As the Negro congregation streamed 800 strong from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery one day last week and marched toward Alabama's Capitol, 5,000 whites waited in the street. A race riot was inches away. Seething in the crowd was anger built up in the past fortnight by a Negro sit-in at a segregated lunch counter and a protest march and prayer meeting at the Capitol. Four hundred city, county and state police quickly moved between marchers and whites, dispersed them by threatening to turn on fire hoses. Violence was averted—for the moment. From tense and angry Montgomery, a deeply...
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