The March to Montgomery

The March To Montgomery

March 25, 1965

Report to the congregation of FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Poughkeepsie, New York

And to the citizens of Dutchess County

Over radio station WKIP

By The Rev. Merle S. Irwin

March 28, 1965 The eyes and conscience of a nation have been focused this week on a little town in Alabama and on a little governor in a state capital, who hides himself behind the skirts of a 100 year old tradition, fighting desperately to hold back the forces of righteousness and to maintain a privileged position for a favored few.

Because I know that many of you in this congregation are concerned and that probably all of you are at least curious, let me take a few moments at this time to make a personal report to you of my impressions on the march to Montgomery.

History was being made this past Thursday in Alabama. Like an idea whose time had come, truth crushed to earth was rising, as this nation has never before seen it. A year or two from now America will have forgotten all about the Gemini twins and their ride through space this week, but I venture to say that it will be a long, long time before America forgets the march on Montgomery. For history was being made there this week and I am convinced that our nation will never again be the same.

Therefore, I would like to tell you about our trip and to share some impressions.

As you know, our United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has for many years taken a strong positive position in matters of human rights. Our leaders, along with other church leaders, have been in the forefront of this struggle.

Our own congregation has for three years had a small-dedicated group of people studying the problem as it relates to us here in Poughkeepsie. More recently many other members have come to see the problem more clearly and are lending some support toward solution. We have been free to act; we have communicated freely with the Negro community; we have maintained communication among ourselves, even with those who disagree with our purpose and goals; and we have maintained communication with other religious groups and have been drawn closer together in our common concern. Much of our gain in our own community has been accomplished through our County Counsel of Churches and the host of groups and peoples that have worked with us.

Thus it was that the march on Montgomery began for us as a group of clergymen, representing the three faiths of our community. The Protestant Council of New York City chartered a special plan for 110 of us, 9 of us from this community and representative of Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, a Roman Catholic Seminary and the largest Jewish Temple of the city. Together with Vassar College Professors of Religion we joined our brother clergymen at Kennedy Airport. Many laymen, some of them actually women, also wanted to make the trip, so a second plane was chartered and more than 200 of us from the Metropolitan New York area survived the bedlam and confusion at the airport, and arrived in Montgomery in time to join the marchers from Selma.

Slipping and sloshing through the red mud of the back streets of Montgomery, where the Negro community resides, we made our way into the city. The streets and porches were lined with Negroes calling out their “God bless you's” and waving American flags, as they wept unashamedly. Moving on into the white community with its paved streets, where we stomped the red mud from our shoes, the atmosphere was quite different. The whites also sat on their porches and steps, but seldom faced the street; rather they sat sideways, looking furtively over their shoulders at the endless line of marchers.

We waved to them, too, to let them know that we were not angry with them, and occasionally one would slip off the porch or lawn to join the procession.

Reaching the downtown area of this beautiful city we discovered that many white business men and women, who filled every available office window facing the march, had been laughing and jeering at the bedraggled marchers who led the procession. Of course, they resembled beatniks, even as governor Wallace had said, but who could march fifty some miles in four days of rain and mud and still resemble a fashion plate?

Long before we reached the downtown area, these spectators were not longer laughing and jeering. They appeared more to be stunned than anything else. For more than an hour they had watched well dressed, middle income people quietly marching down the street – and there was still another hour to come. As one white woman put it, as her cigarette burned her fingers without her being aware of it, “There’s more people here than I have every seen in one place in my whole life.”

Here then, there was no exchange of words – just heavy silence. A well-dressed white couple alongside me carried a large sign on which was printed “Silence is no longer golden in Alabama – and we’re from Alabama.”

Perhaps it was indeed a prophetic note.

Moving on past the Jefferson Davis Hotel, the lower floors of which were filled with silent whites, the upper floors with exuberant Negro maids and porters, we turned up the avenue to the Capital.

On the sidewalks nearby, special single page editions of the local newspaper were being distributed by newsboys. The news announced that the 300 marchers from Selma had now grown to 1,000 and that in Governor Wallace’s opinion they were all beatniks and communists, and the city should ignore them.

Three white teenage boys, sitting in a doorway, read the article without comment, and then one of them touched a match to the newsprint and all three silently watched it turn into ashes.

I hope this too was a prophetic note.

Fifty abreast now in close rank on the six lane avenue, we were stopped over a block away from the Capitol. We could go no further. Ahead was nothing but a solid mass of humanity, and behind us were two more blocks of marchers coming up the hill. At this point most of us agreed, I think, with the chairman’s figure of 50,000, which seemed more realistic than the police chief’s final estimate of 20,000.

