Feb. 10, 1965 - James Clark (pictured), sheriff of Dallas County, Ala., and a group of deputies armed with nightsticks and electric cattle prods led 165 Negro demonstrators, all children and teenagers, on a forced march into the Dallas County countryside today.
The youngsters were marched at a pace alternating between a run and a rapid walk while Clark and members of the Dallas County sheriff’s posse rode in cars and spelled each other at the task of drill master.
Several youngsters told newsmen later that the sheriff’s men had used the nightsticks and cattle prods on them. Clark said he had not seen anything like that.
“You’ve been wanting to march, now let’s go,” the possemen yelled as they trotted beside the Negroes. “Close up the ranks back there. Come on, close it up, close it up.”After 2.3 miles, the exhausted youngsters rebelled and fled into a private yard beside the road. The sheriff and his men tried to herd them back on the road, but the Negroes refused to leave the yard. Many went into the house at the invitation of one of the Negro marchers who lived there.
The sheriff gave up after a few minutes and took his men back to Selma. Clark said later that he had arrested the Negroes for truancy and that he was taking them to the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge to lock them up because the jail at Selma was not large enough to hold them. “They escaped,” he said with a small grin.
After the march had broken up and the posse had left, the Negroes were found singing freedom songs in the yard where they had taken refuge.
One girl was crying and could not stop. Another showed a lump on her head and said one of the possemen had put it there with a cattle prod.
A 9-year-old boy stood in the yard with dried tears staining his face. He had made the march barefoot.
Clarence Carson, 15, stood rubbing his lips. He said he had told one of the possemen, “God sees you,” and that the man had hit him in the mouth with his club.
The FBI said it was investigating to determine whether any Federal law had been violated.
Dr. Martin Luther King, who returned to Selma today after meeting with President Johnson in Washington, said: “Selma will never get right and Dallas County will never get right until we get rid of Jim Clark.
“We are disgusted with brutality and with terroristic methods and with Jim Clark’s downright meanness in the handling of the boys and girls in our community.”
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