Word: reeb
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tuesday night three white clergymen dined at a Negro restaurant in Selma. One of them was the Rev. James Reeb. Reeb, who was born in Casper, Wyo., was ordained a Presbyterian minister but converted to Unitarianism in 1959. A slight, energetic, hard-working man, father of four children, Reeb worked for four years at All Souls' Church in Washington, D.C., but he found parish work too limiting. "He had a great love for people and their needs," says a colleague, the Rev. William A. Wendt. "He could not have cared less about whether they were going to heaven...
Last year Reeb gave up his Washington duties and took a job with the American Friends Service Committee in Boston, where he directed the group's low-income housing project, bought a rundown house in Boston's Negro ghetto of Roxbury, sent his children to the local school, where most pupils were Negroes...
Leaving the Negro restaurant in Selma, Reeb and the two other clergymen walked past a scruffy whites-only restaurant, the Silver Moon Café. At least four white men came toward them. One called, "Hey, nigger!" Another smashed Reeb on the temple with a club. The hooligans jumped the ministers and beat them mercilessly. From inside the Silver Moon, customers could see the fight-but not one lifted a hand to help. Reeb's friends dragged themselves to their feet, stumbled for 2½ blocks before they found help. As they sped toward Birmingham, their ambulance got a flat...
...days Reeb hovered near death in the hospital. Twice his heart stopped, and twice doctors managed to start it beating again. But Reeb never recovered from his coma...
...wife was at his bedside when he died. President and Mrs. Johnson and Vice President Humphrey spoke to her on the phone. The President sent flowers, dispatched a jet plane to return Mrs. Reeb and her father-in-law to Boston. Within two days, local lawmen had arrested four men, William Hoggle...