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Box 16, Folder 5, Document 147
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�Several hundred demonstrators were forced to stand on Dexter Ave1me in front of the State Capitol at Montgomery. On the
night of March 10, 1965, these demonstrators, who knew that once they left the area they would not be able to return, urinated
en masse in the street on the signal of James Forman, SNCC ExecJJtiVe Director. "All right," Forman shoute<)l, "Everyone
stand up and relieve yourself." Almost everyone did. Some arrests were made of men who went to obscene extremes in exposing themselves to local police officers.
�The True SELMA Story
Albert C. (Buck) Persons has lived in
Birmingham, Alabama for 15 years. As
a stringer for LIFE and managing editor
of a metropolitan weekly newspaper he
covered the Birmingham demonstrations
in 1963. On a special assignment for Congressman William L. Dickinson of Alabama he investigated the Selma-Montgomery demonstrations in March, 1965.
In 1961 Persons was one of a handful of
pilots hired to support the invasion of
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. His story on
this two years later led to the admission
by President Kennedy that four American flyers had died in combat over the
beaches of Southern Cuba in an effort to
drive Fidel Castro from the armed Soviet
garrison that had been set up 90 miles
off the coast of the United States. After
interviewing scores of people who were
eye-witnesses to the Selma-Montgomery march, Mr. Persons has written
the articles published here. In summation he says, "The greatest obstacle
in the Negro's search for "freedom" is the Negro himself and the leaders
he has chosen to follow.
CONTENTS
Page 2
Black Kni_g ht of the Civil Rights Movement
In ten short years Martin Luther King has risen to a · position of leadership and
political influence never before approached by a Negro in America. Many people
in both races today question his associations and his ultimate goals. Down what road
,is King leading his race in the United States - is it toward freedom, or is it back
into slavery?
Sex and Civil Rights -
The True Selma Story
Page 4
Was the widespr.ead misbehavior prevalent on the Selma-to-Montgomery march onlyto-be-expected youthful protests against established mores, or was it an integral part
of the planned demonstration, calculated to provoke and to incite. Here are sworn
statements of eye-witnesses.
Bayard and Ralph, Just a Couple of the Boys
Page 13
In a so-called Christian movement morality would seem to play an important part.
Here are the unsavory police and court records of the leaders of the civil rights
movement.
How "Images" Are Created
Page 16
A photograph, which stops a split-second of action, can say anything an editor wants
it to say. Here is the story, by a LIFE "stringer" of how the Birmingham " image"
was created.
Page 20
Martin Luther King and Communism
The complete files of a Communist front organization were taken in a raid in New
Orleans. These files are a documented record of more than 25 vears of subversive
activity, mostly in the field of civil rights. They offer conclusive· evidence of Martin
Luther King's Jong and intimate association with known Com1:11unist Party mem~ers
working in an organization which was set up by the Commumst Party of the Uluted
States· for the express purpose of subverting the civil rights movement in the South.
Copy rig ht I 965 -
Esco Publ ishers, Inc. -
Birmin gham, A labama
�Black Knight
Of The Civil
Rights Movement
Selma and Montgomery, Alabama,
were visited in March, 1965 by thousands
of sincere people who believed that they
participated irt a holy crusade for human dignity and civil rights. Among
these thousands were priests, nuns, ministers and reU::ious leaders from throughout the nation. They came, they believed, to bear witness to Christ's admonition that "In as · much as ye have
done it unto one of the least of th~se my
bretheren, ye have done it unto me."
* ·~ * *
Selma, however, was neither inspired
nor created by these well motivated and
sincere thousands. The fact that they
believed they were right, the fact that a
civil rights cause, per se, which inspired
their presence in Selma may be just, the
fact that their motives were beyond reproach, does nothing to mitigate the fact
that they were misguided. Selma and
Montgomery were targets chosen by the
leaders of civil rights organizations in
a long range campaign to exploit the
travails of a minority group in this
country. The leadership, the direction
and the control of the civil rights movement is in the hands of those who organize and run the communist conspiracy to subjegate the entire world.
This conspiracy we recognize as a threat
to the peace and security of the worldand we fight hard against it all over
the world. It is also a threat to the
peace and security of this nation, and
it operates among other places here in
this country behind the cover of the
civil rights movement. It is a· good
cover. Dr. Martin Luther King, head of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , one of the sponsors of the
TWO
Selma - Montgomery demonstration, has
even persuaded the President of the
United States to parrot the catch-phrase
"we shall overcome" before a joint session of the U. S. Congress. King has
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Any attack on King today is ·almost automatically assumed to be an attack on
the Negro's search for justice, freedom
and equality. The truth is, however,
Martin Luther King is .tied directly to
a communist conspiracy whic_h is aimed
at destroying every vestige of human
dignity, individual freedom and, incidentally, civil rights.
.,. * * * *
W h e n an Alabama Congressman,
William L. Dickinson, attacked tl:ie
moral degeneracy which characterized_
the behavior of a hard-core element of
demonstrators who participated in the
Selma-to-Montgomery march, he was,
himself, widely attacked for his protest.
When he said that men dressed as
clergymen participated in these activities, he was attacked for smearing the
church. He was called a liar and accused of spreading "garbage." The
"garbage" was not of the Congressman's
making, but it was there . It was there
by design. It was an integrnl part of
the whole operation, and it was calculated to incite and to provoke. These
are not s i m p 1y youthful protestors
against established mores. These are
professional and semi-professional agitators who know what they are doing. If
they, and the insufferable indignities
they inflict on the decent people in the
communities where they appear, were
not desired in the civil rights movement
it would take only a word from Dr. King
to have them removed. Dr. King did
not give the word in Selma. Nor will
he in Boston, Washington, San Francisco
or wherever he decides to strike next.
People in towns and citi!l,', which are
future targets for King and his "movement" should prepare themeselves for
the debauchery, drunkeness and open,
promiscuous sexual activity which occurred in Selma and Montgomery.
~ *
)c
What the people of the United States
must learn is that no honest person in
the South today will deny that Negroes
in this country have been the victims
of prejudice, discrimination and injustice. No honest person in the South today will deny the Negro's right to full
citizenship, equal opportunity and an
end to personal indignities they have
been subjected to in the past because
of tl}eir race and color. And no one in
the United States today should fail to
recognize that because the Negro's cause
is just and his protest legitimate, both
he and the white Southerner are particularly attractive victims for those who
would use this cause, and this protest,
for their own divisive purposes. Dr.
Martin Luther King is one of these.
This black knight sits astride the white
horse of the civil rights movement. And
Dr. King, if he is not checked will ride
'
it to its death.
~**
" Non-violence" is not Dr. King's weapon. Non-violence would actually destroy King-if he allowed it to prevail.
Violence is King's weapon. He must
have it. Violence and civil disorder are
King's meat and bread. It is what sustains him. He uses it to divide the South
�from the rest of the nation. And in his
efforts he has had a big assist from the
national press and other communications
medja. Today, almost anywhere in the
world, the name " Birmingham" automatically calls to mind vicious police
dogs, thug cops, bombs, and firehoses
mowing down innocent Negro children
on the city streets. This " image" is as
phony as a three-dollar bill. In Birmingham, and Alabama, there are violent uncontrollable elements of society.
These are not peculiar to Alabama.
There are large prison populations in
every state in the Union which attest to
the fact that there are violent and uncontrollable members of society in every
state . The problem is one which involves frailties of human nature, uncontrollable itself. It is not a problem
created by some ba.sic bestiality confined to members of the white race who
live below the Mason-Dixon Line.
According to the results of recent
polls only. a small percentage of people
in the United States outside the South
believe that Negroes can register to vote
in the South. Martin Luther King says
Negroes can't register and, unfortunately, most of the nation's press media
goes right along with him in support of
his "voter registration drive" - without
attempting to learn the facts . The truth
is King's drive in Selma and the Black
Belt counties of Alabama is a drive to
register every illiterate in the statewhich happens to be a violation of the
laws of the State of Ala bam a, just as it
is a violation in many other states outside the South.
King is already beginning to talk
Martin Luther King and James Forman, Executive Director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Selma-Montgomery demonstrations. The
hand at the right is that of a demonstrator who is attempting to unfurl for clearer
identification the United Nations flag. Many people object to King's use of the United
Nations flag in his demonstrations as reflecting his new emphasis on the civil rights
movement as a world-wide "class struggle."
about the civil rights movement as a
part of a world-wide " class struggle ."
He also suggests -we should pull out of
Viet Nam . Next he will probably have
something to say about the Dominican
Republic and Cuba. When he does, it's
a safe bet that his recommendations will
follo w a line which serves best the interests of the communist conspiracy . But
then why not ? For years King has been
on intimate terms, and has worked
closely, with people and organizations
dedicated to the communist cause .
The churches and churchmen, (the
biggest single threat to communist ambitions throughout the world ) when they
lend their support to King, should consider carefull y the garden path down
which they are being led . In a time of
much physical insecurity a nd spiritual
uncertainty, clergymen must often feel
a sense of inadequacy to meet the growing demands of their calling. The place
to correct this, however , is at home-
not in the ranks of King's marchers in
Selma, Alabama.
In Montgomery, late in February,
1964, Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin
Luther King had this to say: "To the
State of Alabama and its people , you
had better fasten your seat belts. There
will be no peace or tranquility until the
Negro has had his conquest. .. "
In Birmingham, in the summer of
1963, Martin Luther King was asked by
a young white man (one of King's supporters who feared for his physical
safety in forthcoming planned demonstrations) if he, King, thought it would
be necessary for him to take an active
part in the planned demonstrations. Dr.
King said it ·was not necessary. "You
don 't have to demonstrate," King said.
"We ·don 't want you to. We have enough
idiots out there to take care of all that ."
,:,
For sheer hypocrisy there has been
nothing equal to Dr. Ma rtin Luther King
since Judas Iscariot.
THREE
�NO BOOZE?
N B C commentator Charles
Quinn testified at length on the
Huntley - Brinkley program that
.there had been no drinking in
evidence on the Selma-to-Montgomery march . Quinn said that
he had accompanied the marchers all the way. The only evidence he saw was one beer can
-and that was his own. Not
that it makes all that much difference, but just to keep the
record straight, and Mr. Quinn
along with it, the pictures on
this page were taken at the
Montgomery Municipal Airport
on the night of March 28 (following the ,departure from Montgomery of thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in
front of the State Capitol earlier
in the · afternoon . The case of
Scotch W hi s k e y, incidentaliy,
was empty.
SIX
�?
Here, however, for those who are
willing to accept the kind of evidence
which 1s accepted in our courts, are
some of the affidavits of people who
were on the spot and have taken oath
that what they state is the truth.
AFFIDAVIT
My name is Mrs . Nettie Adams, and
live at 3555 Prince George Drive in
Montgomery, Alabama. I am now and
have been a member of the City Police
Department of Montgomery for over five
(5 ) years.
On March 15 , 1965, at about 9:30 P.M.,
my husband and I were returning home
from my mother's home at 622 South
Hull Street. We knew that there had
been some trouble with demonstrators
at High and Jackson Streets. We took
Adams Street to avoid this, but as we
approached Adams· and Ripley Streets,
we noticed a crowd of people. We
stopped to see what was going on. There
were white" and Negro people all over
the Ripley Street side of St. Margaret's
I
?
?
Hospital and across the street, between
Price's Drug Store and Powell Electric
Company. They were all kissing and
hugging. This one particular couple on
St. Margaret's lawn was engaged in
sexual relations, a· white woman (a
skinny blonde ) and a Negro man. After
they were through, she wiggled out
from beneath him and over to the man
lying to the left of them on the lawn
and started kissing and caressing his
face . At this point, a detective's car
pulled up nex.t to the group over by
Price's Drug Store, and my husbartd
said, "Let's get out of here; this is no
place for a man to have his wife." We
left immediately.
*
The day they marched on the Courthouse, the policewomen had to work
traffic downtown, and after a few hours
my husband came down and he ,and I
went into Chris' Hog Dog Stand for a
coffee break. When we came out, two
of the other ladies went in for a break.
Just as they went inside, a group came
from the Courthouse, hollering and
carrying on, saying, "We are Communists and we belong to the John Birch
Society." They stopped in front of Chris'
and this red-haired woman and Negro
man started making love and embracing one another, as if they wanted someone to try and stop them . I stayed there
because I was afraid they were going in
Chris' and I wanted to be able to call
for help. I didn't want our two policewomen or anyone to get hurt.
On March 31, the day they had the
funeral to place the ten coffins on the
Capitol steps, I was placed at the intersection of Wilkerson and Montgomery
Streets to hold the traffic . As they
passed me, they started laughing real
loud and some of them hollered, "She's
a segregationist, you can tell ; she just
looks like one." At one time during the
day, before the parade started, there
was a crowd gathering on the Dexter
Avenue Bap-tist Church steps and in
front of the church. A Negro boy· was
lying backwards across the hood of a
SEVEN
_I
�The interesting thing about the human race is that it comes in so many different sizes and shapes. Here is a good cross
section at Montgomery in the persons of some of the demonstrators who took part in the mar ch from Selma. The boots are
not recommended hiking equipment.
EIGHT
�car parked in front of the church and
a white girl was leaning over him from
the other side of the car, kissing him
about the face .
About 5:30 that evening, March 31,
a group of Negroes coming from the
demonstration was in the second block
of Dexter Avenue. They started yelling
all together, " Them white sons of
bitches , we will cut their asses off." I
called for a patrol car. They were
headed for the first block of Dexter,
and just as they got to the corner they
started singing r eal loud, " We Shall
Overcome," and " We Want Our Freedom, and We Want It This Year." The
officer working the first block of Dexter,
M. E . Furr, noticed them and began to
follow them. They split up. He followed
a group of four into H. L. Green's and
back out. By this time, the patrol car
was there and we approached them and
told them they were under arrest. There
were three (3) juveniles and one adult,
Babette Hadley, 26 years old, who lived
on Ludie Street in Montgomery. Babette
Hadley started fighting Officer Rodgers,
saying that she wasn 't getting in that
damned car ; he would have to kill her
first and she was ready to die for the
cause. She had an umb rella and was
swinging it at him. He took it away
from her and put her in the car . After
she got to jail, they discovered that she
was drinking. I called the jail to see
if she had made . bond or if I would have to go to court the next morning. I
talked with Security Officer Lawr ence
who said that she had not made bond'.
I told him that it looked as though I
would be in court the next morning. He
said, " Yes, if she sobers up enough."
I stated that I had not known that she
was drinking, since I had been warned
by my supervisors not to get close and
risk getting hurt, but that I knew that
she was acting strangely. He said that
she was drunk. I called Chief Lackey,
because I knew that he had been tied
up at the Capitol that day and probably
did not know about this arrest. He said
that he didn 't know about it and would
call the jail. I later called the jail and
.talked with Sgt. Grady Arnette. He told
me that Chief Lackey had called and
that she had quieted down and made a
phone call , and that she would probably
make t: wnd . I asked him if she was
drunk, a nd he told me that she was
dri nking quite a bit. She didn't i;nake
bond and was charged with disorderly
conduct and fined $25 and costs in court
the next morning.
I also worked at the jail two nights
when we had to make quite a few
arrests . I shook down the women pris-
oners, and most of them had no underpants on .
(sl NETTIE ADAMS
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this 3rd day of April, 1965.
(s l Albert Marvin, Sr.
Notary Public
My commission expires 1-18-67.
:j: * *· *
AFFIDAVIT
My name is ------------------------· I am a
Negro thirty-two years old and a lifelong resident of Montgomery, Alabama .
I live at._ _____ _______________ Street in Montgomery. I am employed at ------------------·
During a three-day period which I
believe to be around March 8, 9, and
10, 1965, a great many people began to
arrive in Montgomery to demonstrate
here and to get ready for the march
from Selma to Montgomery. During this
period, I was frequently in and around
the Ben Moore Hotel , a Negro hotel at
902 Highland Avenue, which was headquarters of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee on the corner of
J ackson and High Streets. Many of the
outside demopstrators stayed at the Ben
Moore Hotel and in the neighborhood .
One man whom I saw freque_ntly during
this period was dressed as a priest. I
was later told by a SNCC staff worker,
whose name was Randy, that this
priest's name is Lennon Sweat, and that
he is from Philadelphia. When I saw
him he was usually drinking wine or
whiskey in company with Negro boys
and girls . On one occasion, I saw him
go into the back room at SNCC headquarters with a Negro girl. I saw them
begin to take their clothes off. I did not
see what they did. Later the girl told
me that this priest, Sweat, had paid her
· $12. I, myself, had seen this priest hand
the girl some money before they went
back .
SNCC headquarters. was located in a
building with a large room up front
which was used for an office. Off this
room , in back, was a smaller room in
which were about twelve to fifteen canvas cots. During the period l am talking a bout, men and women .u sed this
room fo r sex freely and openly and without interfe rence. On one occasion, I saw
J ames F orman, Executive Director of
SNCC, and a red-haired white girl whose
name is R achel, on one of the cots together. They engaged in sexual inter course, as well as an a bnormal sex act
which consisted of each of the two
manipulating the other's private parts
with their mouths simul taneously. Forman and the girl, Rachel, made no
effort to hide their actions .
During this same period, March 8,
9 and 10, a large number of young dem-
onstrators of both races and sexes occupied the J a c k s o n Street Baptist
Church for approximately forty - eight
hours. These were not members of the
church, or at least most of them were
not, but people who had come from out
of town. J would estimate that there
were at least two hundred involved. In
spite of pleas from the minister and
other members of the church, these people would not leave. I saw young boys
and girls drinking beer and whiskey in
the church and having wild parties in
general. They left the bottles and cans
all over the church. I saw numerous
instances of boys and girls of both races
hugging and kissing and fondling one
another openly in the church. On one
occasion, I saw a Negro boy and a white
girl engaged in sexual intercourse on the
floor of the church. At this time the
church was packed and the couple did
nothing to hide their actions. While they
were engaged in this act of sexual intercourse, other boys and girls stood
around and watched, laughing and joking.
This statement, which I make freely
and of my own accord, and which has
been read back to me, represents incidents which I have personally witnessed .
Subscribed and sworn to this
day of April , 1965.
Signed.
Notary Public.
~:
AFFIDAVIT
My name is James Duke. I am a
Captain in the Sheriff's Office of Montgomery County, Alabama, and I reside
at 516 Forest Hills Dr., Montgomery,
Alabama . On March 10, 1965, at approximately 1 : 20 p.m., I , in my official
capacity as a Captain of the Sheriff's
Office, along with other law officers of
the City of Montgomery and the State
of Alabama, was on duty on Dexter
Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama. in
the block as it ends at the front door of
the Alabama State Capitol Building. A
group of demonstrators arrived and
were prevented from going any fur ther
in their march to the State Capitol than
this particular block. ·T hese demonstrators, numbering more than two hund red
were told to leave and disperse but the;
sat down and laid down in the s treet.
For the next few hours a gond many
of the demonstrators began to drift
away,, singly and in small groups. By
8:00 p.m . that night some 100 were left.
The group was composed of a racially
mixed crowd of both sexes, and included
adul ts as well as juveniles . At approximately 8:00 one of the leaders, a colored
man whose name I can not recall but
NINE.:
__ j
�It's fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama . The road is paved, and hard, all the way. This group of marchers
looks as if they had walked every inch of the way.
whom I believe myself a ble to .identify
from existing photos if necessary, stood
and announced in a loud voice to the
crowd " E veryone sta nd and relieve
your s e Iv es. " Practically the entire
crowd in every mi xture of a ge, sex, and
color rose and a large number exposed
themselves atid urinated in the streets.
I would li ke to point out tha t thi s area
is within the Sta te Capitol compl ex and
at the hea d of the ma in street of Montgomery, Ala bama , a nd is fair ly well
lighted. Urine began to course clown
the street in sma ll streams a nd into the
gutters a nd ran almost to the next block.
Two colored men were arrested fo r indecent exposure for pa rticula rly lewd
a nd offensive exposure of their pri vate
parts. The demo nstrators foun d it necessary to ta ke their placards and signs to
sit on after this conduct. The resu lting
odor became so offensive in a few hou r:;
that we had to get up-wind in order to
Escape the smell. I might acid that I
saw kissing, hugging, a nd fond ling between mi xed sexes a nd races . At a roun d
1: 35 a .m. on Ma rc h 11 , 1965, more tha n
12 hours after their a rr iva l, a cold dnzzling ra in bega n a nd the entire crowd
dispersed.
TEN
(s ) JAMES DUKE
Sworn a nd subscribed to before me,
George W. Dean, Jr., a Notary in and
for said State and County, thi s ·5th day
of April , 1965.
STATE OF ALABAMA,
COUNTY OF DALLAS:
Befor e me, undersigned a uthority , in
a nd fo r sa id State a nd County, persona lly ai:; peared Ha rold Sewell and being
by me first duly sworn on oath, deposes
a nd says:
On Marc h 5, 1965 , a nd severa l days
thereafter , my waitress in our dining
room did ser ve several mixed drinks to
priests a nd mi nisters in our restaurant .
Thi s was a mixed group of Negroes a nd
whites from out of tow n. Over about
two and one ha lf hour period , this gr oup
was louder tha n the ordina ry with their
conve rsation.
Thi s is a true statement to the best
of my knowledge .
(sl HAROLD SEWELL
Swo rn to a nd subscribed befo re me
this the 7th cl ay of April , 1965.
(sl ,JUD ERNEST HEWSTON. JR.
No ta ry P ublic.
AFFIDAVIT
My name is Cecil H. Atkinson, and
I reside on Allenville Road in Prattville,
being employed with the Continental
Gin Company in Prattville. I do hereby
swear under oath and under penalty of
perjury that the followin g facts are true
a nd accura te in every respect to my
own persona l knowledge:
My wife and I drove to Selma on
Sunday , the day the m arch was to begin . We saw many people taking pictures of the church , a nd it appeared
that everything was very order ly and
ni ce. We tried to drive by Brown 's
Chapel where the Negroes were assembled, but the street was blocked off. We
pa rked at the corner of Broa d a nd Water
Streets a nd sat a nd waited for the
ma r ch to begin. At approxima tely 11
a. m ., we obser ved a n a m bulance arri ve at Brown's Chapel and depart
shortly t hereafter, going toward Montgom ery, with sirens a nd blinking red
lights in operation .
The peop le in the car next to ours
were ve ry dist ressed about the condition of the nuns who were tak ing part
in the march. These people were Episcopa lians a nd fro m St. Louis. Missouri,
�,.
and had heard that some of their own
church people were taking part in the
march. The general appearance of the
marchers was disgraceful, m o s t of
the marchers which we saw were Negroes, but the white men a nd women
who were mixed in with them were
holding hands and arms with them. We
watched for King to come by, but never
did see him walk by. When he came
by he was riding in a station wagon,
and the station wagon rode along with
the marchers and I observed King getting out of it several times.
Between Selma and the first stop I
observed both men and women relieving themselves in public, all together
and making no a ttempt to conceal themselves at a ll.
At the rest stop, I saw King sitting
by the side of the road. A man walked
up .to him and ha nded him a slip of
paper , which seemed to concern King
greatly. He said, " We'll take care of
this at the next rest stop. "
At one point I observed a young
beatnik-type man with his collar turned
around to r esemble a priest. He told
me that it was "the way to get a long."
Another told me that he had been offered $15 a day, 3 meals a day, and ail
the sex he could handle if he would
come down and join in the demonstration from the North.
It appeared that the demonstrators
were making every effort to stir up
some sort of trouble. At one point, one
of the marchers said to me, " Get out
of the way, you white bastard." They
were making other similar remarks to
others sta nding a long the street.
(s l CECIL H. ATKINSON
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 10th day of April, 1965.
(s) Chauncy D. Wood
Notary Public, State at Large
Expiration date Nov. 17, 1965.
*
AFFIDAVIT
I , Lionel Freema n, a Captain in the
Alabama State Troopers, in Huntsville,
Alabama, do swea r and affirm, under
oath, and under penalty of perjury that
the following events happened or actually occurred in my presence and to
my own personal knowledge while on
duty out of Huntsville in Selma, Alabama, from March 9th through March
16th:
During the march, or attempted
march, from Selma to Montgomery on
March 9, 196~, myself and the men
under my command were stationed
along the north side of the road just
east of Pettus Bridge. While the march
was stopped in the highway, one of the
white beatniks, with a goatee, told one
of my troopers who was standing only
a few feet from me that he was being
paid $10 per day, 3 meals, and all the
Negro p - - - he wantea." This same
beatnik was observed for the next eight
(8) days in Selma acting as some sort
of leader around Sylvan Street, where
the street · demonstration was going on.
He was in the company of a white girl
part of the time and a Negro girl part
time. The next time I saw him after
The student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, one of the organizations sponsoring the march from Selma to Montgomery,
works on campuses throughout the nation to influence students and young people to become active in the civil r ights movement and in participating in demonstrations. Here are some of the students_ who participated in the demonstrations in Alabama
last March. The undergraduate in the center carries a school sweater with the letter "H" emblazoned on it. Perhaps he is
a Harvard undergrad.
ELEVEN
�L
Selma was when he came up Dexter
Avenue on March 18th .
While at the Sylvan Street "Berlin
Rope, " I and many others observed
smooching and lovemaking between Negroes a nd whites. A n e w s reporter
called me over to the side of the street
and pointed to a couple just to the rear
of the group sta nding in -the street, a
mixed couple, were in the act of having sexual relations. About this time,
a priest broke it up and had the couple
come up to the " Rope." It didn't seem
to bother any of the three and soon
were all gone from the front of the line.
On Saturday, March 13, they had an
extra la rge crowd of both white and
Negroes in the streets. They atte!IJpted
to scatter and go around the blockade.
One Negro who was standing beside a
priest, a nd both standing about three
feet from a line of Troopers , made several attempts to provoke a Trooper into
hitting him . The Negro waved three
dollar bills in the Trooper's face and
then dropped them , saying " Why don't
you pick them up, I know you need
it. " During this time, the priest just
grinned. The Negro man then said "I'll
sleep with a white woman tonight." The
priest seemed to think this was real
funny . The priest and Negro would
whisper back and forth a nd then laugh
out loud . I ove rheard three beatniks
talking, saying that they had been in
Clevela nd, Berkley, California and Harlem, and had come directly to Selma to
join in the demonstrations there.
On the afternoon of March 8th, at
about 6 p.m ., as we were turning onto
U. S. 80 a t the intersection of Alabama
21 , which is in downtown Selma , I ,
along with 30 of my men saw two men
dressed as priests a nd four young Negro girls walk across U . S. 80. The
priests were holding ha nds with two
Negro girls each . The Rev. Reeb was
beaten about two or three hours later.
One tall priest was observed for several days around Sylvan Street, always
in the compa ny of a Negro girl of a bout
sixteen years of age . Anytime you saw
one you saw the other , a nd usually they
were holding ha nds . .They were in the
m arch to the Courthouse in Selma on
Monday, March 15. They went to a nd
from the County Courthouse in Selma
on Monday, March 15. They went to
a nd fro m the County Courthouse holding hands.
On the night of March 16, at 10 p.m .,
a group of thirty-fou r (34 ) men, mostiy
dressed as priests, came from a Negro
church in Montgomery to the fro nt of
the Capitol. They st a t e d that they
wa nted to get on the Capitol step3 to
hold a " P rayer-Service. " They were to ld
TWELVE
that they could hold their service on
the walk but not on the steps. They
stayed until 3 a .m., insisting that they
be allowed up on the Capitol grounds.
