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.Ordered to turn back, the marchers refused, giving thepolice the excuse they needed to launch an all-out attack using89 What Are You Afraid Of?tear gas grenades, cattle prods, clubs, and bullwhips from theircharging horses.Coretta got word of this  Bloody Sunday just before givinga Freedom Concert in San Francisco as part of a six-cityWest Coast tour.Martin called her to tell her of his plan topersonally lead another march that Tuesday, with RalphAbernathy at his side.The significant difference of this march and the tragicattempt made two days earlier was that roughly half of the1,500 marchers were white.One striking similarity remained:the blockade of troopers and horsemen at the Edmund PettusBridge.Fearing more bloodshed, King ordered the marchersto turn back.President Johnson had been watching the developments inSelma.Overriding Governor Wallace, Johnson had the federalgovernment take control of the Alabama National Guard andassigned them to protect the civil-rights marchers.On March 21, the SCLC leadership and thousands ofsupporters left Selma for Montgomery on a four-day march.Coretta had a speaking engagement at Bennett College inNorth Carolina that day, but she joined Martin on the sec-ond day of the march.The marchers sang gospel songs andchanted,  We want freedom! on a trek that was punctuatedby rain and mud.Finally they reached Montgomery and thesteps of the capitol.On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the VotingRights Act.Coupled with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, theVoting Rights Act signaled the demise of the southern systemof racial discrimination that had existed since slavery.INTEGRATION ON THE HOME FRONTThat summer, the Atlanta public schools were finally integrated.Coretta suddenly realized that she would have to act quicklyto enroll Yoki and Marty in one of the previously all-whiteelementary schools for them to start in September.90CORETTA SCOTT KINGThe King children did not want to be the only two blackkids in school, so Coretta convinced Juanita Abernathy toregister her three children, as well.The women agreed onthe Spring Street School, which had a reputation as one ofAtlanta s finest.They took their children to the school for registration,and the school s principal made them feel welcome.When areporter approached, however, the principal made it clearthat she did not want any publicity about the event.Corettadisagreed. I felt that it was extremely important that thenation see that integration could be accomplished peacefully,she wrote, hoping, too, that their experience would encourageother black families to do the same.Thus, when a reporterappeared at her house later that morning, she didn t hesitateto give him all the details.This was one time when Corettawanted the entire nation to see her children walking in theirfather s footsteps.A NEW STRUGGLEWith the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the VotingRights Act, the civil rights movement had accomplishedwhat it had set out to do.The Kings felt it was now timeto take their activism in a different direction literally.InJanuary 1966 they decided to move into a public housingunit in Chicago, where they would launch the Poor People sCampaign.This, they hoped, would shine the spotlight onthe plight of poor urban blacks.In larger cities through-out the North, many blacks lived in ghettos that separatedthem from mainstream American life, consigning them tolive either in crumbling tenements or cramped housingprojects neglected by city landlords.The rate of unemploy-ment among northern urban blacks was high compared toother racial groups, as well.As in the South, education atpredominantly black public schools was usually inferiorto that offered by schools in all-white neighborhoods, and91 What Are You Afraid Of?When the Atlanta public schools were finally integrated, Corettaacted quickly to enroll Yolanda and Marty in one of the previouslyall-white elementary schools.Here, she sings with all four childrenat home after church.92CORETTA SCOTT KINGschool buildings in ghetto areas were frequently decrepitand poorly equipped.Life in a housing project was a jarring adjustment forCoretta and her family [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]