Capitol Rally Decries Diminished Political Power : Blacks March to Protest Alabama Losses

About 2,000 marchers protesting what they called diminished black political clout in the Statehouse and an “anti-black attitude” in the White House rallied Saturday at the Alabama Capitol.

“My objective here is to rejuvenate Martin Luther King’s strategies,” said the Rev. Hosea Williams of Atlanta, who joined Alabama black leaders in the protest. “It’s time again for nonviolent direct action. Back to the streets.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who missed the march but arrived to speak from the Capitol steps, targeted Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt for failing to give blacks a substantial role in his new Republican administration.

‘Dream Is for Justice’

“Our dream is for justice. Our dream is for fairness. Our dream is to do right and be right. It is too noble a dream to be put out by a dream buster,” the 1984 Democratic presidential candidate said.

Hunt, the first GOP governor of Alabama in this century, has said that his administration will be “colorblind.” He met two days ago with the state’s black mayors, who praised his economic policies but criticized him for appointing only one black to his Cabinet.

Five of Alabama’s 35 senators are black, and there are 19 blacks in Alabama’s 104-member House. Blacks landed only two committee chairmanships--neither a major post--in the new legislative session. At the same time, they saw their numbers on major committees cut to one in several cases.

Most of the protesters’ placards focused on the committee assignments, but Williams, an Atlanta city councilman who has led recent protests in Georgia, said that the loss of political power was part of “a new movement afoot across America.”

“The focal point must end up being Ronald Reagan . . . and the anti-black attitude he projects,” Williams said. That attitude, he said, has allowed the Ku Klux Klan “to rear its ugly head again.”

Police Stand Watch

Dozens of Montgomery police and state troopers, on motorcycles and on foot, stood watch at intersections along the route to the Capitol. There was no sign of any klan presence.

Organizers expected as many as 3,000 people to attend. Several hundred began the march and their ranks swelled as it proceeded. Police Capt. S. T. Williams estimated that there were 2,000 people at the Capitol, where a handful of white supporters joined the predominantly black group of marchers.

The march went through a black neighborhood and the downtown shopping district before heading up Dexter Avenue, the route taken in 1965 at the end of the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march led by slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.