AJC Sunday sept 28, 1969 2A

Hippies’ March

Aims at ‘Brutality’

By LEONARD RAY TEEL

Members of Atlanta's hippie community in the 14th Street area were joined Saturday by members of the Negro community, four candidates for alderman and school board. and others for a march from Piedmont Park to police headquarters—protesting what they called ''police brutality" in the park last Sunday.

The march began at 2 p.m. and the nearly 500 marchers arrived at the Police station at 3:25 p.m. chanting '"We want Jenkins!" They disbanded shortly after 4 p.m.

Speaking from the steps of the police department as 12 blue-shirted patrolmen watched, a member of the hippie community, "Sullivan," 27, read a list of demands, including one that Police Chief Herbert T. Jenkins be fired.

One girl passed daisies to people in the march on the sidelines. Some marchers carried banners and placards which generally opposed the police department. Police directed traffic along the route. Until the marchers reached Peachtree and Forsyth streets. They kept in one or two lanes of the streets. After that they claimed the entire street and police kept traffic away entirely.

One banner stating "No armed police or narks in park" was carried with the help of Rev. Douglas Slappey, an Atlanta minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

At the front of the march was another minister in his black coat and white collar, the Rev. Elroy Embroy, of the United Methodist Church and a candidate for the school board inward 3 of Atlanta.

Driving a yellow truck carrying other protesters in the back was Emmett Doe, candidate for alderman in Ward 2. When it was said that some citizens would hold that against him for participating. Doe replied, “Damn ‘em!”

In the back of the truck rode another candidate for alderman, Ed Walters, formerly active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

A 17-year-old girl in the procession, Sandy Becker, said she was marching because, "I don't feel the police should come into the park and take it over because it is the people's park."

Sullivan, speaking with a microphone, said his community wanted the dismissal of eight patrolmen and some officers, and the freedom to hold gatherings in Piedmont Park.

A leader of the black community, Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who has been "beaten" by police in Alabama, Chicago and St. Augustine, Fla. Williams opened by leading in singing "We Shall Overcome," and went on to ask the young white protesters to join the black "human rights movement."