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During the strategy session, telephone calls were received from U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, urging King to postpone; Katzenbach promised that Government attorneys would help plead King's case before Judge Johnson on Thursday. Finally King came to a half-a-loaf decision: the march to Montgomery would start, but he would stop it before trouble developed.
Early next morning, King's attorneys again appeared before Judge Johnson, announced King's decision. Without another word, Johnson dictated an order enjoining the marchers until after the Thursday hearing. This placed King in an even deeper dilemma: his entire civil rights success has been based on upholding the law of the land and fighting for its observance. Now, if he marched, he would be doing so in direct defiance of a federal court order.
Mapping the Route. Mediator LeRoy Collins provided an answer—of sorts. He had conferred with Selma's Mayor Smitherman, with Top Trooper Al Lingo and Sheriff Clark. They were willing to let the civil rights marchers cross the bridge to the point on Highway 80 where the Sunday march ended in disaster. Then the troopers would turn King and his followers back—and King would leave peaceably. Lingo even drew a rough map of the route that the marchers would be permitted to take. Collins, in turn, showed the map to King, who reluctantly fell in with the plan.
While all these negotiations were going on, the would-be marchers—1,500 strong—congregated in and around the Brown Chapel. Despite the federal court order, sentiment was strongly in favor of marching. A white minister arose to declare: "No matter what happens, we can never get away from Selma, Alabama, again—never!" Princeton University's Religion Professor Malcolm Diamond announced that he would march, quoted Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall, a Negro, as once having said, "I am not defying the sovereignty of my country. I am making witness within the framework of the law of my country."
A Time to Choose. Mrs. Paul Douglas suggested that "it seems if we wait two more days we are losing a great deal of public support." A Roman Catholic priest from Baltimore declared that "it's about time we walked that last mile."
Said Springfield, N.J., Rabbi Israel Dresner: "There is a higher law in God's universe and that is God's law. There is a time when man must choose between man's law and God's law." George Docherty, pastor of Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, took the floor. "I'm here for three reasons," said he. "One, I think the fundamentals of the Christian church are at stake in this hour. Someone said this is the largest gathering of ministers since the Council of Trent. I'd venture to say it is also just as important. We differ in the way we interpret the Scripture. But at this moment the church is being challenged." Second, "the Constitution of the United States is at stake here. Three, we are in the midst of a revolution regarding human rights. Sunday evening my wife and I watched TV and saw those ghastly scenes—our stomachs turned."
Only a few argued against marching. One was Alabamian Charles Reynolds, a graduate student in ethics at Harvard, who explained that "the civil rights movement owes its