Various Forms of Embezzlement

Throughout the civil rights struggle in Selma, Ala., and on the march to Montgomery, there at Martin Luther King's side was the Rev. Frederick D. Reese, 35, a Baptist preacher and as president of the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL), Selma's own Negro leader for the past two years. Last week a Dallas County grand jury indicted Reese on three counts of embezzlement, charging him with diverting $1,850 of DCVL funds to his own use.

Alabama's white authorities, who in some past instances have been less than notable in their pursuit of justice, went at this case with special vigor. Mayor Joe Smitherman of Selma told Public Safety Director Wilson Baker to spare nothing in the investigation. Baker and two aides flew to San Francisco to question contributors to DCVL, last week spent five days in New Jersey and Ohio on the same mission.

There seemed to be little question that Reese did in fact use DCVL funds. Whether or not that constituted embezzlement remained for the courts to decide. Reese and others claimed that DCVL's board of directors last spring authorized him to spend the money in the expectation that his civil rights activities would surely get him fired from his job as a math teacher at Selma's all-Negro Hudson High School. Reese was, indeed, fired last month. However, he had neglected to explain the DCVL board's authorization to the organization's steering committee, which has overall responsibility for the DCVL's campaign. Reese said later that he had been "going to" tell the steering committee but had not gotten around to it.

Shortly after Reese was indicted, Martin Luther King sent to Selma his top deputy, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. "There may have been some practices not in line with acceptable accounting procedures," said Abernathy. "But I'm not suggesting that there has been any dishonesty. If there have been mistakes, they have been mistakes of the head and not of the heart." With more emotion than legal merit, Abernathy insisted that what Reese had done with DCVL funds was "none of the business" of the Dallas County grand jury.

Released from jail on $5,000 bond, Reese faced an audience of some 350 Negroes, bowed to a standing ovation, and outdid Abernathy in his emotional approach: "The white man is not after Reese. He is after us. We must trust one another and stick together. If anybody knows about embezzlement, the Southern white man knows. He embezzled my mother, he embezzled my grandmother, he embezzled my grandfather. He cannot say to anybody, 'You are accused of embezzlement,' because if we could collect all he embezzled, the white man would be in rags."

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