Feb. 12, 1965 - Sheriff James Clark of Selma, Ala., was hospitalized with exhaustion today after four weeks of dealing with Negro demonstrators. About 200 Negro teenagers (pictured), most of whom had been on a forced march with the sheriff two days before, knelt in front of the Dallas County courthouse and prayed for his recovery “in mind and in body.”
A handful of deputies looked on with puzzled frowns but made no attempt to arrest them. It was the first time the hefty sheriff had not been on hand when the demonstrators arrived.
“It just wasn’t the same without Jim Clark fussing and fuming,” one of the demonstrators said later. “We honestly miss him.”
The 220-pound officer was admitted to the new Vaughan Memorial Hospital in Selma at 6 a.m. “Sheriff Clark was admitted to the hospital for chest pains and is being kept for observation and rest,” his physician said. “he is doing fine.”
The sheriff’s wife told a reporter her husband was suffering from exhaustion, and she expected him to recover in a couple of days. She said she awoke at 3 a.m. and found him reading a newspaper. She said he had not been to sleep and was upset about something he had read about himself in the paper.
Sheriff Clark had been up a good part of the night receiving complaints about the chaining of a civil rights workers to his hospital bed and keeping an armed guard outside his door.
The Rev. James Bevel, a field worker for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was arrested by Sheriff Clark Monday and convicted of contempt of court for demonstrating in the vicinity of the courthouse in violation of a court order. He was fined $50 and sentenced to five days in jail.
Mr. Bevel became ill in jail and was transferred last night to Burwell Infirmary, a small Negro-owned hospital. Ace Anderson, administrator of the hospital, said Mr. Bevel’s leg was chained to the bedpost, and an armed member of the volunteer Dallas County Sheriff’s posse was stationed outside his door.
The physician who examined Mr. Bevel said he was suffering from a severe respiratory infection and had a fever of 102. Sheriff Clark ordered him unshackled after he had been in the hospital about five hours and after his physician had submitted a written request to the sheriff requesting that the chain be removed.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office denied that Mr. Bevel had been chained to the bed. The spokesman said he had been sent to the hospital in leg irons, as is customary.
Mr. Anderson, however, insisted that Mr. Bevel had been chained to the bedpost. He also said it was not customary for prisoners to be hospitalized in leg irons, even those charged with murder.
“They sent a guard out but no leg irons,” Mr. Anderson said.
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