Renata Adler - After the Tall Timber

Again the night was cold and damp. At the entrance to the field, there was so much mud that boards and reeds had been scattered to provide traction for cars. Most of the marchers went to sleep in their four tents soon after supper, but at Steele’s Service Station, across the highway, a crowd of blacks from the neighborhood had gathered. Some of them were dancing to music from a jukebox, and a few of the more energetic marchers, white and black, joined them.

“This is getting to be too much like a holiday,” said a veteran of one of the earlier marches. “It doesn’t tell the truth of what happened.”

At about ten o’clock, the last of the marchers crossed the highway back to camp. Shortly afterward, a fleet of cars drove up to the service station and a group of white boys got out. Two of the boys were from Georgia, two were from Texas, one was from Tennessee, one was from Oklahoma, one was from Monroeville, Alabama, and one was from Selma. The Reverend Arthur E. Matott, a white minister from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, who was a member of the night patrol, saw them and walked across the highway to where they were standing. “Can I help you fellows?” Mr. Matott asked.

“We’re just curious,” the boy from Monroeville said. “Came out to see what it was like.”

“How long are you planning to stay?” said Mr. Matott.

“Until we get ready to leave,” the boy said.

A black member of the night patrol quietly joined Mr. Matott.

“I cut classes,” said the boy from Tennessee. “Sort of impulsive. You hear all these stories. I wondered why you were marching.”

“Well, you might say we’re marching to get to know each other and to ease a little of the hate around here,” Mr. Matott said.

“You don’t need to march for that,” said one the boys from Texas. “You’re making it worse. The hate was being lessened and lessened by itself throughout the years.”

“Was it?” asked the black member of the guard.

“It was,” the Texas boy said.

“We never had much trouble in Nashville,” said the boy from Tennessee. “Where you have no conflict, it’s hard to conceive …”

“Why don’t you-all go and liberate the Indian reservations, or something?” said the boy from Monroeville. “The Negroes around here are happy.”

“I don’t think they are,” said Mr. Matott.

“I’ve lived in the South all my life, and I know that they are,” the boy from Georgia said.

“I’m not happy,” said the black guard.

“Well, just wait awhile,” said the boy from Monroeville.

An attractive blond girl in a black turtleneck sweater, denim pants, and boots now crossed the highway from the camp. “Do you know where I can get a ride to Jackson?” she asked the black guard.

“This is Casey Hayden, from SNCC. She’s the granddaughter of a Texas sheriff,” said the minister, introducing her to the group.

A battered car drove up, and three more white boys emerged.

“I don’t mean to bug you,” the black whispered to the girl, “but did you realize we’re surrounded?”

“You fellows from Selma?” Miss Hayden asked, turning to the three most recent arrivals.

“Yeah,” said one, who was wearing a green zippered jacket, a black shirt, and black pants, and had a crew cut.

“What do you want?” Miss Hayden asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy answered.

“That’s an honest answer,” Miss Hayden said.

“It is,” the boy said.

“What do you do?” Miss Hayden asked.

“Well, Miss, I actually work for a living, and I can tell you it’s going to be hard on all of them when this is over,” the boy said. “A lot of people in town are letting their maids go.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I’d want to have a maid anyway,” Miss Hayden said amiably. “I guess I can do most things myself.”

“That’s not all, though,” said another boy. “It’s awfully bad down the road. Nothing’s happened so far, but you can’t ever tell. Selma’s a peace-loving place, but that Lowndes County is something else.”

“I guess some of these people feel they haven’t got that much to lose,” Miss Hayden said.

“I know,” said the boy.

“Do you understand what they’re marching about?” Miss Hayden asked.

“Yeah — fighting for freedom, something like that. That’s the idea, along that line. It don’t mean nothing,” the boy said.

“And to make money,” the third young man said. “The men are getting fifteen dollars a day for marching, and the girls are really making it big.”

“Is that so?” said Miss Hayden?

“Yeah. Girl came into the Selma hospital this morning, fifteen hundred dollars in her wallet. She’d slept with forty-one.”

“Forty-one what?” Miss Hayden asked.

“Niggers,” the young man said.

“And what did she go to the hospital for?” Miss Hayden asked.

“Well, actually, Ma’am, she bled to death,” the young man said.

“Where did you hear that?” Miss Hayden asked.

“In town,” the young man said. “There’s not much you can do, more than keep track of everything. It’s a big mess.”

“Well,” Miss Hayden said, “I think it’s going to get better.”

“Hard to say,” said one of the boys as they drifted back to their cars.

At midnight in the camp, Charles Mauldin, aged seventeen, the head of the Dallas County Student Union and a student at Selma’s Hudson High School, which is black, was awakened in the security tent by several guards, who ushered in a rather frightened-looking black boy.

“What’s going on?” asked Charles.

The boy replied that he was trying to found a black student movement in Lowndes County.

“That’s fine,” said Charles.

“The principal’s dead set against it,” the boy said.

“Then stay underground until you’ve got everybody organized,” Charles said. “Then if he throws one out he’ll have to throw you all out.”

“You with SNCC or SCLC, or what?” the boy asked.

“I’m not with anything,” Charles said. “I’m with them all. I used to just go to dances in Selma on Saturday nights and not belong to anything. Then I met John Love, who was SNCC project director down here, and I felt how he just sees himself in every Negro. Then I joined the movement.”

“What about your folks?” the boy asked.

“My father’s a truck driver, and at first they were against it, but now they don’t push me and they don’t hold me back,” Charles said.

“Who’ve you had personal run-ins with?” the boy asked.

“I haven’t had personal run-ins with anybody,” Charles said. “I’ve been in jail three times, but never more than a few hours. They needed room to put other people in. Last week, I got let out, so I just had to march and get beaten on. In January, we had a march of little kids — we called it the Tots’ March — but we were afraid they might get frightened, so we joined them, and some of us got put in jail. Nothing personal about it.”

“Some of us think that for the march we might be better off staying in school,” the boy said.

“Well, I think if you stay in school you’re saying that you’re satisfied,” Charles said. “We had a hundred of our teachers marching partway with us. At first, I was against the march, but then I realized that although we’re probably going to get the voting bill, we still don’t have a lot of other things. It’s dramatic, and it’s an experience, so I came. I thought of a lot of terrible things that could happen, because we’re committed to nonviolence, and I’m responsible for the kids from the Selma school. But then I thought, If they killed everyone on this march, it would be nothing compared to the number of people they’ve killed in the last three hundred years.”