Selma, Contd.

In its direct aim of qualifying Negroes to vote, Martin Luther King's two-week registration drive in Selma, Ala., was a flop. Despite a federal court injunction against interfering with orderly registration, Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies arrested 56 more applicants and civil rights workers last week, bringing the total to 282. And during the two weeks not a single Negro was added to the registration rolls.

One at a Time. County officials easily thwarted the drive by their tortuous registration procedures. Negroes stood in line for up to five hours a day waiting to enter Room 122 in the courthouse. During the two weeks only 93 got in, since only one applicant was admitted at a time. Each had to answer a series of biographical questions, then provide written answers in a 20-page test on the Constitution, federal, state and local governments. (Sample questions: Where do presidential electors cast ballots for President? Name two rights a person has after he has been indicted by a grand jury.) To prove literacy, each applicant had to write down passages from the Constitution read to him by the registrar. The registrar was the sole judge of whether the applicant's writing was passable, and whether his test answers were correct.

In its goal of bringing such unjust registration procedures to national attention, however, King's drive was a success. In this, King was helped considerably by the clumsy antics of Sheriff Clark. Last week the 220-lb. Clark tangled violently along the courthouse waiting line with Mrs. Annie Lee Cooper, a 226-lb. aspiring registrant. Mrs. Cooper twice walloped Clark solidly and appeared to be outpointing him until three burly deputies came to his aid. While the deputies pinned her to the ground, Clark belabored her with his billy club.

"She Hit Me." Accounts differed as to how the fight started. Claimed Clark: "I don't know what happened. I didn't even see her when she hit me in the eye. She knocked hell out of me." Mrs. Cooper, 54-year-old night manager of Selma's Torch Motel, was born in Selma, spent most of her life in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where, she says, she had voted since she was 21. Three years ago, she returned to Selma to care for her mother, now 98 years old, and has twice tried unsuccessfully to register. She contends that she and others in the line were complaining about police treatment of an arrested civil rights worker when Clark heard her say: "There ain't nobody scared here." At that, Clark jerked her out of line, twisted her arm, struck her on the head. Then, she concedes, "I went for him."

King, who had been standing near by while Clark and Mrs. Cooper scuffled, later told a Negro meeting: "We have seen another day of brutality."

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