May 13, 1963 - The Army has moved about 3,000 infantrymen, paratroopers, military policemen, and other troops into Alabama. The Pentagon said today that on President Kennedy’s orders, a brigade of the Second Infantry Division had been moved by truck from Fort Benning, Ga., to Fort McClellan, Ala., about 50 miles east of riot-torn Birmingham. The Second, like other infantry outfits, is trained in controlling riots. A special battalion-size task force, composed of elements of the 503rd Military Police Battalion and one company of the First Battle Group, 325th Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division, was flown from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Maxwell Air Force Base, about 80 miles southeast of Birmingham. It was the second such expedition in seven and a half months for the M.P. battalion. Elements of it were among the first Federal troops sent into Mississippi last fall when rioting erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi at Oxford after the admission of James Meredith, a Negro.
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