Rights Leaders Vow 2nd March in N. Georgia
Civil rights leaders announced today they will return next weekend to Forsyth County, where a “brotherhood anti-intimidation march” was halted when marchers were pelted with rocks and bottles by Ku Klux Klansmen and their followers.
The Rev. Hosea Williams, the Atlanta city councilman who led last Saturday’s march, announced that he and Coretta Scott King will lead a second march in the all-white northern Georgia county on Saturday. Dean Carter, a Gainesville resident who organized the original march, also will help lead the second march, Williams said.
In a statement issued at a news conference, Williams invited “all who believe in and, like (Martin Luther) King, are willing to stand up and uphold the American Constitution . . . to join us.”
Forsyth County Commissioner James Harrington Jr. vowed Sunday that the marchers will get more help from authorities if they return.
Eight people were arrested Saturday after about 400 counter-demonstrators, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, interrupted the march. Police in riot gear could not control the crowd, and several of the 90 marchers were slightly injured.
Harrington said advance publicity about the march drew outsiders to the county of 38,000, where blacks were terrorized and driven out in 1912 after the fatal rape of a young white woman.
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