Selma

My plan required me to drive from Los Angeles to Ft. Benning, Georgia, in four days. I had thought everything through and there were risks, but not many. I had faith in my personal powers. Although success rested on one key assumption, I was certain that this was rock solid fact. Dead certain.
From such naiveté comes multi-level marketers, third-rate stick-up men, brides serving life under virtual house arrest, Ponzi-scheme investors — and ex-infantry sergeants who re-up on the eve of war, like me.

And, more to the point, suicidally naïve plans.
 
But let’s begin at the beginning. When I mustered out in 1962, I was certain that I’d put the Army behind me.  I intended to be the first in my family to go to college, after which, I believed, I could make a better life for myself than that of my perpetually struggling parents.

That’s what I told Lt. Bauman, the re-enlistment officer, after he pointed out all the reasons why a young buck like me should re-enlist: A three-stripe sergeant and not yet 21, I was on track for topkick’s chevrons by 30.  And I could go to any Army school — even OCS.
 
“No, sir,” I said. “College.”
​
Amiable but relentless, Bauman called me in the next day and started over. And the next day, and the next – every single day for my last month in uniform. His parting words were, “You’ll be back.”
Once a civilian, however, I discovered that unlike those who served in WW II and Korea, Cold War veterans had no GI Bill educational benefits.  I needed money for college, so I answered a blind ad and took a job as an encyclopedia salesman, unable to imagine how few ever succeed at this. Five months later I had an office and 11 salesmen working for me. I was making good money — too much to quit for college. But after a year of regular contact with my too-slick bosses, I gradually realized that the encyclopedia business was sleazy, almost a scam; the only imperative was selling books, whatever it took.  I quit.
 
I worked for my father until it became plain that only a ­goniff­, a thief, makes a living in the scrap metal business.  I moved on.
 
I'd always enjoyed photography, so I found a job in a camera store. There I met a  photojournalist — and a new world opened for me. I spent months of evenings in the library, poring over back issues of picture magazines and leafing through photo books. I bought an old camera and began to shoot regularly.  Friends admired my work; I began to think that photojournalism was within my capabilities. As I read more, I made up my mind: If journalism was history’s first draft, I would sit at History’s elbow and make memorable images that future generations would rely upon to help understand what went before. I would join a noble calling.
 
But how to break in? I tried to land a job, but newspapers and magazines   demanded to see an impressive portfolios or, at least, a college degree.
 
Then the camera store laid me off. By the end of 1964 I was nearly broke. This was, coincidentally, just when I began to believe that America was headed for war in Vietnam. I thought it might last a year, maybe two — no President would be so foolish as to involve us in a protracted struggle on the Asian mainland, right?
 
It gave me an idea.  A shortcut to a career in photojournalism.
 
My plan was to re-up, reach my initial duty station in two days less than the Army allowed for travel, and use this time to find a unit that would give me on-the-job training as a photographer.  Then I’d volunteer for Vietnam, where I’d build a portfolio of great combat photos. Meanwhile I’d make contacts in the news media.  When I got out, I’d find a job easily.
 
Even after a recruiting sergeant explained that the penalty for a 33 month break in service was to become an infantry private, I still thought my plan was nearly foolproof: Military occupational specialties didn’t matter because privates are in such great supply that they’re virtually fungible. I knew how the Army functioned. I’d work the system, find a photographer’s billet.
 
The first time I joined the Army, we recruits were herded between processing stations like half-wild longhorns at branding time. This time I made my own way through cubicles offering assorted physical exams and written tests. Finishing, a sergeant pointed to a stairway: “Upstairs, to be sworn in,” he ordered.
 
I knocked to find an officer, head down, hunched over a pile of paper.
 
“I told you you’d be back,” said Captain Bauman without even looking up.
 
Bauman was never part of the plan, but thanks to his help, I picked my own duty assignment, Ft. Benning, and was allowed to drive my car there.
 
On the afternoon of March 5, 1965, I headed southeast from Los Angeles. The most direct route in that pre-Interstate era was Highway 80, which ran from Yuma, Arizona, through Montgomery, Alabama to my destination in Georgia.
 
That’s how I found myself in Selma, Alabama, 50 miles west of Montgomery, at midmorning on March 9th.
 
Two days earlier, some 600 citizens, mostly from Selma and environs, had attempted to march down Highway 80 from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery to demonstrate against Dallas County’s notoriously racist voting restrictions. Approaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, the marchers were beaten and turned back by police and local sheriff’s deputies in what came to be called “Bloody Sunday.”
 
In response to the demonstrations, Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark had deputized dozens of white racists to arrest or beat anyone they didn’t like. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston, was assaulted by these “deputies” and died of his injuries about the time I arrived in Selma.
 
Knowing none of this, I was surprised to see thousands of people crowding the streets of what I’d supposed was a sleepy rural town. After crossing the Pettus bridge to the east of Selma, I parked my car, grabbed my cameras, and walked back over the bridge.
 