But whatever our number, the thing that impressed mew about the crowd was its representative aspect. During our flight down, one of the stewardesses was attempting to find out who was on board. Jo one really knew. She began calling the roll over the public address system. It sounded like the roll call of the United Nations. One half of the names she simply could not pronounce and had to spell them, while the clergyman named would respond with a chuckle. Now multiplied many thousands of times over, we were all the more aware of the divergent backgrounds and the diversity of our origins as we marched arm in arm with but a single purpose. We may not have come over on the same ship, but we were in the same boat now!

As we sat down on the hot pavement to e3ase our weary feet, we had our first opportunity to greet one another.

There were few famous or nationally known people in that crowd, save a few Negro leaders.

A rancher from Texas, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles, a student from a southern University, a district attorney from up north, an Episcopal clergyman from the south, an Alabama housewife, a Presbyterian Church executive from the Midwest – these were typical of the whites around us. There was an equal number of Negroes, only a few from outside the state, and most of them young people, although we did not embarrass them by asking them their professions, recognizing that most of them had not had the educational opportunities that we had had. A few were obviously clergymen, for they wore clerics, but there were scores of clergymen present in the crowd who could not be identified by any special dress. The estimate of two hundred clergymen made by the press was obviously based upon clerical garb – for there wee 110 from the New York City area alone.

Practically everyone had been separated from traveling companions, and many of the companions had the lunch basket, so we sat there on the black pavement sharing what lunches we had and passing around the two canteens which foresighted individuals had brought. Admittedly, it was not very sanitary, but no one seemed to mind. We, literally, had all things in common.

And in many ways it reminded me of a scene long ago when a multitude sat on another hillside sharing loaves and fishes with each other.

Finally, the last of the marchers had entered the avenue – an hour and a half later than planned – due to the large number of participants; and the formal program began.

The Invocation was offered by the Rev. Dr. Theodore Gill, President of our Presbyterian Seminary in San Francisco, who along with fifty of his seminarians had been the “work horses” of the march. He announced that the Invocation would be in two parts – the first addressed to the hundreds of government employees, state troopers and legislators who were massed on the Capital steps and in every window of nearby buildings. Dr. Gill said: “I pray in words that are not my own, ‘Our Father, forgive us our trespasses. Amen’.” At the conclusion of the Invocation the National anthem began. The long line of green helmeted state troopers on the Capital steps immediately turned their backs on the American flag and saluted the confederate flag, which was flying atop the Capital dome. This is no doubt the only State Capital in the nation that does not fly the American flag from its dome but instead, puts it on a small flag p9olie in a clump of trees nearby. My heart sank! But this is not all. The thousands of National Guardsmen, a number of them with confederate flags actually sewn on their uniforms, also turned their backs and saluted the confederate flag. It goes to show how far prejudice can take you, if you let it.

The army troops from Fort Bragg stood stiffly at attention saluting the American flag.

But there was more. Six County sheriffs standing within fifteen feet of me on the lawn of the state building, turned their backs on both flags and formed a circle, conversing in extra loud tones as they puffed their big black cigars an spat upon the ground. It was quite a symbol of men who feel they are a power unto themselves even as it is symbolic that every law enforcement vehicle in the whole city carries the emblem of the confederate flag – an overt warning to every Negro that he is still a slave.

The National Anthem ended and I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was this a foreign land – was it a nightmare of some kind from which I would awake in a few moments to see the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window? I can only hope the sun will come out soon, for there is much darkness in our land.

The Rabbi in our group, a German born Jew, commented sadly that it resembled in exact detail the days of Hitler’s rise in Nazi Germany: sneering, sullen, sightless eyes, staring over the tip of riffles, which we hope were not loaded; potential brutality that wore the uniform of law and justice and yet turned its might on helpless men and children; so-called better people, hiding under bed sheets of anonymity and firing guns at defenseless women; suave politicians closing their eyes to reality and struggling for all they are worth to maintain the status quo, while good people do nothing? Small wonder that one of our number upon de-planning at Kennedy Airport in the wee hours of the morning commented, “Boy, it’s sure good to be back in the U.S.A.”

You have heard and read the speeches that were made during the three-hour program and I will not attempt to interpret them. The radio and press gave its usual fine coverage, even if the local television coverage was considerably slanted, and you will be well able to form your own opinions on what was said.

At the conclusion of the formal program, thousands of us waited in a nearby vacant lot for buses to transport us to railroad stations and airport. The area was sealed off by the army and even those who wanted to leave in search of a taxi were not allowed to do so. As a result, there were no incidents of any kind, as nearly as we could determine, and both the army and the national guard carried out their orders to perfection, most of them serving for more than thirty hours without relief, and we were grateful. There was a six-hour delay in getting out of the airport, as planes from every part of the nation jockeyed for position on the single small runway. Dinner on the plan at 1:30 in the morning was a welcome relief and our safe arrival home about sun-up proved at least one thing – we could stay awake for twenty-seven hours!

