THE 54-mile civil rights march – to ensure black people got the vote in America – left from Selma, Alabama, for the state capital, Montgomery and started 50 years ago tomorrow. When it ended, I was standing along the back of the 25,000-strong crowd at the bottom of Capital Hill, listening to Dr Martin Luther King’s speech given on the steps of the state government building underneath a Confederate flag.

Behind me was a line of Alabama State police now deputised by the President of the United States into the National Guard and working under his control to protect the marchers. Behind this buffer zone was a thick circle of angry, spitting, white protesters.

They were so close we could hear their threats interspersed with Martin Luther King’s words. It was surreal. King: “We will get to that place where my eyes will see the glory of the coming of the Lord.” The protesters: “We will get to that place where we will kill you white niggers.”

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At the end of his speech we turned to go home and found the buffer zone had disappeared within seconds. Perhaps the National Guard had taken off their helmets and joined the crowd of haters. We were left to fend for ourselves. It wasn’t easy.

After the march we fought our way to a bolt-hole two blocks from the Alabama state capital. Drinking gin and tonic inside an air-conditioned apartment, we were almost celebrating, expecting to watch the evening news report about the march. Instead, we saw the story of a murder.

The TV presenter was clinical with the top story. “Viola Liuzzo, 39, a white woman from Detroit, Michigan, was killed instantly by a bullet to the brain near the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma while she had stopped for a traffic light on Highway 80.

“Mrs Liuzzo had been on the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery led by King earlier in the day and was driving some of the marchers back home to Selma.

A 19-year-old African American survived the attack. He claimed a car drove up beside them and three white men opened fire.”

The celebratory mood changed.

Our host, a retired Air Force general with several stars on his shoulder and many more years of combat under his belt, insisted we stay the night. “It’s far too dangerous. If they’re killing in broad daylight, Ku Klux Klan snipers will take more risks under cover of darkness. They could be anywhere, especially in cars.

“What happens if you break down or have a flat? You could be in a viper’s pit. With those white Washington DC licence plates, you’ll stand out a mile from all the red and blue Confederate coloured Alabama plates. If you go tonight you will be marked men.”

The five of us were 800 miles away from ‘home’. All three students and two faculty members had to be back at Georgetown University the next day. We needed to climb off this rollercoaster we’d been riding the last few days and crawl back into the ordinariness of our lives.

If this meant an all-night drive to Washington DC, then so be it.

At 11pm we headed out of Montgomery towards Georgia, the lynching capital of the USA where 586 ‘negroes’ were hanged between 1877 and 1950. But in our minds Georgia was ‘safer’ compared to Alabama on this night.

By 1am it was my turn to drive.

Only three of the five of us had driving licences, the two priests and me. They settled into a fitful sleep after I took the steering wheel. That was a mistake.

I’m not a good navigator. We – I – came to a fork in the main road without any signposts. I took the right-hand turn and soon found it was the road less well travelled.

Sidewalks appeared, so did street lamps and houses. Trees leaned out over the road to cover what was happening below. I could see one car in my rear-view mirror following us, so this wasn’t the ‘ back of beyond’. We had company. I felt reassured.

We drove through the town and then the concrete road ran out and – clunk! – we were down into a dirt road. This could not possibly be the right road. I had to turn around.

The car behind followed us on to the dirt road. I thought that was fine, we were not on our own. Then I could see the lights of the car growing bigger and getting closer in my mirror. They got so close I couldn’t see them at all, but I felt the jolt when they rammed us. After the first bump all bets were off.

The second impact forced me to decide. Where was this dirt road leading? To a dead end? I had to act. My one chance to escape was now. But how many people can do a successful handbrake turn?

This was no Steve McQueen moment straight out of the film Bullitt. I didn’t know what to do.

There are times – eyes wide, terrified, doubting, kicking and screaming in the mind – when we need to take a big risk or we might not have much time to regret it. I don’t know who was more surprised, the people chasing or me, when I ended up facing the opposite direction.

They flew past and ran about half a mile down the road before they could stop and do a conventional, clumsy three-point turn. I put my foot down and raced over that dirt road; and yes I did think about a flat tyre, a wild boar running out of the hedge and a heart attack.

Time collapsed. It seemed an incredibly short drive back to the main highway. They were closing the gap when I reached the ‘T’ junction.

While we were stationary we were sitting ducks and we could still lose it, so I had to pull out in front of a car transporter. It was touch and go with the squeal of brakes and bellow of horns.

We made it into the fast lane and folded into the stream of traffic leading out of Alabama. We were not safe, only safer as we disappeared into the thickness of the traffic and the thin morning light. We knew that car was still out there.