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"My father told me it would be history in the making," Ross recalled last week, "and it was. That was a different time then. I'm glad to see blacks got all their rights. It's something to be proud of." Smitherman agreed, "We look back on it now, and we were wrong. Every American ought to have the right to vote."
The marchers crossed the bridge. The troopers put on their gas masks. "Turn around and go back to your church," shouted State Police Major John Cloud through a bullhorn. "You will not be allowed to march any further." The marchers stopped, but did not turn back.
As the anniversary march crossed the Pettus bridge, black and white Selma police officers and state troopers held back the automobile traffic. Blacks constitute 35% of the Selma police department and 45% of the fire department. Two of Selma's six present councilmen are black. A black woman, Jackie Walker, was elected tax collector last fall, becoming the first of her race to win a countywide election since Reconstruction. Walker died in an auto accident on Feb. 1. Selma's minority community is waiting to see if the white county commissioners will appoint another black to take her place.
"Troopers--forward!" shouted Cloud. As the dark blue uniforms advanced, officers swung their clubs. The marchers retreated under the assault, many falling. The troopers, joined eagerly by Clark's redneck posse, pushed on amid clouds of tear gas. Charging on horseback, someof the men swung bullwhips at the fallen and fleeing marchers. "O.K., nigger," yelled one horseman as he flailed his whip at a woman. "You wanted to march. Now march!"
"What happened was unjust," said Selma Librarian Patricia Blalock. "Some people reacted badly. But I think you should give a town another chance. We've tried to change." To the Rev. Frederick Reese, a Selma black leader who had invited King to check out the city's denial of voting rights in the first place, the 20-year evolution has been "miserably slow." Now principal of the Eastside Junior High School, Reese pointed to two private white academies that have opened since the public schools began to integrate in 1965. "There is toleration," he said. "Toleration is a step forward from the past, but real racial harmony has not been achieved."