(2 of 3)
> In Camden, Ala., seat of Wilcox County, demonstrators picked up where they had left off in Selma, 33 miles to the northeast. Negro students, some only nine years old, tried five times to march into the town to demand voting rights for Wilcox Negroes, who outnumber whites 4 to 1, but had been unable to register a single member ot their race until last month. Each time Mayor Reginald Albritton halted them with an augmented force of volunteer cops, county deputies and state troopers. "If you don't have a parade permit, don't go past that sign," barked Albritton, pointing to a town-limits marker. When a Negro youth stepped over the town boundary line, Albritton tossed a smoke bomb at his feet. Two volunteer cops pitched canisters at the fleeing crowd, and though nobody was hurt, the disheartened demonstrators retreated.
> In Birmingham, scene of 23 racial bombings since 1956, a dynamite explosion and two near misses shocked the city. In an alleyway outside the home of prosperous Negro Accountant Toussaint L'Overture Crowell, a bomb made with 15 dynamite sticks demolished two garages, tore a hole three feet deep and ten feet long, luckily caused no graver injuries than a cut requiring five stitches in the hand of Crowell's 13-year-old son. Another bomb was ticking away on the porch of white Councilwoman Nina Miglionico, a racial moderate, when her 80-year-old father stepped outside for the morning newspaper and noticed a green box. "I thought it was a gift," he said. But when he saw what was inside, "I took the clock out and threw it out of the yard." Police immediately rushed to the homes of the other eight city council members and moderate Mayor Albert Boutwell, a precaution that paid off. Outside the mayor's home was a powerful time bomb containing 50 sticks of dynamite, enough to level the house. When Wallace learned of the bombing, he ordered his plane diverted from Washington to Birmingham and made a beeline for the Croweli place. "This is an infamous and dastardly action," he said.
The bombs in Birmingham and Camden gave impetus to the latest campaign of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—a threatened economic boycott of the whole state of Alabama as a means of ending "this reign of terror." King's reliance on the boycott technique was certainly understandable. It was the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, after all, that propelled him to national fame and won considerable support for the Negro cause.
But the idea drew heavy fire, even from his fans, because of the effect it might have on the Negroes, who make up one-third of Alabama's population, and on innocent whites as well. Said National Urban League Executive Director Whitney Young: "I have some reservations about a total boycott that makes no distinction between the good guys and the bad guys." For similar reasons, President Johnson was cool to the idea. "We must be very careful," said the President at a White House press conference, "to see that we do not punish the innocent while we are trying to protect all of our people."