After about thirty minutes , the news
media were told to get out of the street
and they moved across the street. Some
of the men claiming to be priests
cursed like sailors during these five
hours . At 3 a.m ., when they started to
leave, two photographers, apparently
in their employment, c a m e running
across the street. One of the men
dressed as a priest said, " You stupid
son-of-a-bitch , after all this time here
you didn't get a picture of us saying a
prayer on the bottom step." They were
allowed to kneel on the bottom step in
attempt to get rid of them.
During the eight days in Selma, several newspaper men who were allowed
to go to the rear of the demonstration
crune back up to the front and told us
they observed white and Negro couples
in_the act of sexual relations . They told
us that they had sent the story and pictures home to their papers. One told
me that the only thing he recognized
about his story when it was printed was
his name . He had asked to be allowed
to leave the Selma area but was refused by his paper .
A Jewish rabbi who was on the five
hour stand at the Capitol was contacted
by a Trooper in a barber shop the next
day . The rabbi stated that the leaders
had lied to him . He stated that, " They
told m e we'd only be at the Capitol
for ty-five minutes at the moi;;t, but after
getting there they wanted. to remain
all night." He said further, " They want
(Continued on Page 28 )
-
~~is gentleman marched all the way from Sel!'1a to Montgomery-accommodating
l,1mself to the u~s_eas~nably hot weather. He 1s a Canadian student who took advant~ge of the civil rights march to accomplish some research for the Ph.D. he is
workmg on.
�nstration
l told us
couples
1'hey told
and pieOne told
icognized
nted was
allowed
was rethe five
ontacted
the next
leaders
, "They
Capitol
mt after
remain
ey want
Bayard and Ralph
Just A
Couple Of
The Boys
,,
wdating
ook ad>. he is
Negroes in Birmingham were asked to kneel as Martin Luther King and Ralph
Abernathy walked past during demonstrati.ons in Birmingham in 1963. Assistants
preceded the two Negro !eaders with exhortations, "Here he comes. Here comes
the King of Kings."
W h e n the march from Selma to
Montgomery started on Sunday, March
21, it was joined by clergymen and
church leaders from across the land.
They had come to join a crusade for
human dignity and civil rights. They,
and thousands of others, believed that
their participation in this massive demonstration helped to dramatize a long
overdue protest by Negroes against injustice, discrimination, suppression of
their constitutional rights as citizens,
and a denial of their fundamental dignity as human beings. For many it
was an exalted and emotional experience without parallel in their lives.
Perhaps it is only natural, therefore, that when voices are raised in
protest against these demonstrations.
They seemed to be raised in · defense
of " police brutality," discrimination,
suppression of human rights and denial
of civil liberty. This is not true.
Churchmen, who have been called
to devote their lives to the teachings
of Christ, may· want to ask themselves
this question : If their efforts over the
past 2,000 years have been inadequate
to the task of eliminating man's inhumanity to man, how do they think
marching from Selma to Montgomery
is going to get the job done? Whatever the answer, the fact is there remains a faint and distasteful residue
of doubt in many minds concerning
the propriety of · the widespread participation by clergymen in the SelmaMontgomery activities. For many, no
doubt, Selma was a form of self-expression, an outlet for their own frustrations-which is entirely understandable. What they fail to understand ,
however, is that their presence and
participation in Selma not only adds
substance a n d dignity to the civil
rights cause itself, but also to those
who use the cause, and the cloth, for
basically evil purposes of their own.
Two ,of these are Bayard Rustin and
Ralph Abernathy, the one a homosexual who solicits on city streets.
whose life's work is the subversion of
the moral fibre of the youth of America, and who led Martin Luther King
from obscurity to a position of such
eminence in the eyes of many of his
followers that they actually kneel when
THIRTEEN
�he walks past. The other is a minister,
the "dear and abiding friend " of Martin Luther King and his most intimate
associate in the civil rights movement,
and a man who hides behind the cloth
to seduce a 15-year-old member of his
church congregation.
One of the men who sat with Martin
Luther King on the stand at the Capitol in Montgomery is Bayard Rustin .
Rustin was an organizer for the Communist Party for 12 years. Later he
became head of the War Resistors
League , the U. S. branch of War Resistors International. The efforts of
this world-wide organization are devoted entirely to persuading and assisting young men to avoid military
service to their governments - which
activity, if not a direct attempt to overthrow the government, is at least an
indirect effort which, if successful, will
accomplish the same purpose.
Rustin had already reached a posi-~ 2.8;8.•A .{!?ex P.-rvorsion .
tion of prominence in his chosen field
of subversion in 1955 when he was
called on to go to Montgomery anrl
lend assistance to an obscure young
Baptist minister who had organized a
bus boycott in that city. Just who
".called upon" Rustin for this assignment is not clear. Rustin did leave
New York and for three years ga\·e
counsel ·and advice to Martin Luther
King. There is a widely held misconception that Bayard Rustin rose to eminence through his efforts as Martin
Luther King's executive secretary. Exactly the opposite is true . Rustin made
King.
Bayard Rustin is a homosexual with
a long police record. In this enlightened age we are neither surprised nor
concerned with a person's private sex
practices. When they cease to be private, however, they become offensive
and call into question a person's mental
balance and standards of values. This
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Pasadena, California p.olice report on arres t of Bayard Rustin and two men at 2:30
a.m .. January 21, 1953.
FOURTEEN
sort ·of thing was widely in evidence
th r o u g ho u t the Selma-Montgomery
demonstrations. Small wonder-if Rustin 's influence can be seen here. Rustin
himself was jailed in Pasadena , California for soliciting two men .on the
street and then engaging in a homosexual act while parked in a car on
one of the city's main thoroughfares.
The Pasadena Police report of this incident is reproduced on page 14.
We are not concerned with Ralph
Abernathy's private sex life. It should
be an entirely private and personal
matter. However, when a person's
standards of personal behavior are such
that he can be found being chased down
Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama by an outraged husband with an
axe in his hand; and we learn further
that this person seduced the wife of the
outraged husband when she was a 15year-old member of his church congregation, and that he has continued to
annoy her ever since-then there would
seem to be ligitimate cause for concern about the man's moral character
and personal standards, particularly if
he is one of the leaders of what purports to be a Christian movement.
Such a man is Ralph Abernathy. Here
is a transcript from the trial of Edward
Davis, a s c h o o 1 teacher in Butler
County, Alabama . This is case number 8741, State vs. Davis, in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama , November Term, 1958, before
Judge Eugene W. Carter. Davis was
tried and acquitted on a charge of assault with attempt to mur der . Followi?~ is a transcript of the testimony
of V1v1an McCoy Davis. It is not pretty
reading but it should be instructive to
any who are interested in knowing in
what direction the civil rights movement may be moving.
*
VIVIAN McCOY DAVIS , having been
duly sworn, was examined and testified as follows:
Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE:
Q. This is Vivian Davis?
A. Yes, I am.
Q. And what was your name before
you became Davis?
A. Vivian McCoy.
Q. Did you see the girl who was on
the stand just befo re you got on ?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, who was she?
A. Ber nice Cooper Davis.
Q. Could you speak louder so these
gentlemen over her can hear it ?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis. She was
Bernice Cooper at that time.
�he walks past. The other is a minister,
the " dear and abiding friend" of Martin Luther King and his most intimate
associate in the civil rights movement,
and a man who hides behind the clotll
to seduce a 15-year -old member of his
church congregation .
One of the men who sat with Martin
Luther King on the stand at the Ca pitol in Montgomery is Bayard Rustin .
Rustin was an organizer for the Communist Party for 12 years. Later he
became head of the War Resistors
League, t he U. S. branch of War Resistors International. The efforts of
this world-wide organization are devoted entirely to persuading and assisting young men to avoid military
ser vice to their governments - which
activity, if not a direct attempt to overthrow the government, is at least an
indirect effo r t which, if successful , will
a ccomplish the same purpose.
Rustin had a lready reached a posi--~ 28_S-A _(~ex ~rvora1on_
c...•1- .,, r,, .....
tion of prominence in his chosen field
of subversion in 1955 when he was
called on to go to Montgomery and
lend assistance to an obscure young
Baptist minister who had organized a
bus boycott in that city. Just who
"_called upon " Rustin for this assignment is not clear . Rustin did leave
New York and for three years gave
counsel ·and advice to Martin Luther
King. There is a widely held misconception that Bayard Rustin rose to eminence through his efforts as Martin
Luther King's executive secretary. Exactly the opposite is true. Rustin made
King.
Bayard Rustin is a homosexual with
a long police record . In this enlightened age we are neither surprised nor
concerned with a person's private sex
practices. When they cease to be private, however, they become offensive
and call into question a person's mental
balance and standards of values. This
.RaPOtl.T
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(~on~. )
Pasadena, California police report on arrest of Bayard Rustin and two men at 2:30
a.m .. January 21, 1953.
FOURTEEN
1
sort ·of thing was widely in evidence
th r o u g ho u t the Selma-Montgomery
demonstrations. Small wonder-if Rustin's influence can be seen here. Rustin
himself was jailed in Pasadena , California for soliciting two men .on the
street a nd then engaging in a homosexual act while parked in a car on
one of the city's main thoroughfares.
The Pasadena Police report of this incident is r eproduced on page 14.
We are not concerned with Ralph
Abernathy's private sex life. It should
be an entirely private and personal
matter. Howeyer, when a person's
standards of personal behavior are such
that he can be found being chased down
Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama by an outraged husband with an
axe in his hand; and we learn further
that this person seduced the wife of the
outraged husband when she was a 15year-old member of his church congregation, and that he has continued to
annoy her ever since-then there would
seem to be ligitimate cause for concern about the man's moral character
and personal standards, particularly if
he is one of the leaders of what purports to be a Christian movement.
Such a man is Ralph Abernathy. Here
is a transcript from the tria l of Edward
Davis, a s c h o o I teacher in Butler
County, Alabama. This is case number 8741, State vs. Davis, in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama , November Term, 1958, before
Judge Eugene W. Carter. Davis was
tried and acquitted on a charg~ of assault with attempt to murder. Followi~g. is a transcript of the testimony
of V1 v1an McCoy Davis. It is not pretty
reading but it should be instructive to
a ny who are interested in knowing in
what direction the civil rights movement may be moving.
VIVIAN McCOY DAVIS, having been
duly sworn, was examined a nd testified as follo ws:
Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE:
Q. This is Vivian Davis?
A. Yes, I am .
Q. And what was your name befo re
you became Davis?
A. Vivia n McCoy.
Q. Did you see the gir l who was on
the stand just before you got on?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, who was she?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis.
Q. Cou ld you speak louder so these
gentlemen over her can hear it?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis. She was
Bernice Cooper at that time.
Q. Now, you say at that time, what :
time do you mean ?
A. When she was living with me.
Q. Did she used to live with you ?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. Did she know Abernathy at that
time?
A. Yes , sir, she did .
Q. Did Abernathy know her ?
A. I am sure he did . He come to
our house and he was acquainted with
her.
Q. Now, did Abernathy date you al
any time?
A. Yes, sir, he did.
Q. Did he ever have physical or
sexual relations with you ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did he have normal relations or
abnormal relations ?
A. Both.
Q. Both?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now , did you ever tell him that
you wa nted him to stop getting in touch
with you ?
Bayard Rustin in New York where he directs activities of the War Resistors League,
an organization whose only purpose is to persuade and aid young men to avoid
A. Yes, sir, I did.
military service to their country.
Q. Now, when was the last time ?
Let us just take the summer of 1958.
that he contacted you or that you got
band went outside. Apparently Rev.
I believe your husband went off to
in touch with Abernathy?
Abernathy went outside and I star ted
school , did he not?
A. He contacted me during the sumout the door . His wife and myself, we
A . Yes, sir, he did .
mer of '58 when he was in town this
were inside talking, a nd they were on
Q. Now, before he went off to school
past June, July and August.
the outs ide, a nd when I started out he
were you with him a t any time when
Q. Now , when is the last time he
was ta lking to Rev. Abernathy and I
he h~d a conversation with Abernathy?
contacted you before this occurrence·,
A. Yes, sir .
looked a nd went back inside.
A. He contacted me on August 29th.
Q. Ca n you tell us where that ocQ. Did you come up to them as
curred?
Q. That is the day . . .
they fini shed their conversation ?
A. That is the day that this incident
A. It occurred at his house, a nd it
A. No, I didn 't.
occur red. The incident took place.
occurred in-out at Loveman's in NorQ. And did you talk to a nybody
mandale.
Q. Now , about what time of day did
while they were talking, or did you
he
contact you?
Q. You say that there was a time
just stay inside?
A. He called me approximately at
out a t Lovema n's ?
A. I was inside ta lking to his wife,
two o'clock in the afternoon.
A. Yes, sir, it was.
a nd she went outside.
Q. And now, what went on in that
Q. Was it inside of Loveman's or
Q. Now, a t the time that he marconversation ?
out in front ?
ried; that is Aberna thy, I believe you
A. It was out in front.
A. He called and said he had been
were in the wedding, were you not?
Q. Now, who was there at tha t
trying to get in touch with me, and
A. Yes, sir, I was .
time?
asked me where I had been and I told
Q. Who asked you to be in the wedhim I had been out of town, and at
A. His wife.
ding, did he ask you or did his wife
Q. And by his wife you mean Rev .
as k yo u?
that time I told him, I asked him
Aherna thy's wife?
kind ly not to call me again. And I
A. He asked me first.
A. Rev . Abernathy's wife.
said , "I told you , I told my husband.
Q. Did yo u know his wife ?
Q. Abernathy's wife and Abernathy
and he had told you also that I told
A. No, I didn't.
and who else?
him," and at that time I hung up in
Q. Did she 1i v e here in MontA. And my husband.
his face.
go mery ?
Q. Edward and yo u?
0. And what happened after that?
A. No , she did not.
A. Yes , sir.
A. My husband was at a meeting.
Q. Now, when he first started going
Q. You four ?
with you and having these r elations
Q. Your husba nd was not home at
A. Yes , sir .
that time?
coth proper a nd improper, how old
Q. Were you all sta nding together
were you ?
A,. No, he was not at home.
ta lking?
A. I was fiftee n.
Q. And when did he come home?
A . No.
Q. F iftee n at that time ?
A. He came home a bout fifteen
Q. Well , how were you arranged?
A . Ye , sir.
minut-es after , about two-fifteen.
A. Well , we met up in the store and
Q. Now, after this conversation that
Q. Then what did you and your hushe spoke, and I went over to look at
band do ?
·
occurred out in front of Loveman 's in
some women's apparel and my husMontgomery when was the next time
l Continued on Page 25 1
FIFTEEN
�How 'IMAGES' Are
BY ALBERT C. PERSONS
Almost anywhere in the world today
the name "Birmingham" calls to mind
vicious police dogs, thug cops, bombs
that explode in the night and fire hoses
mowing down innocent Negro children
in the streets. If this were a true
"image" of Birmingham then it would
almost have to go without saying that
the general populace (some 600,000 ),
who are responsible for the city's government and actions of city off.icials ,
is some kind of breed apart from the
rest of the human race. Since this is
not true , it follows that the world-wide
image of Birmingham must be the artificial creation of some outside agency.
More than any other one, single
thing, the Birmingham image is a
product of two publications with worldwide readership numbering in the ten's
of millions . They are LIFE and TIME.
I worked for LIFE during the period
of the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations in the Spring of 1963.
In the May 10, 1963 edition of TIME
their story covering the Birmingham
demonstrations carries this descriptive
passage: ". . . furious , the Commis-
sioner <Bull Conner l roared for his
police dogs . The crowd in the park
edged back ; some hurried away. "Look
at 'em run ," yelled Bull. He saw a
police officer holding back a crowd of
white people nearby . " Let those people come to the corner, Sergeant,"
shouted Connor. " I want 'em to see
the dogs work. Look at those niggers
run.
No matter what else anyone might
want to say about how Connor handled
the Birmingham demonstrations, the
one thing every reporter who covered
Here is a !)icture that will look familiar to many readers. It is almost identical with one taken by the Associated Press and
widely distributed. TIME's caption with this picture in their edition of May 17, 1963 read: Birmingham Cons Manhandlin.,.
Negro woman. The building in the background is on the comer directly across the street from the 16th Streef Baptist Church
-Martin Luther King's command !)Ost for the Birmingham demonstrations., A short time before this picture was taken the
last of several hundred little children had marched quietly up the sidewalk where the woman lies, to waiting school buses
at the end of the block. The buses took the children to "jail" at the city fairgrounds. Most reporters, photographers and
police were at that end of the block when the woman above ca m e out of the d'o orway in the background. A lone policeman
st.ood on the sidewalk by the door. The woman spat in his face and struck out at him. She is a very large w.o man. She
fought and fell to the ground. She also took a large bite out of the leg of the squatting policeman. Several other officers
came to his assistance. It took four to subdue her-without hurting her. The Associated Press photographer and I each took
a picture. The captions us ed on his !)icture were not written by him , of course.
SIXTEEN
�Created
this story knows is that Connor at no
time allowed white spectators within
one city block of the park where Birmingham city police attempted to confine (and disperse) the several thousand Negroes who congregated there
every day. Knowing this, and having
rubbed elbows with Connor almost
every day throughout a several weeks
period, I questioned the TIME correspondent who had filed the report. He
was Dudley E. Morris, at that tim~
based in TIME's Atlanta office. Morris
got quite hot under the collar, but he
fina lly admitted that he had not heard
Connor make the statement, but that
someone else told him Connor made
it. Our argument took place in a motel
room in downtown Birmingham. P resent were several LIFE photographers
and LIFE associate editor David Nevin.
In spite of Morris' admission that
he had not actually heard Police Comm1ss10ner Connor invite tr 3 whites
down to " look at the niggers run," the
fo llowing week LIFE picked up the
quote a nd ran it as part of this passage-which is from their May 17, 1963
edition.
"ATTACK DOGS. With vicious
guard dogs the police attacked the
marchers - and thus rewarded them
with a n outrage that would win support all over the world for Birmingha m 's Negroes. If the Negroes themselves ha d written the script," (they
did J "they could hardly have asked for
greater help for their cause than City
Commissioner Eugene ("Bull " J Connor freely gave. Or dering his men to
let white spectators come near , he
said : "I want 'em to see the dogs work.
Look at those niggers run ."
This statement a ttributed to Bul l
Connor by LIFE and TIME is absolutely fa lse- a nd they know it. Both
magazines have a perfect r ight to their
opinions of Connor a nd they have a ,1
equa l r ight to tell their readers what
this opi nion is. They do not have the
r ight, under a ny norma lly accepted
standards of responsi ble journa lism , to
put words into the mouth of Connor
which he did not utter. By doing so
they fa lsely contrive to have Connor
create a n image of himself whi ch is in
fact entirely their own.
The w:oman in the picture above was drunk on Easter Sunday afternoon in Birmingham in ~963. She and ~undi:eds of others had joined with a group which left a
church deep m a Negro residential area. They were bent on streaming into town.
Birmingha m police ha d orders to prevent this. A stand-off developed a nd the crowd
of chanting Negroes soon numbered more than a thousand. Police were almos t
helpless in effo1·ts to disperse the crowd. The situation became explosive. The only
whites were the police and a handful of reporters. The woman in the oicture struck
out -0f ihe crowd at a _oolicc officer. He went after her. She fought~ It took the
five policemen pictured here to get her into a wagon and off to jail-without hurting her. She could, of course, have been subdued quite easily if any of the police
had wanted to use his club.
Here is more of TIME's view of the
Birmingha m demonstra tions. In the
May 10, 1963 edition TIME says : " Birm ingha m saw a sma ll civil war : whites
against Negroes," tit never happened)
"cops against children" (oh, come on
now l " clogs against huma ns." (Just
li ke ancient Rome where they used to
let the lions eat Christia ns every Saturday a fternoon. eh?l
And this: "It began when Rev. Ma rtin Lu ther King decided to throw school
children into the ba ttle lines." (Tha t
King is a real soldier l . "Police Commissioner Eugene ( " Bull " l Connor,
arch segrega tionist, viciously retaliated
with club swinging cops" (you see, they
can swing straight down on kids l "police dogs," ( they let the dogs eat the
six-year-olds l "and blasts of water
from the fire hoses."
" Blackbooted firemen" (the g ood
firen:ien a I w ays wear white boots l
" turned on their hoses. The kids fell
back from the crushing streams. The
water pressure increased. Children fell
a nd lay there bleeding. ··
Had enough? This would all be
funny if it were not so tragic. The
tragic par t of it is that millions of
SEVENTEE N
�--
~-=-==~-=.-- ,___.,...
A .. _ _ , _
_
_
_ _ _ __ _ __ __ _ _ __
TIME readers actually have a picture
of bleeding Negro children spread like
limp, wet rags all over Birmingham's
city streets. Morris must have waited
until after the bar closed to write that
one.
And so, today, "This is Binningham." The fact that it isn't is something millions of people around the
_ __ _ __
_ _ __
world will never know. TIME anti
LIFE, and all other journals, have a
right (I'm sure they believe it is even
a responsibility l to express their attitudes on any subject they care to approach editorially. These magazines
make no pretense of being objective~
so they are not deceiving their readers
on that count. It is unfortunate, how
The first time police dogs were used in Birmingham was on Sunday, April 13, 1963.
They were used• late in the afternoon to disperse a mob that had, gathered in Kelly
Ingram Park. Shortly after I arrived on the scene I heard shrieks and dogs snarling near the corner of 17th Street and 6th Avenue. I ran over and took the picture
at the top left of police officers shackling a Negro man on the ground. In the top
right picture, Leroy Allen, handcuffed, is being led off by a police officer. The left
oleeve of his sweater is torn and his arm has been gashed by a police dog. Negrn
leaders at the Gaston Motel, where I went that night with LIFE reporters, said that
Allen had stepped between a dog and a woman with a baby in her arms. Then
they said police knocked him to the ground whern he was kicked by Police Chief
Jamie Moore. Later it was learned that Allen had attacked a d'o g with a knife.
The dog was pull~d off and Allen was subdued. When I developed the pictures at
the top it was obvious that Police Chief Moore was nowhere around. The story
about Moore received wide circulation, nevertheless. Thus are "images" creat-e'li.
EIGHTEEN
_ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
ever, that their readers have so little
way of determining what is straight
fact aud what is, shall we say, only
"editorial licel}se." (If you can think
of another word, go ahead and use it. l
There is a lot of talk these days
about "police brutality." Martin Luther King and his civil rights leaders use
the phrase constantly-usually only in
connection with "white soutJ:iern cops."
The elimination of "police brutality"
is almost always one of the demands
they make as a price for an armistice
in communities where they are campaigning. Somehow they have managed to sell much of the national press
on the idea too, as witness the preceeding excerpts from news stories
coming out of Birmingham. The job the
police had to do in Birmingham was
to control" the mobs, numbering in thousands; which gathered in Kelly Ingram
Park. These mobs were not organized
demonstrators with specific projects in
mind-like a march on the courthouse
for a prayer session. They were Negroes who gathered every day to see
what the real demonstrators inside the
16th Street Baptist Church were going
to do. The real demonstrators, for
their part, simply stayed inside the
church until the mob had formed outside, thus creating the real problem
for the Birmingham police force . How
is a mob, particularly an emotionally
charged mob, handled ? Do you start
shooting them? Do you just wade in
clubbing right and left? Most certainly
not. A trained police force handles
and disperses a mob as gently, and
with as little physical force as possible.
You squirt them with fire hoses , which
have a limited range. Then you get
police dogs, on leashes, and move
through the crowd. People always
move away from a police dog-and
no one gets hurt. That's the way it
was handled in Birmingham. The only
issues involved as far as the police are
concerned is simply to properly perform a tough often hazardous job. Reporters who were in Birmingham know
this to be the truth.
Police forces are small forces. The
main thing that makes it possible for
a police force to function is the generally widespread respect that people
have for the law. Efforts to discredit
law enforcement agencies are dangerous. National news media of the stature of LIFE and TIME do la_w enforcement age ncies and law abiding citizens
everywhere a great disservice when
they allow themselves to be recruited
into such efforts.
�Police dogs- in Birmingham, Chicago or San Francisco-are not used to "attack" anyone . . They are used to control and
d!sperse crowds of people who cannot otherwise be persuaded to move. The attitudes expressed by · t.he Negroes in the
picture a bove is not that of people who are being attacked. The fact is they are entirely unconcerned. All that's happening
here is that they are being moved out of Kelly Ingram Park.
When the Negroes in Birmingham learned that police dogs we r ~ not_ going to be allowed to attack them they became quite
blase about f.he whole thing. Many of the youths pulled off th eir shi r ts and used the m as capes in mock " bullfights .. with
the dogs. The boy in the center of the picture, shi rt in bot~ hands , is pl~ying " toreador " with one of the dogs out of the
picture to the right. When I took all of these pictures I was m company with a LIFE photographer. LIFE must have m anv
of the same kinds of pictures: But suc h pictures do not reflect LIFE's own attitude. There fore , 30 million readers of LIFE
never saw pictureS' like this.
�Martin Luther King
And Communism
There is an old saw that goes like
this: "If it looks like a duck, quacks
like a duck, and lays an egg like a
duck-the chances are very good that
··
it is a duck."
To insist that Martin Luther King
is not a Communist, or at the very
least, dominated and controlled by
Communists, it is necessary to deny
completely all the evidence of one's
senses. He looks like one, talks like
one, acts like one, and has been intimately associated with Communists
throughout his entire career as a leader
in the civil rights movement. If he
could Jay an egg it would be a Communist egg; for certain.
Apologists for Communists in the
civil rights movement like to point out
how natural it is that Communists
would be attracted to such a movement; that there probably are Communists in the civil rights movement;
that needing all the help they can get,,
civil rights organizations accept help,
but not control, from anyone, including Communists, and that the leadership of civil rights organizations,. including Martin Luther King, is free of
influence by any Communist conspiracy to subvert the movement. This
sounds good but it is not true.
A joint committee of both houses of
the Louisiana State Legislature was
created in 1960 to. find out if there is
any Communist infiltration into the
State of Louisiana, and if so, what
form it has taken. At the conclusion
of hearings held in Baton Rouge on
March 19, 1964 the Louisiana Joint
Committee on Un-American Activities
had this to say: "The infiltration of
the Communist Party into the civil
rights movement through the Southern
Conference Educational Fund is shocking and highly dangerous to this state
and to the nation. The evidence is
quite conclusive that the civil rights
Photograph of Martin Luther King and Dombrowski, Anne and Carl Braden. The
1Jotes on the back of the phot.ograph in the handwriting of James A. Dt>mbrowski
say: "The 6th Annual Conference of the Southern Christian Leadership .Conference,
Birmingham, Alabama, September 25 to 28, 1962·. Martin Luther King, Jr. responding to Anne Braden' speech; in background AB, Carl Braden, JAD."
TWENTY
movement has been grossly and solidly
infiltrated by the Communist Party.
Those persons in the civil rights movement who deny this, deny overwhelming evidence that it is so. Tfie evidence c I e a r 1 y shows that Martin
Luther King has very closely c:;onnected his organization, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, with
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund. This has been going on for
years. By thus connecting himself with
the Communists, Martin Luther King
has cynically betrayed his responsibilities as a Christian minister and the
political leader of a large number of
people.
