics and sociology, streaked with humor. "The white man starts all the wars, then he talks about you cuttin' somebody...They talk about our education. But the most important thing is to teach people how to live..."
Later, Jim Forman spoke to the crowd, making
"Do you know any white man in Selma—just one even—who is sympathetic with your cause?" I asked three young Selma fellows as we talked in Mrs. Boynton's home. "Not one," they said. "Well, maybe one," one of them added. There was a Jewish storekeeper for whom his mother worked, and the man would sit and talk with the boy in the back of the store, telling him, "Keep up the good work." Later that night, I saw a list of Citizens Council members who signed a proclamation in the local paper; the storekeeper's name was near the top of the list. There are over a hundred Jews in Selma, many of them businessmen, many of them— through conviction or through fear—members of the Citizens Council.
The only white man who openly helped the Negro movement was Father Maurice Ouillet, a thirty-seven-year old Catholic priest in charge of St. Edmonds Mission in Selma. Father Ouillet was called in once by a group of white leaders of the city and advised to leave town for his own protection, told he might be killed. He received abusive phone calls. Once, he told Texas Observer editor Ronnie Dugger, as he visited demonstrators at the jail, someone called him an "adjective, adjective nigger-lover."
With John Lewis and seven others still in jail in October, 1963, with Sheriff Clark's posse armed and on the prowl, with people afraid to go down to the courthouse, SNCC decided on a large-scale offensive. They had discovered elsewhere that fear decreased with numbers. It was decided to set October 7 as the day to bring hundreds to the county courthouse to register. As Freedom Day approached, mass meetings were held every night, and the churches were packed.
On October 5, Dick Gregory came to Selma. His wife, Lillian, had been jailed in Selma while demonstrating. He spoke to a crowded church meeting that evening. It was an incredible performance. With armed deputies ringing the church outside, and three local officials sitting in the audience taking notes, Gregory lashed out at white Southern society with a steely wit and a passion that sent his Negro listeners into delighted applause again and again. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform, ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. It was a historic coming of age for Selma, Alabama. It was also something of a miracle that Gregory was able to leave town alive. The local newspaper said that a "wildly applauding crowd" listened that night to "the most scathing attack unleashed here in current racial demonstrations."
Gregory told the audience that the Southern white man had nothing he could call his own, no real identity, except "segregated drinking fountains, segregated toilets, and the right to call me nigger." He added, "And when the white man is threatened with losing his toilet, he's ready to kill!" He wished, Gregory said, that the whole Negro race would disappear overnight. "They would go crazy looking for us!" The crowd roared and applauded. Gregory lowered his voice, and he was suddenly serious: "But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them."
He called the Southern police officials "peons, the idiots who do all the dirty work, the dogs who do all the biting." He went on for over two hours in that vein; essentially it was a lesson in economics and sociology, streaked with humor. "The white man starts all the wars, then he talks about you cuttin' somebody...They talk about our education. But the most important thing is to teach people how to live..."
Later, Jim Forman spoke to the crowd, making
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