In Protest

In Protest

When Nixon came to visit in Mobile 1971 a bunch of us from the University of South Alabama trekked downtown to picket him. We piled into our vehicles and got as close as we could to Broad Street. We parked our cars and started the trek down to Water Street and the International Trade Center.

But from the moment we crossed Broad Street, it was obvious that this was no longer your daddy's old Mobile. It was hard to miss the fact that we were under surveillance. Large SUV Suburban types trailed us, often going up the street in reverse. Helicopters hovered over us. Police cruisers inched along, dogging us as we traveled up Dauphin Street.

We finally made it to Water Street to somewhere along St. Louis and waited. The crowds started to arrive. It wasn't long, however, before we were joined by another group of protesters. While we fit the mold of scruffy long hair hippie types, these guys made us look like Brooks Brothers models. Having been in the service, I was a bit older than the rest of our group and these guys were about my age. They all had fatigue jackets with the requisite counterculture regalia like peace signs and protest buttons. They fit the profile of my Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) comrades. We welcomed them.

Until they started talking about looking for rocks and bricks to throw. "If you start that shit," I told them, "get the hell away from us. We are not here to start trouble." They called us chickenshit or something like that, made fun of us, and went on.  We didn't know it at the time, but a friend of ours who worked at Brookley had seen them get off a cargo plane as part of the President's entourage.

No sooner had they left, however,  when a Prichard policeman came up to me. He asked to see my sign. I handed it to him. And he tore it up. I was shocked. "What the fuck are you doing?" I asked. "You want to go to jail?" He shot back. I was taken aback. To my shame, I was silent. "No," I was thinking to myself as he walked away," I don't want to go to jail."

And then my rage took over. As he walked back by us, I blurted out, "yes". "Yes, what?" he asked, still oblivious to what he had done. "Yes, I'm ready to go to jail." He had a look on his face comparable to the shock I had expressed when he tore my sign. I blazed into him. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? I have every right in the world to be here. I have a First Amendment right to picket. Don't you understand that?" "I was just following orders," he  countered, now meek as a lamb. "So was Lieut. Calley," I yelled at him. "And they let him out to dry just like they're going to do to you." That seemed to take the wind completely out of his sails.

If the intention had been to cower us. It had the exact opposite effect. The anthill spilled over. We were no longer passive observers; We were pissed and raising hell. This had the effect of bringing all sorts of cops and their supervisors. We didn't back down. At some point one of the sergeants managed to diffuse the situation and they left us alone.

(This was obviously being observed by the VIPs at the Trade Center, most of whom applauded the tactics. To his credit, Clay Swanzy, Jack Edward's Press Secretary, spoke up. He criticized our treatment and the abridgment of our First Amendment rights.)

We eventually took this to Graham Gibbons, a lawyer who was known for championing social issues. He was as outraged as we were and agreed to take the case, but we never followed up on that as we didn't have filing fees or any way to advance costs. I can't find the rest of them, but this picture was taken by one of our folks.

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