"The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, from all the evidence,
is substantially under the influence of
the Communist Party through the support and management given it by the
Communists in the SCEF. However
the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee may have started, it is now
getting strong financial aid from the
SCEF and its policies are · substantially
influenced by the SCEF. Many innocent students have been and are now
being recruited by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to unknowingly carry out the instructions
and policies of the Communist Party,
dictated to Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee by the SCEF."
W ha t is the "conclusive evidence" that this committee gathered,
and what is the Southern Conference
Educational Fund itself?
The evidence comes in part from
hearings of the U. S. House Committee
on Un-American Activities and of the
Senate Internal Security Committee.
But most of the evidence concerning
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund and its connections with civil
rights comes from the files of the
SCEF itself-files which were taken in
a raid on SCEF Headquarters in New
Orleans. These files and records are
a completely documented recor d of
�over twenty-five years of successful
subversive aetivity, primarily in the
field of civil rights.
The Southern Conference Educational Fund is the new name for the Southern Conference for Human Weifare.
The Southern Conference for Human
Welfare was conceived, set up, and
financed by the Communist Party in
1938 as a mass organization to promote
Communism throughout the Southern
States. It was exposed as a Communist front a few years later by a government committee and simply changed
its name-continuing in business as the
SCEF with the same old address, same
telephone number, substantially the
identical leadership, and it conlinued
to print the same official organ, "The
Southern Patriot" which was cited as
a subversive "publication by the U. S.
Government.
At a hearing of the Louisiana Joint
Committee on Un-American Activities
Dr. William Sorum, New Orleans physician, for six years an active member
of the Communist Party, testified as
follows:
Q - I believe you also testified in 1957
(before the Senate Internal Security
Committee ) while you were in the
Communist Party, you were told to
work in the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare, is that correct?
A - That's right, it was one of the
main organizational outlets, and it was
considered one of the most important
things that we ·had. When the Southern
Conference for Human Welfare had
their national m e e t i n g down here,
about 12 of the top Communists in the
South were here . . . "
These are some· of the people who
direct the activities of the Southern
Conference Educational fund :
Fred Shuttleworth , was responsibie
for the formation of the Montgomery
Improvement Association which gave
Martin Luther King his start on the
road to prominence in the civil rights
movement. At one time the resignation of some of the leaders of the Montgomery Improvemen·t Association followed a disclosure of discrepancies in
the organization's books amounting to
approximately $100,000. In 1941 Shut:
tiesworth was arrested and pied guilty
in District Court in the State of Alabama to the illegal distillation of whisa
key, commonly known as moonshining.
Fred Shuttlesworth is currently vicepresident of Martin Luther King's
Southern Christian Conference. He is
also president of the Southern Conference Educational Fund.
Aubrey Williams, deceased: Williams was president of SCEF before
Shuttlesworth. In April 1954 at hear-· _
ings held in New Orleans by the Senate
Internal Security Committee he ·was
identified as .a Communist Party member by one witness who had been in
the party, and was identified by another witness at the same time as one
who had accepted Communist Party
Discipline.
William Howard Melish: Melish was
a minister and has been identified in
sworn testimony as a Communist Party
member. Melish is on the staff of the
SCEF as the Eastern representative of
the organization, primarily as a solicitor of funds in the New York area.
Benjamin Smith : Smith is an attorney in the city of New Orle·ans. He
was treasurer of the SCEF and was
a member of the board of directors of
the National Lawyers Guild-which has
been cited by the U. S. Government
as the "foremost legal bulwark of the
Communist Party, which has rallied to
the defense . of Communist law-break-
z
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ers, and violators of the Smith Act,
and has never failed to rally to their
defense." Smith is registered with the
U. S. Justice Department as a representative of semi-official agencies of
the Communist C u b a n Government.
Smith's picture appeared in the March
11, 1962 edition of "The Worker, " official publication of the Communist
Party of the _ United States. The accompanying article described his presentation of an award by the National
Lawyers Guild for his "anti-bias struggle in the South."
Dr. James A. Dombrowski: Dombrowski was identified as a Communist at hearings of the Senate Internal
Security Committee by Paul Crouch
and John Butler. Crouch held many
major positions in the Communist Party. According to his own testimony he
was at one time head of the Communist Party's department for infiltration
of the Armed Forces. He was a representative of the Communist Party of
QQ
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Check paid to Martin Luther King by SCEF. Check is signed by James Dombrowski
and Ben Smith and endorsed on the back by King.
TWENTY-ONE
�the United States to the E xecutive
Committee of the Communist Internationale in Moscow, and he was a member of the commission in Moscow to
draft plans to infiltrate and subvert
all of the armed forces of the world.
Crouch testified that he was one of
three Communists who had originally
planned the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare to set up in the South
a mass "organization through which
the Communist line could extend over ·
all of the South, and through which
intellectuals, professionals and ministers could be brought within the scope
of the Communist Party influence. Mr.
Crouch was asked about James Dombrowski in connection with the Communist Party. He said thi_s : "I should
like to add for the record that Dr.
Dombrowski told me on several occasions that he ·preferred to be called a
'Left Socialist' r ather than a Commu-
~
nist ; that he could serve the Revolutionary movement better under the Socialist label than he could under the
Communist label. " Then the question
was, "Was that a customary practice
of the top - fli g ht operators ?" Mr.
Crouch says, " Yes, sir."
At another place in the record of·
this hearing the witness named John
Butler swore that, " James A. Dombrowski had been a party member ."
He was introduced by another party
member, Alton Lawrence. At that time
John Butler was in the Communist
Party himself. Butler swears that
Lawrence told him that Dombrowski
was one of the upper ten Communists
in the United States.
On page 25 of his Doctoral thesis,
written at Columbia University, Dombrowski says : "Proletarians who have
suffered at the hands of ruthless power
in an industrial system, and who have
,rut1p,- -~ mg, Jr.
~ ......
~GUpmlf
401143.215.248.55 16:23, 29 December 2017 (EST)
~
.....Jia
August 16, 1960
Dear Jim:
This is just a note to acknowledge r e ceipt or y our
letters or recent date. We, too, were more than
happy- to have you in our home. The f e, llows hip was
very , rewarding.
I \d.11 expect to hear from you when Bi s hop Love
returns to the country. At that ti me we can set the
date for an Atlanta meting .
Ver y s inc e r ely yours,
Dr . James Dombrowski
Southern Conferenc e Educ ati ona l Fund, Inc.
822 Perdido Stre~t
Rew Orleans 12, · Louilliana
MLK:mlb
TWENTY-TWO
tried all of the avenues of moderation
and of moral suasion, conclude that
such power will continue to utilize its
control of society to increase its advantage until fin al justice can only be
achieved by a violent revolution, in
which the sources of power are brought
under the control of the workers ." On
page 189 of his thesis Dr . Dombrowski
says : " Thus it is the first duty of all .
religious people to destroy Capitalism
without regard for their own welfare."
Dr. Dombrowski is the Director of the
Southern Conference Educational Fund.
and has been since its inception as the
Southern Conference fo r Human Welfare in 1938.
Carl and Anne Braden: The Bradens are both field organizers for the
SCEF, Carl Braden is also editor of
" The Southern Patriot. " They were
both identified as Communist Party
members by Alberta M. Ahearn, who
was an FBI informer surfaced for the
purpose of testifying against the Bradens. She testified that she was r ecruited into the Communist Party by
Anne Braden. Carl Bradden was convicted of sedition and received a 15year sentence in Kentucky. He served
several months on this sentence, and it
was voided under the old Nelson Case
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court
which voided State Sedition Laws. Sub'.
sequent to this Braden served a year
in the Federal Penitentiary for contempt of Congress for refusing to a nswer questions of the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
In the files of the SCE F , all taken
in the raid on their headquarters in
New Orleans, there is a voluminous
correspondence, stretching over a period of many years , between leaders
of the SCEF and leaders of civil r ights
organizations. Here is an excerpt from
a letter from Martin Luther King to
Anne Braden . King writes : "It was
certainly good to have Carl in Columbia last week. He added a great deal
to the meeting. I hope both of you
will fi nd it possible to become permanently associated with the Southern
Chr istian Leadership Conference. . ."
In a letter to J ames Dombrowski
Martin Luther King writes: " This is
just a note to acknowledge receipt of
your letters of r ecent date. We, too,
were more than happy to have you in
our home. The fellowship was very
rewarding."
In the SCEF fi les there is correspondence between Dombrowski and
King and Wyatt Tee Walker (King's
Executive Secretary l concerning the
layout of a full page new paper ad
�the United States to the Executive
Committee of the Communist Internationale in Moscow, and he was a member of the commission in Moscow to
draft plans to infiltrate and subvert
all of the armed forces of the world.
Crouch testified that he was one of
three Communists who had original!v
planned the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare to set up in the South
a mass " organization through which
the Communist line could extend over ·
all of the South, and through which
intellectuals, professionals and ministers could be brought within the scope
of the Communist Party influence. Mr.
Crouch was asked about James Dombrowski in connection with the Communist Party. He said this : "I should
like to add for the record that Dr.
Dombrowski told me on several occasions that he ·preferred to be called a
'Left Socialist' rather than a Commu-
nist ; that he could serve the Revolutionar y movement better under the Socialist label than he could under the
Communist label." Then the question
was, " Was that a customary practice
of the top - f Ii g ht operators?" Mr.
Crouch says, "Yes, sir."
At another place in the record of·
this hearing the witness named John
Butler swore that, "James A. Dombrowski had been a party member."
He was introduced by another party
m ember, Alton Lawrence. At that time
John Butler was in the Communist
Party himself. Butler swears that
Lawrence told him that Dombrowski
was one of the upper ten Communists
in the United States.
On page 25 of his Doctoral thesis,
written at Columbia University, Dombrowski says: "Proletarians who have
suffered at the ha nds of ruthless power
in an industrial system, and who have
~ ~utlpt: -~ing,
Jr.
~---~GUpard,
407143.215.248.55 16:23, 29 December 2017 (EST)
~Lq;a
Aug ust 16, 1960
Dear J'im:
Thia is just a note to acknowledge receipt or your
letters or recent da te. We, t o o, were more than
happy to have you 1n our home.
very, :rewardlng.
The fe,llowship was
I will expect to hear f r om you when Bishop Love
returns to the count r y. At that time we can set the
date ror an Atlanta meet i ng.
Very s incerel y you.rs,
Dro Jame I Dombrowski
Southern Conference Educational Fund p Inc
822 Perdido St~~t
Rew Orleans 12,· Louisiana
JIU:Jlilb
TWENTY-TWO
0
tried all of the avenues of moderation
and of moral suasion, conclude that
such power will continue to utilize its
control of society to increase its advantage until final justice can only be
achieved by a violent revolution, in
which the sources of power are brought
under the control of the workers." On
page 189 of his thesis Dr . Dombrowski
says : "Thus it is the first duty of all
religious people to destroy Capitalism
without regard for their own welfare."
Dr. Dombrowski is the Director of the
Southern Conference Educational Fund.
and has been since its inception as the
Southern Conference for Human Welfare in 1938.
Carl and Anne Braden : The Bradens are both field organizers for the
SCEF, Carl Braden is also editor of
" The Southern Patriot." They were
both identified as Communist P arty
members by Alberta M. Ahearn, who
was an FBI informer surfaced for the
purpose of testifying against the Bradens. She testified that she was recruited into the Communist P arty by
Anne Braden. Carl Bradden was convicted of sedition and r eceived a 15year sentence in Kentucky. He served
several months on this sentence a nd it
was voided under the old Nels~n Case
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court
which voided State Sedition Laws. Sub'.
~equent to this Braden served a year
m the Federal P enitentiary for contempt of Congress for r efusing to a nswer questions of the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
In the files of the SCEF all taken
in the raid on their head~uarters in
New Orleans, there is a voluminous
correspondence, stretching over a period of m any years, between leaders
of the SCEF and leaders of civil rights
organizations. H_ere is an excerpt from
a letter from Martin Luther King to
Anne Braden. King writes: "It was
certainly good to have Carl in Colum bia last week. He added a great deal
to the meeting. I hope both of you
will find it possible to become perm anently associated with the Southern
Christian Leadership, Conference. . ."
In a letter to J ames Dombrowski
Martin Luther King writes : "This is
just a note to acknowledge receipt of
your letters of recent date. We, too,
were more than happy to have you in
our home. The fellowship was very
rewarding."
In the SCEF files there is correspondence between Dombrowski and
King and Wyatt Tee Walker (King's
Executive Secretary) concerning the
layout of a full page newspaper ad
which was a joint project of SCEF,
SCLC, and SNCC.
A letter from James Farmer, National Director of CORE says: "Let
me acknowledge w i t h pleasure the
good wishes which you extend on behalf of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and to assure you that
they are reciprocated. It is a good
fight we are in, and one which will
call forth all the dedication we can
muster."
A letter from Dombrowski to the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee discusses the pattern of placing
SNCC personnel on grants from the
SCEF, paid not to the students themselves, but to SNCC, allowing the
SCEF to control the field workers and
organizers of the SNCC without their
being any way identified w i t h the
SCEF. J am es Forman, E xecutive Director of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee wrote to Dombrowski as follows : ' 'We sincerely
thank you for the last installment on
the grant to Robert Zellner made by
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund. May we take this opportunity
to thank you for the other services
rendered to the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee by SCEF. The
cooperation we have re c e i v e d has
made it possible to carry on a program despite m any obstacles we have
encountered this past year . Specifically, your efforts in raising money
fo r the McComb students a nd members of our staff will long be r emembered. The fact that SCEF has made
available to us certain channels of
communication has been vitally important to the movement in general. It is
our hope that our actions further advance the cause for which we are all
working."
In one eighteen month period, from
December, 1961, to June of 1963, the
Southern Conference Educational Fund
gave the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee over ten thousand,
three hundred dollars ($10,300 >. The
Student Non-violent Coordinating Comm ittee has been the spearhead of violence used as a tool of the SCEF and
the Communist Conspiracy throughout
the United States, particularly in the
South.
F BI Director J . Edgar Hoover has
said that Communist " front organizations exist not only in isolation, but as
a pa rt of a vast, interlaced front system." To all but the dedicated, fulltime a nti-Communist these interlocking conections b e come quite overwhelming in their complexity. This, of
course, is by design, not by accident.
4000
......
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Checks from the SCEF to the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.
One of the interlocking connections of
SCEF with another Communist organization will serve as a n example of how
it works. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee, itself intertwined at the top
level of leadership with the militantly
revolutionary Socialist Workers P arty,
has close connections with SCEF. In
May, 1961 the Senate Internal Security
Committee established that Carl Braden was one of the main speakers at a
ba nquet in New York given by the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee on
April 28. 1961. His expenses had been
pa id to come to the banquet from
wherever he was at the time. In ad-
dition to this, and more important, the
Senate Committee established that Carl
Braden is one of the national directors
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Both Fair P lay for Cuba Committee
a nd the SCEF publicly supported a
man , Robert Williams. who fled the
United States to escape prosecution
for kidnapping in North Carolina. He
went to Ct1ba and set up a powerful
broadcasting station from which he
beamed violent exhortations to Southern Negroes to use razors and lye
bombs against Southern whites.. Robert Williams is now in Communist
China . A half page book re\'iew in
TWENTY-THREE
�~
.. .
\.
·
'
100062 -,
OCT 1 1954
LOUISVIUX'
,__
CARL BRADEN
ANNE BRADEN
"The Southern Patriot" commented favorably on Williams' book "Negroes
with Guns," another vicious piece of
inflamatory propaganda. The review
was written and si g ned by Anne
Braden.
In the SCEF files were two letters
from and to an identified Communist,
Corliss Lamont. One letter is from
Lamont to Dombrowski enclosing a
check for $1,000 to the defense fund of
the SCEF. The other is from Dombrowski to Lamont asking for additional contributions to help with printing costs for a pamphlet defending
Braden who had been sentenced to a
year in the Federal Penitentiary. It is
interesting to note that Lee Harvey
Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, is reported to have made the
statement that the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee literature that he handed
out in New Orleans came to him from
Corliss Lamont.
The planned program of the Communist Party to use the racial issue to
further its goal of revolution in the
United States is definitely being carried out. The SCEF is an obvious
and effective part of that program ,
Through the operations of the SCEF
the leadership and influence of known
Communists is transmitted into civil
rights organizations. Obviously everyone in the civil rights movement is not
a Communist, but the act of Communist infiltration of the movement is a
fact, and not conjecture. Through its
manipulation and control of the civil
rights movements Communist p r e y
upon one of the best human motivesidealism toward a better wor ld. Their
programs are particularly effective
with better educated and more cultured people, who see that there are,
TWENTY-FOUR
POLICE
. ---DIV.
--~-- -
JAMES A. DOMBROWSKI
in fact, some things wrong in our society but are unable to see the proper
remedies for the problems. These victims simply refuse to recognize and
accept certain obvious facts , and delude themselves as to the true nature
of all manner of people and organizations that seek to exploit them.
As far as Martin Luther King and
other leaders of the civil rights organizations are concerned, it is impossible
to accept the proposition that they,
too, are unwitting dupes of an obvious
Communist conspiracy within the civil
rights movement. King and Forman,
whose respective organizations sponsored the march from Selma to Mont-
BENJAMINE. SMITH
gomery know that Carl Braden, who
was on the march, is a Communist of
long standing. They know that Anne
Braden; James Dombrowski, Aubrey
Williams, et al are Communists. They
have worked with these people and accepted all manner of assistance from
them for years. Yet, last summer in
Mississippi Martir. Luther King made
a public statement that there are more
Eskimos in Florida than there are
Communists in the civil rights movement. "
FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover says
" Marti11 Luther King is one of the most
notorious liars in the country."
What do you think ?
I have heard from many people that
the Conference, perhaps because of
necessity, was devoting itself to the
raisin g of funds instead of concentratin g on tne real Job.
I tried workin i; with American. communists ,
as. you know, and have lon g since given
up trying .
I can not work with any
one who is not completely honest and
American communists are not honest .
I kno w tnat often they work for tne
same objectives, and do good work , but
that does not alter my opinion.
Very s i nce r ely your s ,
Even Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, a noted liberal, couldn't stomach the SCEF after
she discovered who was behind it. Reproduced above is a part of a letter written
to James Dombrowski, a known Communist.
�Bayard and Ralph -
Jus.t A Couple Of The Boys
Continued from Page 15)
A. We went out on a picnic.
Q. And did you during that picnic
...., .
~.
·
100062
-·
OCT l 1954
mv. POLICE
---...-~
'
LOUlSVllµ
-
CARL BRADEN
ANNE BRADEN
"The Southern Patriot" commented favorably on Williams' book "Negroes
with Guns, " a nother vicious piece of
inflamatory propaganda . The review
was written and s i g n e d by Anne
Braden.
In the SCEF files were two letters
from and to an identified Communist,
Corliss Lamont. One letter is from
Lamont to Dombrowski enclosing a
check for $1,000 to the defense fund of
the SCEF. The other is from Dombrowski to Lamont asking for additional contributions to help with printing costs for a pamphlet defending
Braden who had been sentenced to a
year in the Federal Penitentiary. It is
interesting to note that Lee Harvey
Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, is reported to have made the
statement that the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee literature that he handed
out in New Orleans came to him from
Corliss Lamont.
The planned program of the Communist P a rty to use the racial issue to
fu rther its goal of revolution in the
United States is definitely being carried out. The SCEF is an obvious
and effective part of that program.
Through the operations of the SCEF
the leadership and influence of known
Communists is transmitted into civil
rights organizations. Obviously everyone in the civil rights movement is not
a Communist, but the act of Communist infiltration of the movement is a
fact, and not conjecture. Through its
manipulation and control of the civil
rights movements Communist p r e y
upon one of the best human motivesidealism toward a better world. Their
programs are particularly effective
with better educated and more cultured people, who see that there are,
TWENTY-FOUR
JAMES A. DOMBROWSKI
in fact, some things wrong in our society but are una ble to see the proper
remedies for the problems. These victims simply refuse to recognize and
accept certain obvious facts, and delude themselves as to the true nature
of all manner of people and organizations that seek to exploit them.
As far as Martin Luther King a nd
other leaders of the civil rights organizations are concerned, it is impossible
to accept the proposition that they,
too, are unwitting dupes of an obvious
Communist conspiracy within the civil
rights movement. King a nd Forman,
whose respective organizations sponsored the ma rch from Selma to Mont-
-~IC
BEN.JAMIN E . SMITH
gomery know that Carl Braden, who
was on the march, is a Communist of
long standing. They know that Anne
Braden,- J ames Dombrowski, Aubrey
Williams, et al are Communists. They
have worked with these people and accepted all manner of assistance from
them for years. Yet, last summer in
Mississippi Martir. Luther King m ade
a public statement that there a re more
Eskimos in F lorida than there are
Communists in the civil rights movement. "
FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover says
"Martin Luther King is one of the most
notorious liars in the country."
What do you think?
V - I U . C?O'n'_._
NYDK P AIUC,.
~
CO.
I have heard from -many peopl e that
t he Conference , perhaps be cauAe of
necessity, was devot ing i tself t o the
rai sing of funds i ns t ead of concentr ating on the real Job .
I t rie d workin~ wit h Ameri can. communis t s,
as. you know, and have l ong since given
up trying .
I can not work with any
one who is not complet.ely honest and
American communists are not hones t .
I know that of t e n they work for the
same objectives, and do good work but
that does not alter my opinion, '
Very sincerely yours,
Even IV"trs. Eleanor Roosevelt, a noted liberal, couldn't stomach the SCEF after
she discovered- who was behind it. Reproduced above is a part of a letter written
to James Dombrowski, a known Communist.
any time during the afternoon tell him
about this call?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, referring to that time,
prior to ,fogust the 29th, when is the
last time before that he called you?
A. He p h o n e d me approximately
about the 4th of August, I imagine.
Q. And at that time what was your
conversation?
A. He asked me what was going on
b e t w e e n me and my husband, he
wanted to know, and how I had been
getting along, and why can't I see him.
Well, I didn't want to discuss with him
those things because I had asked him
not to contact me again and I didn't
have any further use to talk to him.
Q. I show you a picture that is
marked for identification the Defendant's Exhibit No. 4 and ask you if you
recognize that picture?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. What is that a picture of?
A. That is a picture of a house, and
that is the house that we went to.
Q. Is that house located in the City
of Montgomery?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Do you know about where it is
located?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And where is it located?
A. It is located on Clark Street.
Q. Now, t he n, you say you went
there? Who went there?
A. Rev. Abernathy and myself.
Q. Did he take you or did you take
him?
A. He took me.
Q. I see. And now what happened
at that house?
A. That is where these affa irs took
place.
Q. That is where all three . .
A. That is right.
Q. All of these affairs you mentioned took place?
A. That is right.
Q. And at that time how old were
you?
A. Fifteen.
Q . And at that time you were a
member of his church?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know who was in charge
of the house at that time?
A. A lady by the name of Mrs.
Davis.
Q. Do you know whether that is
Mrs. C. D. Davis, or not?
A. I am pretty positive.
Q. Is she a little woman, middle
sized woman, or what?
A. She is large.
Q. You recognize this picture?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. What is that picture of?
A. That is a picture of a convention in Birmingham that I attended.
Q. Where did you get this picture?
A. I received that picture from him
on the night we went out in Birmingham.
Q. The night you went out in Birmingham?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, tell us what happened that
night when you went out in Birmingham.
A. On the night we went out in Birmingham I was on my way home,
Rosemond Lowe and myself, we were
asked to go out on a dinner date with
the Rev. Abernathy and the Rev.
James Dixon. That night they came
and picked us up at the house where
we were living, and we went to the
Afro Club in Birmingham.
Q. Afro Club?
A. That is right.
Q. Where is that located?
A. It is in some part of Birmingham.
Q. Go right ahead. Now, what happened then?
A. We went in and we had a couple
of beers.
Q. Now, that was the time when you
were in Birmingham ?
A . Yes.
Q. And you say that Abernathy was
wi th you at that time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, when you came back from
Birmingham did he very shortly after
that or immediately after that get in
touch with you again?
A. No. He asked me to . go out to a
tea with him that night. This all was
the night we got in from Birmingham.
Q. The night when you got in from
Birmingham, that was when you were
fifteen years old?
A. Yes .
Q. He asked you to go out to a tea
with him ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. Now. what happened
then, did you go?
A. Well , I thought it was supposed
to have been a tea, he said it was to
have been a tea. and he and Rev.
James Dixon and Walter Parker came
by to pick me up. Walter P arker came
up to the door for me, and we put him
out at the Derby Supper Club.
Q. You say Walter P arker came to
the door to get you?
A. That is right. He and his girl
friend was in the car .
Q. And you went with them and got
in the car and Abernathy was already
-in the car?
A. Yes, he was.
Q. All r ight. And then you and Abernathy after that?
A. We went over , Walter Parker
and Walter Parker's girl friend, and
Rev. James Dixon and we went over
and put Walter Parker and Gloria
Thompson out at the Derby Supper
Club, and then he went over to Rosemond Lowe's and picked her up. She
was ill at the time and couldn't go. So
in turn he took Rev. Dixon home and
we rode out on the Atlanta Highway,
and I haven't seen him since.
Q. How late did you stay out that
night?
A. It was ten-thirty about.
Cross Examination
BY MR. THETFORD:
Q. Vivian, you say Bernice is named
what now?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis.
Q. Now, is she kin to this defendant?
A. No, she isn't.
Q. Is she related to him, or is her
husband any kin to him?
A. No, sir.
Q. Now, you testified, I believe, that
- I don't know whether you did testify
-when did you fir st knew Rev. Abernathy, what year?
A. It was '52 or '51, I imagine, when
he came to the First Baptist Church.
I am not sure what year it was he
came there. But the first time he made
approaches to me was in Birmingham
in ' 52, July of '52.
Q. Now, how old were you in 1952?
A. I was fi fteen then at that time.
Q. Fifteen?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, you testified that you had
intercourse or sexual relations with
Rev. Abernathy on several occasions?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When and where did you first
have relations with him?
A. At the house on Clark Street.
Q. The house where?
A. On Clark Street.
Q. House on Clark Street?
A. Yes. sir.
Q. ls that the house that you
A. That picture I just testified. the
first picture I identified.
TWENTY-FI\ E
�Q. Is that the picture you pointed
out?
A. Yes, sir, it is.
Q. Do you remember what month
that was in?
A. It was in August of '52.
Q. August of '52?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, did he come to your house
and get you?
A. No.
Q. Did you meet him there?
A. No.
Q. How did you happen to get there?
A. He called my mother and asked
her to let me do some typing for him,
which was the ·excuse, and I went up
to the church, and in turn we went
over there , on Clark Street.
Q. You and he went together?
A. That's right.
Q. How did you go?
A. In his car.
Q: An9- he parked his car in front
of this house?
A. No, he didn't.
Q. Where did he park it?
A. He parked it in the driveway.
Q. In the driveway?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And then the two of you went in
the house?
A. That,s right.
Q. Was there anybody in the house
at home?
A. Yes, there was.
Q. Who was there?
A. Mrs. Davis.
'Q. What is her first name?
A. I said Mrs. Davis. It is C. 0 .
Davis.
Q. Well, what did you and Reverend Abernathy tell her?
A. Well, he had already made the
reservations.
Q. Made the r eservations.
A. Advance notice.
Q. What do you mean by advance
notice?
A. He had already contacted her.
Q. He had already contacted her?
A. Yes, sir, he had.
Q. Did he say anything to her when
you walked in, did he knock on the
door ?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And when you walked in what
happened then, what did he say to her?
