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Shades of Bilbo. More levelheaded Negro leaders—and white civil rights advocates—are appalled by the implications of the black-power mentality. Accusing S.N.C.C. of adopting a "black racist" course, N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Roy Wilkins adds that it is ominously similar to South Africa's apartheid policy, only turned topsy-turvy. Black power, says Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young Jr., is indistinguishable from the bigotry of "Bilbo, Talmadge and Eastland." Besides, notes Howard University President James Nabrit Jr., currently on leave to serve as U.S. Permanent Deputy Representative to the U.N., "common sense should tell us that 20 million Negroes in a country of 180 million whites need the help of the white majority." And J. H. Jackson, the president of the Negro National Baptist Convention, made the point that after Meredith was ambushed it was, after all, "white officials who arrested the criminal, white physicians who ministered to his needs."
"White Folks Must Go." So uneasy are some moderates over the growing streak of undirected anger in the rights movement that the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League have given the Mississippi march limited and lukewarm support. Their reservations seemed well founded. At one point last week the marchers took up the chant: "Hey, hey, what do you say? White folks must go, must go!" Retorted Mississippi's N.A.A.C.P. Field Director Charles Evers, whose brother Medgar was assassinated three years ago as a result of his civil rights activities: "If we are marching these roads for black supremacy, we're doomed. I never will be antiwhite. I would be just as guilty of the racism and bigotry we've been fighting all these years."
Martin Luther King specifically sought to rebut the evangelists of black power. "It is absolutely necessary for the Negro to gain power," he said, "but the term black power is unfortunate because it tends to give the impression of black nationalism. We must never seek power exclusively for the Negro but the sharing of power with the white people."
"Right Behind You." For a time, the controversy all but overshadowed the Mississippi march. As the week began, the marchers plodded through the red dust of Belzoni—where a Negro minister was murdered ten years ago for trying to register voters—and towns with ominous-sounding names like Midnight. At Louise a score of marchers led by King left the main group and headed for Philadelphia, the town of brotherly love, Mississippi-style, where three civil rights workers were slain in 1964. There, white Mississippians soon abandoned the sullen restraint they had shown through the march's first fortnight.
As the marchers entered Philadelphia, a button-cute blonde in an ice blue Mustang convertible roared straight at the column, then braked to a stop. "You better get knives, you white niggers," she snarled at white marchers. "You're gonna need 'em." A pickup truck careened down the column as a white man in the passenger's seat flailed at the marchers with a club. When the demonstrators knelt to pray, they were sprayed by a white tough with a hose.