Warren A. Trest
from Chapter 15: "It's a Hell of a Job''
The governor's phones rang off the hook. More trouble was brewing. Reverend King had cancelled a speaking engagement in Chicago and was flying into Montgomery to speak at a mass rally in support of the Freedom Riders. A busload of "American Nazi" leader George Lincoln Rockwell's followers was reported to be en route to Alabama to exploit the racial strife. Klansmen had already moved in from around the state. Robert Kennedy threatened to send in federal marshals. Patterson fired back that his state was already under invasion, and Kennedy's interference would only make matters worse.
The phone lines between the governor's office and Washington sizzled with as much heat as the racial tensions percolating around the capital city. The attorney general barked orders like a drill sergeant, while the governor gave as good as he got. Patterson told the attorney general if he truly wanted to help ease the tensions in Alabama he would pull his people out of Alabama and would convince King to stay in Chicago. Alabama could handle its own problems, Patterson insisted, adding that Kennedy's sending federal marshals to Montgomery would only "worsen the situation and make our job of law enforcement more difficult."
Patterson (with Mann, state attorney general McDonald Gallion, and members of the press in attendance) repeated the state's position in a meeting on Sunday morning with assistant U.S. Attorney General Byron White. The governor made it clear that he believed White's presence and the Justice Department's act of political grandstanding in sending federal marshals to Alabama was unconstitutional, was unwarranted, and would "only further complicate and aggravate the situation and worsen federal-state relations." He accused the administration of sending "your forces here ostensibly to quell a disturbance that you, yourselves, have helped create."
Patterson said he personally liked Byron White, but thought at the time that "we ought to be very clear that we did not need federal intervention in maintaining order in Alabama." White, whose calls from Maxwell AFB were monitored by a friendly telephone operator, was overheard telling Kennedy that he believed the state was fully capable of handling the situation. He recommended pulling the federal marshals out. Kennedy disagreed. Pulling the marshals out now would look as if the administration had backed down.
Patterson's concern grew by the minute as he and his staff assessed the situation. He was told that the five hundred or so federal marshals were a mixed lot brought in from various federal court systems around the country and were not trained in crowd control. The presence of the marshals, the rally that Reverend Abernathy had scheduled at his First Baptist Church for Sunday evening, and King's arrival in the afternoon were magnets pulling a horde of white hecklers and troublemakers into downtown Montgomery. When King arrived at the airport, federal marshals escorted him into town to Abernathy's church where a large congregation was waiting...
As nightfall approached, radio announcers were pleading for listeners to stay away from downtown and not to come near the church where King was to speak. The public announcements had the opposite effect, attracting not only racist troublemakers but every young tough and curiosity seeker from miles around. Patterson and his staff had seen the trouble brewing through the day and prepared to deal with it. Kate Simmons had typed a proclamation of martial law and had it on the governor's desk for his signature if needed. Major General Henry Graham assigned Colonel Rufus Sheppard to stay with the governor and serve as a liaison with the National Guard. The general moved Guard units into Montgomery and had them on standby at the Dixie Graves Armory.
The Guard units (the equivalent of a regimental combat team) were comprised primarily of infantrymen and two military police battalions that were trained in riot control. They were not allowed to have live ammunition. They had fixed bayonets, with orders not to use them except in a life or death situation. "I didn't want anybody to get killed out there, if we could avoid it," Patterson explained. "We knew those marshals couldn't hold off that mob, if things got bad down at the church. Our guardsmen could. They were well-trained, they were tough, and they were ready. No concerns about that."
When night fell the marshals formed a ring around the church. Standing back on the perimeter, a few city policemen swapped jokes as the gathering mob grew larger and bolder under the cover of darkness. Mann and the governor's aide, state trooper Tom Posey, were on the scene with Henry Graham watching and listening. Tommy Giles was there. "Every few minutes they would call me from a pay phone down there and tell me what was going on," the governor said. The open fields fronting the church was overflowing with spectators and disorderly troublemakers aching for a fight.
Violence broke out with sudden fury as the surly mob swarmed into the streets taunting the marshals and setting fire to a car parked down from the church. The car belonged to Virginia Durr, a well-known Montgomerian who, with her attorney husband, Clifford, were among the few local whites who were sympathetic to civil rights activities. Mrs. Durr was the sister-in-law of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Her friend, British writer Nancy Mitford, had borrowed the Durrs' car to drive to the church to interview Dr. King. Mitford was inside the church when stones and bottles flew and the rioters, cursing and howling racial slurs, charged toward the marshals. "When the bottles started flying the marshals covered up to protect themselves, and the crowd ran right over them," the governor recalled. "Floyd moved in quickly with state troopers and Henry Graham ordered in squads of infantry with rifles in diamond formation and stopped the rioters before they could break down the door of the church. Our troops beating on a few of them broke it up real quick. That was the end of it."
The National Guard patrols kept order in the capital city until the Freedom Riders left the Montgomery terminal in a pair of buses a few days later heading through Selma to the Mississippi line. A convoy of three planes, two helicopters, and seventeen highway patrol cars escorted them to the state line where Governor Ross Barnett's highway patrolmen took over. To keep from repeating the violence inflicted on the riders in Alabama, the Mississippi governor had the Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson for violating state laws. They were incarcerated in the state penitentiary at Parchman Farm for three weeks. The immediate Freedom Rider crisis was over, but King noted that the rides and the sit-ins "dramatized the new militancy of Southern Negroes, particularly young people," and were a turning point in the civil rights movement. Together they were on a venture to change the moral compass of the nation.