At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch Page B

cross-racial journalism in Selma. He dutifully followed the instructions of troopers and deputies who promised to guarantee his safety, but also wore a new athletic supporter and protective cup to guard against a repeat of earlier attacks from the same uniformed authorities. On foot, and from makeshift perches, the camera crews gathered images that soon obliterated a host of preoccupations while lifting some details into lore—that Hosea Williams claimed under his breath to have captured such bridges in Germany, that one tipsy marcher near the front had to be steadied over the crest, that Lewis and Williams eyed a possible destination below in the Alabama River and confessed softly to each other that neither could swim.
    What the machines recorded as Williams and Lewis continued methodically down the slope was an eerie silence, broken by the snorting of horses. After they had covered roughly a hundred yards of level ground, a quietly spoken order ahead introduced unnerving new sights and sounds to the marchers: snapping noises that swept along the barrier line ahead as officers secured otherworldly gas masks of bug-eyed goggles and elongated rubber snouts. Williams and Lewis halted the march line at a separation of fifty feet when an unmasked trooper stepped forward with a bullhorn. “It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,” said Major John Cloud, a scholarly-looking deputy to Al Lingo. “And I’m saying that this is an unlawful assembly. You are to disperse. You are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue. Is that clear to you? I’ve got nothing further to say to you.”
    â€œMay we have a word with the major?” asked Hosea Williams. Without amplification, his voice was barely audible to the journalists nearby.
    â€œThere is no word to be had,” replied Cloud. He gave the marchers two minutes to withdraw, and the lines faced each other silently in front of Haisten’s Mattress and Awning Company. Lewis and Williams looked straight ahead, wearing light and dark raincoats, respectively, each with a buttoned tab collar pushing forward his necktie. Behind Lewis, Bob Mants stood motionless in an overcoat and collegiate scarf, wearing “high-water pants” that were stylish on the Atlanta University campuses, stopping five inches above the ankle. Behind Williams stood Albert Turner in rural denim, carrying a stuffed backpack that evidenced the hope of the Perry County marchers to sustain themselves all the way to Montgomery. Mants and Turner wore the jaunty Sluggo cap, also known as the Big Apple hat.
    After one minute and five seconds, Major Cloud addressed his front unit without the bullhorn: “Troopers, advance.” The blue line of elephantine masks moved forward with slow, irregular steps, overlapping and concentrating to curl around the front ranks of marchers. With nightsticks held chest high, parallel to the ground, the troopers pushed into the well-dressed formation, which sagged for nearly four suspended seconds until the whole mass burst to the rear, toppling marchers with accelerating speed as troopers hurtled over and through them. Almost instantly, silence gave way to a high-pitched shriek like the war cry of Indians in Hollywood movies, as the march line screamed and white spectators thrilled, some waving encouragement alongside the charge. John Lewis shot out of the mass at an angle, leaning oddly as he sank to the ground in five steps, felled by a truncheon blow to the head. A clattering of horses’ hooves on pavement signaled the general deployment of Alabama reserves and raised the volume of the pulsing shrill yell. Two troopers in the forward tangle stumbled over bodies into a heap and came up swinging clubs. The sharp report of guns sounded twice on the first launch of tear gas, one round reportedly fired by Sheriff Clark himself. A canister landed behind a moving wave of chaos that had not