A. He asked her how was she getting along.
Q. What did she say?
A. She said she was fine.
Q. Then what did he say?
A. Well, he just told her that he
came there, he had brought me over
there.
TWENTY-SIX
Q. He brought you over there?
And he introduced me to
her.
Q. He introduced you to her?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. What did you all do
then?
A. We went in the room.
.Q. Living room, bedroom?
A. No. Bedroom.
Q. In the bedroom?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, did you know what you
were going over for ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Well, when did he first ask you
to go over there and have intercourse
with him?
A. He asked me the night we went
out when we came from Birmingham
fo this so-called tea, but I didn't go
and we went out riding.
Q. He asked you would ·you have
intercourse with. him when you went
out riding, you tell us, on the Atlanta
Highway?
A. Yes, sir. He wanted to take me
over there then.
Q. He wanted to take you over there
then?
A. He wanted to take me on Clark
Street that night but I didn't go, and
in turn we went out on the Atlanta
Highway riding.
Q. Did you have intercourse with
him out on the Atlanta Highway?
A. No, sir, I didn't.
Q. Then did he ask you that night
to go to the house --on Clark Street with
him?
A: He asked me that same night to
go to the house on Clark Street.
Q. Well, what did you tell him?
A. I told him no.
Q. All right. When did you tell him
you would go?
A. Well, I didn't tell him I would go
that night. It was three times during
that month.
Q. Do you mean he asked you three
times during that month?
A. No, he didn't. On several occasions on the telephone and several
times coming to my house asking me.
Q .. Asked you to go with him to this
house on Clark Street.
A. Yes, sir, he did. And finally we
got together, and he called my mother
and asked her could I do some typing
for him, and which was an excuse.
Q. So you and he went in the bedroom?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you knew what you were going in there for?
A. I guess so.
A. Yes.
Q. And did both of you get undressed?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Get in bed?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you have normal sexual relations with him on that occasion?
A. Well, he did, yes.
Q. What?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How long were you at the house
on this occasion?
A. About an hour, or an hour and a
half, something like that.
Q. And then did he take you back
to the church, or where did he take
you?
A. He didn't take me back to the
church, he took me - I got out of the
car to the corner of Union and Alabama.
Q. Now, how close is that to your
house?
A. My house is the second from the
cqrner, the second house from the
corner.
Q. Let you out around the corner
from your house?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Let me ask you this. Were you,
going with the defendant at that time?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. In 1952?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When did you get married?
A. I got married in December of '55.
Q. That is three years later?
A. About that.
Q. Two years later?
A. Yes.
Q . All right. Now, you testified that
you had a norm al intercourse sometime in August at this house on Clark
Street. That was the first time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you go back to that house
again?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. When?
A. That same month, in August. I
went there three times that August.
Q. You went there three times that
August?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Went into the same house?
A. Same house.
Q. Was he expected, were both of
you expected by the owner of the house
each time?
A. I imagine so. He had always
called her to tell her that we were
coming.
Q. Each time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. In other words, she didn't seem
surprised to see you?
�l
A. No. sir. she didn't seem to be
surprised.
Q. Did she know who you were?
A. Yes. sir. she did. They were very
close frie nds.
Q. Now you say that you have had
both normal and abnormal intercourse ?
A. Yes. sir.
Q. Where did you have the abnormal intercourse with him '?
A. The three occasions.
Q. On all three occasions ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Well, now, what do you mean by
abnormal sexual intercourse?
A. Pervertedness. He u s e d his
mouth .
Q. He used his mouth ?
A. Yes, sir, he did .
Q. On your private parts ?
A. Yes , sir.
Q. Now, did he do that, you say on
each of the three occasions?
A. Yes , sir.
Q. Well, was tha t after he had . a
normal intercourse with you ?
A. No, sir, it was before.
Q. It was before he had a normal
intercourse ?
A. That's right.
Q. In other words , each time he
used his mouth on you before and then
had a nor mal intercourse ?
A. That 's right.
Q. Now, that happened three times
in August of 1952?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, has he ever had intercourse
with you since then?
A. No.
Q. None whatever?
A. No, I ha ven't.
Q. Have you ever been out with him
alone since August of 1952?
A. No , I haven't been out with him .
Q. You haven't been out with him ?
A. No, .sir.
Q. Now, when did you first tell your
husband about this?
A. I told my husband about it approximately a year after we were
married.
Q. About a year after you were
married, I believe you told us, you
would say in 1906?
A. That is right. I remembe r
vividly we went to New Orleans on a
second honeymoon.
Q. Well , now, according to your
testimony did Rev. Abernathy start
running after you again, telephoning
you again ?
A. He hasn 't ever stopped.
Q. He hasn 't ever stopped?
A. No, sir. He has been to my
house. He came there in '52 and came
there in '54 when Bernice Davis Cooper
Charles Moore, LIFE photographer, holds ankle which has just been struck by a
brick hurled at him by one of the mob in Kelly Ingram Park off to the right of
picture. On Moore's left is LIFE correspondent Mike Durham. In the background
is the three-story hotel from which a piece of concrete block was hurled almost
tearing off one side of a Birmingham fireman's face. L~rge pieces of brick and'
concrete block can be seen in the street in · this picture. They have all been hurled
by Negroes at police officers and reporters, who were the only whites allowed in
the area. Most of the injuries received during the deµ10nstrations in Birmingham
were by police officers and' firemen.
1,
was living with me, and she was in
bed one night, her mother was in
Washington, and he came by and I was
ordering him out of the house and she
awakened and found him there, and
he had his arms around me.
Q. And that was what year ?
A. And that was in '54 or '53 - '53
because she went to Washington both
times twice, a nd during that period he
was coming by here a nd he would
come down there a nd try to get me
to go out with him, but I told him
that I had made the mistake, and I
realized the mistake and that I didn't
intend ever to go out with him again.
Q. All r ight. Now, let's get down
to the picnic that you a nd your husband went on. You went out and got
drunk, didn't you?
A. Yes , sir .
Q. And you got real drunk , didn't
you?
Q. · I was n't out.
(Objected to . Objection overuled )
Q. How much beer did you drink
out there on the picnic? (Objected to .
Objection sustained l
Q. Where did he get that pistol he
pu lled on Rev. Abernathy?
A. Well , I don' t know.
Q. Where did the hatchet come
from?
A. I don 't know.
Q. Have you ever seen this pistol
before?
A. No, I have n't ever seen it until
- it was in the car pocket.
Q. It was in the car pocket?
A. It was in the car. My husband
tra veled , you see.
Q. Did he ha ve a license to carry
it?
A. Wen; I don't know. (Objection
sustained .)
Q. Have you ever seen that hatchet
before ?
A. No .
Q. Never have seen it?
A. No, sir. I saw it in Police Court.
Q. You had never seen it before
that ?
A. No , I haven't seen it either.
Q. I ask you if that is the pistol,
you know that is his pistol don 't you ?
A. Yes, sir. He traveled, and he
ha d it in the car pocket.
Re-Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE :
Q. You tell the jury there when you
reached the age of fifteen you haven 't
had anything to do with Rev. Abernathy ?
A. No, I ha ven 't.
Q. You haven't been with him in
public since ·then including August 29th ,
1958?
A. No, sir, I haven't.
-0I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully
and accurately in the notes of testimony taken by me upon the trial of
the above case , and that this transcript is a true copy a nd correct c6py
of the same.
W. Ha lowell Lewis
Official Court Reporter
Fifteenth Judicial Circuit
of Alabama
-0Edward Davis was acquitted for
chasing and striking Rev. Abernathy
with the hatchet. He and his wife now
live in Montgomery.
TWENTY-SEVEN
�l
Sex and Civil Rights
(Continued from Page 12)
bodies and blood in the street, our
bodies " and "I am going home today
and t~II everyone how I've been lied
to."
(s) LIONEL FREE¥AN
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 5th day of April, 1965.
(s l George N. Dean, Jr. Notary Public.
,,,
My commsision expires ____ , 19____ _
...
,:,
AFFIDAVIT
I, Samuel M. Carr, a First Lieutenant in the Alabama National Guard,
Battery C, 117th Artillery, Alabama do
hereby swear under oath and under
penalty of perjury the following facts
are true and accurate in every respect
to my own personal knowledge :
The National Guard unit of which I
am a member was activated on March
20, 1965. We were assigned the task
of guarding camp sites of the Negro
Voter-Protest Marchers on their march
from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery,
Alabama. This duty we commenced to
perform on Tuesday, March 23 , 1965
at 1: 00 PM picking up contact with the
marchers on HiWay 80.
I hereby further swear and attest
that during such time of duty with my
National Guard unit I personally saw
one case of sexual intercourse between
a young white boy and a Negro girl.
I further swear and attest that I saw
occasions of public urination in and
near the camp sites.
I further solemnly state that many
of the Negro marchers, most especially
the young ones, made remarks and
statements to members of the National
Guard which were, in my opinion, for
the purpose of inflaming the emotions
of said members of the Guard.
(s l SAMUEL M. CARR
1/ Lt Battery C
117th Artillery
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 3rd day of April, 1965 .
(s l J . D. Smyth, Jr .
Notary Public
Alabama, State at Large
My commission expires 5-20-68
.,.
.,.
STATE OF ALABAMA ,
COUNTY OF DALLAS
Before me, undersigned authority, in
a nd for said State and County, personally appeared J . E. Crowder and being by me first duly sworn on oath ,
deposes and says:
I, J ames E . Crowder , Selma Police
Department, do make the following
TWENTY-EIGHT
The picture above was taken a few minutes before the 11icture at the lower right.
Annie Lee Cooper, 265-pound bouncer at a Selma motel landed a surprise right to
the eye of Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark. Then she snatched a billy club from
Deputy Sheriff Leo Nichols. She hung onto the billy club club for dear life and with
both hands as shown above. With effort Sheriff Clark managed to wrest the club
away from Mrs. Co.oper. Two deputies got handcuffs on her. The oicture at the
lower right is a part of this action. Newsweek described it differently.
Newsweek
"With that, Mrs . Cooper wheeled
on Sheriff Clark - eleven · years
her junior and six and one half
pounds lighter - and landed a
solid _ . , right on his eye. Whiie
three deputies helped wrestle her
to the ground, Clark scrambled
astride her stomach and brought
his billy down on her head with
a resounding crack"-Newsweek,
F ebruary 8, 1965
statement. I saw several Negro males,
that I know by sight, in a drunken condition . One Negro was there most of
the time and was drunk every time that
I saw him . The others came and we nt
at intervals. I also saw a short Negro
in a green sweater come to the front
of the line stretched across the street
�on three different occasions and rub up
against \\·hite girls. feeling their breasts
and other parts of their bodies and then
taking them off to the rear of the crowd
and on to different apartments. One of
the white girls was a short fat girl with
a white sweat shirt on: a nother was a
medium tall girl. wearing a green coat
and carrying a camera bag. This second girl also made several passes at
some of the other Negro men on the
front line on other occasions. I do not
remember what the third white girl
looked like that the short Negro carried off as I only saw her that one time.
On · one occasion I saw a white man
and a Negro female laying side by side
beneath a blanket in the middle of the
street just before daylight. There was
a good deal of movement by both parties beneath the bla nket. The \rhite
man, the day before. was wearing a
priest robe. The next day he \l"aS wearing a sweat shirt and dungaree pants.
That man is still in town or was on
Saturday, March 3, 1965.
(SI J. E . CROWDER
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 7th day of April 1965.
(sl Jud Ernest Hewston
Notary Public
My commission expires: 7-18-67
the street in front of Brown's Chapel.
We noticed a big, heavy set Negro male
near a small tree in front of the Parsonage: he was talking to a white female. They were talking, laughing and
slapping each other on the back. They
moved in closer to the tree, he had one
hand hanging on a limb; she would
move in very close to where she would
rub on his legs and stomach. He was
acting like he had ants in his pants.
He would put his hands in his pocket
attempting to control his sexual impulses.
Finally they locked lips together as if
they were sucking each other's tongue,
this lingered for 2 or 3 minutes; he then
took her by the arm and they walked
down the sidewalk towards the Baptist
Church.
(sl V. B. Bates
Sworn to and subscribed before m e
this the 5th day of April, 1965.
(sl Jud Ernest Hewston
Notary Public
My commission expires 7-18-67.
AFFIDAVIT
Personally appeared before me, the
undersigned Notary Public, Richard
Perrino Emmet, who by me being first
duly sworn, deposes and says as fol* .,. * * *
lows :
STATE OF ALABAMA,
My name is Richard Perrino Emmet.
COUNTY OF DALLAS
I presently serve as Judge of the 15th
Judicial Circuit of the State of Alabama.
Before me, undersigned authority, in
and for said State a nd County, personI formerly presided over the Family
ally appeared V. B. Bates and being by . Court of Montgomery, Alabama. The
Family Court is charged with the reme first duly sworn on oath, deposes
and says:
sponsibility of ha ndling all juvenile
matters. All boys and girls who have
I, V. B. Bates, Deputy Sheriff of
not reached their 18th birthday are conDallas County, Alabama was assigned
s idered juveniles.
to special duty of observation in the
During the recent disturbances in
area of Sy I v an Street and Brown's
Montgomery, the present Family Court
Chapel during the preparation of Civil
Judge was called out of town and inasRights March to Montgomery, Alamuch as I had formerly presided over
bama.
the Court, I assisted in handling all
What I state here is what I actually
demonstrators who feJI in the juvenile
saw from a distance of 40 feet and less.
category.
To begin with I saw white females
Several white females still seniors in
from other counties, other states I behigh school from various northern cities
lieve, building up their sexua l desires
were taken into protective custody.
with Negro males. After a few minutes
Their parents were notified and they
of necking a nd kissing, the Negro male
were released to their parents. Several
would lead them off into the Negro
college freshmen were also taken into
housing project. I watched this proprotective custody who were 17 years
cedure ma ny. ma ny times.
of age or under.
On a nother occasion , I saw a white
One white female from the midwest
male meet a Negro ma le on the front
who is attending college in Florida as
porch of Re\·. Lewis' parsonage : they
a na tiona l merit finalist was taken into
embraced a nd kissed each other mouth
custody when she was found with three
to mouth .
Negro men at night on the grounds of
the State Capitol in a state of partia l
On Friday afternoon before the Sundisrohement.
day of the ma rch to Montgomery. Officer He\rston a nd I 1rere pa rked across
I contacted her fa ther, a minister in a
mid-western community, informed him
of the circumstances in w h i c h his
daughter was found, that she was in
Montgomery unchaperoned and apparently with no place to stay.
He informed me that he had e ncouraged his daughter to come to
Montgomery and that she was there
with his approval. He did not seem to
be shocked __upon learning the circumstances of his daughter's apprehension.
(sl RICHARD PERRINO EMMET
Subscribed to a nd sworn to before
me this 5th day of April, 1965.
(sl Walter E. Graham
Notary Public, State at Large
My commission expires January
21, 1967.
~
~=
(Letterhead)
STATE OF ALABAMA
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
SAFETY
Grove Hill, Alabama
STATEM~NT
TO: Major John W. Cloud
Commander, Ala. State Troopers
FROM: Lt. J. L. Fuqua
DATE :. 2 April, 1965
SUBJECT: Observed Obscenities
during Recent Selma and
Montgomery Racial Problem
This writer was in Selma from
March 8 until March 16 and then in
Montgomery until March 29. During
the time I was in Selma I was assigned
to the 10PM to 6AM shift and stayed
in the vicinity of the Brown Chapel
Church.
One night about 200 demonstrators
were singing in the street while I observed a limp wrist white male standing in the front row with a blanket
over his shoulder and a black male's
shoulder. This whfte man had his arm
around the Negro and at one time he
kissed the Negro in the mouth with a
Jong lingering kiss. A few minutes later
these two men walked out of the line
together, arm in arm, tqward the
church.
On another occasion in Selma Lt.
Jeffries and myself were making a
round around the blocked off area of
the church and we stopped a 1957 Ford
driven by John Calhoun, a Negro man
from Montgomery. There was another
Negro man in the front seat and a Negro man and a white girl about 24
years old in the back seat. The girl
tried to conceal her race by pulling a
coat over her head. This writer got
both of these people out of the car, the
white girl and the Negro man and observed their appearance. The Negro
TWENTY-NINE
�l
man's pants were unzipped in the front
and the girl had on dungaree pants.
They were unzipped · on the side. The
girl said she was from California.
On several occasions I saw white
girls rubbing up against Negro men
and kissing them on the street in this
demonstration. I also saw Negro men
feel the breast and butt of white girls,
making no attempt to hide this but
rather appearing like they wanted
everyone to see them.
I noticed prophylactics on the
ground near the church several different times.
<Signed ) Lt. James L. Fuqua
:::
.,.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
On March 13, 1965, while on duty at
Selma, Alabama in the afternoon while
standing on the front line at the colored
project on Lawrence Street where the
colored people and white people were
demonstrating, there was a colored
man arm in arm with a white priest.
The odor of whiskey was very much
on · the Negro's breath. From this
writer's experience and opinion the
Negro man was very much under the
influence of alcohol.
Cs ) M. D. TUCKER
Birmingham District
Sworn ·to and subscribed before me
this the 6th day of April, 1965.
(sl Virginia C. McCoy
Notary Public, S'tate at Large
My commission expires November
15, 1966.
posedly religious service on a public
street before a public building, an open
display for any one who would look on.
After the demonstrators had been
assembled before the courthouse for a
few minutes, rain began to fall. Those
of the crowd who had on coats or raincoats began to share their wraps with
their pa r't n er s or neighbors in the
group. Aging, balding men wearing
clerical collars spread their coats and
CONFERENCE ON
THE DEEP SOUTH:
WAYS AND MEANS TO INTEGRATION
FRIDAY-SATURDAY, APRIL 13-14, 1962
HEADQUARTERS:
St. Paul Methodist Church
1500 Sixth Avenue; North
AFFIDAVIT
Before me, undersigned authority,
in and for said State and County, personally appeared Mrs. John J. Atherton and being by me fi rst duly sworn
on oath, deposes and says:
Of the many marches on the Dallas
County Courthouse, the one which impressed me as being the most disgusting display of the manifestation of
the close association of the motley ·
crew that had been camping day and
night for several days on Sylvan Street,
was the demonstration held on the
afternoon of March 17, 1965. Most probably by design to incur the wrath of
any onlookers, the marchers came to
the courthouse two by two, each being
a mixture either of older white man
with adolescent colored girl or colored
man with white woman. A display of
so-call 'affection' - hand holding, entwining-arms, waist encircling - all
cver t acts of familiarity have long and I realize until recently - been
looked upon as in the r oorest taste.
All of these were flaunted in a supTHIRTY
gathered in youngish colored girls ;
others made tents of their coats and
several stood huddled close under these
improvised umbrellas. Putting their
actions down in print cannot begin to
convey what went on in the way of
numerous physical contacts between
members of the two races and of the
two sexes. Perhaps this behavior was
not 'immoral' in our modern day when
the accepted ideas of morality are so
Birmingham, Alabama
Rev . J. C . Wilson , Pastor
SPONSORS:
ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
STUDENT NON-VIOLENT CO-ORD INATING · COMMITTEE
SOUTHERN CONFERENCE EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
HOST:
THE ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
FOR HUMAN RI GHTS
THEME:
"RELIGION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
. AND CIVIL LIBERTIES."
Cover of Brochure on April 13 - 14, 1962, Birmingham "Conference"
sponsored by the SCEF.
�lax. but it most certainly was immodest and distasteful. We very soon
closed our blinds against the scene and
ha\'e tried to erase the memory from
our minds.
As my husband is 011 the staff of a
local Southern Baptist Church, I spent
much of the time the demonstration
abo,·e described was in progress trying to defend "men of the cloth"
against the criticism being brought , on
them by the men attired in "the cloth"
1rho were taking part in this public
spectacle.
Signed : Mrs. John J . Atherton.
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 8th day of April, 1965.
(Signed l Jud. Ernest Hews ton
Notary Public
My commission expires : 7-18-67.
.,.
.,.
AFFIDAVIT
AFFIDAVIT
STATE OF ALABAMA,
COUNTY OF DALLAS
Before me, undersigned authority in
and for said State and County, personally appeared Mrs. Frances W. Martin,
and being by me first duly sworn on
oath, deposes and says:
This is to certify that I, Mrs. Frances W. Martin, and 50 years of age,
and I am employed in the Courthouse,
Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, with
an office on the third floor . I have
witnessed the demonstrations in. and
about the Courthouse, since their beginning both from my office windows
and going in and out of the Courthouse.
I have seen young Negro men and
young white women walking down the
street holding hands or with their arms
around each other's waists. I have also
seen young white men and young Negro women doing the same thing and
I also saw on one occasion, a white
man with both arms around a Negro
embracing her, hugging and caressing
her bosom, and all this in full view of
anyone and everyone who might chance
to · look their way.
(sl FRANCES W. MARTIN
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 6th day of April 1965.
(s) Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
Notary Public
My commission expires 7-18-67.
Before me, the undersigned authority, in and for said State and County,
personally appeared Charles R. McMillian, and being by me first duly
sworn on oath, deposes and says:
I am a City Policeman and was on
duty during the demonstration in front
of Brown's Chapel Church. Due to the
fact that it was raining, the demonstrators attempted to put up tents in
the middle of the street which was furnished by one of the Negro funeral
homes in the city. They were told that
* *
they could not pitch tents in the middle
of the street so they moved the tents
STATE OF ALABAMA,
and put them up on the I awns of
COUNTY OF DALLAS
G. W. C. Project.
Before me, undersigned authority,
After tents were put up, they made .. in and for said State and County, persides for them out of polyethylene,
sonaJly appeared Frank Barr and bewhich is a plastic- that you can see
ing by me first duly sworn on oath,
through. When night came the demondeposes and says:
strators started making their beds on
On March 12, 1965, I was working
the night shift and was stationed on
the ground inside the tents. Both NeSylvan Street near Brown's Chapel. I
groes and white deinonstrators were
bedding down s ide by side. A young
saw white girls and Negro boys, and
teenage Negro boy and girl were enwhite boys and Negro girls pair off
gaged in a sexual intercourse that was
and go into the dark areas of Brown's
interrupted t:y a newsman who atChapel. They would disappear in the
dark areas for as long as 45 minutes
tempted to take a picture of the act.
at a time. I do not know for sure what
I was at the barricade when I saw the
they were doing but I did see these
above. Also during the time spent
couples with their arms around each
guarding the demonstrators there was
other and kiss.ing.
constant kissing and hugging, and rubCs J FRANK BARR
bing up against each other and pairing
Sworn to and subscribed before me
off and leaving the group that was in
this the 7th day of April, 1965.
the street. The above mentioned dem(s J Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
onstration took place in March 1965.
Notary Public
This statement is true to the best
My commission expires 7-18-67.
of my knowledge.
's I CHARLES R. Mc MILLIAN
*
AFFIDAVIT
~·worn to and subscribed before me
Statement of K. W. Jones, Captain,
this the 7th day of April 1965.
Montgomery Police Department, con's I Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
cerning the sit-in demonstration in
Notary Public
front of the Capitol on March 10 and
My commisison expires 7-18-67
11, 1965, and the indecent incidents
connected with the demonstration.
This statement is made of my own
free will, with no pressure from any
source being exerted.
On March 10, 1965, at about 10:00
p.m. we had a march to the Church,
Columbus and Ripley, and a parade
permit had been issued for this march
for this date. About 1,000 people participated in this march.
The march was orderly and the
demonstrations in front of the Capitol
was orderly up to the point of the
marchers dispersing. The leaders of
the march, who had gotten the parade
permit, wanted to disperse like they
had promised to. James Forman and
about 300 of his group who was in the
march, refused to disperse and sat
down in the street. About 700 dispersed and was escorted back to the
church, -First Baptist.
· The remaining, about 300, huddled
up as a small group as possible and
sang and made speeches. They used
the street. for a bathroom, they urinated until it ran down the street for
about half a block. We could not see
everything that was going on in the
center of the group and this is where
they would go to urinate. Two walked
to the edge of the group and proceeded
to urinate and were arrested. These
were men. There was no mistaking
the smell of urine even though we
couldn't see them urinate. This went
on until about 2: 00 a.m. when they
dispersed.
This is a true and correct statement
and J freely sign my name below.
(sl K. W. JONES
Captain, Montgomery Police
Department
Notary : Mary B. Newberry (s J
Date : April 5, 1965
My commission expires on August
1965.
...
...
...
AFFIDAVIT
I, James E. Farris, member of th.e
State Troopers of the State of Alabama, do hereby swear and attest and
under penalty of perju'ry, that from
Monday, March 22nd, 1965, through
Wednesday, March 24th, I, among
many others, was assigned duty with
the other officials in connection with
the march from Selma to Montgomery,
Alabama.
I further swear and attest that during this tour of duty I personally saw
many, many cases of drunkeness, sexual promiscuity, and urination in the
streets and other public places.
I further swear and attest that on
March 24th, Wednesday, we were assi~ned duty in front of the Capitol
THIRTY-ONE
�Building in Montgomery where a large
number of marchers had gathered.
These marchers stayed in front of the
Capitol until approximately 3:00 a .m.
Thurs.day morning and so many of ·
them had urinated in the street (Dexter) that it actually ran a city block
down the street. This I saw myself
and do not report this as heresay.
I further swear and attest that on
n u m e r o u s occasions the marchers
would walk close to myself, as weii as
troopers, and actually curse us, and
make most obscene remarks to us. As
stated, this happened on many, many
occasions.
I further swear and attest that traffic was blocked all the way from Dannelly Field into . the city of Montgomery
when the marchers arrived in the Danneily Field vicinity on March 24th,
1965. I was on duty that day and saw
•
this myself. The entire march caused
a traffic hazard that just simply could
not be adequately guarded against.
(s l JAMES E. FARRIS
State Trooper
State of Alabama
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 3rd' day of April, 1965.
(s ) J. D. Smyth, Jr.
Notary Public
Alabama, State at Large
My commission expires 5-20-68.
.,.
AFFIDAVIT
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN :
I, Marlon J. Bass, did, ·on the night
of the 23rd of March, 1965; see, at the
camp site of the Selma to Montgomery
marches, a young white girl and a colored man having sex relations. They
were on the ground out in the open
and did not try in any way to hide as
I walked within six or eight feet of
them.
There were many colored girls and
white boys laying in the same sleeping
bags. I also saw a white girl about
17 years old and 4 colored boys get
into the back of a truck and close the
doors. This was befQre dark on the
23rd day of March 1965. They were
in the truck about 45 minutes and wheff
they opened the door to get out the
girl was dressing.
This is a true statement.
(s ) MARLON J. BASS
Route 6
Andalusia, Alabama
County of Covington
Sworn to and subscribed before me
on this 7th day of April, 1965.
(s ) Neil L. Coplin
Notary Public
My commission expires 3-21-66 .
,-•
It_ was a hot Spring _in. Birmingham . . Negro youths in Kelly ~ngram Park appreciated most the efforts of the Birmingham
Fire D~partment . . This 1s a scene typical of m ost any day durmg the d'e monstrntion. Negro boys playing in the streams of
water from the fire hoses. There don't seem to be any "children b!eeding on the ground."
THIRTY-TWO
�Here are four of the marchers from Selm a to Montgomery who seem t-0 be feeling the effects of the heat--Or the miles--0r
something. There was always a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on if the boots began to feel heavy along the way.
