Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Part 19

"We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... Freedom ... Freedom," the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than ten years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders. Most are nicely dressed, in b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts and clean slacks for the boys, and dresses and bows for the girls.

The marchers number more than one thousand strong. All have skipped cla.s.s to be here. Some of them even climbed over locked gates. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all.

The Children's Crusade, as Newsweek magazine will call it, fans out and marches across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. "We're going to walk, walk, walk," they continue to chant. They are peaceful, almost spiritual. Yet electricity courses through the group, for what they are doing is completely illegal. "Freedom ... Freedom ... Freedom."

The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants. More than six hundred students were arrested doing the same thing yesterday. The youngest was just eight years old. This earned the Children's Crusade national recognition. About a thousand miles away, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy actually scolded the black civil rights leaders who had organized the children's march, stating that "schoolchildren partic.i.p.ating in street demonstrations is dangerous business. An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us wants to pay."

Even Malcolm X, one of the fieriest black leaders in America, railed against the Children's Crusade, stating that "real men don't put their children on the firing line."

But these kids want to be here. Many have come against their parents' wishes. Nothing can stop them. They know that if their mothers and fathers were to do the marching, their arrests could cause them to lose jobs, or days and weeks of income.

They know that this march is not just about public toilets; this march is an act of defiance. A few days before he took office, just four months ago, Alabama governor George Wallace made one thing crystal clear: "I'm gonna make race the basis of politics in this state, and I'm gonna make it the basis of politics in this country." Later, at his inaugural, he proclaimed, "I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom ... Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us ... In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!"

Those words are a call to arms for blacks and whites alike who disagree with Wallace. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Birmingham earlier in the spring to fight for integration. Local black leaders, fearing retribution from their white creditors, told King they didn't want him in town. The civil rights leader ridiculed their fears, implying they were cowardly, thus shaming them into joining the fight.

But despite the best efforts of King and his close friend Ralph Abernathy, the fight for Birmingham stalled just a week ago. After months of protests and arrests, the national media lost interest. There was no longer money to pay the bail for the hundreds being arrested. And the size of the protests dwindled. The segregationists, led by Birmingham's public safety commissioner, Eugene "Bull" Connor, were on the verge of winning. Connor, a sixty-five-year-old former member of the Ku Klux Klan, has enjoyed this battle tremendously and takes great delight in the thought of keeping blacks "in their place."

The first children's march, on May 2, altered Connor's plans. When it is done, thousands gather in the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak about the courage of the children. And King swears that the demonstrations will continue. "We are ready to negotiate," he tells the press. "But we intend to negotiate from strength."

But Bull Connor has other plans.

"We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... Freedom ... Freedom."

The Children's Crusade has now reached the shade of Kelly Ingram Park's elm trees. The temperature is a humid eighty degrees. Ahead, the marchers see barricades and rows of fire trucks. German shepherds, trained by the police to attack, bark and snarl at the approach of the young students, and an enormous crowd of black and white spectators lines the east side of the park, waiting to see what will happen next. The black adults taunt the police, even as the marchers begin singing "We Shall Overcome."

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the protesters before they set out from the church, reminding them that jail was a small price to pay for a good cause. They know not to fight back against the police or otherwise provoke confrontation when challenged. Their efforts will be in vain if the march turns into a riot.

Bull Connor can't afford to let these kids get to the white shopping district. He has ordered Birmingham firefighters to attach their hoses to hydrants and be ready to open those nozzles and spray water on the marchers at full force-a power so great that it can remove the bark from trees or the mortar from a brick building. If the protesters reach the shopping district, using the hoses might damage expensive storefronts. The marchers need to be stopped now.

The first children in the group are met with a half-strength blast from the fire hoses. It's still enough force to stop many of them in their tracks. Some of the kids simply sit down and let the water batter them, following orders not to be violent-or to retreat.

Connor, realizing that half measures will not work with these determined children, then gives the order to spray at full strength. Every protester is knocked off his or her feet. Many children are swept away down the streets and sidewalks, their bodies sc.r.a.ping against gra.s.s and concrete. Clothing is torn from their bodies. Those who make the mistake of pressing themselves against a building to dodge the hoses soon become perfect targets. "The water stung like a whip and hit like a cannon," one child will later remember. "The force of it knocked you down like you weighed only twenty pounds, pus.h.i.+ng people around like rag dolls. We tried to hold on to the building but it was no use."

Then Connor lets loose the police dogs.

A German shepherd's jaws bite down with 320 pounds of pressure-half the force of a great white shark or a lion. But the German shepherd is much smaller than these predators. Pound for pound, the Birmingham police dogs are unmatched in their bite force.

Bull Connor watches with glee as the German shepherds lunge at the children, ripping away their clothing and tearing into their flesh. Connor, a pear-shaped, balding man who wears gla.s.ses, appears mild-mannered. But in actuality he is a vicious good old boy whose beliefs are even more racist than those of Governor Wallace. The public safety commissioner wades into the thick of the action, encouraging policemen to open the barricades so that Birmingham's white citizens can get a better view as the police dogs do their worst.

By 3:00 P.M., it all seems to be over. The children who haven't been arrested limp home in their soaked and torn clothing, their bodies bruised by countless point-blank blasts of water cannon. No longer bold and defiant, they are now just a bunch of kids who have to explain to their angry parents about their wrecked clothes and a missed day of school.

Once again, Bull Connor has won.

Or at least it seems that way.

But among those in Birmingham this afternoon is an a.s.sociated Press photographer named Bill Hudson. He is considered one of the best in the business, willing to endure any danger to get a great photo. He has ducked bullets during the Korean War and dodged bricks while covering the civil rights movement.

