There was another march 50 years ago.
Everybody remembers the events surrounding the Selma-to-Montgomery march, but virtually nobody remembers another march to Montgomery deserving of history’s fist bump.
Andre Taylor, a former vice-president of Alagasco, was a sophomore at Tuskegee Institute in the dangerous spring of 1965. His recent recollections on Facebook led me to the tale of the Tuskegee Institute Advancement League’s march on Montgomery.
When I spoke to Taylor last week, he explained, “Like a lot of things, you had to be there to know about it.”
Straight out of parochial school, his first time away from home was his enrollment at the school founded by Booker T. Washington, legendary advocate of reason and racial harmony. Attitudes were changing there. As the Civil Rights struggle mounted throughout the South, voices of militancy arose on campus. Tuskegee students, inspired by organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, decided to control their own destiny. As Taylor put it, “It was during a time when my generation was saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”
A response to the voting rights campaign in Selma, TIAL was founded on campus in February 1965. The words of TIAL members in their publication, The Activist, might have given Booker Washington pause. George Ware, a chemistry grad student, wrote, “I say to you here and now that after 300 years the white man has not made any attempt, or effort, to give the Negroes anything except intimidation and lynchings.” Wendell Paris, a Jackson, Mississippi native, was concerned about poverty in the Tuskegee area: “Macon County is so busy trying to help the middle class Negro that it has forgotten its underprivileged brother. Not only is the white man not interested in the welfare of the poor, the Negro himself has forgotten his brother who suffers most of all.”
Ware, Paris and other TIAL members were planning a student march on the state capital even as the events of “Bloody Sunday” shook the nation. Reportedly, after Judge Frank Johnson postponed further Selma marches, movement elders attempted to dissuade TIAL from acting. Even as Dr. King’s plans to march were in limbo, though, TIAL’s plans were firm.
About 7 a.m. on March 10, just three days after the Pettus Bridge carnage, hundreds of Tuskegee students and faculty members gathered at Logan Hall. They were to ride to Montgomery, assemble at the First Baptist Church and from there march 10 blocks to the capitol. A local activist, the Rev. Jessie Douglas, had applied for a parade permit, so the march was no surprise to city police, who were already barricading Dexter Avenue.
Thanks to excellent reportage by the staff of the school paper, The Campus Digest, we know in detail what transpired. The buses from Tuskegee arrived about 9 a.m., and those students were joined at the church by more from high schools and also from Alabama State University. A rally began about 9:45, which included speeches from movement representatives and music from protest singer Len Chandler.
By noon, Montgomery radio had spread news about the impending event, and crowds were gathering along the parade route. Inside the church, the protocol for marching was explained to the group and “We Shall Overcome” was sung. At 12:50, the group started lining up outside, with Douglas and students George Ware and George Davis at the head of the procession.
The line of marchers, three abreast, was about two blocks long. A few carried hand-lettered signs. Ware and Davis were carrying a petition asking Governor Wallace to guarantee voting rights for Negroes, not just in Selma, but also throughout Alabama. Their intent was to present the petition in person to the governor.
It became obvious as they came to the foot of the capitol steps at 1:11 that they weren’t getting inside. The Campus Digest counted 20 city policemen, 20 mounted sheriffs and 80 state troopers at the barricade there. Montgomery’s assistant police chief met Ware and Davis to explain that their parade permit didn’t cover entry to the capitol, and when they attempted to press the point, they were arrested. At that point, marchers began singing freedom songs and an impromptu rally occupied the rest of the afternoon, with about 1,000 people taking part. (At one point, Wallace’s notorious public safety director, Col. Al Lingo, invited state legislators inside the capitol to come outside, “because it would be good for them to see a Communist activity.”)
After Ware and Davis were released, Ware suggested returning to campus to regroup, and about 700 demonstrators went back to the church a little after 5 p.m.
Andre Taylor told me that he felt a sense of accomplishment on the bus back to Tuskegee, but that he also felt a need to get back to his studies. Did his foray into participatory politics make a lasting impression? It’s worth remarking that after Taylor left the Institute in 1968 and served a tour of duty in Vietnam. Once he returned to Alabama, one of the first groups he joined was Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “The sensibility of being active, being involved, has carried over,” he said.
So what about that other march from 50 years ago, little noted nor long remembered?
“I guess the best way to describe it is, you were just filled with the spirit, and you knew it was the right thing to do … It was a consciousness raising time for a lot of us as to ‘enough is enough,’ and if this was one of the ways to make those changes, let’s go give it a try,” Taylor said.
And never mind history’s short memory, said Andre: “When I go back to Montgomery and I hit that corner from Dexter Avenue and look up at the capitol, it all floods back. If I went back now, I could just look up and I’d have all those feelings again.”