��
night of March 10, 1965, these demonstrators, who knew that once they left the area they would not be able to return, urinated
en masse in the street on the signal of James Forman, SNCC ExecJJtiVe Director. "All right," Forman shoute<)l, "Everyone
stand up and relieve yourself." Almost everyone did. Some arrests were made of men who went to obscene extremes in exposing themselves to local police officers.
�The True SELMA Story
Albert C. (Buck) Persons has lived in
Birmingham, Alabama for 15 years. As
a stringer for LIFE and managing editor
of a metropolitan weekly newspaper he
covered the Birmingham demonstrations
in 1963. On a special assignment for Congressman William L. Dickinson of Alabama he investigated the Selma-Montgomery demonstrations in March, 1965.
In 1961 Persons was one of a handful of
pilots hired to support the invasion of
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. His story on
this two years later led to the admission
by President Kennedy that four American flyers had died in combat over the
beaches of Southern Cuba in an effort to
drive Fidel Castro from the armed Soviet
garrison that had been set up 90 miles
off the coast of the United States. After
interviewing scores of people who were
eye-witnesses to the Selma-Montgomery march, Mr. Persons has written
the articles published here. In summation he says, "The greatest obstacle
in the Negro's search for "freedom" is the Negro himself and the leaders
he has chosen to follow.
CONTENTS
Page 2
Black Kni_g ht of the Civil Rights Movement
In ten short years Martin Luther King has risen to a · position of leadership and
political influence never before approached by a Negro in America. Many people
in both races today question his associations and his ultimate goals. Down what road
,is King leading his race in the United States - is it toward freedom, or is it back
into slavery?
Sex and Civil Rights -
The True Selma Story
Page 4
Was the widespr.ead misbehavior prevalent on the Selma-to-Montgomery march onlyto-be-expected youthful protests against established mores, or was it an integral part
of the planned demonstration, calculated to provoke and to incite. Here are sworn
statements of eye-witnesses.
Bayard and Ralph, Just a Couple of the Boys
Page 13
In a so-called Christian movement morality would seem to play an important part.
Here are the unsavory police and court records of the leaders of the civil rights
movement.
How "Images" Are Created
Page 16
A photograph, which stops a split-second of action, can say anything an editor wants
it to say. Here is the story, by a LIFE "stringer" of how the Birmingham " image"
was created.
Page 20
Martin Luther King and Communism
The complete files of a Communist front organization were taken in a raid in New
Orleans. These files are a documented record of more than 25 vears of subversive
activity, mostly in the field of civil rights. They offer conclusive· evidence of Martin
Luther King's Jong and intimate association with known Com1:11unist Party mem~ers
working in an organization which was set up by the Commumst Party of the Uluted
States· for the express purpose of subverting the civil rights movement in the South.
Copy rig ht I 965 -
Esco Publ ishers, Inc. -
Birmin gham, A labama
�Black Knight
Of The Civil
Rights Movement
Selma and Montgomery, Alabama,
were visited in March, 1965 by thousands
of sincere people who believed that they
participated irt a holy crusade for human dignity and civil rights. Among
these thousands were priests, nuns, ministers and reU::ious leaders from throughout the nation. They came, they believed, to bear witness to Christ's admonition that "In as · much as ye have
done it unto one of the least of th~se my
bretheren, ye have done it unto me."
* ·~ * *
Selma, however, was neither inspired
nor created by these well motivated and
sincere thousands. The fact that they
believed they were right, the fact that a
civil rights cause, per se, which inspired
their presence in Selma may be just, the
fact that their motives were beyond reproach, does nothing to mitigate the fact
that they were misguided. Selma and
Montgomery were targets chosen by the
leaders of civil rights organizations in
a long range campaign to exploit the
travails of a minority group in this
country. The leadership, the direction
and the control of the civil rights movement is in the hands of those who organize and run the communist conspiracy to subjegate the entire world.
This conspiracy we recognize as a threat
to the peace and security of the worldand we fight hard against it all over
the world. It is also a threat to the
peace and security of this nation, and
it operates among other places here in
this country behind the cover of the
civil rights movement. It is a· good
cover. Dr. Martin Luther King, head of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , one of the sponsors of the
TWO
Selma - Montgomery demonstration, has
even persuaded the President of the
United States to parrot the catch-phrase
"we shall overcome" before a joint session of the U. S. Congress. King has
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Any attack on King today is ·almost automatically assumed to be an attack on
the Negro's search for justice, freedom
and equality. The truth is, however,
Martin Luther King is .tied directly to
a communist conspiracy whic_h is aimed
at destroying every vestige of human
dignity, individual freedom and, incidentally, civil rights.
.,. * * * *
W h e n an Alabama Congressman,
William L. Dickinson, attacked tl:ie
moral degeneracy which characterized_
the behavior of a hard-core element of
demonstrators who participated in the
Selma-to-Montgomery march, he was,
himself, widely attacked for his protest.
When he said that men dressed as
clergymen participated in these activities, he was attacked for smearing the
church. He was called a liar and accused of spreading "garbage." The
"garbage" was not of the Congressman's
making, but it was there . It was there
by design. It was an integrnl part of
the whole operation, and it was calculated to incite and to provoke. These
are not s i m p 1y youthful protestors
against established mores. These are
professional and semi-professional agitators who know what they are doing. If
they, and the insufferable indignities
they inflict on the decent people in the
communities where they appear, were
not desired in the civil rights movement
it would take only a word from Dr. King
to have them removed. Dr. King did
not give the word in Selma. Nor will
he in Boston, Washington, San Francisco
or wherever he decides to strike next.
People in towns and citi!l,', which are
future targets for King and his "movement" should prepare themeselves for
the debauchery, drunkeness and open,
promiscuous sexual activity which occurred in Selma and Montgomery.
~ *
)c
What the people of the United States
must learn is that no honest person in
the South today will deny that Negroes
in this country have been the victims
of prejudice, discrimination and injustice. No honest person in the South today will deny the Negro's right to full
citizenship, equal opportunity and an
end to personal indignities they have
been subjected to in the past because
of tl}eir race and color. And no one in
the United States today should fail to
recognize that because the Negro's cause
is just and his protest legitimate, both
he and the white Southerner are particularly attractive victims for those who
would use this cause, and this protest,
for their own divisive purposes. Dr.
Martin Luther King is one of these.
This black knight sits astride the white
horse of the civil rights movement. And
Dr. King, if he is not checked will ride
'
it to its death.
~**
" Non-violence" is not Dr. King's weapon. Non-violence would actually destroy King-if he allowed it to prevail.
Violence is King's weapon. He must
have it. Violence and civil disorder are
King's meat and bread. It is what sustains him. He uses it to divide the South
�from the rest of the nation. And in his
efforts he has had a big assist from the
national press and other communications
medja. Today, almost anywhere in the
world, the name " Birmingham" automatically calls to mind vicious police
dogs, thug cops, bombs, and firehoses
mowing down innocent Negro children
on the city streets. This " image" is as
phony as a three-dollar bill. In Birmingham, and Alabama, there are violent uncontrollable elements of society.
These are not peculiar to Alabama.
There are large prison populations in
every state in the Union which attest to
the fact that there are violent and uncontrollable members of society in every
state . The problem is one which involves frailties of human nature, uncontrollable itself. It is not a problem
created by some ba.sic bestiality confined to members of the white race who
live below the Mason-Dixon Line.
According to the results of recent
polls only. a small percentage of people
in the United States outside the South
believe that Negroes can register to vote
in the South. Martin Luther King says
Negroes can't register and, unfortunately, most of the nation's press media
goes right along with him in support of
his "voter registration drive" - without
attempting to learn the facts . The truth
is King's drive in Selma and the Black
Belt counties of Alabama is a drive to
register every illiterate in the statewhich happens to be a violation of the
laws of the State of Ala bam a, just as it
is a violation in many other states outside the South.
King is already beginning to talk
Martin Luther King and James Forman, Executive Director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Selma-Montgomery demonstrations. The
hand at the right is that of a demonstrator who is attempting to unfurl for clearer
identification the United Nations flag. Many people object to King's use of the United
Nations flag in his demonstrations as reflecting his new emphasis on the civil rights
movement as a world-wide "class struggle."
about the civil rights movement as a
part of a world-wide " class struggle ."
He also suggests -we should pull out of
Viet Nam . Next he will probably have
something to say about the Dominican
Republic and Cuba. When he does, it's
a safe bet that his recommendations will
follo w a line which serves best the interests of the communist conspiracy . But
then why not ? For years King has been
on intimate terms, and has worked
closely, with people and organizations
dedicated to the communist cause .
The churches and churchmen, (the
biggest single threat to communist ambitions throughout the world ) when they
lend their support to King, should consider carefull y the garden path down
which they are being led . In a time of
much physical insecurity a nd spiritual
uncertainty, clergymen must often feel
a sense of inadequacy to meet the growing demands of their calling. The place
to correct this, however , is at home-
not in the ranks of King's marchers in
Selma, Alabama.
In Montgomery, late in February,
1964, Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin
Luther King had this to say: "To the
State of Alabama and its people , you
had better fasten your seat belts. There
will be no peace or tranquility until the
Negro has had his conquest. .. "
In Birmingham, in the summer of
1963, Martin Luther King was asked by
a young white man (one of King's supporters who feared for his physical
safety in forthcoming planned demonstrations) if he, King, thought it would
be necessary for him to take an active
part in the planned demonstrations. Dr.
King said it ·was not necessary. "You
don 't have to demonstrate," King said.
"We ·don 't want you to. We have enough
idiots out there to take care of all that ."
,:,
For sheer hypocrisy there has been
nothing equal to Dr. Ma rtin Luther King
since Judas Iscariot.
THREE
�NO BOOZE?
N B C commentator Charles
Quinn testified at length on the
Huntley - Brinkley program that
.there had been no drinking in
evidence on the Selma-to-Montgomery march . Quinn said that
he had accompanied the marchers all the way. The only evidence he saw was one beer can
-and that was his own. Not
that it makes all that much difference, but just to keep the
record straight, and Mr. Quinn
along with it, the pictures on
this page were taken at the
Montgomery Municipal Airport
on the night of March 28 (following the ,departure from Montgomery of thousands of demonstrators who had gathered in
front of the State Capitol earlier
in the · afternoon . The case of
Scotch W hi s k e y, incidentaliy,
was empty.
SIX
�?
Here, however, for those who are
willing to accept the kind of evidence
which 1s accepted in our courts, are
some of the affidavits of people who
were on the spot and have taken oath
that what they state is the truth.
AFFIDAVIT
My name is Mrs . Nettie Adams, and
live at 3555 Prince George Drive in
Montgomery, Alabama. I am now and
have been a member of the City Police
Department of Montgomery for over five
(5 ) years.
On March 15 , 1965, at about 9:30 P.M.,
my husband and I were returning home
from my mother's home at 622 South
Hull Street. We knew that there had
been some trouble with demonstrators
at High and Jackson Streets. We took
Adams Street to avoid this, but as we
approached Adams· and Ripley Streets,
we noticed a crowd of people. We
stopped to see what was going on. There
were white" and Negro people all over
the Ripley Street side of St. Margaret's
I
?
?
Hospital and across the street, between
Price's Drug Store and Powell Electric
Company. They were all kissing and
hugging. This one particular couple on
St. Margaret's lawn was engaged in
sexual relations, a· white woman (a
skinny blonde ) and a Negro man. After
they were through, she wiggled out
from beneath him and over to the man
lying to the left of them on the lawn
and started kissing and caressing his
face . At this point, a detective's car
pulled up nex.t to the group over by
Price's Drug Store, and my husbartd
said, "Let's get out of here; this is no
place for a man to have his wife." We
left immediately.
*
The day they marched on the Courthouse, the policewomen had to work
traffic downtown, and after a few hours
my husband came down and he ,and I
went into Chris' Hog Dog Stand for a
coffee break. When we came out, two
of the other ladies went in for a break.
Just as they went inside, a group came
from the Courthouse, hollering and
carrying on, saying, "We are Communists and we belong to the John Birch
Society." They stopped in front of Chris'
and this red-haired woman and Negro
man started making love and embracing one another, as if they wanted someone to try and stop them . I stayed there
because I was afraid they were going in
Chris' and I wanted to be able to call
for help. I didn't want our two policewomen or anyone to get hurt.
On March 31, the day they had the
funeral to place the ten coffins on the
Capitol steps, I was placed at the intersection of Wilkerson and Montgomery
Streets to hold the traffic . As they
passed me, they started laughing real
loud and some of them hollered, "She's
a segregationist, you can tell ; she just
looks like one." At one time during the
day, before the parade started, there
was a crowd gathering on the Dexter
Avenue Bap-tist Church steps and in
front of the church. A Negro boy· was
lying backwards across the hood of a
SEVEN
_I
�The interesting thing about the human race is that it comes in so many different sizes and shapes. Here is a good cross
section at Montgomery in the persons of some of the demonstrators who took part in the mar ch from Selma. The boots are
not recommended hiking equipment.
EIGHT
�car parked in front of the church and
a white girl was leaning over him from
the other side of the car, kissing him
about the face .
About 5:30 that evening, March 31,
a group of Negroes coming from the
demonstration was in the second block
of Dexter Avenue. They started yelling
all together, " Them white sons of
bitches , we will cut their asses off." I
called for a patrol car. They were
headed for the first block of Dexter,
and just as they got to the corner they
started singing r eal loud, " We Shall
Overcome," and " We Want Our Freedom, and We Want It This Year." The
officer working the first block of Dexter,
M. E . Furr, noticed them and began to
follow them. They split up. He followed
a group of four into H. L. Green's and
back out. By this time, the patrol car
was there and we approached them and
told them they were under arrest. There
were three (3) juveniles and one adult,
Babette Hadley, 26 years old, who lived
on Ludie Street in Montgomery. Babette
Hadley started fighting Officer Rodgers,
saying that she wasn 't getting in that
damned car ; he would have to kill her
first and she was ready to die for the
cause. She had an umb rella and was
swinging it at him. He took it away
from her and put her in the car . After
she got to jail, they discovered that she
was drinking. I called the jail to see
if she had made . bond or if I would have to go to court the next morning. I
talked with Security Officer Lawr ence
who said that she had not made bond'.
I told him that it looked as though I
would be in court the next morning. He
said, " Yes, if she sobers up enough."
I stated that I had not known that she
was drinking, since I had been warned
by my supervisors not to get close and
risk getting hurt, but that I knew that
she was acting strangely. He said that
she was drunk. I called Chief Lackey,
because I knew that he had been tied
up at the Capitol that day and probably
did not know about this arrest. He said
that he didn 't know about it and would
call the jail. I later called the jail and
.talked with Sgt. Grady Arnette. He told
me that Chief Lackey had called and
that she had quieted down and made a
phone call , and that she would probably
make t: wnd . I asked him if she was
drunk, a nd he told me that she was
dri nking quite a bit. She didn't i;nake
bond and was charged with disorderly
conduct and fined $25 and costs in court
the next morning.
I also worked at the jail two nights
when we had to make quite a few
arrests . I shook down the women pris-
oners, and most of them had no underpants on .
(sl NETTIE ADAMS
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this 3rd day of April, 1965.
(s l Albert Marvin, Sr.
Notary Public
My commission expires 1-18-67.
:j: * *· *
AFFIDAVIT
My name is ------------------------· I am a
Negro thirty-two years old and a lifelong resident of Montgomery, Alabama .
I live at._ _____ _______________ Street in Montgomery. I am employed at ------------------·
During a three-day period which I
believe to be around March 8, 9, and
10, 1965, a great many people began to
arrive in Montgomery to demonstrate
here and to get ready for the march
from Selma to Montgomery. During this
period, I was frequently in and around
the Ben Moore Hotel , a Negro hotel at
902 Highland Avenue, which was headquarters of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee on the corner of
J ackson and High Streets. Many of the
outside demopstrators stayed at the Ben
Moore Hotel and in the neighborhood .
One man whom I saw freque_ntly during
this period was dressed as a priest. I
was later told by a SNCC staff worker,
whose name was Randy, that this
priest's name is Lennon Sweat, and that
he is from Philadelphia. When I saw
him he was usually drinking wine or
whiskey in company with Negro boys
and girls . On one occasion, I saw him
go into the back room at SNCC headquarters with a Negro girl. I saw them
begin to take their clothes off. I did not
see what they did. Later the girl told
me that this priest, Sweat, had paid her
· $12. I, myself, had seen this priest hand
the girl some money before they went
back .
SNCC headquarters. was located in a
building with a large room up front
which was used for an office. Off this
room , in back, was a smaller room in
which were about twelve to fifteen canvas cots. During the period l am talking a bout, men and women .u sed this
room fo r sex freely and openly and without interfe rence. On one occasion, I saw
J ames F orman, Executive Director of
SNCC, and a red-haired white girl whose
name is R achel, on one of the cots together. They engaged in sexual inter course, as well as an a bnormal sex act
which consisted of each of the two
manipulating the other's private parts
with their mouths simul taneously. Forman and the girl, Rachel, made no
effort to hide their actions .
During this same period, March 8,
9 and 10, a large number of young dem-
onstrators of both races and sexes occupied the J a c k s o n Street Baptist
Church for approximately forty - eight
hours. These were not members of the
church, or at least most of them were
not, but people who had come from out
of town. J would estimate that there
were at least two hundred involved. In
spite of pleas from the minister and
other members of the church, these people would not leave. I saw young boys
and girls drinking beer and whiskey in
the church and having wild parties in
general. They left the bottles and cans
all over the church. I saw numerous
instances of boys and girls of both races
hugging and kissing and fondling one
another openly in the church. On one
occasion, I saw a Negro boy and a white
girl engaged in sexual intercourse on the
floor of the church. At this time the
church was packed and the couple did
nothing to hide their actions. While they
were engaged in this act of sexual intercourse, other boys and girls stood
around and watched, laughing and joking.
This statement, which I make freely
and of my own accord, and which has
been read back to me, represents incidents which I have personally witnessed .
Subscribed and sworn to this
day of April , 1965.
Signed.
Notary Public.
~:
AFFIDAVIT
My name is James Duke. I am a
Captain in the Sheriff's Office of Montgomery County, Alabama, and I reside
at 516 Forest Hills Dr., Montgomery,
Alabama . On March 10, 1965, at approximately 1 : 20 p.m., I , in my official
capacity as a Captain of the Sheriff's
Office, along with other law officers of
the City of Montgomery and the State
of Alabama, was on duty on Dexter
Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama. in
the block as it ends at the front door of
the Alabama State Capitol Building. A
group of demonstrators arrived and
were prevented from going any fur ther
in their march to the State Capitol than
this particular block. ·T hese demonstrators, numbering more than two hund red
were told to leave and disperse but the;
sat down and laid down in the s treet.
For the next few hours a gond many
of the demonstrators began to drift
away,, singly and in small groups. By
8:00 p.m . that night some 100 were left.
The group was composed of a racially
mixed crowd of both sexes, and included
adul ts as well as juveniles . At approximately 8:00 one of the leaders, a colored
man whose name I can not recall but
NINE.:
__ j
�It's fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama . The road is paved, and hard, all the way. This group of marchers
looks as if they had walked every inch of the way.
whom I believe myself a ble to .identify
from existing photos if necessary, stood
and announced in a loud voice to the
crowd " E veryone sta nd and relieve
your s e Iv es. " Practically the entire
crowd in every mi xture of a ge, sex, and
color rose and a large number exposed
themselves atid urinated in the streets.
I would li ke to point out tha t thi s area
is within the Sta te Capitol compl ex and
at the hea d of the ma in street of Montgomery, Ala bama , a nd is fair ly well
lighted. Urine began to course clown
the street in sma ll streams a nd into the
gutters a nd ran almost to the next block.
Two colored men were arrested fo r indecent exposure for pa rticula rly lewd
a nd offensive exposure of their pri vate
parts. The demo nstrators foun d it necessary to ta ke their placards and signs to
sit on after this conduct. The resu lting
odor became so offensive in a few hou r:;
that we had to get up-wind in order to
Escape the smell. I might acid that I
saw kissing, hugging, a nd fond ling between mi xed sexes a nd races . At a roun d
1: 35 a .m. on Ma rc h 11 , 1965, more tha n
12 hours after their a rr iva l, a cold dnzzling ra in bega n a nd the entire crowd
dispersed.
TEN
(s ) JAMES DUKE
Sworn a nd subscribed to before me,
George W. Dean, Jr., a Notary in and
for said State and County, thi s ·5th day
of April , 1965.
STATE OF ALABAMA,
COUNTY OF DALLAS:
Befor e me, undersigned a uthority , in
a nd fo r sa id State a nd County, persona lly ai:; peared Ha rold Sewell and being
by me first duly sworn on oath, deposes
a nd says:
On Marc h 5, 1965 , a nd severa l days
thereafter , my waitress in our dining
room did ser ve several mixed drinks to
priests a nd mi nisters in our restaurant .
Thi s was a mixed group of Negroes a nd
whites from out of tow n. Over about
two and one ha lf hour period , this gr oup
was louder tha n the ordina ry with their
conve rsation.
Thi s is a true statement to the best
of my knowledge .
(sl HAROLD SEWELL
Swo rn to a nd subscribed befo re me
this the 7th cl ay of April , 1965.
(sl ,JUD ERNEST HEWSTON. JR.
No ta ry P ublic.
AFFIDAVIT
My name is Cecil H. Atkinson, and
I reside on Allenville Road in Prattville,
being employed with the Continental
Gin Company in Prattville. I do hereby
swear under oath and under penalty of
perjury that the followin g facts are true
a nd accura te in every respect to my
own persona l knowledge:
My wife and I drove to Selma on
Sunday , the day the m arch was to begin . We saw many people taking pictures of the church , a nd it appeared
that everything was very order ly and
ni ce. We tried to drive by Brown 's
Chapel where the Negroes were assembled, but the street was blocked off. We
pa rked at the corner of Broa d a nd Water
Streets a nd sat a nd waited for the
ma r ch to begin. At approxima tely 11
a. m ., we obser ved a n a m bulance arri ve at Brown's Chapel and depart
shortly t hereafter, going toward Montgom ery, with sirens a nd blinking red
lights in operation .
The peop le in the car next to ours
were ve ry dist ressed about the condition of the nuns who were tak ing part
in the march. These people were Episcopa lians a nd fro m St. Louis. Missouri,
�,.
and had heard that some of their own
church people were taking part in the
march. The general appearance of the
marchers was disgraceful, m o s t of
the marchers which we saw were Negroes, but the white men a nd women
who were mixed in with them were
holding hands and arms with them. We
watched for King to come by, but never
did see him walk by. When he came
by he was riding in a station wagon,
and the station wagon rode along with
the marchers and I observed King getting out of it several times.
Between Selma and the first stop I
observed both men and women relieving themselves in public, all together
and making no a ttempt to conceal themselves at a ll.
At the rest stop, I saw King sitting
by the side of the road. A man walked
up .to him and ha nded him a slip of
paper , which seemed to concern King
greatly. He said, " We'll take care of
this at the next rest stop. "
At one point I observed a young
beatnik-type man with his collar turned
around to r esemble a priest. He told
me that it was "the way to get a long."
Another told me that he had been offered $15 a day, 3 meals a day, and ail
the sex he could handle if he would
come down and join in the demonstration from the North.
It appeared that the demonstrators
were making every effort to stir up
some sort of trouble. At one point, one
of the marchers said to me, " Get out
of the way, you white bastard." They
were making other similar remarks to
others sta nding a long the street.
(s l CECIL H. ATKINSON
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 10th day of April, 1965.
(s) Chauncy D. Wood
Notary Public, State at Large
Expiration date Nov. 17, 1965.
*
AFFIDAVIT
I , Lionel Freema n, a Captain in the
Alabama State Troopers, in Huntsville,
Alabama, do swea r and affirm, under
oath, and under penalty of perjury that
the following events happened or actually occurred in my presence and to
my own personal knowledge while on
duty out of Huntsville in Selma, Alabama, from March 9th through March
16th:
During the march, or attempted
march, from Selma to Montgomery on
March 9, 196~, myself and the men
under my command were stationed
along the north side of the road just
east of Pettus Bridge. While the march
was stopped in the highway, one of the
white beatniks, with a goatee, told one
of my troopers who was standing only
a few feet from me that he was being
paid $10 per day, 3 meals, and all the
Negro p - - - he wantea." This same
beatnik was observed for the next eight
(8) days in Selma acting as some sort
of leader around Sylvan Street, where
the street · demonstration was going on.
He was in the company of a white girl
part of the time and a Negro girl part
time. The next time I saw him after
The student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, one of the organizations sponsoring the march from Selma to Montgomery,
works on campuses throughout the nation to influence students and young people to become active in the civil r ights movement and in participating in demonstrations. Here are some of the students_ who participated in the demonstrations in Alabama
last March. The undergraduate in the center carries a school sweater with the letter "H" emblazoned on it. Perhaps he is
a Harvard undergrad.
ELEVEN
�L
Selma was when he came up Dexter
Avenue on March 18th .
While at the Sylvan Street "Berlin
Rope, " I and many others observed
smooching and lovemaking between Negroes a nd whites. A n e w s reporter
called me over to the side of the street
and pointed to a couple just to the rear
of the group sta nding in -the street, a
mixed couple, were in the act of having sexual relations. About this time,
a priest broke it up and had the couple
come up to the " Rope." It didn't seem
to bother any of the three and soon
were all gone from the front of the line.
On Saturday, March 13, they had an
extra la rge crowd of both white and
Negroes in the streets. They atte!IJpted
to scatter and go around the blockade.
One Negro who was standing beside a
priest, a nd both standing about three
feet from a line of Troopers , made several attempts to provoke a Trooper into
hitting him . The Negro waved three
dollar bills in the Trooper's face and
then dropped them , saying " Why don't
you pick them up, I know you need
it. " During this time, the priest just
grinned. The Negro man then said "I'll
sleep with a white woman tonight." The
priest seemed to think this was real
funny . The priest and Negro would
whisper back and forth a nd then laugh
out loud . I ove rheard three beatniks
talking, saying that they had been in
Clevela nd, Berkley, California and Harlem, and had come directly to Selma to
join in the demonstrations there.
On the afternoon of March 8th, at
about 6 p.m ., as we were turning onto
U. S. 80 a t the intersection of Alabama
21 , which is in downtown Selma , I ,
along with 30 of my men saw two men
dressed as priests a nd four young Negro girls walk across U . S. 80. The
priests were holding ha nds with two
Negro girls each . The Rev. Reeb was
beaten about two or three hours later.
One tall priest was observed for several days around Sylvan Street, always
in the compa ny of a Negro girl of a bout
sixteen years of age . Anytime you saw
one you saw the other , a nd usually they
were holding ha nds . .They were in the
m arch to the Courthouse in Selma on
Monday, March 15. They went to a nd
from the County Courthouse in Selma
on Monday, March 15. They went to
a nd fro m the County Courthouse holding hands.
On the night of March 16, at 10 p.m .,
a group of thirty-fou r (34 ) men, mostiy
dressed as priests, came from a Negro
church in Montgomery to the fro nt of
the Capitol. They st a t e d that they
wa nted to get on the Capitol step3 to
hold a " P rayer-Service. " They were to ld
TWELVE
that they could hold their service on
the walk but not on the steps. They
stayed until 3 a .m., insisting that they
be allowed up on the Capitol grounds.
