Word: selma
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...begin the 1965 civil rights drive, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King chose the town of Selma (pop. 29,500), deep in Alabama's black belt. It was a deliberate choice - and it brought results, up to a point...
...long years, Selma could have served as the model of unyielding resistance to civil rights progress. After the Supreme Court school-desegregation decision in 1954, it was the first Ala bama town to organize a white Citizens Council, which has kept Selma as stubbornly segregated as any community in the nation. From his Selma headquarters, Dallas County Sheriff James Clark firmly kept Negroes down, aided by a squad of special deputies known locally as "squirrel shooters." Last summer Clark and his men herded more than 100 Negroes off to jail with sticks, blows and cattle prods when they tried...
...soon as King arrived in town last week, accompanied by eleven Negro aides, he walked into Selma's Hotel Albert, built by slave labor over a century ago as a copy of the ornate Doge's Palace in Venice, and tried to register for a room. Out from the white crowd in the lobby edged a onetime Birmingham gas-station operator named James Robinson, 26, a member of the small, arch-segregationist National States Rights Party. While one white woman stood on a chair screaming "Get him, get him, get him!" Robinson landed two punches on King...
Long Enouqh in the Alleys. Fact is that a new Selma city administration, with the cooperation of many businessmen, is trying hard to clear the town's dark racist reputation by steering a more moderate course. On the very day that King arrived, seven of Selma's restaurants were quietly and peaceably integrated...
Another indication of a possible change was King's announcement that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which he is the president, would begin an intensive voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, next week, and in the following months this drive would be extended throughout the state. He said that they would also conduct a "freedom election," the results of which would be used to challenge the legality of the Alabama state legislature. The role King plays in Selma will probably reveal whether or not King will move beyond the role he played in Montgomery nine years...