At reunion, UPI reporters recall civil rights era coverage

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA - Patrick Harden was in a hot, jam-packed black church in Montgomery in 1961 as a white mob grew in numbers outside, angry over the arrival of Freedom Riders. <br> <br> ``It looked as though we were going to be burned,&#39;&#39; he said. ``I have never been so scared in my life.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Harden wasn&#39;t a Freedom Rider or a black churchman. With a clipped British accent, he wasn&#39;t mistaken for a white Southerner, either. He was a reporter for United Press International, covering one of the violent events of the civil rights era. <br> <br> Harden recalled the siege at the church during a reunion Saturday of a cadre of aging UPI reporters whose stories from a bridge at Selma and the wreckage of a bombed church in Birmingham helped bring the civil rights revolution to the nation in the 1960s. <br> <br> Leon Daniel, who covered ``Bloody Sunday&#39;&#39; at the Selma bridge in 1965, reported from beats around the world during the course of his UPI career, but he said there was nothing like Selma. <br> <br> ``For me the story was almost a personal epiphany,&#39;&#39; he said. ``Good and bad were so easy to differentiate.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Their remarks were given during a panel discussion, ``UPI Coverage of the Civil Rights Era,&#39;&#39; sponsored by the Gannett Foundation and Montgomery Advertiser. It was held at the Rosa Parks Library and Museum, the Troy State University Montgomery building that is near the downtown site where Parks made history in 1955. <br> <br> From her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, the modern civil rights movement led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged. While some Southern news media sought to downplay or black out coverage of the story, UPI reporters were on the scene to make sure it received national attention, said Robert H. Gordon. <br> <br> ``I always had a sense we were watching history being made,&#39;&#39; said Gordon, who later was managing editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., and is now retired. <br> <br> ``I was never all that scared in Alabama,&#39;&#39; he said, ``but I was terrified in Mississippi, and it was my home state.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Gordon was roused early in Birmingham on Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, and went to the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had been rocked by a bomb that killed four black girls. He said he saw the bodies brought out, one of them unrecognizable. <br> <br> ``For a long time in my life I tried to block out memories of that morning,&#39;&#39; he said. <br> <br> Anthony Heffernan, who was UPI bureau manager in Birmingham in 1964 and 1965, recalled a memo sent by the wire service&#39;s Montgomery chief, Don Martin, preparing the staff for what was about to come with the demonstrations of 1965: ``Alabama will bear its soul to the nation.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Heffernan also said the photographers who covered the often violent events were obvious targets for those angry with press coverage of the racial strife. Among them, he said, ``there was nobody more talented and courageous than Alabama&#39;s Joe Holloway Jr.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Holloway, who later worked for UPI&#39;s wire service rival, The Associated Press, gained notice for his photo coverage of both Vietnam and the racial wars in the South. He died two years ago. <br> <br> Daniel said the story of Bloody Sunday, when marchers were attacked by club-swinging officers in violence that helped inspire the Voting Rights Act, remains more memorable to him than other stories, such as Vietnam. <br> <br> The reason, he said: ``It had a happy ending.&#39;&#39;

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