After about thirty minutes , the news
media were told to get out of the street
and they moved across the street. Some
of the men claiming to be priests
cursed like sailors during these five
hours . At 3 a.m ., when they started to
leave, two photographers, apparently
in their employment, c a m e running
across the street. One of the men
dressed as a priest said, " You stupid
son-of-a-bitch , after all this time here
you didn't get a picture of us saying a
prayer on the bottom step." They were
allowed to kneel on the bottom step in
attempt to get rid of them.
During the eight days in Selma, several newspaper men who were allowed
to go to the rear of the demonstration
crune back up to the front and told us
they observed white and Negro couples
in_the act of sexual relations . They told
us that they had sent the story and pictures home to their papers. One told
me that the only thing he recognized
about his story when it was printed was
his name . He had asked to be allowed
to leave the Selma area but was refused by his paper .
A Jewish rabbi who was on the five
hour stand at the Capitol was contacted
by a Trooper in a barber shop the next
day . The rabbi stated that the leaders
had lied to him . He stated that, " They
told m e we'd only be at the Capitol
for ty-five minutes at the moi;;t, but after
getting there they wanted. to remain
all night." He said further, " They want
(Continued on Page 28 )
-
~~is gentleman marched all the way from Sel!'1a to Montgomery-accommodating
l,1mself to the u~s_eas~nably hot weather. He 1s a Canadian student who took advant~ge of the civil rights march to accomplish some research for the Ph.D. he is
workmg on.
�nstration
l told us
couples
1'hey told
and pieOne told
icognized
nted was
allowed
was rethe five
ontacted
the next
leaders
, "They
Capitol
mt after
remain
ey want
Bayard and Ralph
Just A
Couple Of
The Boys
,,
wdating
ook ad>. he is
Negroes in Birmingham were asked to kneel as Martin Luther King and Ralph
Abernathy walked past during demonstrati.ons in Birmingham in 1963. Assistants
preceded the two Negro !eaders with exhortations, "Here he comes. Here comes
the King of Kings."
W h e n the march from Selma to
Montgomery started on Sunday, March
21, it was joined by clergymen and
church leaders from across the land.
They had come to join a crusade for
human dignity and civil rights. They,
and thousands of others, believed that
their participation in this massive demonstration helped to dramatize a long
overdue protest by Negroes against injustice, discrimination, suppression of
their constitutional rights as citizens,
and a denial of their fundamental dignity as human beings. For many it
was an exalted and emotional experience without parallel in their lives.
Perhaps it is only natural, therefore, that when voices are raised in
protest against these demonstrations.
They seemed to be raised in · defense
of " police brutality," discrimination,
suppression of human rights and denial
of civil liberty. This is not true.
Churchmen, who have been called
to devote their lives to the teachings
of Christ, may· want to ask themselves
this question : If their efforts over the
past 2,000 years have been inadequate
to the task of eliminating man's inhumanity to man, how do they think
marching from Selma to Montgomery
is going to get the job done? Whatever the answer, the fact is there remains a faint and distasteful residue
of doubt in many minds concerning
the propriety of · the widespread participation by clergymen in the SelmaMontgomery activities. For many, no
doubt, Selma was a form of self-expression, an outlet for their own frustrations-which is entirely understandable. What they fail to understand ,
however, is that their presence and
participation in Selma not only adds
substance a n d dignity to the civil
rights cause itself, but also to those
who use the cause, and the cloth, for
basically evil purposes of their own.
Two ,of these are Bayard Rustin and
Ralph Abernathy, the one a homosexual who solicits on city streets.
whose life's work is the subversion of
the moral fibre of the youth of America, and who led Martin Luther King
from obscurity to a position of such
eminence in the eyes of many of his
followers that they actually kneel when
THIRTEEN
�he walks past. The other is a minister,
the "dear and abiding friend " of Martin Luther King and his most intimate
associate in the civil rights movement,
and a man who hides behind the cloth
to seduce a 15-year-old member of his
church congregation.
One of the men who sat with Martin
Luther King on the stand at the Capitol in Montgomery is Bayard Rustin .
Rustin was an organizer for the Communist Party for 12 years. Later he
became head of the War Resistors
League , the U. S. branch of War Resistors International. The efforts of
this world-wide organization are devoted entirely to persuading and assisting young men to avoid military
service to their governments - which
activity, if not a direct attempt to overthrow the government, is at least an
indirect effort which, if successful, will
accomplish the same purpose.
Rustin had already reached a posi-~ 2.8;8.•A .{!?ex P.-rvorsion .
tion of prominence in his chosen field
of subversion in 1955 when he was
called on to go to Montgomery anrl
lend assistance to an obscure young
Baptist minister who had organized a
bus boycott in that city. Just who
".called upon" Rustin for this assignment is not clear. Rustin did leave
New York and for three years ga\·e
counsel ·and advice to Martin Luther
King. There is a widely held misconception that Bayard Rustin rose to eminence through his efforts as Martin
Luther King's executive secretary. Exactly the opposite is true . Rustin made
King.
Bayard Rustin is a homosexual with
a long police record. In this enlightened age we are neither surprised nor
concerned with a person's private sex
practices. When they cease to be private, however, they become offensive
and call into question a person's mental
balance and standards of values. This
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Pasadena, California p.olice report on arres t of Bayard Rustin and two men at 2:30
a.m .. January 21, 1953.
FOURTEEN
sort ·of thing was widely in evidence
th r o u g ho u t the Selma-Montgomery
demonstrations. Small wonder-if Rustin 's influence can be seen here. Rustin
himself was jailed in Pasadena , California for soliciting two men .on the
street and then engaging in a homosexual act while parked in a car on
one of the city's main thoroughfares.
The Pasadena Police report of this incident is reproduced on page 14.
We are not concerned with Ralph
Abernathy's private sex life. It should
be an entirely private and personal
matter. However, when a person's
standards of personal behavior are such
that he can be found being chased down
Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama by an outraged husband with an
axe in his hand; and we learn further
that this person seduced the wife of the
outraged husband when she was a 15year-old member of his church congregation, and that he has continued to
annoy her ever since-then there would
seem to be ligitimate cause for concern about the man's moral character
and personal standards, particularly if
he is one of the leaders of what purports to be a Christian movement.
Such a man is Ralph Abernathy. Here
is a transcript from the trial of Edward
Davis, a s c h o o 1 teacher in Butler
County, Alabama . This is case number 8741, State vs. Davis, in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama , November Term, 1958, before
Judge Eugene W. Carter. Davis was
tried and acquitted on a charge of assault with attempt to mur der . Followi?~ is a transcript of the testimony
of V1v1an McCoy Davis. It is not pretty
reading but it should be instructive to
any who are interested in knowing in
what direction the civil rights movement may be moving.
*
VIVIAN McCOY DAVIS , having been
duly sworn, was examined and testified as follows:
Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE:
Q. This is Vivian Davis?
A. Yes, I am.
Q. And what was your name before
you became Davis?
A. Vivian McCoy.
Q. Did you see the girl who was on
the stand just befo re you got on ?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, who was she?
A. Ber nice Cooper Davis.
Q. Could you speak louder so these
gentlemen over her can hear it ?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis. She was
Bernice Cooper at that time.
�he walks past. The other is a minister,
the " dear and abiding friend" of Martin Luther King and his most intimate
associate in the civil rights movement,
and a man who hides behind the clotll
to seduce a 15-year -old member of his
church congregation .
One of the men who sat with Martin
Luther King on the stand at the Ca pitol in Montgomery is Bayard Rustin .
Rustin was an organizer for the Communist Party for 12 years. Later he
became head of the War Resistors
League, t he U. S. branch of War Resistors International. The efforts of
this world-wide organization are devoted entirely to persuading and assisting young men to avoid military
ser vice to their governments - which
activity, if not a direct attempt to overthrow the government, is at least an
indirect effo r t which, if successful , will
a ccomplish the same purpose.
Rustin had a lready reached a posi--~ 28_S-A _(~ex ~rvora1on_
c...•1- .,, r,, .....
tion of prominence in his chosen field
of subversion in 1955 when he was
called on to go to Montgomery and
lend assistance to an obscure young
Baptist minister who had organized a
bus boycott in that city. Just who
"_called upon " Rustin for this assignment is not clear . Rustin did leave
New York and for three years gave
counsel ·and advice to Martin Luther
King. There is a widely held misconception that Bayard Rustin rose to eminence through his efforts as Martin
Luther King's executive secretary. Exactly the opposite is true. Rustin made
King.
Bayard Rustin is a homosexual with
a long police record . In this enlightened age we are neither surprised nor
concerned with a person's private sex
practices. When they cease to be private, however, they become offensive
and call into question a person's mental
balance and standards of values. This
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(~on~. )
Pasadena, California police report on arrest of Bayard Rustin and two men at 2:30
a.m .. January 21, 1953.
FOURTEEN
1
sort ·of thing was widely in evidence
th r o u g ho u t the Selma-Montgomery
demonstrations. Small wonder-if Rustin's influence can be seen here. Rustin
himself was jailed in Pasadena , California for soliciting two men .on the
street a nd then engaging in a homosexual act while parked in a car on
one of the city's main thoroughfares.
The Pasadena Police report of this incident is r eproduced on page 14.
We are not concerned with Ralph
Abernathy's private sex life. It should
be an entirely private and personal
matter. Howeyer, when a person's
standards of personal behavior are such
that he can be found being chased down
Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama by an outraged husband with an
axe in his hand; and we learn further
that this person seduced the wife of the
outraged husband when she was a 15year-old member of his church congregation, and that he has continued to
annoy her ever since-then there would
seem to be ligitimate cause for concern about the man's moral character
and personal standards, particularly if
he is one of the leaders of what purports to be a Christian movement.
Such a man is Ralph Abernathy. Here
is a transcript from the tria l of Edward
Davis, a s c h o o I teacher in Butler
County, Alabama. This is case number 8741, State vs. Davis, in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama , November Term, 1958, before
Judge Eugene W. Carter. Davis was
tried and acquitted on a charg~ of assault with attempt to murder. Followi~g. is a transcript of the testimony
of V1 v1an McCoy Davis. It is not pretty
reading but it should be instructive to
a ny who are interested in knowing in
what direction the civil rights movement may be moving.
VIVIAN McCOY DAVIS, having been
duly sworn, was examined a nd testified as follo ws:
Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE:
Q. This is Vivian Davis?
A. Yes, I am .
Q. And what was your name befo re
you became Davis?
A. Vivia n McCoy.
Q. Did you see the gir l who was on
the stand just before you got on?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, who was she?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis.
Q. Cou ld you speak louder so these
gentlemen over her can hear it?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis. She was
Bernice Cooper at that time.
Q. Now, you say at that time, what :
time do you mean ?
A. When she was living with me.
Q. Did she used to live with you ?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. Did she know Abernathy at that
time?
A. Yes , sir, she did .
Q. Did Abernathy know her ?
A. I am sure he did . He come to
our house and he was acquainted with
her.
Q. Now, did Abernathy date you al
any time?
A. Yes, sir, he did.
Q. Did he ever have physical or
sexual relations with you ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did he have normal relations or
abnormal relations ?
A. Both.
Q. Both?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now , did you ever tell him that
you wa nted him to stop getting in touch
with you ?
Bayard Rustin in New York where he directs activities of the War Resistors League,
an organization whose only purpose is to persuade and aid young men to avoid
A. Yes, sir, I did.
military service to their country.
Q. Now, when was the last time ?
Let us just take the summer of 1958.
that he contacted you or that you got
band went outside. Apparently Rev.
I believe your husband went off to
in touch with Abernathy?
Abernathy went outside and I star ted
school , did he not?
A. He contacted me during the sumout the door . His wife and myself, we
A . Yes, sir, he did .
mer of '58 when he was in town this
were inside talking, a nd they were on
Q. Now, before he went off to school
past June, July and August.
the outs ide, a nd when I started out he
were you with him a t any time when
Q. Now , when is the last time he
was ta lking to Rev. Abernathy and I
he h~d a conversation with Abernathy?
contacted you before this occurrence·,
A. Yes, sir .
looked a nd went back inside.
A. He contacted me on August 29th.
Q. Ca n you tell us where that ocQ. Did you come up to them as
curred?
Q. That is the day . . .
they fini shed their conversation ?
A. That is the day that this incident
A. It occurred at his house, a nd it
A. No, I didn 't.
occur red. The incident took place.
occurred in-out at Loveman's in NorQ. And did you talk to a nybody
mandale.
Q. Now , about what time of day did
while they were talking, or did you
he
contact you?
Q. You say that there was a time
just stay inside?
A. He called me approximately at
out a t Lovema n's ?
A. I was inside ta lking to his wife,
two o'clock in the afternoon.
A. Yes, sir, it was.
a nd she went outside.
Q. And now, what went on in that
Q. Was it inside of Loveman's or
Q. Now, a t the time that he marconversation ?
out in front ?
ried; that is Aberna thy, I believe you
A. It was out in front.
A. He called and said he had been
were in the wedding, were you not?
Q. Now, who was there at tha t
trying to get in touch with me, and
A. Yes, sir, I was .
time?
asked me where I had been and I told
Q. Who asked you to be in the wedhim I had been out of town, and at
A. His wife.
ding, did he ask you or did his wife
Q. And by his wife you mean Rev .
as k yo u?
that time I told him, I asked him
Aherna thy's wife?
kind ly not to call me again. And I
A. He asked me first.
A. Rev . Abernathy's wife.
said , "I told you , I told my husband.
Q. Did yo u know his wife ?
Q. Abernathy's wife and Abernathy
and he had told you also that I told
A. No, I didn't.
and who else?
him," and at that time I hung up in
Q. Did she 1i v e here in MontA. And my husband.
his face.
go mery ?
Q. Edward and yo u?
0. And what happened after that?
A. No , she did not.
A. Yes , sir.
A. My husband was at a meeting.
Q. Now, when he first started going
Q. You four ?
with you and having these r elations
Q. Your husba nd was not home at
A. Yes , sir .
that time?
coth proper a nd improper, how old
Q. Were you all sta nding together
were you ?
A,. No, he was not at home.
ta lking?
A. I was fiftee n.
Q. And when did he come home?
A . No.
Q. F iftee n at that time ?
A. He came home a bout fifteen
Q. Well , how were you arranged?
A . Ye , sir.
minut-es after , about two-fifteen.
A. Well , we met up in the store and
Q. Now, after this conversation that
Q. Then what did you and your hushe spoke, and I went over to look at
band do ?
·
occurred out in front of Loveman 's in
some women's apparel and my husMontgomery when was the next time
l Continued on Page 25 1
FIFTEEN
�How 'IMAGES' Are
BY ALBERT C. PERSONS
Almost anywhere in the world today
the name "Birmingham" calls to mind
vicious police dogs, thug cops, bombs
that explode in the night and fire hoses
mowing down innocent Negro children
in the streets. If this were a true
"image" of Birmingham then it would
almost have to go without saying that
the general populace (some 600,000 ),
who are responsible for the city's government and actions of city off.icials ,
is some kind of breed apart from the
rest of the human race. Since this is
not true , it follows that the world-wide
image of Birmingham must be the artificial creation of some outside agency.
More than any other one, single
thing, the Birmingham image is a
product of two publications with worldwide readership numbering in the ten's
of millions . They are LIFE and TIME.
I worked for LIFE during the period
of the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations in the Spring of 1963.
In the May 10, 1963 edition of TIME
their story covering the Birmingham
demonstrations carries this descriptive
passage: ". . . furious , the Commis-
sioner <Bull Conner l roared for his
police dogs . The crowd in the park
edged back ; some hurried away. "Look
at 'em run ," yelled Bull. He saw a
police officer holding back a crowd of
white people nearby . " Let those people come to the corner, Sergeant,"
shouted Connor. " I want 'em to see
the dogs work. Look at those niggers
run.
No matter what else anyone might
want to say about how Connor handled
the Birmingham demonstrations, the
one thing every reporter who covered
Here is a !)icture that will look familiar to many readers. It is almost identical with one taken by the Associated Press and
widely distributed. TIME's caption with this picture in their edition of May 17, 1963 read: Birmingham Cons Manhandlin.,.
Negro woman. The building in the background is on the comer directly across the street from the 16th Streef Baptist Church
-Martin Luther King's command !)Ost for the Birmingham demonstrations., A short time before this picture was taken the
last of several hundred little children had marched quietly up the sidewalk where the woman lies, to waiting school buses
at the end of the block. The buses took the children to "jail" at the city fairgrounds. Most reporters, photographers and
police were at that end of the block when the woman above ca m e out of the d'o orway in the background. A lone policeman
st.ood on the sidewalk by the door. The woman spat in his face and struck out at him. She is a very large w.o man. She
fought and fell to the ground. She also took a large bite out of the leg of the squatting policeman. Several other officers
came to his assistance. It took four to subdue her-without hurting her. The Associated Press photographer and I each took
a picture. The captions us ed on his !)icture were not written by him , of course.
SIXTEEN
�Created
this story knows is that Connor at no
time allowed white spectators within
one city block of the park where Birmingham city police attempted to confine (and disperse) the several thousand Negroes who congregated there
every day. Knowing this, and having
rubbed elbows with Connor almost
every day throughout a several weeks
period, I questioned the TIME correspondent who had filed the report. He
was Dudley E. Morris, at that tim~
based in TIME's Atlanta office. Morris
got quite hot under the collar, but he
fina lly admitted that he had not heard
Connor make the statement, but that
someone else told him Connor made
it. Our argument took place in a motel
room in downtown Birmingham. P resent were several LIFE photographers
and LIFE associate editor David Nevin.
In spite of Morris' admission that
he had not actually heard Police Comm1ss10ner Connor invite tr 3 whites
down to " look at the niggers run," the
fo llowing week LIFE picked up the
quote a nd ran it as part of this passage-which is from their May 17, 1963
edition.
"ATTACK DOGS. With vicious
guard dogs the police attacked the
marchers - and thus rewarded them
with a n outrage that would win support all over the world for Birmingha m 's Negroes. If the Negroes themselves ha d written the script," (they
did J "they could hardly have asked for
greater help for their cause than City
Commissioner Eugene ("Bull " J Connor freely gave. Or dering his men to
let white spectators come near , he
said : "I want 'em to see the dogs work.
Look at those niggers run ."
This statement a ttributed to Bul l
Connor by LIFE and TIME is absolutely fa lse- a nd they know it. Both
magazines have a perfect r ight to their
opinions of Connor a nd they have a ,1
equa l r ight to tell their readers what
this opi nion is. They do not have the
r ight, under a ny norma lly accepted
standards of responsi ble journa lism , to
put words into the mouth of Connor
which he did not utter. By doing so
they fa lsely contrive to have Connor
create a n image of himself whi ch is in
fact entirely their own.
The w:oman in the picture above was drunk on Easter Sunday afternoon in Birmingham in ~963. She and ~undi:eds of others had joined with a group which left a
church deep m a Negro residential area. They were bent on streaming into town.
Birmingha m police ha d orders to prevent this. A stand-off developed a nd the crowd
of chanting Negroes soon numbered more than a thousand. Police were almos t
helpless in effo1·ts to disperse the crowd. The situation became explosive. The only
whites were the police and a handful of reporters. The woman in the oicture struck
out -0f ihe crowd at a _oolicc officer. He went after her. She fought~ It took the
five policemen pictured here to get her into a wagon and off to jail-without hurting her. She could, of course, have been subdued quite easily if any of the police
had wanted to use his club.
Here is more of TIME's view of the
Birmingha m demonstra tions. In the
May 10, 1963 edition TIME says : " Birm ingha m saw a sma ll civil war : whites
against Negroes," tit never happened)
"cops against children" (oh, come on
now l " clogs against huma ns." (Just
li ke ancient Rome where they used to
let the lions eat Christia ns every Saturday a fternoon. eh?l
And this: "It began when Rev. Ma rtin Lu ther King decided to throw school
children into the ba ttle lines." (Tha t
King is a real soldier l . "Police Commissioner Eugene ( " Bull " l Connor,
arch segrega tionist, viciously retaliated
with club swinging cops" (you see, they
can swing straight down on kids l "police dogs," ( they let the dogs eat the
six-year-olds l "and blasts of water
from the fire hoses."
" Blackbooted firemen" (the g ood
firen:ien a I w ays wear white boots l
" turned on their hoses. The kids fell
back from the crushing streams. The
water pressure increased. Children fell
a nd lay there bleeding. ··
Had enough? This would all be
funny if it were not so tragic. The
tragic par t of it is that millions of
SEVENTEE N
�--
~-=-==~-=.-- ,___.,...
A .. _ _ , _
_
_
_ _ _ __ _ __ __ _ _ __
TIME readers actually have a picture
of bleeding Negro children spread like
limp, wet rags all over Birmingham's
city streets. Morris must have waited
until after the bar closed to write that
one.
And so, today, "This is Binningham." The fact that it isn't is something millions of people around the
_ __ _ __
_ _ __
world will never know. TIME anti
LIFE, and all other journals, have a
right (I'm sure they believe it is even
a responsibility l to express their attitudes on any subject they care to approach editorially. These magazines
make no pretense of being objective~
so they are not deceiving their readers
on that count. It is unfortunate, how
The first time police dogs were used in Birmingham was on Sunday, April 13, 1963.
They were used• late in the afternoon to disperse a mob that had, gathered in Kelly
Ingram Park. Shortly after I arrived on the scene I heard shrieks and dogs snarling near the corner of 17th Street and 6th Avenue. I ran over and took the picture
at the top left of police officers shackling a Negro man on the ground. In the top
right picture, Leroy Allen, handcuffed, is being led off by a police officer. The left
oleeve of his sweater is torn and his arm has been gashed by a police dog. Negrn
leaders at the Gaston Motel, where I went that night with LIFE reporters, said that
Allen had stepped between a dog and a woman with a baby in her arms. Then
they said police knocked him to the ground whern he was kicked by Police Chief
Jamie Moore. Later it was learned that Allen had attacked a d'o g with a knife.
The dog was pull~d off and Allen was subdued. When I developed the pictures at
the top it was obvious that Police Chief Moore was nowhere around. The story
about Moore received wide circulation, nevertheless. Thus are "images" creat-e'li.
EIGHTEEN
_ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
ever, that their readers have so little
way of determining what is straight
fact aud what is, shall we say, only
"editorial licel}se." (If you can think
of another word, go ahead and use it. l
There is a lot of talk these days
about "police brutality." Martin Luther King and his civil rights leaders use
the phrase constantly-usually only in
connection with "white soutJ:iern cops."
The elimination of "police brutality"
is almost always one of the demands
they make as a price for an armistice
in communities where they are campaigning. Somehow they have managed to sell much of the national press
on the idea too, as witness the preceeding excerpts from news stories
coming out of Birmingham. The job the
police had to do in Birmingham was
to control" the mobs, numbering in thousands; which gathered in Kelly Ingram
Park. These mobs were not organized
demonstrators with specific projects in
mind-like a march on the courthouse
for a prayer session. They were Negroes who gathered every day to see
what the real demonstrators inside the
16th Street Baptist Church were going
to do. The real demonstrators, for
their part, simply stayed inside the
church until the mob had formed outside, thus creating the real problem
for the Birmingham police force . How
is a mob, particularly an emotionally
charged mob, handled ? Do you start
shooting them? Do you just wade in
clubbing right and left? Most certainly
not. A trained police force handles
and disperses a mob as gently, and
with as little physical force as possible.
You squirt them with fire hoses , which
have a limited range. Then you get
police dogs, on leashes, and move
through the crowd. People always
move away from a police dog-and
no one gets hurt. That's the way it
was handled in Birmingham. The only
issues involved as far as the police are
concerned is simply to properly perform a tough often hazardous job. Reporters who were in Birmingham know
this to be the truth.
Police forces are small forces. The
main thing that makes it possible for
a police force to function is the generally widespread respect that people
have for the law. Efforts to discredit
law enforcement agencies are dangerous. National news media of the stature of LIFE and TIME do la_w enforcement age ncies and law abiding citizens
everywhere a great disservice when
they allow themselves to be recruited
into such efforts.
�Police dogs- in Birmingham, Chicago or San Francisco-are not used to "attack" anyone . . They are used to control and
d!sperse crowds of people who cannot otherwise be persuaded to move. The attitudes expressed by · t.he Negroes in the
picture a bove is not that of people who are being attacked. The fact is they are entirely unconcerned. All that's happening
here is that they are being moved out of Kelly Ingram Park.
When the Negroes in Birmingham learned that police dogs we r ~ not_ going to be allowed to attack them they became quite
blase about f.he whole thing. Many of the youths pulled off th eir shi r ts and used the m as capes in mock " bullfights .. with
the dogs. The boy in the center of the picture, shi rt in bot~ hands , is pl~ying " toreador " with one of the dogs out of the
picture to the right. When I took all of these pictures I was m company with a LIFE photographer. LIFE must have m anv
of the same kinds of pictures: But suc h pictures do not reflect LIFE's own attitude. There fore , 30 million readers of LIFE
never saw pictureS' like this.
�Martin Luther King
And Communism
There is an old saw that goes like
this: "If it looks like a duck, quacks
like a duck, and lays an egg like a
duck-the chances are very good that
··
it is a duck."
To insist that Martin Luther King
is not a Communist, or at the very
least, dominated and controlled by
Communists, it is necessary to deny
completely all the evidence of one's
senses. He looks like one, talks like
one, acts like one, and has been intimately associated with Communists
throughout his entire career as a leader
in the civil rights movement. If he
could Jay an egg it would be a Communist egg; for certain.
Apologists for Communists in the
civil rights movement like to point out
how natural it is that Communists
would be attracted to such a movement; that there probably are Communists in the civil rights movement;
that needing all the help they can get,,
civil rights organizations accept help,
but not control, from anyone, including Communists, and that the leadership of civil rights organizations,. including Martin Luther King, is free of
influence by any Communist conspiracy to subvert the movement. This
sounds good but it is not true.
A joint committee of both houses of
the Louisiana State Legislature was
created in 1960 to. find out if there is
any Communist infiltration into the
State of Louisiana, and if so, what
form it has taken. At the conclusion
of hearings held in Baton Rouge on
March 19, 1964 the Louisiana Joint
Committee on Un-American Activities
had this to say: "The infiltration of
the Communist Party into the civil
rights movement through the Southern
Conference Educational Fund is shocking and highly dangerous to this state
and to the nation. The evidence is
quite conclusive that the civil rights
Photograph of Martin Luther King and Dombrowski, Anne and Carl Braden. The
1Jotes on the back of the phot.ograph in the handwriting of James A. Dt>mbrowski
say: "The 6th Annual Conference of the Southern Christian Leadership .Conference,
Birmingham, Alabama, September 25 to 28, 1962·. Martin Luther King, Jr. responding to Anne Braden' speech; in background AB, Carl Braden, JAD."
TWENTY
movement has been grossly and solidly
infiltrated by the Communist Party.
Those persons in the civil rights movement who deny this, deny overwhelming evidence that it is so. Tfie evidence c I e a r 1 y shows that Martin
Luther King has very closely c:;onnected his organization, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, with
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund. This has been going on for
years. By thus connecting himself with
the Communists, Martin Luther King
has cynically betrayed his responsibilities as a Christian minister and the
political leader of a large number of
people.
"The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, from all the evidence,
is substantially under the influence of
the Communist Party through the support and management given it by the
Communists in the SCEF. However
the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee may have started, it is now
getting strong financial aid from the
SCEF and its policies are · substantially
influenced by the SCEF. Many innocent students have been and are now
being recruited by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to unknowingly carry out the instructions
and policies of the Communist Party,
dictated to Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee by the SCEF."
