Word: possemen
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...marchers formed two lines and moved toward the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sixty state troopers were massed on the other side, blocking all four lanes of U.S. Highway 80. Sheriff Clark and his men, some on horses, waited nearby. Dale Ross, 10, watched as his father joined Clark's mounted possemen...
...Highway 80, 400 yards beyond the bridge, was a phalanx of 60 state cops. Suddenly the clubs started swinging. From the sidelines, white townspeople raised their voices in cheers and whoops. Joined by possemen and deputies, the patrolmen waded into the screaming mob. Now came the sound of canisters being fired. A Negro screamed: "Tear gas!" Within seconds the highway was swirling with white and yellow clouds of smoke, raging with the cries of men. Choking, bleeding, the Negroes fled in all directions while the whites pursued them. The mounted men uncoiled bull whips and lashed out viciously...
...marchers were to follow the same route attempted two weeks ago from Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the first march was bloodily halted by helmeted state troopers and mounted possemen, then onto a four-lane, divided stretch of U.S. Highway 80. All but 300 marchers were to drop back at a point 17 miles out of Selma, where the highway narrows to a two-lane, 20-mile strip of piny woods and dismal marshes...
Finally, each city has a force of municipal policemen, under the control of an appointed police chief. They are generally more sophisticated than the troopers or the possemen...
...possemen charged the civil rights demonstrators, Lackey asked Montgomery County sheriff Mac Sim Butler to help him get a small crowd of the marchers back to the other side of the street where the bulk of the crowd was being contained. Whether from personal sadistic zeal, or sheriff's orders, the possemen went wild, and began to charge both groups of demonstrators...