July 2023 - “The Bridge in Selma"
“Right here,” I said, pointing to a spot on U. S. Route 80 just east of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. On March 7, 1965, on that bit of pavement, twenty-five-year-old John Lewis and dozens of other peaceful marchers were beaten. Over a hundred white spectators cheered the brutality of what became known as Bloody Sunday. Journalists and cameras documented the horror.
One photo captures Lewis, brought to his knees by a billy club wielding officer. Behind the pair is Haisten’s Mattress and Awning Company, a building that today houses the National Voting Rights Museum which features the history of nonviolent protest and techniques passed from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. to all the Foot Soldiers of the U. S. civil rights movement. Non-violent training prepared them to expose injustice by giving up their bodies to the cause.
Plaster casts of footprints of some of Bloody Sunday’s foot soldiers are mounted on the wall of the National Voting Rights Museum. A sign next to them describes how subjectively-administered literacy tests denied them the right to vote. In another room glass jars are filled with jelly beans or cotton bolls. Black citizens were made to guess how many were in the jars before receiving a ballot, a ridiculous and demeaning exercise. No wonder that, in 1940, in a state where 43% of the residents were Black, the percentage of Black voting-age people registered to vote was less than half a percent. It was not until the year 2000 that Selma, then two-thirds African American, elected its first Black Mayor, James Perkins.
The right to vote was demanded by those who marched over the famous bridge that, back in 1940, was built and named for Edmund Pettus, a former U. S. Senator, Confederate General, and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. When I walked across the bridge, I paused to look out at Selma, then down to the Alabama River far below. Full, muddy, swiftly flowing south towards the gulf, it had once carried boats full of enslaved people and misery. They unloaded into the teeming slave markets of Montgomery, the state capitol, where the foot soldiers eventually arrived. Their sacrifice led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act which became law on August 6, 1965.
And yet, racist backlash goes on. In 2015, on the 50th Anniversary of March from Selma to Montgomery, the “Friends of Forrest” erected a billboard glorifying Nathan Bedford Forrest, slave trader and first Grand Wizard of the KKK. Former Selma city councilman, Glenn Sexton, welcomed the billboard. Back in 2000, while serving the city of Selma, Sexton helped publicly memorialize Forrest with a bronze bust. During the Civil War, the Battle of Selma was one of Forrest’s last major battles. The bust was stolen in 2012. Clearly, in Selma, the battles continue.
Future action:
1) Speak out about how virulent racism is not a thing of the distant past. The Edmund Pettus Bridge was named for a grand dragon who was alive during the life of John Lewis, someone who shed blood as he retreated back over the bridge. After my wife and I crossed the bridge, we spoke to a Mr. George Sallie who still bears a scar on his forehead from the blow of a state trooper’s billy club on Bloody Sunday in 1965. Though he served our nation through military service, it was in his hometown that he was wounded. At the foot of the bridge, he spoke to us of his pride in being honored as the “Oldest Footsoldier of the Voting Rights Movement.” Back in 2015, he marched alongside President Obama at the fiftieth anniversary celebration. Mr. Sallie did not mention the controversy involving Nathan Bedford Forrest that marred the occasion. Racism is not ancient history.
2) Consider how best the bridge can be renamed so that it does not simply promote the name of a klansman. Debate about the name of the bridge was nearly settled last year when the Alabama Senate voted 23-3 for legislation that would change the official name to the “Edmund W. Pettus-Foot Soldiers Bridge.” The bill did not advance further due to the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017.
3) While President Johnson can be praised for passing the Voting Rights Act, appreciate how he was pressured to do that by the civil rights movement. Also appreciate that, while the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black man, gained little notice in the media, it took the March 9, 1965, murder of a white Unitarian minister, James Reeb to get the attention of the nation. Jackson, a Baptist deacon and civil rights activist, was beaten and fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper on February 18, 1965. His death hardly made national news. Reeb’s murder was front page news. Of the four men indicted for Reeb’s murder - Elmer Cook, William Stanley Hoggle, Namon O'Neal Hoggle, and R.B. Kelley— three were acquitted by an all-white jury in less than 90 minutes, and the fourth man went into hiding. Black Americans continue to sacrifice so as to make justice a reality for all citizens.
4) Make a contribution to the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute. For more information go to http://nvrmi.com/ or send a check to P.O. Box 1366, Selma, AL 36702-1366.