W ha t is the "conclusive evidence" that this committee gathered,
and what is the Southern Conference
Educational Fund itself?
The evidence comes in part from
hearings of the U. S. House Committee
on Un-American Activities and of the
Senate Internal Security Committee.
But most of the evidence concerning
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund and its connections with civil
rights comes from the files of the
SCEF itself-files which were taken in
a raid on SCEF Headquarters in New
Orleans. These files and records are
a completely documented recor d of
�over twenty-five years of successful
subversive aetivity, primarily in the
field of civil rights.
The Southern Conference Educational Fund is the new name for the Southern Conference for Human Weifare.
The Southern Conference for Human
Welfare was conceived, set up, and
financed by the Communist Party in
1938 as a mass organization to promote
Communism throughout the Southern
States. It was exposed as a Communist front a few years later by a government committee and simply changed
its name-continuing in business as the
SCEF with the same old address, same
telephone number, substantially the
identical leadership, and it conlinued
to print the same official organ, "The
Southern Patriot" which was cited as
a subversive "publication by the U. S.
Government.
At a hearing of the Louisiana Joint
Committee on Un-American Activities
Dr. William Sorum, New Orleans physician, for six years an active member
of the Communist Party, testified as
follows:
Q - I believe you also testified in 1957
(before the Senate Internal Security
Committee ) while you were in the
Communist Party, you were told to
work in the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare, is that correct?
A - That's right, it was one of the
main organizational outlets, and it was
considered one of the most important
things that we ·had. When the Southern
Conference for Human Welfare had
their national m e e t i n g down here,
about 12 of the top Communists in the
South were here . . . "
These are some· of the people who
direct the activities of the Southern
Conference Educational fund :
Fred Shuttleworth , was responsibie
for the formation of the Montgomery
Improvement Association which gave
Martin Luther King his start on the
road to prominence in the civil rights
movement. At one time the resignation of some of the leaders of the Montgomery Improvemen·t Association followed a disclosure of discrepancies in
the organization's books amounting to
approximately $100,000. In 1941 Shut:
tiesworth was arrested and pied guilty
in District Court in the State of Alabama to the illegal distillation of whisa
key, commonly known as moonshining.
Fred Shuttlesworth is currently vicepresident of Martin Luther King's
Southern Christian Conference. He is
also president of the Southern Conference Educational Fund.
Aubrey Williams, deceased: Williams was president of SCEF before
Shuttlesworth. In April 1954 at hear-· _
ings held in New Orleans by the Senate
Internal Security Committee he ·was
identified as .a Communist Party member by one witness who had been in
the party, and was identified by another witness at the same time as one
who had accepted Communist Party
Discipline.
William Howard Melish: Melish was
a minister and has been identified in
sworn testimony as a Communist Party
member. Melish is on the staff of the
SCEF as the Eastern representative of
the organization, primarily as a solicitor of funds in the New York area.
Benjamin Smith : Smith is an attorney in the city of New Orle·ans. He
was treasurer of the SCEF and was
a member of the board of directors of
the National Lawyers Guild-which has
been cited by the U. S. Government
as the "foremost legal bulwark of the
Communist Party, which has rallied to
the defense . of Communist law-break-
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ers, and violators of the Smith Act,
and has never failed to rally to their
defense." Smith is registered with the
U. S. Justice Department as a representative of semi-official agencies of
the Communist C u b a n Government.
Smith's picture appeared in the March
11, 1962 edition of "The Worker, " official publication of the Communist
Party of the _ United States. The accompanying article described his presentation of an award by the National
Lawyers Guild for his "anti-bias struggle in the South."
Dr. James A. Dombrowski: Dombrowski was identified as a Communist at hearings of the Senate Internal
Security Committee by Paul Crouch
and John Butler. Crouch held many
major positions in the Communist Party. According to his own testimony he
was at one time head of the Communist Party's department for infiltration
of the Armed Forces. He was a representative of the Communist Party of
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Check paid to Martin Luther King by SCEF. Check is signed by James Dombrowski
and Ben Smith and endorsed on the back by King.
TWENTY-ONE
�the United States to the E xecutive
Committee of the Communist Internationale in Moscow, and he was a member of the commission in Moscow to
draft plans to infiltrate and subvert
all of the armed forces of the world.
Crouch testified that he was one of
three Communists who had originally
planned the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare to set up in the South
a mass "organization through which
the Communist line could extend over ·
all of the South, and through which
intellectuals, professionals and ministers could be brought within the scope
of the Communist Party influence. Mr.
Crouch was asked about James Dombrowski in connection with the Communist Party. He said thi_s : "I should
like to add for the record that Dr.
Dombrowski told me on several occasions that he ·preferred to be called a
'Left Socialist' r ather than a Commu-
~
nist ; that he could serve the Revolutionary movement better under the Socialist label than he could under the
Communist label. " Then the question
was, "Was that a customary practice
of the top - fli g ht operators ?" Mr.
Crouch says, " Yes, sir."
At another place in the record of·
this hearing the witness named John
Butler swore that, " James A. Dombrowski had been a party member ."
He was introduced by another party
member, Alton Lawrence. At that time
John Butler was in the Communist
Party himself. Butler swears that
Lawrence told him that Dombrowski
was one of the upper ten Communists
in the United States.
On page 25 of his Doctoral thesis,
written at Columbia University, Dombrowski says : "Proletarians who have
suffered at the hands of ruthless power
in an industrial system, and who have
,rut1p,- -~ mg, Jr.
~ ......
~GUpmlf
401143.215.248.55 16:23, 29 December 2017 (EST)
~
.....Jia
August 16, 1960
Dear Jim:
This is just a note to acknowledge r e ceipt or y our
letters or recent date. We, too, were more than
happy- to have you in our home. The f e, llows hip was
very , rewarding.
I \d.11 expect to hear from you when Bi s hop Love
returns to the country. At that ti me we can set the
date for an Atlanta meting .
Ver y s inc e r ely yours,
Dr . James Dombrowski
Southern Conferenc e Educ ati ona l Fund, Inc.
822 Perdido Stre~t
Rew Orleans 12, · Louilliana
MLK:mlb
TWENTY-TWO
tried all of the avenues of moderation
and of moral suasion, conclude that
such power will continue to utilize its
control of society to increase its advantage until fin al justice can only be
achieved by a violent revolution, in
which the sources of power are brought
under the control of the workers ." On
page 189 of his thesis Dr . Dombrowski
says : " Thus it is the first duty of all .
religious people to destroy Capitalism
without regard for their own welfare."
Dr. Dombrowski is the Director of the
Southern Conference Educational Fund.
and has been since its inception as the
Southern Conference fo r Human Welfare in 1938.
Carl and Anne Braden: The Bradens are both field organizers for the
SCEF, Carl Braden is also editor of
" The Southern Patriot. " They were
both identified as Communist Party
members by Alberta M. Ahearn, who
was an FBI informer surfaced for the
purpose of testifying against the Bradens. She testified that she was r ecruited into the Communist Party by
Anne Braden. Carl Bradden was convicted of sedition and received a 15year sentence in Kentucky. He served
several months on this sentence, and it
was voided under the old Nelson Case
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court
which voided State Sedition Laws. Sub'.
sequent to this Braden served a year
in the Federal Penitentiary for contempt of Congress for refusing to a nswer questions of the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
In the files of the SCE F , all taken
in the raid on their headquarters in
New Orleans, there is a voluminous
correspondence, stretching over a period of many years , between leaders
of the SCEF and leaders of civil r ights
organizations. Here is an excerpt from
a letter from Martin Luther King to
Anne Braden . King writes : "It was
certainly good to have Carl in Columbia last week. He added a great deal
to the meeting. I hope both of you
will fi nd it possible to become permanently associated with the Southern
Chr istian Leadership Conference. . ."
In a letter to J ames Dombrowski
Martin Luther King writes: " This is
just a note to acknowledge receipt of
your letters of r ecent date. We, too,
were more than happy to have you in
our home. The fellowship was very
rewarding."
In the SCEF fi les there is correspondence between Dombrowski and
King and Wyatt Tee Walker (King's
Executive Secretary l concerning the
layout of a full page new paper ad
�the United States to the Executive
Committee of the Communist Internationale in Moscow, and he was a member of the commission in Moscow to
draft plans to infiltrate and subvert
all of the armed forces of the world.
Crouch testified that he was one of
three Communists who had original!v
planned the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare to set up in the South
a mass " organization through which
the Communist line could extend over ·
all of the South, and through which
intellectuals, professionals and ministers could be brought within the scope
of the Communist Party influence. Mr.
Crouch was asked about James Dombrowski in connection with the Communist Party. He said this : "I should
like to add for the record that Dr.
Dombrowski told me on several occasions that he ·preferred to be called a
'Left Socialist' rather than a Commu-
nist ; that he could serve the Revolutionar y movement better under the Socialist label than he could under the
Communist label." Then the question
was, " Was that a customary practice
of the top - f Ii g ht operators?" Mr.
Crouch says, "Yes, sir."
At another place in the record of·
this hearing the witness named John
Butler swore that, "James A. Dombrowski had been a party member."
He was introduced by another party
m ember, Alton Lawrence. At that time
John Butler was in the Communist
Party himself. Butler swears that
Lawrence told him that Dombrowski
was one of the upper ten Communists
in the United States.
On page 25 of his Doctoral thesis,
written at Columbia University, Dombrowski says: "Proletarians who have
suffered at the ha nds of ruthless power
in an industrial system, and who have
~ ~utlpt: -~ing,
Jr.
~---~GUpard,
407143.215.248.55 16:23, 29 December 2017 (EST)
~Lq;a
Aug ust 16, 1960
Dear J'im:
Thia is just a note to acknowledge receipt or your
letters or recent da te. We, t o o, were more than
happy to have you 1n our home.
very, :rewardlng.
The fe,llowship was
I will expect to hear f r om you when Bishop Love
returns to the count r y. At that time we can set the
date ror an Atlanta meet i ng.
Very s incerel y you.rs,
Dro Jame I Dombrowski
Southern Conference Educational Fund p Inc
822 Perdido St~~t
Rew Orleans 12,· Louisiana
JIU:Jlilb
TWENTY-TWO
0
tried all of the avenues of moderation
and of moral suasion, conclude that
such power will continue to utilize its
control of society to increase its advantage until final justice can only be
achieved by a violent revolution, in
which the sources of power are brought
under the control of the workers." On
page 189 of his thesis Dr . Dombrowski
says : "Thus it is the first duty of all
religious people to destroy Capitalism
without regard for their own welfare."
Dr. Dombrowski is the Director of the
Southern Conference Educational Fund.
and has been since its inception as the
Southern Conference for Human Welfare in 1938.
Carl and Anne Braden : The Bradens are both field organizers for the
SCEF, Carl Braden is also editor of
" The Southern Patriot." They were
both identified as Communist P arty
members by Alberta M. Ahearn, who
was an FBI informer surfaced for the
purpose of testifying against the Bradens. She testified that she was recruited into the Communist P arty by
Anne Braden. Carl Bradden was convicted of sedition and r eceived a 15year sentence in Kentucky. He served
several months on this sentence a nd it
was voided under the old Nels~n Case
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court
which voided State Sedition Laws. Sub'.
~equent to this Braden served a year
m the Federal P enitentiary for contempt of Congress for r efusing to a nswer questions of the House Committee
on Un-American Activities.
In the files of the SCEF all taken
in the raid on their head~uarters in
New Orleans, there is a voluminous
correspondence, stretching over a period of m any years, between leaders
of the SCEF and leaders of civil rights
organizations. H_ere is an excerpt from
a letter from Martin Luther King to
Anne Braden. King writes: "It was
certainly good to have Carl in Colum bia last week. He added a great deal
to the meeting. I hope both of you
will find it possible to become perm anently associated with the Southern
Christian Leadership, Conference. . ."
In a letter to J ames Dombrowski
Martin Luther King writes : "This is
just a note to acknowledge receipt of
your letters of recent date. We, too,
were more than happy to have you in
our home. The fellowship was very
rewarding."
In the SCEF files there is correspondence between Dombrowski and
King and Wyatt Tee Walker (King's
Executive Secretary) concerning the
layout of a full page newspaper ad
which was a joint project of SCEF,
SCLC, and SNCC.
A letter from James Farmer, National Director of CORE says: "Let
me acknowledge w i t h pleasure the
good wishes which you extend on behalf of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and to assure you that
they are reciprocated. It is a good
fight we are in, and one which will
call forth all the dedication we can
muster."
A letter from Dombrowski to the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee discusses the pattern of placing
SNCC personnel on grants from the
SCEF, paid not to the students themselves, but to SNCC, allowing the
SCEF to control the field workers and
organizers of the SNCC without their
being any way identified w i t h the
SCEF. J am es Forman, E xecutive Director of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee wrote to Dombrowski as follows : ' 'We sincerely
thank you for the last installment on
the grant to Robert Zellner made by
the Southern Conference Educational
Fund. May we take this opportunity
to thank you for the other services
rendered to the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee by SCEF. The
cooperation we have re c e i v e d has
made it possible to carry on a program despite m any obstacles we have
encountered this past year . Specifically, your efforts in raising money
fo r the McComb students a nd members of our staff will long be r emembered. The fact that SCEF has made
available to us certain channels of
communication has been vitally important to the movement in general. It is
our hope that our actions further advance the cause for which we are all
working."
In one eighteen month period, from
December, 1961, to June of 1963, the
Southern Conference Educational Fund
gave the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee over ten thousand,
three hundred dollars ($10,300 >. The
Student Non-violent Coordinating Comm ittee has been the spearhead of violence used as a tool of the SCEF and
the Communist Conspiracy throughout
the United States, particularly in the
South.
F BI Director J . Edgar Hoover has
said that Communist " front organizations exist not only in isolation, but as
a pa rt of a vast, interlaced front system." To all but the dedicated, fulltime a nti-Communist these interlocking conections b e come quite overwhelming in their complexity. This, of
course, is by design, not by accident.
4000
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Checks from the SCEF to the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.
One of the interlocking connections of
SCEF with another Communist organization will serve as a n example of how
it works. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee, itself intertwined at the top
level of leadership with the militantly
revolutionary Socialist Workers P arty,
has close connections with SCEF. In
May, 1961 the Senate Internal Security
Committee established that Carl Braden was one of the main speakers at a
ba nquet in New York given by the
Fair Play for Cuba Committee on
April 28. 1961. His expenses had been
pa id to come to the banquet from
wherever he was at the time. In ad-
dition to this, and more important, the
Senate Committee established that Carl
Braden is one of the national directors
of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Both Fair P lay for Cuba Committee
a nd the SCEF publicly supported a
man , Robert Williams. who fled the
United States to escape prosecution
for kidnapping in North Carolina. He
went to Ct1ba and set up a powerful
broadcasting station from which he
beamed violent exhortations to Southern Negroes to use razors and lye
bombs against Southern whites.. Robert Williams is now in Communist
China . A half page book re\'iew in
TWENTY-THREE
�~
.. .
\.
·
'
100062 -,
OCT 1 1954
LOUISVIUX'
,__
CARL BRADEN
ANNE BRADEN
"The Southern Patriot" commented favorably on Williams' book "Negroes
with Guns," another vicious piece of
inflamatory propaganda. The review
was written and si g ned by Anne
Braden.
In the SCEF files were two letters
from and to an identified Communist,
Corliss Lamont. One letter is from
Lamont to Dombrowski enclosing a
check for $1,000 to the defense fund of
the SCEF. The other is from Dombrowski to Lamont asking for additional contributions to help with printing costs for a pamphlet defending
Braden who had been sentenced to a
year in the Federal Penitentiary. It is
interesting to note that Lee Harvey
Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, is reported to have made the
statement that the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee literature that he handed
out in New Orleans came to him from
Corliss Lamont.
The planned program of the Communist Party to use the racial issue to
further its goal of revolution in the
United States is definitely being carried out. The SCEF is an obvious
and effective part of that program ,
Through the operations of the SCEF
the leadership and influence of known
Communists is transmitted into civil
rights organizations. Obviously everyone in the civil rights movement is not
a Communist, but the act of Communist infiltration of the movement is a
fact, and not conjecture. Through its
manipulation and control of the civil
rights movements Communist p r e y
upon one of the best human motivesidealism toward a better wor ld. Their
programs are particularly effective
with better educated and more cultured people, who see that there are,
TWENTY-FOUR
POLICE
. ---DIV.
--~-- -
JAMES A. DOMBROWSKI
in fact, some things wrong in our society but are unable to see the proper
remedies for the problems. These victims simply refuse to recognize and
accept certain obvious facts , and delude themselves as to the true nature
of all manner of people and organizations that seek to exploit them.
As far as Martin Luther King and
other leaders of the civil rights organizations are concerned, it is impossible
to accept the proposition that they,
too, are unwitting dupes of an obvious
Communist conspiracy within the civil
rights movement. King and Forman,
whose respective organizations sponsored the march from Selma to Mont-
BENJAMINE. SMITH
gomery know that Carl Braden, who
was on the march, is a Communist of
long standing. They know that Anne
Braden; James Dombrowski, Aubrey
Williams, et al are Communists. They
have worked with these people and accepted all manner of assistance from
them for years. Yet, last summer in
Mississippi Martir. Luther King made
a public statement that there are more
Eskimos in Florida than there are
Communists in the civil rights movement. "
FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover says
" Marti11 Luther King is one of the most
notorious liars in the country."
What do you think ?
I have heard from many people that
the Conference, perhaps because of
necessity, was devoting itself to the
raisin g of funds instead of concentratin g on tne real Job.
I tried workin i; with American. communists ,
as. you know, and have lon g since given
up trying .
I can not work with any
one who is not completely honest and
American communists are not honest .
I kno w tnat often they work for tne
same objectives, and do good work , but
that does not alter my opinion.
Very s i nce r ely your s ,
Even Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, a noted liberal, couldn't stomach the SCEF after
she discovered who was behind it. Reproduced above is a part of a letter written
to James Dombrowski, a known Communist.
�Bayard and Ralph -
Jus.t A Couple Of The Boys
Continued from Page 15)
A. We went out on a picnic.
Q. And did you during that picnic
...., .
~.
·
100062
-·
OCT l 1954
mv. POLICE
---...-~
'
LOUlSVllµ
-
CARL BRADEN
ANNE BRADEN
"The Southern Patriot" commented favorably on Williams' book "Negroes
with Guns, " a nother vicious piece of
inflamatory propaganda . The review
was written and s i g n e d by Anne
Braden.
In the SCEF files were two letters
from and to an identified Communist,
Corliss Lamont. One letter is from
Lamont to Dombrowski enclosing a
check for $1,000 to the defense fund of
the SCEF. The other is from Dombrowski to Lamont asking for additional contributions to help with printing costs for a pamphlet defending
Braden who had been sentenced to a
year in the Federal Penitentiary. It is
interesting to note that Lee Harvey
Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy, is reported to have made the
statement that the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee literature that he handed
out in New Orleans came to him from
Corliss Lamont.
The planned program of the Communist P a rty to use the racial issue to
fu rther its goal of revolution in the
United States is definitely being carried out. The SCEF is an obvious
and effective part of that program.
Through the operations of the SCEF
the leadership and influence of known
Communists is transmitted into civil
rights organizations. Obviously everyone in the civil rights movement is not
a Communist, but the act of Communist infiltration of the movement is a
fact, and not conjecture. Through its
manipulation and control of the civil
rights movements Communist p r e y
upon one of the best human motivesidealism toward a better world. Their
programs are particularly effective
with better educated and more cultured people, who see that there are,
TWENTY-FOUR
JAMES A. DOMBROWSKI
in fact, some things wrong in our society but are una ble to see the proper
remedies for the problems. These victims simply refuse to recognize and
accept certain obvious facts, and delude themselves as to the true nature
of all manner of people and organizations that seek to exploit them.
As far as Martin Luther King a nd
other leaders of the civil rights organizations are concerned, it is impossible
to accept the proposition that they,
too, are unwitting dupes of an obvious
Communist conspiracy within the civil
rights movement. King a nd Forman,
whose respective organizations sponsored the ma rch from Selma to Mont-
-~IC
BEN.JAMIN E . SMITH
gomery know that Carl Braden, who
was on the march, is a Communist of
long standing. They know that Anne
Braden,- J ames Dombrowski, Aubrey
Williams, et al are Communists. They
have worked with these people and accepted all manner of assistance from
them for years. Yet, last summer in
Mississippi Martir. Luther King m ade
a public statement that there a re more
Eskimos in F lorida than there are
Communists in the civil rights movement. "
FBI Director J . Edgar Hoover says
"Martin Luther King is one of the most
notorious liars in the country."
What do you think?
V - I U . C?O'n'_._
NYDK P AIUC,.
~
CO.
I have heard from -many peopl e that
t he Conference , perhaps be cauAe of
necessity, was devot ing i tself t o the
rai sing of funds i ns t ead of concentr ating on the real Job .
I t rie d workin~ wit h Ameri can. communis t s,
as. you know, and have l ong since given
up trying .
I can not work with any
one who is not complet.ely honest and
American communists are not hones t .
I know that of t e n they work for the
same objectives, and do good work but
that does not alter my opinion, '
Very sincerely yours,
Even IV"trs. Eleanor Roosevelt, a noted liberal, couldn't stomach the SCEF after
she discovered- who was behind it. Reproduced above is a part of a letter written
to James Dombrowski, a known Communist.
any time during the afternoon tell him
about this call?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Now, referring to that time,
prior to ,fogust the 29th, when is the
last time before that he called you?
A. He p h o n e d me approximately
about the 4th of August, I imagine.
Q. And at that time what was your
conversation?
A. He asked me what was going on
b e t w e e n me and my husband, he
wanted to know, and how I had been
getting along, and why can't I see him.
Well, I didn't want to discuss with him
those things because I had asked him
not to contact me again and I didn't
have any further use to talk to him.
Q. I show you a picture that is
marked for identification the Defendant's Exhibit No. 4 and ask you if you
recognize that picture?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. What is that a picture of?
A. That is a picture of a house, and
that is the house that we went to.
Q. Is that house located in the City
of Montgomery?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Do you know about where it is
located?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. And where is it located?
A. It is located on Clark Street.
Q. Now, t he n, you say you went
there? Who went there?
A. Rev. Abernathy and myself.
Q. Did he take you or did you take
him?
A. He took me.
Q. I see. And now what happened
at that house?
A. That is where these affa irs took
place.
Q. That is where all three . .
A. That is right.
Q. All of these affairs you mentioned took place?
A. That is right.
Q. And at that time how old were
you?
A. Fifteen.
Q . And at that time you were a
member of his church?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know who was in charge
of the house at that time?
A. A lady by the name of Mrs.
Davis.
Q. Do you know whether that is
Mrs. C. D. Davis, or not?
A. I am pretty positive.
Q. Is she a little woman, middle
sized woman, or what?
A. She is large.
Q. You recognize this picture?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. What is that picture of?
A. That is a picture of a convention in Birmingham that I attended.
Q. Where did you get this picture?
A. I received that picture from him
on the night we went out in Birmingham.
Q. The night you went out in Birmingham?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, tell us what happened that
night when you went out in Birmingham.
A. On the night we went out in Birmingham I was on my way home,
Rosemond Lowe and myself, we were
asked to go out on a dinner date with
the Rev. Abernathy and the Rev.
James Dixon. That night they came
and picked us up at the house where
we were living, and we went to the
Afro Club in Birmingham.
Q. Afro Club?
A. That is right.
Q. Where is that located?
A. It is in some part of Birmingham.
Q. Go right ahead. Now, what happened then?
A. We went in and we had a couple
of beers.
Q. Now, that was the time when you
were in Birmingham ?
A . Yes.
Q. And you say that Abernathy was
wi th you at that time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, when you came back from
Birmingham did he very shortly after
that or immediately after that get in
touch with you again?
A. No. He asked me to . go out to a
tea with him that night. This all was
the night we got in from Birmingham.
Q. The night when you got in from
Birmingham, that was when you were
fifteen years old?
A. Yes .
Q. He asked you to go out to a tea
with him ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. Now. what happened
then, did you go?
A. Well , I thought it was supposed
to have been a tea, he said it was to
have been a tea. and he and Rev.
James Dixon and Walter Parker came
by to pick me up. Walter P arker came
up to the door for me, and we put him
out at the Derby Supper Club.
Q. You say Walter P arker came to
the door to get you?
A. That is right. He and his girl
friend was in the car .
Q. And you went with them and got
in the car and Abernathy was already
-in the car?
A. Yes, he was.
Q. All r ight. And then you and Abernathy after that?
A. We went over , Walter Parker
and Walter Parker's girl friend, and
Rev. James Dixon and we went over
and put Walter Parker and Gloria
Thompson out at the Derby Supper
Club, and then he went over to Rosemond Lowe's and picked her up. She
was ill at the time and couldn't go. So
in turn he took Rev. Dixon home and
we rode out on the Atlanta Highway,
and I haven't seen him since.
Q. How late did you stay out that
night?
A. It was ten-thirty about.
Cross Examination
BY MR. THETFORD:
Q. Vivian, you say Bernice is named
what now?
A. Bernice Cooper Davis.
Q. Now, is she kin to this defendant?
A. No, she isn't.
Q. Is she related to him, or is her
husband any kin to him?
A. No, sir.
Q. Now, you testified, I believe, that
- I don't know whether you did testify
-when did you fir st knew Rev. Abernathy, what year?
A. It was '52 or '51, I imagine, when
he came to the First Baptist Church.
I am not sure what year it was he
came there. But the first time he made
approaches to me was in Birmingham
in ' 52, July of '52.
Q. Now, how old were you in 1952?
A. I was fi fteen then at that time.
Q. Fifteen?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, you testified that you had
intercourse or sexual relations with
Rev. Abernathy on several occasions?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When and where did you first
have relations with him?
A. At the house on Clark Street.
Q. The house where?
A. On Clark Street.
Q. House on Clark Street?
A. Yes. sir.
Q. ls that the house that you
A. That picture I just testified. the
first picture I identified.
TWENTY-FI\ E
�Q. Is that the picture you pointed
out?
A. Yes, sir, it is.
Q. Do you remember what month
that was in?
A. It was in August of '52.
Q. August of '52?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, did he come to your house
and get you?
A. No.
Q. Did you meet him there?
A. No.
Q. How did you happen to get there?
A. He called my mother and asked
her to let me do some typing for him,
which was the ·excuse, and I went up
to the church, and in turn we went
over there , on Clark Street.
Q. You and he went together?
A. That's right.
Q. How did you go?
A. In his car.
Q: An9- he parked his car in front
of this house?
A. No, he didn't.
Q. Where did he park it?
A. He parked it in the driveway.
Q. In the driveway?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And then the two of you went in
the house?
A. That,s right.
Q. Was there anybody in the house
at home?
A. Yes, there was.
Q. Who was there?
A. Mrs. Davis.
'Q. What is her first name?
A. I said Mrs. Davis. It is C. 0 .
Davis.
Q. Well, what did you and Reverend Abernathy tell her?
A. Well, he had already made the
reservations.
Q. Made the r eservations.
A. Advance notice.
Q. What do you mean by advance
notice?
A. He had already contacted her.
Q. He had already contacted her?
A. Yes, sir, he had.
Q. Did he say anything to her when
you walked in, did he knock on the
door ?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And when you walked in what
happened then, what did he say to her?
A. He asked her how was she getting along.
Q. What did she say?
A. She said she was fine.
Q. Then what did he say?
A. Well, he just told her that he
came there, he had brought me over
there.
