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Transcription below by: Noemi Teppang (2010 adult workshop). Edited transcription by: Judy Minton (volunteer). Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org

Selma Demonstrations, 1964

You asked me about events of the summer. I guess probably the most dramatic events started off very early on. Selma was one of the worst towns in the South. In some ways, Alabama was a much tougher state to work in than Mississippi because they were better organized. They had their fascism in line. So Jim Forman had sent a young photographer from Antioch, who became one of my photographers, into Selma to document voter registration demonstrations that were going on. He and a writer had been badly beaten by Sheriff Jim Clark's posse outside a church one evening and they ended up in a hospital in Montgomery. Cameras were smashed and they came very close to being killed. So I was on the road headed for Mississippi and I stopped at a phone both to call Jim. He said, "I want you to go into Selma and take up what [David] Prince was trying to do. Shoot the demonstrations." I was terrified by this, but I also knew that if I didn't say okay, I would lose Forman's support, trust, and so on. And I would show that I was wimp and couldn't do this. So, I drove my Volkswagen bus into Selma wondering,"Where am I gonna find the action?" And it was like a movie set. I stopped at the first stop light and there was a group of civil rights marchers crossing in front of me, being led to jail by the sheriff's posse.

So I drove around the corner into a vacant lot and stuffed film into cameras, packed my camera bag and ran to the center square of this little town. There was a CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Company] camera crew and a couple of reporters, everybody looking very terrified. The marchers were no longer in sight, but they had been brought into an alley next to the jail. I knew that the police were probably beating them and working them over with cattle prods. So I ran into the square trying to get to a point where I could focus a long lens down the alley and a couple of police charged me. I turned and ran and I felt a billy club crease my back. I was moving fast and it didn't really hurt me. The CBC cameraman had followed me into the square and I heard this crash. I looked and he was sprawled on the pavement with his Orikon bouncing across the cement. [tape break]

So the CBC cameraman was sprawled full on the pavement with his Orikon bouncing across the pavement. It was one of those moments when you don't think very clearly. I was trying to keep from getting caught and beaten and he scooped up this camera and rushed to a corner. As he did, I saw this little thing skittering across the pavement. In my addled brain I scooped it up and it was a SNCC button. So I turned toward him with it in my outstretched hand and I said, "You lost your SNCC button!" They left town that night. I stayed on. The next evening, I was at the same church where Prince had been so severely beaten. There was another mass meeting in this church similar to the one the night before. And there was the sheriff's posse outside. Earlier in the afternoon I had gone to a couple of houses next to the church and asked the families if anyone would open their backdoor to me if I came running at the end of the service. One family said, "Yes." I often thought about the courage that it took because I would be out of town the next day and they were going to go on living in Selma.

Were these black families or white families?

Oh, Black. Yes. It's a black neighborhood, black church. You know, there might be a fire bomb through their front porch or they might lose their jobs. That stuff happened very, very routinely.

Transcription below by: Mae Lee (2010 adult workshop). Edited transcription by: Judy Minton (volunteer). Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org

The church was very dark. The meeting was kind of disorganized. My flash was dying. I couldn't get any very good pictures. Finally I sat down in the balcony next to the only journalist there, who was a New York Times reporter. I told him what had happened the night before and what I expected when the meeting broke up. He said, "Well, why don't we just leave early?" So we sauntered out the front door and over to where the posse was standing and stood around in the dark chatting with them in my best New Orleans accent. When the meeting was over and the folks filed out, there was no charge of the posse. Journalists were present. Everything ended quite calmly. I was in Selma for another day and photographed some more demonstrations. That was the introduction to the summer.