The Crowley Post-Signal (Crowley, Louisiana) September 2, 1963
Troopers on Horseback Disperse Angry Crowd
By ROBERT A. SCHAEFER
United Press International
PLAQUEMINE, La. (UPI) – State police using tear gas and fire hoses dispersed an angry crowd of 1,000 Negroes Sunday night and flushed 700 Negroes from a church with a barrage of gas and water.
Twenty state troopers were treated for cuts from flying rocks. Scores of demonstrators were injured and 68 arrested, one of them a 23-year-old white girl, is the second consecutive night of racial violence in this Mississippi riverfront town.
Most of the injuries suffered by the demonstrators were from tear gas burns and flying glass.
Police searched house-to-house for James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equality and leader of the Negro civil rights drive in Plaquemine. They kicked in the doors of three Negro homes and a Negro funeral parlor was searched for Farmer.
Negroes surveying the litter in the streets and the shambles inside the Freedom Rock Baptist Church muttered “this is it.”
Order Too Late
A court order, abruptly issued by Federal Judge E. Gordon West in Baton Rouge Sunday night two hours before the street demonstrators started, failed to stop the Negroes. The order temporarily banned de-monstrators, but moments after the order was served by U.S. marshals, the Negroes filed into the streets.
Most of the injuries occurred when state troopers hurled tear gas into the church. Negroes jammed in the building leaped through win-dows. Some came out fighting and threw rocks at police. A squad car window was smashed.
Firemen moved in with hoses. A high-pressure stream through the front door swept some Negroes out the back door.
A bible was hurled from the pulpit by the water. Benches were over-turned and a stack of placards protesting segregation was splashed to pulp.
The stench of tear gas hung over the streets.
Mob Scene Develops
The demonstrations started in orderly fashion and within 20 minutes degenerated into a mob scene.
Disregarding the court order, 1,000 Negroes filed out of the church and marched along sidewalks in silence, carrying placards.
Carloads of whites paced the marchers on their 15-block walk through a residential district and back to the church. Whites gathered on the sidewalks, but there was no disorder.
At the church, the Negroes regrouped, and the mood of the marchers changed. State troopers on horseback and sheriff’s deputies moved in and threw tear gas.
Some 700 Negroes retreated into the church. The troopers ordered them out, then hurled tear gas into the building.
Six ministers were among those arrested. Several CORE leaders also were marched off. All were jailed in a sugar cane warehouse where 69 others were jailed after demon-strations were broken up by police on horseback Saturday night.
