When I arrived in Alabama, however, I was surprised. It looked just like the real world. Montgomery and Birmingham could have been in any other state; and even the legendary Selma looked like any Midwest commercial town. There were no border guards to weed out Northerners who had come to meddle; thick-necked police didn't roam the strets with electric cattle prods; Negroes walked on the sidewalks and not in the gutters. There were more Wallace posters, of course, and the bookstands seemed notably short of books like Black Power. But if Alabama wasn't Cambridge or Haight-Ashbury, neither was it the South Africa I had imagined.

Lessons in Selma

My first lesson in Southern life came two weeks into the summer, in Selma. I had come to Selma to see Ted Dibble, a friend of mine from California who was spending the summer working for a welfare rights project in the Black Belt. On my way through Selma, I stopped at the Silver Moon Cafe to get some coffee.

The Silver Moon is not one of the South's classier joints. Its clientele consists of truck drivers and farmers, and the conversation runs to items like "Ah dam near runned over a nigger on the way into Mobile last week." I had come there to soak up the seamy atmosphere and tuck it away into my group of Southern Observations. So the men sat and talked, I sat and tucked, and eventually I left with no overt threats hanging over my head.

I soon learned about another side of the Silver Moon. When I was in the cafe, I was a clean-cut white boy. When my friend was there, he was a "white nigger." The students working for the project had incurred Selma's hatred as "them boys livin' with the niggers over on First Street," and now they were instantly recognizable on the streets.

Those who deny the Southern intelligence have never considered the amazing ability of a Southern town to recognize Outsiders. Student-age people are instantly suspect, especially if they are wearing the standard-issue Civil Rights Worker uniform (blue jeans, t-shirt) and have "hippie communist" hair (i.e., long enough so the scalp doesn't show). When one of these creatures appears in town, locals gather quickly. If he speaks in strange and foreign tongues, he becomes the target of a public drive to oust him. And if he commits the ultimate heresy of talking to or LIVIN' WITH NIGGERS, he is in for trouble.

My friends and his workers already had all the strikes against them in Selma. They were surly looking, Northern-sounding students. They were living with militant blacks. They made weekly visits to the county welfare office and threatened to bring down the might of the Federal Government unless welfare officials stopped discriminating against Negroes. Selma, of course, had responded, doing everything it could to make the White Niggers--and the black ones too--uncomfortable when they came to town. "Your parents and your grandparents are gonna be so ashamed," they would hiss at the workers. "Someday they's gonna find out you been livin' with niggers and making' trouble." Others were more direct. "You goddam white niggers," they would say. "Why dontcha just get out of here and leave decent folk alone."

Scalped

After one visit to Selma, I was branded by association with my white nigger friends. After walking with six of them down the street, I found that I had joined the list of 'The hippies livin' with the niggers." I didn't find out about that, however, until I stupidly went in for a haircut to the Selma Barber Shop. I sat down, feeling like an innocuous white boy; I didn't realize what had happened until the barber had strapped me in and begun his lecture on the evils of liberalism, the North, and--most of all--long hair. In a way, I had to be grateful. For the rest of the summer, my semi-U.S. Marine appearance helped me avoid trouble.

But the events at the Silver Moon were more frightening than any of the routine humiliations on the street. Evenings in Selma can get pretty tedious, and on the night that I drove into town Ted had left for a walk. He brought along his camera, and had slyly decided to take pictures of some of Selma's seamier scenes. After episodes of photographing alleys, dual entrances at theaters, and "Motel for Colored" signs, Ted headed to the Silver Moon. About ten minutes after I had finished my greasy coffee there, Ted strolled by. Ted was usually pretty circumspect in his anti-redneck sabotage, but at the Silver Moon he lost all self-control for a minute. Looking through the grimy window, he saw a row of thick-bodied workers, laughing with the surly waitress. On the window, forming a kind of frame for the people, were Wallace and More Power for Police stickers. All in all, it made a perfect picture. So Ted took it, and stepped off quickly.

A few steps later, he realized his mistake. He discovered he was being followed, and as he rounded a bend and turned onto Selma's main street, four of the truckdrivers-in-the-window stepped out to greet him.

"You the guy been taking the pictures?" they asked. It is often hard to find a good-sounding answer in these situations; Ted prudently said nothing. "What you think you taking a picture of? Why you always takin' pickturs?" No reply.

"We're fixin' to kill us a nigger-lover," the man said. "Do you want it should be you we kill?"

Sensing that the interrogation was going nowhere, the Silver Mooners tried more direct action. One of them grabbed the offending camera and threw it onto the ground. A black leather boot rose and rammed itself down into the camera. A chorus of guttural laughs went up.

It was quickly followed by a new refrain. "We's so sick and tired of you damn nigger-lovers." The two in the back row kept that up, while the two in the front had another line. "Why donctha just get outa here and leave us alone. Why dontcha go away. Cause we're a fixin' to kill us a nigger-lover."