“They (Selma officials) knew all the black folks,” LaFayette said. “They controlled the jobs and even the other white folks. They controlled them. You had eight families that controlled all of Dallas County. If you were a part of those families, you were a part of the power structure, and you never had to worry about a job.

“They would target those ministers to make sure they did not come out and try to what they called ‘step out of line,’” he said. “Here’s what they did to the other black folks: If somebody spoke out, or tried to come to any kind of rally, what they would do is … they would fire your mother-in-law from her job and tell her, ‘You need to spend more time with your son-in-law since he needs to learn how to behave.’ There would be implosion of the family. You would be in more trouble getting your mother-in-law fired from her job than you losing your job.”

What’s more, any political activity could cost you your life. In 1962, LaFayette became the director of SNCC’s Alabama Voter Registration Project and did so without incident until a year later, on Feb. 18, 1963.

LaFayette, after returning from a voter registration meeting, noticed a car parked in front of his home. One of the white men there asked LaFayette if he would give him a push to get his car started.

What they were doing, LaFayette surmised, was trying to lure him into the white neighborhood on the other side of town. He guessed there was a mob waiting on him there. The man looked at his car’s rear bumper and LaFayette’s front bumper, then told Lafayette he wasn’t sure they would align. He asked LaFayette to take a look.

“I’d told them I wasn’t going to charge them (for the push),’’ LaFayette said. “I realized then they were going to try to knock me out. That’s when they attacked me and knocked me to the pavement. I yelled to my neighbor when I found out one of the guys had a gun. That’s what they beat me with.

“I had a neighbor upstairs and yelled for him, ‘Red! Red!’ so somebody could see what was happening. I didn’t yell until I saw he had a gun. Red, a Vietnam vet, ran across the balcony with his gun. I stood between Red and the guy, because Red was going to shoot him. He was jockeying to get into position to get a good aim at him. I stood between them so he wouldn’t shoot him. It was from a moral point of view, but also from a practical point of view. If Red had shot that white man, both of us would have been in jail there for life.”

Red scared the men away, but not before LaFayette was severely beaten. He would spend a few days in the hospital and considered himself fortunate. Two weeks after the beating, an FBI team out of Mobile came to investigate. The investigation was necessary because the Justice Department had an injunction on those Alabama counties where blacks had been disproportionately represented in voter registration.

An FBI agent told LaFayette there had been a three-state conspiracy, in which “three of us were scheduled to be killed the same night about the same time,” LaFayette said. The three were LaFayette, Ben Elton Cox in Louisiana and Medgar Evers in Mississippi.

Cox wasn’t home, so his would-be killers couldn’t find him, but Evers was shot in his driveway in Jackson and died in a local hospital less than an hour later. LaFayette didn’t know Evers was dead until the next day because he was still hospitalized from his own beating.

The FBI told LaFayette the plan had been hatched in New Orleans. Who exactly hatched it remains a mystery. All LaFayette was told was that it was a “Klan-like group.”

“The Klan didn’t operate in Selma,” LaFayette said. “You never saw anybody with a robe on in Selma. You know why? Because every white male, 21 and over, was automatically a part of (Dallas County Sheriff) Jim Clark’s posse. You already had your gun and your horse. All you had to do was go get your badge.”

The backing of state officials gave them even more power. To facilitate the suppression of the state’s African-American citizens, Gov. Wallace placed a ban on nighttime demonstrations.

Wallace’s ban not only failed but also was fatal.