Minister, Rights Leader Denies Incest Charges

Later, he testified that he told family members about the allegations, "I'm not going to contest that." But he said that did not mean he agreed with the allegations, but that they should discuss them further. "Every problem has a cause," he said. "My position was something has happened, and we have to have a solution to this."

Bevel suggested that his accuser had serious problems and that he wanted to resolve them through dialogue, rather than confrontation. "My interest is in [the daughter's] salvation," he said. "She's the one who has the problem."

Bevel was a leader of the Freedom Rides to desegregate public accommodations in the South in the early 1960s, and he helped conceive the March on Washington in 1963, the Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama in 1965 and the Million Man March in Washington in 1995. He was with King the day he was assassinated in 1968.

"My question is . . . who is attacking me?" Bevel said yesterday. "I'm a social scientist. . . . Who are these people? Are they communist guys? Who is trying to destroy me?"

Hoffman also asked Bevel about a tape of a phone conversation with his daughter, played for the jury Tuesday. Leesburg police recorded the conversation without Bevel's knowledge in an apparent attempt to show he had acknowledged having sex with his daughter.

In one exchange, Bevel told his daughter, "I have no interest in getting you pregnant." But he never flatly admitted or denied having sex with her.

Bevel completed his testimony late yesterday afternoon, and Judge Burke F. McCahill told jurors their deliberations could begin as early as today.