Amid budding trees and sidewalks thick with people in warm clothes, deputies and state troopers swarmed the courthouse square. The county courthouse was surrounded by police cruisers parked bumper-to-bumper behind a phalanx of state troopers bristling with riot gear and clubs.
 
I encountered a black girl, probably no more than 12, her eyes swollen from tear gas. A button on her overcoat proclaimed “I Want To Vote.” She said the courthouse was surrounded to keep black people from registering to vote.
 
I am the grandson of immigrants; I grew up in the predominantly black Chicago neighborhood where Michelle Robinson Obama’s parents lived. Many of my boyhood pals were black, Even so, that little girl’s words sent swords of shame to sear my soul. For a long moment I loathed my white skin ­How can we treat human beings this way? What have black people ever done to us?­  Why do we fear them?
 
Shocked, I wandered toward a throng of white men in coats and ties waiting outside a whitewashed wooden building.
 
I asked a man with three cameras around his neck what was going on.
 
“Dr. Martin Luther King is in a meeting in that church," he said, nodding at the whitewashed building. "They’re planning a march to Montgomery for voting rights,” he said,
 
Then I noticed a laminated press pass around his neck: His name was Flip Schulke.  I'd seen his work in ­National Geographic­. Now he was working for LIFE Magazine.
 
I moved through the throng of newsmen outside the church, casually browsing  press credentials for names and publications: James Karales, Leon Daniel, Charles White, Matt Herron, Spider Martin, Dan Budnik.  LOOK and LIFE Magazines, United Press, Associated Press, half a dozen major newspapers. Big-time journalists!
 
It dawned on me that the mere presence of Dr. King meant that I had stumbled into an important, perhaps historic event.  I headed back to the courthouse square to shoot more photos.  Suddenly someone slapped me on the shoulder.
 
I turned to find a red-faced giant – six feet six and at least 350 lbs packed into bib overalls and a straw hat. Tufts of salt-and-pepper hair sprouted from his massive arms. Pinned to his overalls was a clear plastic nametag with a card that said "Dallas County Deputy Sheriff."
 
"Now, who’re you with, boy?" he bellowed.
 
I was with the US Army, of course. But the Army hadn't told me to take pictures in Selma.
 
"I'm on my own, sir."
 
Without another word he hammered a ham-like fist to my ear and knocked me down. He stomped my camera into the pavement, then scooped me up by my belt and threw me into the back of a pickup truck.
 
The pickup smelled of fertilizer. My head was on fire. Before I could climb out, the truck lurched off. We crossed the bridge and stopped near my car, where the giant got out and pulled me upright, close enough to smell beer on his breath.
 
He punched my belly once, hard, then threw me onto the road.
 
As his truck made a U-turn, someone gave a rebel yell and hollered, "Y'all come back any time, heah?" After awhile I pulled myself together and drove away.
 
As I headed east, Dr, King led a second, symbolic march to the bridge. Twelve days later he returned with the leadership of the civil rights movement and 25,000 people from across the country. Their now-famous march to the state capital in Montgomery helped pave the way for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
 
But all that lay ahead. I spent that night in a Georgia motel nursing my bruised and aching body.  Eyes on the plan, I told myself. Focus.
The next day, with 48 hours before I was due to report in, I made the rounds of Ft. Benning units that used photographers.  I discovered in the years since my discharge, all Ft. Benning photographer billets had been converted to civilian jobs.
 
The key assumption upon which my plan rested, was not the bedrock I had relied upon, but sand.
 
The only military photographers at Ft. Benning were in the 122nd Signal Battalion — but they had more photographers than billets.
 
My last hope was the Second Infantry Division public information office, where I made my pitch to a staff sergeant.
 
He shook his head. “Try 122nd Signal,” he said. “They provide our photo support.”
 
“Could I at least speak to the Public Information Officer?”
 
“He’s in Selma.”
 
“Selma?”
 
“If there’s another big demonstration there, we might send troops to protect them,” the sergeant explained.  “The major went over to have a look around.”
 
Dread and panic welling up from the pit of my stomach, I turned to go. I had sentenced myself to three years in the infantry on the eve of war. I was a fool.
 
“I wish there was some way we could use you,” called the sergeant. “The 122nd  boys do all right with grip-and-grins [award ceremonies], but they’re not photojournalists.”
 
The office door yawned. A major, short and burly, appeared. He looked somehow familiar.
 
“What’s that about photojournalists?” he said.
 
“This is Private Wolf,” replied the sergeant. “He just re-upped —  looking for a slot.”
 
The major gave me a long, careful look. “Weren’t you over in Selma?” he asked. “Didn’t one of those ‘special deputies’ smash your cameras?”
 
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
 
“Hurt you pretty bad?”
 
“I’ll be okay, sir.”
 
He frowned. “We’re not authorized a photographer, so I can’t promise anything — but maybe I can work something out.”
 
He did.
 
Five months later I was a combat photographer in Vietnam, learning the news business and becoming friends with some of the world’s finest photojournalists and reporters.
 
Like I said, foolproof.
 
©​ 2000 Marvin J. Wolf