But I think the march on Montgomery proved some other things as well.

For the first time in their long lifetime, the Negroes of Alabama saw their white brothers giving evidence of their concern for them. The picture that will probably live longest in my memory is that of hundreds of old men, real old men, neither waving nor speaking, but standing along the roadside with tears running down their cheeks. For the first time in their long lifetime someone apparently cared about them.

And for the first time in their lifetime white citizens of Alabama know for certain that their brothers of the nation care about them. Most southerners are good people. I know! For I have lived one-sixth of my life south of the Mason Dixon line. Most southerners do not want to hate or kill; they do not want to oppress their fellowmen – listen to them protest how they “love the Negro.” But the Negro is now saying to them, in the words of one Albert turner, a college graduate, but a brick layer, “They don’t love us now, but its not vicious hate, the way it looks. There’re just trying to make us live in their system and were’ not going to do it.”

We should say in fairness that some progress has been made in Alabama in places like Mobile, where schools and theaters, golf courses and police forces, are now integrated, with bi-racial committees quietly at work.

And I like to think that all the good white citizens of Alabama will be encouraged to right the wrongs of the past, simply because we paid them a visit. And that they and we together will not fail in providing the basic constitutional right to every citizen of this nation – the right to vote, the right to select those who shall govern them, the right to justice before an honest court of law.

There are many other racial problems of our day, both in Alabama and in Poughkeepsie, with which we must continue to struggle, and I will be frank to say that I do not know what the final answers will be to the many and varied and perplexing problems of human relationships.

But as to the right to vote – what thinking American can deny this freedom or work against this cause?

This is the reason I marched in Poughkeepsie a few weeks ago. This is why I marched in Montgomery. My conscience will not let me keep silence. “Silence is no longer golden.” And if my presence gave encouragement to Negroes and whiles alike, then I’ll sleep a little better these days.

Dr. Martin Luther King said it much better than I can say it, Selma, Alabama, has become a shining moment in the conscience of man. If the worst in American life lurked in the dark streets, the best in American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it. Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but the evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state.”

I also went to Montgomery as a Christian, as one who believes that there is no second class citizenship in the eyes of God, who created “of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” who gave His Son, our Lord, for all men. I went as one who believes that the ground at the foot of the cross is always level.

I also went to Montgomery as an American. When Great Britain told my Scottish ancestors that everything would be all right if they would just surrender certain freedoms to the Crown, on of my kinsmen, named Robert Bruce, said, in the words of a modern General “Nuts” – only he probably said it with a Scottish accent. And for twenty-three years he fought for his life until Scotland was free.

Centuries later, the Crown told my American ancestors that everything would be all right if they would just surrender certain freedoms to the Crown, and my great, great, great grandfather, Nathaniel, said, “Nuts,” with an Irish accent, because he had come from Scotland by way of Ireland. And he donned a Captain’s uniform, fought for his life, and retired a free man.

Now I’m not the fighting man my ancestors were. But I did serve on both sides of the globe in the uniform of my country, along with millions of other Americans. For what? For those basic freedoms in which I believe with all my heart. And I’d do it again, if necessary. God forbid!

How then can I listen to suave politicians in any part of the nation saying “If you’d just leave us alone, we could work this out all right.”

Yes? No! It would mean another hundred years of saying to the American Negro “Just surrender your freedom to us and everything will be all right.” When any American loses his freedom, my freedom is threatened, too. And I’m not going to keep silence.

Perhaps Governor Wallace would label me one of the idealists who came to cause trouble. At least he could not call me a communist nor a fake clergyman. I did not go to cause trouble, but I gladly accept the term “idealist.”

This nation of ours was founded by men with ideals, and it will only remain great as long as our ideals, our moral force, our spiritual strength, remain stronger than any personal, political, economic, provincial, or traditional concept. I believe this!

And finally, I went to Montgomery for you – the people of this congregation. Many of you went with me, even some who did not think I should go, but you went with me in spirit – and for this I am grateful.

I am grateful, too for your spirit in keeping this pulpit free, even though you may not agree with some of the things that are said here; grateful that we can still communicate with each other, and with others of our community, even when we do not agree; and I am grateful that we can witness together, struggle together, pray together. It was a Negro student from Tuskegee who said to us in Montgomery, “We’re going to love the hell out of Alabama.”

Is not this still man’s greatest challenge – to love?

God knows we need it. God teach us how to love.