TWENTY-SIX
Q. He brought you over there?
And he introduced me to
her.
Q. He introduced you to her?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. What did you all do
then?
A. We went in the room.
.Q. Living room, bedroom?
A. No. Bedroom.
Q. In the bedroom?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, did you know what you
were going over for ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Well, when did he first ask you
to go over there and have intercourse
with him?
A. He asked me the night we went
out when we came from Birmingham
fo this so-called tea, but I didn't go
and we went out riding.
Q. He asked you would ·you have
intercourse with. him when you went
out riding, you tell us, on the Atlanta
Highway?
A. Yes, sir. He wanted to take me
over there then.
Q. He wanted to take you over there
then?
A. He wanted to take me on Clark
Street that night but I didn't go, and
in turn we went out on the Atlanta
Highway riding.
Q. Did you have intercourse with
him out on the Atlanta Highway?
A. No, sir, I didn't.
Q. Then did he ask you that night
to go to the house --on Clark Street with
him?
A: He asked me that same night to
go to the house on Clark Street.
Q. Well, what did you tell him?
A. I told him no.
Q. All right. When did you tell him
you would go?
A. Well, I didn't tell him I would go
that night. It was three times during
that month.
Q. Do you mean he asked you three
times during that month?
A. No, he didn't. On several occasions on the telephone and several
times coming to my house asking me.
Q .. Asked you to go with him to this
house on Clark Street.
A. Yes, sir, he did. And finally we
got together, and he called my mother
and asked her could I do some typing
for him, and which was an excuse.
Q. So you and he went in the bedroom?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you knew what you were going in there for?
A. I guess so.
A. Yes.
Q. And did both of you get undressed?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Get in bed?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you have normal sexual relations with him on that occasion?
A. Well, he did, yes.
Q. What?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How long were you at the house
on this occasion?
A. About an hour, or an hour and a
half, something like that.
Q. And then did he take you back
to the church, or where did he take
you?
A. He didn't take me back to the
church, he took me - I got out of the
car to the corner of Union and Alabama.
Q. Now, how close is that to your
house?
A. My house is the second from the
cqrner, the second house from the
corner.
Q. Let you out around the corner
from your house?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Let me ask you this. Were you,
going with the defendant at that time?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. In 1952?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. When did you get married?
A. I got married in December of '55.
Q. That is three years later?
A. About that.
Q. Two years later?
A. Yes.
Q . All right. Now, you testified that
you had a norm al intercourse sometime in August at this house on Clark
Street. That was the first time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you go back to that house
again?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. When?
A. That same month, in August. I
went there three times that August.
Q. You went there three times that
August?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Went into the same house?
A. Same house.
Q. Was he expected, were both of
you expected by the owner of the house
each time?
A. I imagine so. He had always
called her to tell her that we were
coming.
Q. Each time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. In other words, she didn't seem
surprised to see you?
�l
A. No. sir. she didn't seem to be
surprised.
Q. Did she know who you were?
A. Yes. sir. she did. They were very
close frie nds.
Q. Now you say that you have had
both normal and abnormal intercourse ?
A. Yes. sir.
Q. Where did you have the abnormal intercourse with him '?
A. The three occasions.
Q. On all three occasions ?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Well, now, what do you mean by
abnormal sexual intercourse?
A. Pervertedness. He u s e d his
mouth .
Q. He used his mouth ?
A. Yes, sir, he did .
Q. On your private parts ?
A. Yes , sir.
Q. Now, did he do that, you say on
each of the three occasions?
A. Yes , sir.
Q. Well, was tha t after he had . a
normal intercourse with you ?
A. No, sir, it was before.
Q. It was before he had a normal
intercourse ?
A. That's right.
Q. In other words , each time he
used his mouth on you before and then
had a nor mal intercourse ?
A. That 's right.
Q. Now, that happened three times
in August of 1952?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, has he ever had intercourse
with you since then?
A. No.
Q. None whatever?
A. No, I ha ven't.
Q. Have you ever been out with him
alone since August of 1952?
A. No , I haven't been out with him .
Q. You haven't been out with him ?
A. No, .sir.
Q. Now, when did you first tell your
husband about this?
A. I told my husband about it approximately a year after we were
married.
Q. About a year after you were
married, I believe you told us, you
would say in 1906?
A. That is right. I remembe r
vividly we went to New Orleans on a
second honeymoon.
Q. Well , now, according to your
testimony did Rev. Abernathy start
running after you again, telephoning
you again ?
A. He hasn 't ever stopped.
Q. He hasn 't ever stopped?
A. No, sir. He has been to my
house. He came there in '52 and came
there in '54 when Bernice Davis Cooper
Charles Moore, LIFE photographer, holds ankle which has just been struck by a
brick hurled at him by one of the mob in Kelly Ingram Park off to the right of
picture. On Moore's left is LIFE correspondent Mike Durham. In the background
is the three-story hotel from which a piece of concrete block was hurled almost
tearing off one side of a Birmingham fireman's face. L~rge pieces of brick and'
concrete block can be seen in the street in · this picture. They have all been hurled
by Negroes at police officers and reporters, who were the only whites allowed in
the area. Most of the injuries received during the deµ10nstrations in Birmingham
were by police officers and' firemen.
1,
was living with me, and she was in
bed one night, her mother was in
Washington, and he came by and I was
ordering him out of the house and she
awakened and found him there, and
he had his arms around me.
Q. And that was what year ?
A. And that was in '54 or '53 - '53
because she went to Washington both
times twice, a nd during that period he
was coming by here a nd he would
come down there a nd try to get me
to go out with him, but I told him
that I had made the mistake, and I
realized the mistake and that I didn't
intend ever to go out with him again.
Q. All r ight. Now, let's get down
to the picnic that you a nd your husband went on. You went out and got
drunk, didn't you?
A. Yes , sir .
Q. And you got real drunk , didn't
you?
Q. · I was n't out.
(Objected to . Objection overuled )
Q. How much beer did you drink
out there on the picnic? (Objected to .
Objection sustained l
Q. Where did he get that pistol he
pu lled on Rev. Abernathy?
A. Well , I don' t know.
Q. Where did the hatchet come
from?
A. I don 't know.
Q. Have you ever seen this pistol
before?
A. No, I have n't ever seen it until
- it was in the car pocket.
Q. It was in the car pocket?
A. It was in the car. My husband
tra veled , you see.
Q. Did he ha ve a license to carry
it?
A. Wen; I don't know. (Objection
sustained .)
Q. Have you ever seen that hatchet
before ?
A. No .
Q. Never have seen it?
A. No, sir. I saw it in Police Court.
Q. You had never seen it before
that ?
A. No , I haven't seen it either.
Q. I ask you if that is the pistol,
you know that is his pistol don 't you ?
A. Yes, sir. He traveled, and he
ha d it in the car pocket.
Re-Direct Examination
BY MR. KNABE :
Q. You tell the jury there when you
reached the age of fifteen you haven 't
had anything to do with Rev. Abernathy ?
A. No, I ha ven 't.
Q. You haven't been with him in
public since ·then including August 29th ,
1958?
A. No, sir, I haven't.
-0I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully
and accurately in the notes of testimony taken by me upon the trial of
the above case , and that this transcript is a true copy a nd correct c6py
of the same.
W. Ha lowell Lewis
Official Court Reporter
Fifteenth Judicial Circuit
of Alabama
-0Edward Davis was acquitted for
chasing and striking Rev. Abernathy
with the hatchet. He and his wife now
live in Montgomery.
TWENTY-SEVEN
�l
Sex and Civil Rights
(Continued from Page 12)
bodies and blood in the street, our
bodies " and "I am going home today
and t~II everyone how I've been lied
to."
(s) LIONEL FREE¥AN
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 5th day of April, 1965.
(s l George N. Dean, Jr. Notary Public.
,,,
My commsision expires ____ , 19____ _
...
,:,
AFFIDAVIT
I, Samuel M. Carr, a First Lieutenant in the Alabama National Guard,
Battery C, 117th Artillery, Alabama do
hereby swear under oath and under
penalty of perjury the following facts
are true and accurate in every respect
to my own personal knowledge :
The National Guard unit of which I
am a member was activated on March
20, 1965. We were assigned the task
of guarding camp sites of the Negro
Voter-Protest Marchers on their march
from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery,
Alabama. This duty we commenced to
perform on Tuesday, March 23 , 1965
at 1: 00 PM picking up contact with the
marchers on HiWay 80.
I hereby further swear and attest
that during such time of duty with my
National Guard unit I personally saw
one case of sexual intercourse between
a young white boy and a Negro girl.
I further swear and attest that I saw
occasions of public urination in and
near the camp sites.
I further solemnly state that many
of the Negro marchers, most especially
the young ones, made remarks and
statements to members of the National
Guard which were, in my opinion, for
the purpose of inflaming the emotions
of said members of the Guard.
(s l SAMUEL M. CARR
1/ Lt Battery C
117th Artillery
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 3rd day of April, 1965 .
(s l J . D. Smyth, Jr .
Notary Public
Alabama, State at Large
My commission expires 5-20-68
.,.
.,.
STATE OF ALABAMA ,
COUNTY OF DALLAS
Before me, undersigned authority, in
a nd for said State and County, personally appeared J . E. Crowder and being by me first duly sworn on oath ,
deposes and says:
I, J ames E . Crowder , Selma Police
Department, do make the following
TWENTY-EIGHT
The picture above was taken a few minutes before the 11icture at the lower right.
Annie Lee Cooper, 265-pound bouncer at a Selma motel landed a surprise right to
the eye of Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark. Then she snatched a billy club from
Deputy Sheriff Leo Nichols. She hung onto the billy club club for dear life and with
both hands as shown above. With effort Sheriff Clark managed to wrest the club
away from Mrs. Co.oper. Two deputies got handcuffs on her. The oicture at the
lower right is a part of this action. Newsweek described it differently.
Newsweek
"With that, Mrs . Cooper wheeled
on Sheriff Clark - eleven · years
her junior and six and one half
pounds lighter - and landed a
solid _ . , right on his eye. Whiie
three deputies helped wrestle her
to the ground, Clark scrambled
astride her stomach and brought
his billy down on her head with
a resounding crack"-Newsweek,
F ebruary 8, 1965
statement. I saw several Negro males,
that I know by sight, in a drunken condition . One Negro was there most of
the time and was drunk every time that
I saw him . The others came and we nt
at intervals. I also saw a short Negro
in a green sweater come to the front
of the line stretched across the street
�on three different occasions and rub up
against \\·hite girls. feeling their breasts
and other parts of their bodies and then
taking them off to the rear of the crowd
and on to different apartments. One of
the white girls was a short fat girl with
a white sweat shirt on: a nother was a
medium tall girl. wearing a green coat
and carrying a camera bag. This second girl also made several passes at
some of the other Negro men on the
front line on other occasions. I do not
remember what the third white girl
looked like that the short Negro carried off as I only saw her that one time.
On · one occasion I saw a white man
and a Negro female laying side by side
beneath a blanket in the middle of the
street just before daylight. There was
a good deal of movement by both parties beneath the bla nket. The \rhite
man, the day before. was wearing a
priest robe. The next day he \l"aS wearing a sweat shirt and dungaree pants.
That man is still in town or was on
Saturday, March 3, 1965.
(SI J. E . CROWDER
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 7th day of April 1965.
(sl Jud Ernest Hewston
Notary Public
My commission expires: 7-18-67
the street in front of Brown's Chapel.
We noticed a big, heavy set Negro male
near a small tree in front of the Parsonage: he was talking to a white female. They were talking, laughing and
slapping each other on the back. They
moved in closer to the tree, he had one
hand hanging on a limb; she would
move in very close to where she would
rub on his legs and stomach. He was
acting like he had ants in his pants.
He would put his hands in his pocket
attempting to control his sexual impulses.
Finally they locked lips together as if
they were sucking each other's tongue,
this lingered for 2 or 3 minutes; he then
took her by the arm and they walked
down the sidewalk towards the Baptist
Church.
(sl V. B. Bates
Sworn to and subscribed before m e
this the 5th day of April, 1965.
(sl Jud Ernest Hewston
Notary Public
My commission expires 7-18-67.
AFFIDAVIT
Personally appeared before me, the
undersigned Notary Public, Richard
Perrino Emmet, who by me being first
duly sworn, deposes and says as fol* .,. * * *
lows :
STATE OF ALABAMA,
My name is Richard Perrino Emmet.
COUNTY OF DALLAS
I presently serve as Judge of the 15th
Judicial Circuit of the State of Alabama.
Before me, undersigned authority, in
and for said State a nd County, personI formerly presided over the Family
ally appeared V. B. Bates and being by . Court of Montgomery, Alabama. The
Family Court is charged with the reme first duly sworn on oath, deposes
and says:
sponsibility of ha ndling all juvenile
matters. All boys and girls who have
I, V. B. Bates, Deputy Sheriff of
not reached their 18th birthday are conDallas County, Alabama was assigned
s idered juveniles.
to special duty of observation in the
During the recent disturbances in
area of Sy I v an Street and Brown's
Montgomery, the present Family Court
Chapel during the preparation of Civil
Judge was called out of town and inasRights March to Montgomery, Alamuch as I had formerly presided over
bama.
the Court, I assisted in handling all
What I state here is what I actually
demonstrators who feJI in the juvenile
saw from a distance of 40 feet and less.
category.
To begin with I saw white females
Several white females still seniors in
from other counties, other states I behigh school from various northern cities
lieve, building up their sexua l desires
were taken into protective custody.
with Negro males. After a few minutes
Their parents were notified and they
of necking a nd kissing, the Negro male
were released to their parents. Several
would lead them off into the Negro
college freshmen were also taken into
housing project. I watched this proprotective custody who were 17 years
cedure ma ny. ma ny times.
of age or under.
On a nother occasion , I saw a white
One white female from the midwest
male meet a Negro ma le on the front
who is attending college in Florida as
porch of Re\·. Lewis' parsonage : they
a na tiona l merit finalist was taken into
embraced a nd kissed each other mouth
custody when she was found with three
to mouth .
Negro men at night on the grounds of
the State Capitol in a state of partia l
On Friday afternoon before the Sundisrohement.
day of the ma rch to Montgomery. Officer He\rston a nd I 1rere pa rked across
I contacted her fa ther, a minister in a
mid-western community, informed him
of the circumstances in w h i c h his
daughter was found, that she was in
Montgomery unchaperoned and apparently with no place to stay.
He informed me that he had e ncouraged his daughter to come to
Montgomery and that she was there
with his approval. He did not seem to
be shocked __upon learning the circumstances of his daughter's apprehension.
(sl RICHARD PERRINO EMMET
Subscribed to a nd sworn to before
me this 5th day of April, 1965.
(sl Walter E. Graham
Notary Public, State at Large
My commission expires January
21, 1967.
~
~=
(Letterhead)
STATE OF ALABAMA
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC
SAFETY
Grove Hill, Alabama
STATEM~NT
TO: Major John W. Cloud
Commander, Ala. State Troopers
FROM: Lt. J. L. Fuqua
DATE :. 2 April, 1965
SUBJECT: Observed Obscenities
during Recent Selma and
Montgomery Racial Problem
This writer was in Selma from
March 8 until March 16 and then in
Montgomery until March 29. During
the time I was in Selma I was assigned
to the 10PM to 6AM shift and stayed
in the vicinity of the Brown Chapel
Church.
One night about 200 demonstrators
were singing in the street while I observed a limp wrist white male standing in the front row with a blanket
over his shoulder and a black male's
shoulder. This whfte man had his arm
around the Negro and at one time he
kissed the Negro in the mouth with a
Jong lingering kiss. A few minutes later
these two men walked out of the line
together, arm in arm, tqward the
church.
On another occasion in Selma Lt.
Jeffries and myself were making a
round around the blocked off area of
the church and we stopped a 1957 Ford
driven by John Calhoun, a Negro man
from Montgomery. There was another
Negro man in the front seat and a Negro man and a white girl about 24
years old in the back seat. The girl
tried to conceal her race by pulling a
coat over her head. This writer got
both of these people out of the car, the
white girl and the Negro man and observed their appearance. The Negro
TWENTY-NINE
�l
man's pants were unzipped in the front
and the girl had on dungaree pants.
They were unzipped · on the side. The
girl said she was from California.
On several occasions I saw white
girls rubbing up against Negro men
and kissing them on the street in this
demonstration. I also saw Negro men
feel the breast and butt of white girls,
making no attempt to hide this but
rather appearing like they wanted
everyone to see them.
I noticed prophylactics on the
ground near the church several different times.
<Signed ) Lt. James L. Fuqua
:::
.,.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
On March 13, 1965, while on duty at
Selma, Alabama in the afternoon while
standing on the front line at the colored
project on Lawrence Street where the
colored people and white people were
demonstrating, there was a colored
man arm in arm with a white priest.
The odor of whiskey was very much
on · the Negro's breath. From this
writer's experience and opinion the
Negro man was very much under the
influence of alcohol.
Cs ) M. D. TUCKER
Birmingham District
Sworn ·to and subscribed before me
this the 6th day of April, 1965.
(sl Virginia C. McCoy
Notary Public, S'tate at Large
My commission expires November
15, 1966.
posedly religious service on a public
street before a public building, an open
display for any one who would look on.
After the demonstrators had been
assembled before the courthouse for a
few minutes, rain began to fall. Those
of the crowd who had on coats or raincoats began to share their wraps with
their pa r't n er s or neighbors in the
group. Aging, balding men wearing
clerical collars spread their coats and
CONFERENCE ON
THE DEEP SOUTH:
WAYS AND MEANS TO INTEGRATION
FRIDAY-SATURDAY, APRIL 13-14, 1962
HEADQUARTERS:
St. Paul Methodist Church
1500 Sixth Avenue; North
AFFIDAVIT
Before me, undersigned authority,
in and for said State and County, personally appeared Mrs. John J. Atherton and being by me fi rst duly sworn
on oath, deposes and says:
Of the many marches on the Dallas
County Courthouse, the one which impressed me as being the most disgusting display of the manifestation of
the close association of the motley ·
crew that had been camping day and
night for several days on Sylvan Street,
was the demonstration held on the
afternoon of March 17, 1965. Most probably by design to incur the wrath of
any onlookers, the marchers came to
the courthouse two by two, each being
a mixture either of older white man
with adolescent colored girl or colored
man with white woman. A display of
so-call 'affection' - hand holding, entwining-arms, waist encircling - all
cver t acts of familiarity have long and I realize until recently - been
looked upon as in the r oorest taste.
All of these were flaunted in a supTHIRTY
gathered in youngish colored girls ;
others made tents of their coats and
several stood huddled close under these
improvised umbrellas. Putting their
actions down in print cannot begin to
convey what went on in the way of
numerous physical contacts between
members of the two races and of the
two sexes. Perhaps this behavior was
not 'immoral' in our modern day when
the accepted ideas of morality are so
Birmingham, Alabama
Rev . J. C . Wilson , Pastor
SPONSORS:
ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
STUDENT NON-VIOLENT CO-ORD INATING · COMMITTEE
SOUTHERN CONFERENCE EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC.
HOST:
THE ALABAMA CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT
FOR HUMAN RI GHTS
THEME:
"RELIGION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
. AND CIVIL LIBERTIES."
Cover of Brochure on April 13 - 14, 1962, Birmingham "Conference"
sponsored by the SCEF.
�lax. but it most certainly was immodest and distasteful. We very soon
closed our blinds against the scene and
ha\'e tried to erase the memory from
our minds.
As my husband is 011 the staff of a
local Southern Baptist Church, I spent
much of the time the demonstration
abo,·e described was in progress trying to defend "men of the cloth"
against the criticism being brought , on
them by the men attired in "the cloth"
1rho were taking part in this public
spectacle.
Signed : Mrs. John J . Atherton.
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 8th day of April, 1965.
(Signed l Jud. Ernest Hews ton
Notary Public
My commission expires : 7-18-67.
.,.
.,.
AFFIDAVIT
AFFIDAVIT
STATE OF ALABAMA,
COUNTY OF DALLAS
Before me, undersigned authority in
and for said State and County, personally appeared Mrs. Frances W. Martin,
and being by me first duly sworn on
oath, deposes and says:
This is to certify that I, Mrs. Frances W. Martin, and 50 years of age,
and I am employed in the Courthouse,
Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, with
an office on the third floor . I have
witnessed the demonstrations in. and
about the Courthouse, since their beginning both from my office windows
and going in and out of the Courthouse.
I have seen young Negro men and
young white women walking down the
street holding hands or with their arms
around each other's waists. I have also
seen young white men and young Negro women doing the same thing and
I also saw on one occasion, a white
man with both arms around a Negro
embracing her, hugging and caressing
her bosom, and all this in full view of
anyone and everyone who might chance
to · look their way.
(sl FRANCES W. MARTIN
Sworn to and subscribed before me
this the 6th day of April 1965.
(s) Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
Notary Public
My commission expires 7-18-67.
Before me, the undersigned authority, in and for said State and County,
personally appeared Charles R. McMillian, and being by me first duly
sworn on oath, deposes and says:
I am a City Policeman and was on
duty during the demonstration in front
of Brown's Chapel Church. Due to the
fact that it was raining, the demonstrators attempted to put up tents in
the middle of the street which was furnished by one of the Negro funeral
homes in the city. They were told that
* *
they could not pitch tents in the middle
of the street so they moved the tents
STATE OF ALABAMA,
and put them up on the I awns of
COUNTY OF DALLAS
G. W. C. Project.
Before me, undersigned authority,
After tents were put up, they made .. in and for said State and County, persides for them out of polyethylene,
sonaJly appeared Frank Barr and bewhich is a plastic- that you can see
ing by me first duly sworn on oath,
through. When night came the demondeposes and says:
strators started making their beds on
On March 12, 1965, I was working
the night shift and was stationed on
the ground inside the tents. Both NeSylvan Street near Brown's Chapel. I
groes and white deinonstrators were
bedding down s ide by side. A young
saw white girls and Negro boys, and
teenage Negro boy and girl were enwhite boys and Negro girls pair off
gaged in a sexual intercourse that was
and go into the dark areas of Brown's
interrupted t:y a newsman who atChapel. They would disappear in the
dark areas for as long as 45 minutes
tempted to take a picture of the act.
at a time. I do not know for sure what
I was at the barricade when I saw the
they were doing but I did see these
above. Also during the time spent
couples with their arms around each
guarding the demonstrators there was
other and kiss.ing.
constant kissing and hugging, and rubCs J FRANK BARR
bing up against each other and pairing
Sworn to and subscribed before me
off and leaving the group that was in
this the 7th day of April, 1965.
the street. The above mentioned dem(s J Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
onstration took place in March 1965.
Notary Public
This statement is true to the best
My commission expires 7-18-67.
of my knowledge.
's I CHARLES R. Mc MILLIAN
*
AFFIDAVIT
~·worn to and subscribed before me
Statement of K. W. Jones, Captain,
this the 7th day of April 1965.
Montgomery Police Department, con's I Jud Ernest Hewston, Jr.
cerning the sit-in demonstration in
Notary Public
front of the Capitol on March 10 and
My commisison expires 7-18-67
11, 1965, and the indecent incidents
connected with the demonstration.
This statement is made of my own
free will, with no pressure from any
source being exerted.
On March 10, 1965, at about 10:00
p.m. we had a march to the Church,
Columbus and Ripley, and a parade
permit had been issued for this march
for this date. About 1,000 people participated in this march.
The march was orderly and the
demonstrations in front of the Capitol
was orderly up to the point of the
marchers dispersing. The leaders of
the march, who had gotten the parade
permit, wanted to disperse like they
had promised to. James Forman and
about 300 of his group who was in the
march, refused to disperse and sat
down in the street. About 700 dispersed and was escorted back to the
church, -First Baptist.
· The remaining, about 300, huddled
up as a small group as possible and
sang and made speeches. They used
the street. for a bathroom, they urinated until it ran down the street for
about half a block. We could not see
everything that was going on in the
center of the group and this is where
they would go to urinate. Two walked
to the edge of the group and proceeded
to urinate and were arrested. These
were men. There was no mistaking
the smell of urine even though we
couldn't see them urinate. This went
on until about 2: 00 a.m. when they
dispersed.
This is a true and correct statement
and J freely sign my name below.
(sl K. W. JONES
Captain, Montgomery Police
Department
Notary : Mary B. Newberry (s J
Date : April 5, 1965
My commission expires on August
1965.
...
...
...
AFFIDAVIT
I, James E. Farris, member of th.e
State Troopers of the State of Alabama, do hereby swear and attest and
under penalty of perju'ry, that from
Monday, March 22nd, 1965, through
Wednesday, March 24th, I, among
many others, was assigned duty with
the other officials in connection with
the march from Selma to Montgomery,
Alabama.
I further swear and attest that during this tour of duty I personally saw
many, many cases of drunkeness, sexual promiscuity, and urination in the
streets and other public places.
I further swear and attest that on
March 24th, Wednesday, we were assi~ned duty in front of the Capitol
THIRTY-ONE
�Building in Montgomery where a large
number of marchers had gathered.
These marchers stayed in front of the
Capitol until approximately 3:00 a .m.
Thurs.day morning and so many of ·
them had urinated in the street (Dexter) that it actually ran a city block
down the street. This I saw myself
and do not report this as heresay.
I further swear and attest that on
n u m e r o u s occasions the marchers
would walk close to myself, as weii as
troopers, and actually curse us, and
make most obscene remarks to us. As
stated, this happened on many, many
occasions.
I further swear and attest that traffic was blocked all the way from Dannelly Field into . the city of Montgomery
when the marchers arrived in the Danneily Field vicinity on March 24th,
1965. I was on duty that day and saw
•
this myself. The entire march caused
a traffic hazard that just simply could
not be adequately guarded against.
(s l JAMES E. FARRIS
State Trooper
State of Alabama
Subscribed to and sworn before me
this 3rd' day of April, 1965.
(s ) J. D. Smyth, Jr.
Notary Public
Alabama, State at Large
My commission expires 5-20-68.
.,.
AFFIDAVIT
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN :
I, Marlon J. Bass, did, ·on the night
of the 23rd of March, 1965; see, at the
camp site of the Selma to Montgomery
marches, a young white girl and a colored man having sex relations. They
were on the ground out in the open
and did not try in any way to hide as
I walked within six or eight feet of
them.
There were many colored girls and
white boys laying in the same sleeping
bags. I also saw a white girl about
17 years old and 4 colored boys get
into the back of a truck and close the
doors. This was befQre dark on the
23rd day of March 1965. They were
in the truck about 45 minutes and wheff
they opened the door to get out the
girl was dressing.
This is a true statement.
(s ) MARLON J. BASS
Route 6
Andalusia, Alabama
County of Covington
Sworn to and subscribed before me
on this 7th day of April, 1965.
(s ) Neil L. Coplin
Notary Public
My commission expires 3-21-66 .
,-•
It_ was a hot Spring _in. Birmingham . . Negro youths in Kelly ~ngram Park appreciated most the efforts of the Birmingham
Fire D~partment . . This 1s a scene typical of m ost any day durmg the d'e monstrntion. Negro boys playing in the streams of
water from the fire hoses. There don't seem to be any "children b!eeding on the ground."
THIRTY-TWO
�Here are four of the marchers from Selm a to Montgomery who seem t-0 be feeling the effects of the heat--Or the miles--0r
something. There was always a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on if the boots began to feel heavy along the way.
��
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