VII. To the end: the Voting Rights Act of 1965

VII. To the end: the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Instead of being upgraded into a new lively phase (having just increased to about 150 full-timers), SNCC became paralyzed for the rest of the year and well into 1965.⁵⁶ Almost every month of that period, there was a major meeting of staff. The principal concerns were how to adapt the organization to so many new members, and whether whites could ever organize black people effectively. The complete unity of thought and equalitarianism were incompatible with different types of membership (i.e. for SNCC, only full commitment, and nothing less, mattered). There was also general disillusionment with white liberals both from the North and South – to be sure, the MFDP leaders kept working with the Democratic Party, but SNCC workers, though they assisted them, lost heart for it. (Jeffries, Stoper)

As Zinn had put it, the town of Selma, Alabama, looked as an authentic reconstruction of a pre-Civil-War Southern town. Selma, a former slave trade center turned Confederacy military depot turned lynching town, got in the spotlight of SNCC in the beginning of 1963 and the Committee staff had been fighting the wicked union of Citizens Council, mobocracy and notorious Sheriff Jim Clark ever since. In connection with voter registration, more than 300 people went to jail in the fall. Sheriff Clark expanded his regular police force with several hundred citizens who he armed with clubs and cattle prods. He publicly expressed his belief that the voter registration was part of a “world communist conspiracy.” When SNCC held a Freedom Day in Selma on October 6, 1963, comedian Dick Gregory and writer James Baldwin came to address the crowd and report on the situation. When a long queue of would-be voters formed in front of the county courthouse that day, Sheriff Clark and his posse ordered that no water or food be distributed to those in line. The people were kept standing in the scorching sun all day, while a nearby group of federal agents did not do anything to assist them. They even let Clark arrest three SNCC workers, who held protest signs and quietly stood on the steps of a federal building, for unlawful assembly. The Freedom Day in Selma again clearly demonstrated the blatant incompetence of the federal agents.⁵⁷ (Zinn: 147-165)

After King traveled to Norway to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964, he announced his plans to go to Selma. When he arrived in January 1965, Selma was immediately on national news. SNCC saw his coming as yet another of his tactics that would “give him glory overnight” but also hurt local people’s confidence as to their ability to succeed on their own. The Committee, which had worked on voter registration there for several years, got into conflict with the SCLC once again.⁵⁸ (Williams)

On February 4, while King was in jail, SNCC invited militant Black Muslim preacher Malcolm X to Selma to have a speech. It was the fiery rhetoric of this defiant minister that mostly inspired the black nationalist faction already emergent within SNCC. “The white people should thank Dr. King for holding people in check,” he said, “for there are other[s] who do not believe in these [nonviolent] measures.”⁵⁹ (Williams: 262)

President Johnson gave a surprise speech in favor of voting rights the other day. More, a federal judge issued a decree that demanded the registrar in Selma to process at least 100 applications per day. It was only by the end of the month though, when a black man was shot during an SCLC march, that the whole nation came to actually understand the rule of terror by which southern racists kept Afro-Americans from voting. But the progress was very slow and therefore, King and the SCLC chose to sponsor a fifty-mile march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. John Lewis, chairman of SNCC, tried to dissuade King from staging the march because in his opinion, the objectives did not justify the risks involved. But King was determined. (Williams: 262-267)

SNCC decided not to take part in the march officially, but individual members could join and so, John Lewis happened to be leading the march side by side with SCLC’s Hosea Williams. On March 7, a peaceful procession of 600 set to move. At the Edmund Pettus Bridge in East Selma, they ran into a “sea of state troopers.” (Lewis qtd. in Williams: 269) First they were ordered to turn around and disperse and a few moments afterward, the state troopers (led by Major John Cloud) set off pure mayhem. Tear gas was fired into the crowd and then policemen on horseback attacked. “The horses were more humane than the troopers,” recalled one partaker. (Williams: 269) People were being beaten to the ground at random as they were trying to escape. Televisions interrupted their regular programs to show footage of what “looked like war.” Subsequently, a number of people gathered at the church (Brown’s Chapel) and talked about getting their guns and the preachers had to talk them out of it. (Williams)

The day was soon dubbed “Bloody Sunday.” King was asked to postpone any further attempts at staging marches, but two days later he led another one – to the very same bridge where the troopers were again ready to smash it up. This time, after kneeling and praying, he turned the march back to the church. He felt that he demonstrated the point but many protesters were confused and disappointed. SNCC members even accused him of “making secret deals with Jim Clark.” (Stoper: 26)

The third march, some two weeks later, was attended by 3,000, including hundreds of white Northerners, and protected by almost 4,000 federal soldiers. This one actually provided a necessary push to bring the voting rights bill to the Congress. President Johnson publicly announced the new Voting Rights Act already in March. In May, it was passed by the Senate. The House of Representatives finally voted for it on July 9. The president signed it on August 6 with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks (of the NAACP) by his side. (Williams)

Martin Luther King the ‘glory-seeker’ had brought about an enormous victory that the entire civil rights movement was long fighting for. The government, still initially reluctant to send federal registrars to each and every county that appeared to remain discriminatory, gradually sent large numbers of them to help enfranchise African Americans throughout the Deep South. In the hardcore counties of Mississippi, for example, 16,482 blacks were enfranchised during the first year after the passage of the bill. By September 1966, nearly 140,000 Afro-Americans were registered in Mississippi.⁶⁰ This resulted in a new reality that changed the overall patterns of southern politics: white candidates began to openly campaign for black voters and the all-white voting list has disappeared. Although it possibly could not result in swift elimination of violence, racism and unjust distribution of power overnight, the legislation was crucial in the dismantling of Jim Crow, for it gave African Americans a new sense of power and dignity. (McMillen: 369-371; Stoper: 26-27; Williams: 287)