His subordinates laughed appreciatively.

“What are you going to do at the airport?” the sergeant asked George. “Clean the toilets?”

“I’m going to catch a plane to Washington. I work at the Department of Justice. I’m a lawyer.”

“Is that so? Well, I work for George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, and we don’t pay too much mind to Washington, down here. So get in the goddamn car before I break your woolly head.”

“What are you arresting me for?”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy.”

“If you seize me without good cause, you’re a criminal, not a trooper.”

With a sudden quick motion the sergeant swung his rifle, butt first. George ducked and instinctively raised his hand to protect his face. The wooden butt of the rifle struck his left wrist painfully. The other two troopers seized his arms. He offered no resistance, but they dragged him along as if he were struggling. The sergeant opened the rear door of the car and they threw him on the backseat. They slammed the door before he was fully inside, and it jammed his leg, causing him to shout in pain. They opened the door again, shoved his injured leg inside, and closed the door.

He lay slumped on the backseat. His leg hurt but his wrist was worse. They can do anything they like to us, he thought, because we’re black. At that moment he wished he had thrown rocks and bottles at the police instead of running around telling people to calm down and go home.

The troopers drove to the Gaston. There they opened the back door of the car and pushed George out. Holding his left wrist in his right hand, he limped back into the courtyard.

• • •

Later that Sunday morning George at last found a working taxi with a black driver and went to the airport, where he caught a flight to Washington. His left wrist hurt so badly that he could not use his arm, and kept his hand in his pocket for support. The wrist was swollen, and to ease the pain he took off his watch and unbuttoned his shirt cuff.

From a pay phone at National Airport he called the Department of Justice and learned that there would be an emergency meeting at the White House at six P.M. The president was flying in from Camp David, and Burke Marshall had been helicoptered in from West Virginia. Bobby was on his way to Justice and urgently required a briefing, and no, there was no time for George to go home and change his clothes.

Vowing to keep a clean shirt in his desk drawer from now on, George got a taxi to the Justice Department and went straight to Bobby’s office.

George insisted that his injuries were too trivial to require medical treatment, though he winced every time he tried to move his left arm. He summarized the night’s events for the attorney general and a group of advisers including Marshall. For some reason Bobby’s huge black Newfoundland dog, Brumus, was there too.