On this day in Birmingham, Bill Hudson takes the best photo of his life. Appropriately, it's in black and white. He snaps it from just five feet away. The photograph is an image of a Birmingham police officer-looking official in pressed s.h.i.+rt, tie, and sungla.s.ses-encouraging his German shepherd to take a chunk out of black high school student Walter Gadsden's stomach.

The next morning that photograph appears on the front page of the New York Times, three columns wide, above the fold.

And so it is that John Kennedy, starting his morning as he always does by reading the papers, sees this image from Birmingham. Disgusted by what he sees, Kennedy makes a point to tell reporters that the picture is "sick" and "shameful."

Just one look and JFK instinctively knows that America and the world will be outraged by Hudson's image. Civil rights are sure to be a major issue of the 1964 presidential election. And Kennedy now understands he can no longer be a pa.s.sive observer of the civil rights movement. He must take a stand-no matter how many votes it might lose him in the South.

Meanwhile, the reputation of Martin Luther King Jr. is on the rise. He will soon see the Birmingham situation resolved in his favor, thanks to the Children's Crusade. After Bull Connor's initial "victory," the public pressure against Alabama authorities becomes so intense that change is inevitable.

Despite the triumph, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Fitzgerald Kennedy are not on the same page. In fact, they are on a collision course.

Civil disobedience is not limited to the American civil rights movement.

Five days after the children of Birmingham peacefully march into that wall of water cannons and police dogs, and two days after a U.S. Army lieutenant is killed by the Viet Cong just outside Saigon, a crowd of Buddhists gathers in the South Vietnamese city of Hue. It is May 8, 1963, the 2,527th birthday of the Buddha.

The protesters have come to demonstrate against a new law set forth by President Ngo Dinh Diem that makes flying the Buddhist flag illegal in Vietnam. It is Diem's great desire to convert his country to Catholicism, and vital to that effort is the systematic subjugation of the nation's Buddhist majority. Diem-whose regime President Kennedy has long supported, but whose anti-Buddhist stance is contrary to American foreign policy-denies promotions to officials known to be Buddhist and looks the other way when Roman Catholic priests organize private armies that loot and demolish the paG.o.das where the Buddhists wors.h.i.+p. To give his crusade credibility in the eyes of the American government, Diem insists that Buddhism and communism are the same-a suggestion akin to J. Edgar Hoover's quiet belief that civil rights and communism are synonymous.

Now, as the three thousand unarmed Buddhist protesters gather near the Perfume River to voice their frustrations, government police and troops fire into the crowd. Bullets and grenades scatter the marchers, killing one woman and eight children in the process.

In the ensuing public outrage, Diem blames the deaths on his Viet Cong opponents-even though the police and army were clearly South Vietnamese. The so-called Buddhist crisis escalates when Diem refuses to punish the men who did the shooting.

Tensions grow throughout Vietnam during the month of May. Diem, like Bull Connor in Birmingham, appears to have the upper hand. Nothing can be done to end his reign of terror. On June 3, government troops once again attack Buddhists in Hue, using tear gas and dogs to disperse the demonstrators. But the crowd will not leave and continues to rea.s.semble. Now the Buddhists turn violent, shouting obscenities at their government attackers. Finally, South Vietnamese troops pour an unnamed red liquid on the heads of Buddhists who are sitting in the streets praying. Sixty-seven of these men and women are taken to hospitals with burns covering their scalps and shoulders.

Unable to control the protesters any longer, Diem's soldiers place the entire city of Hue under martial law.

Still, just as the Birmingham integration movement was losing steam before the Children's Crusade gave it new life, so the Buddhist crisis has begun to bore members of the foreign press. Diem's persecution of Buddhists has become old news.

But on June 11, 1963, a seventy-three-year-old Buddhist monk will give those reporters something to write about.

It is almost 10:00 A.M. as Thich Quang Duc sits down on a crowded Saigon thoroughfare. He is dressed in a flowing saffron robe. Duc is an ordained member of the Buddhist clergy, a monastic who lives a meditative life of poverty. This morning he has chosen to protest the government crackdown on his beliefs by burning himself to death.

This is not an impulsive decision. Many within the Buddhist community have sought someone who would immolate himself to draw attention to their plight. Such a startling gesture can't help but attract media coverage from around the world. Indeed, the day before, members of the foreign press were told to be in front of the Cambodian legation the next day if they wanted to see something special.

Not many journalists accept the invitation, so few are on hand to witness the gray Austin sedan driving slowly toward the intersection of Phan Dinh Phung Boulevard and Le Van Duyet Street. Three hundred and fifty Buddhist protesters carrying banners in Vietnamese and English that denounce the Diem regime follow right behind.

The Austin stops at the intersection. Thich Quang Duc gets out, gathering his robes about him as he does so. A cus.h.i.+on is placed on the street, and the aging monk sits down. He a.s.sumes the lotus position and begins to recite the words "return to eternal earth Buddha" over and over again.

Duc has come to this point in his life willingly, but nothing has prepared him for the moment when a fellow protester pours five gallons of gasoline over his bald head. The fuel soaks his robes and flows down his back until the cus.h.i.+on on which he sits is saturated.

The protesters gather in a circle around Duc to prevent the police from interfering. In one hand the monk holds a string of oak prayer beads. In the other he holds a match.

Duc lights the match.

There is no need to touch the flame to his person, because the fumes are enough to make his body burst into fire. His face, as seen through the flames, is a mask of pure agony. But Duc does not cry out or even make a sound. His skin turns black. His eyelids are fused shut. Yet as one minute pa.s.ses, and then another, he still does not die.