King march organizers expect 5,000 Saturday

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Organizers from Jackson's Rainbow/Push Coalition and the NAACP predict about 5,000 people will march, but there's a possibility it could be more, said Davida Mathis, a Greenville attorney.

"We have no idea and that's the truth," Mathis said. "Whatever the number is it will be enough. It will be enough to be historic. It will be enough to be significant and it will be more than we ever had in Greenville."

The march begins at 1 p.m. at the Greenville County Courthouse and ends at County Square.

Jackson was in Greenville Thursday to raise support for the march. He left late Thursday to rally potential marchers in Greenwood, Aiken and Columbia on Friday.

"We march to stop the secessionist tendencies and move in step with the rest of the nation," he said. "We will march until there's healing. We'll march until there's hope. We'll march until there's joy."

Steve O'Neill, a Furman University assistant professor and Greenville historian, said it is unusual for the community to have a march.

"It's unusual for the times," he said. "I don't think the civil rights issues have been clear-cut enough to warrant this kind of action in a long time. It's a throwback to the 1960s."

O'Neill said Greenville's last large protest march took place on New Year's Day, 1960 when protesters gathered at the Greenville Downtown Airport to protest the treatment of black baseball player Jackie Robinson when he was at the airport a few months earlier.

Robinson was threatened with arrest when he waited in the white waiting room at the airport. Blacks marched from Springfield Baptist Church to the airport.

"It still took a court order in 1961 to desegregate the airport," O'Neill said. "The march rallied the black community, but it was still the federal courts that forced the desegregation."

There was concern among city officials that the cost of Saturday's march would fall to city taxpayers, who recognize a paid Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Angela Prosser, the city's special events coordinator, said all of the organizations having an event must pay for those services.

According to the NAACP's permit, it must pay approximately $900 to hire 15 off-duty Greenville Police officers. It must also reimburse the city for blocking the street with barricades.

Greenville County Councilwoman Michelle Shain said she's with the marchers "in spirit" but was concerned that the march through the city would have a ripple effect on the city.

"Nationally, when you hear Greenville, South Carolina, you don't distinguish between the county and the city," Shain said. "Somebody said to me today, 'I wish we could just hang a banner on City Hall saying we already have the holiday and are proud of it.'"

Mathis said County Square happens to be in the city but they understand the city's concern.

"That's one reason we didn't want to march down Main Street," she said. "We don't have a desire to bring a negative light to the city of Greenville or a negative light to the county of Greenville but we do have to shed some light."

NAACP members worked this week in local neighborhoods, schools and nightclubs to get the message out to young people to join the march, said Paul Guy, president of the NAACP's Greenville chapter.

"We already know older people are going to come out," Guy said. "They understand what this march is about."

Jackson's Thursday visit to Greenville was a trip home to the Jesse Jackson Townhomes — known as Fieldcrest Village when he lived there. He stood on the porch of his mother's old unit, 15-B, and implored the residents to "keep hope alive," oppose the County Council's rejection of a King holiday and attend Saturday's march.

"They say it will cost $134,000, but we know better," Jackson said. "It is an act of defiance."

Guy said they're expecting turnout from NAACP chapters from all over the Southeast. "If all the branches show up, that's a great number of people," he said.

There will also be church choirs, musicians and T-shirt sales.

"After Saturday, I don't think the county is going to be the same again," Guy said. "Awareness is going to be so high. It will be a definitive day for Greenville."

Jackson hopes the march will spark a new cry for more access to things such as economic and educational opportunity in the South for minorities. If that new movement starts in Greenville, it would be fitting, O'Neill said.

"There was a good bit of direct-action protest in Greenville," O'Neill said. "People think it really started in February 1960 when four students at North Carolina A&T University tried to get a cup of coffee and initiated the sit-ins."

"But a month before that, on the first day of the decade known as the tumultuous 60s, it was in Greenville, not Greensboro where you could argue the direct-action phase of the civil rights movement got its start."

Saturday will be a busy day in Greenville.

Besides the annual Greek Festival and the new, weekly farmer's market, the Armed Forces Day Celebration will go on downtown from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Organizers expect about 5,000 spectators to line Main Street from the Hyatt Regency to City Hall. That march will have eight to 10 bands, 30 vehicles and five to 10 floats, according to the permit application. There will also be a flyover.

The school district, which is sponsoring the celebration, will pay about $1,320 hire at least 22 off-duty officers, according to the permit. Lt. Mike Gambrell, Greenville Police spokesman, said more officers are required because of the number of intersections the parade will cross.