The movie Selma was among eight films nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. It's the dramatic account of the days leading up to and through the historic civil-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in March 1965.
Many don't realize Fayetteville attorney Jim Rose III, as a lieutenant and agent with Army Intelligence at the time, was in the middle of those events as part of a contingent of federal officials actually living those events with Dr. King and his group of confidantes. Rose came to know King and his associates personally in the days leading up to the 54-mile march.
He recalls having breakfast daily at the Holiday Inn where he was staying with King, Andrew Young, The Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Frederick Douglas Reese, John Lewis and other civil-rights leaders. There, Rose listened as they planned each day's activities, including the three mass marches to and finally across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
"Dr. King was always very kind and friendly to me and he kept us up on what was happening," said Rose. "He believed I was with the FBI so I let him think that because it really didn't make much difference. We all were there to observe, not become involved." Smiling, the criminal attorney said, "He always called me 'Rose.'"
Of Dr. King's closest associates in Selma, Rose said it became obvious Young was the brightest and quickest to grasp strategies and potential consequences. "He was clearly so intelligent."
After breakfasts, Rose said, King and the others would gather at the AME Church in Selma to conclude their ever-changing plans. "That's also where the marches always began," he said.
During the first march onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, where some 600 marchers confronted 150 state policemen and deputies of racist Sheriff Jim Clark, Rose stood aside with a camera and captured the horrific scene as terrified women, children and men were beaten and gassed as they fled. That savage attack on innocents became rightly known as Bloody Sunday.
"We had specific instructions not to be involved and we followed those orders," Rose said. "It was really bad watching all the brutality that day."
He said one aspect of the first march most don't know is that the scores of hurriedly deputized men riding their horses had been stationed behind the first wave of Mississippi State Police. But as the state police surged forward and began clubbing the marchers, Clark's deputies pushed in close behind on horseback and began lobbing tear-gas canisters into the crowd. The police had gas masks.
"But they hadn't considered their horses didn't have the masks and would react so violently to it. Deputies were being thrown as horses bucked and bolted in different directions to escape the fumes," he said.
Rose said King staged the beginning of a second march along U.S. 80 on March 9. "But he already realized that march wouldn't occur that day," said Rose. "He was waiting for the federal judge to sign an authorization for the march. When that approval hadn't arrived by the morning of the second march, Dr. King said he was going to make an second appearance on the bridge anyway as a show of resolve.
"He and his group of leaders had decided he wouldn't begin the march if the judge hadn't authorized it, so they stopped at the center of the bridge where they prayed," Rose continued.
Rose said King didn't actually deliver that prayer. He turned instead to Abernathy and asked him to kneel and pray for the marchers. "Then Dr. King turned and walked back through the center of the crowd gathered behind him. And they followed."
Another week passed until the judge finally allowed the marchers to use the highway to Montgomery under certain conditions. The National Guard had been mobilized to protect them. Troops of the 82nd Airborne were flown into Selma to assist, Rose said.
"An informant told me before the march occurred that a group of locals was planning to place rattlesnakes and scorpions in areas where the crowds were to stop for each night," said Rose. "I passed that information along and soldiers quickly combed those areas beforehand."
He said the newspapers mistakenly wrote at the time that the military was searching for mines and bombs.
Rose made the trip in a sedan alongside the marchers while continuing to document the journey. "By then I was ordered to report events to the Pentagon every two hours. A recorder captured everything I dictated into the phone."
In reaching Montgomery, the crowd had swelled to more than 8,000 as latecomers joined Selma marchers for the final three miles to the state Capitol steps. A lot of celebrities also had flown in to be part of the historic moment. Among those was former Bonanza star Pernell Roberts and his wife.
Rose met the couple at the encampment on the evening before that final push to the Capitol. And the next day when he saw them in the crowd, he said he invited them to sit in his sedan out of a steady misting rain, which they did.
Later, Rose said he overheard a smiling King telling his confidantes that the ultimate success of the march would "change things forever."
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 04/05/2015