Guardsmen to Escort Marchers in Georgia to Prevent Violence

Gov. Joe Frank Harris on Friday ordered 1,500 National Guardsmen into Forsyth County to help prevent racial violence during a massive civil rights march today.

“The Guard is here to provide a safe and secure march,” Director Robbie Hamrick of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said at a news conference. “We will do whatever it takes--we will have enough people.”

National Guard trucks loaded with troops were rolling Friday night into the snow-covered north Georgia county, where bottle-throwing Ku Klux Klansmen broke up a march honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last Saturday.

2,500 May March

Today’s march is expected to draw as many as 2,500 protesters, led by Coretta Scott King, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights and religious leaders.

In Washington, Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said he will attend the march.

“There is nothing more repugnant to Americans than racial violence. Racism is intolerable,” said Reynolds, who has ordered the FBI to investigate last weekend’s assaults on protesters.

Adjutant Gen. Joseph Griffin said the 1,500 guardsmen will not be armed but will carry riot sticks and wear bulletproof vests.

National Guardsmen will be in front of and behind the marchers. Other troops will stand between barricades separating the marchers from the counterdemonstrators, he said.

Helicopters to Be Used

Hamrick would not say how many federal, state and local law officers will be on duty but said the state had asked the Federal Aviation Administration to stop all air traffic over the area so police helicopters can fly over the march.

About 75 black and white marchers were met outside Cumming last Saturday by about 400 klan-led counterdemonstrators, some of whom threw rocks, bottles and mud. There were no serious injuries. Eight counterdemonstrators were arrested and the marchers were bused out of range of their foes to complete the march.

News reports of counterdemonstrators’ shouting racial slurs and demanding that blacks stay out of Forsyth County galvanized support for the second march.