Selma was the seat of Dallas County in Alabama. In Dallas county less than 2 percent of eligible African-Americans were registered to vote. By February, Dr. King was already incarcerated and wrote from jail, "There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls."
Northern-based Unitarian-Universalist ministers responded to King's letter and flew into Selma to work with the SCLC. As I was a U-Uist for some time, albeit totally frustrated with my local church, King had my attention. I watched developments closely.
Demonstrations started breaking out in different bergs in the county, and fat county Sheriff Jim Clark cracked down hard and brutally. As I watched on nightly TV, I became enraged.
Then, by the end of February, a Black exactly my age, Jimmy Lee Jackson, was shot in the back by a state trooper. Killed.SCLC escalates in response. Because Jackson was killed by a state trooper, James Bevel (SNCC) announces a March in protest to the state capital building in Montgomery.
On March 7, historically referred to as "Bloody Sunday", SNCC led a march out of Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I remember because I was watching a TV program about Nazi atrocities which was interrupted to show the news from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As soon as they had crossed, Blacks and whites were mercilessly beaten and tear-gassed to the turf by state troopers and a county posse. It was incredibly outrageous to see this happen in the United States of America.
Dr. King put out an appeal to northern churches. There was a huge response. When I saw that forty (40!) Unitarian-Universalists responded by purchasing air line tickets, I began asking myself, what was I doing still here in Claremont?
Two days after Bloody Sunday, about 400-500 out-of-town religious leaders joined 2,000 local SCLC people in a prayer service at that site of the beating, at the far end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Later in the evening, three Unitarian-Universalist ministers were beaten with baseball bats on the steps of a whites-only restaurant in Selma. One of them, Rev James Reeb died.I had enough. It had become personal. I purchased my round-trip airfare from Claremont to Atlanta.
I was not alone. The national outrage was unprecedented. Massive demonstrations of protests occurred all throughout the non-Dixieland states. LBJ called a joint session of Congress to introduce his Voting Rights bill, concluding his speech with "We shall overcome." LBJ had invited Dr. King to be at his side, but SCLC's leader elected to stay in Selma and deliver an eulogy for James Reeb.
I had no idea what to expect as I flew into Atlanta with my sleeping bag and 3 1/2 inch thick portable typewriter. But SCLC was totally organized and we northern marchers were quickly recognized and swept up into caravans of private automobiles. But things were tense. The drive to Selma was 300-400 miles away. We were told to stay in traffic, obey speed limits, and not to get any flat tires.
Selma was overwhelming. The size of my new universe was contained in two city blocks. On one end of the street was Brown Memorial Chapel. Across the street, at the other end of the street was another church, whose name I cannot recall. In these confines the hinge of history was moving. I had never before nor since been in such an apex.
I arrived just in time for Dr. King's Eulogy of Rev. Raab. I'm sure I was too overwhelmed to be able to collect my thoughts. But this account by Unitarian-Universalist Rev Richard D. Leonard totally captures the spirit of the ebb and flow in the Selma movement that first night I was there:
From the balcony I saw a sea of dignitaries clearly unrelated to the events in Selma.National TV was everywhere. National movement figures walked and talked among us. Dr. King. Rev Ralph Abernathy, James Bond. Every three hours there would be another meeting for instructional purposes: non-violence discipline; first aid; committees for food distribution; committee for night security; sleeping arrangements. I cannot recall to this day where it was that we put our sleeping bags. The Church was huge, but I think there was some kind of dormitory down the block.
Many faiths had come to pay tribute in this memorial to Jim Reeb. There was a certain uplift that came from the broad spectrum participating in this ecumenical service. But beyond that, until Dr. King himself spoke, it is hard to imagine a more jumbled collection of prepared prayers and speeches rattled off in a patronizing way. It was ecclesiasticism at its worst. James Reeb’s death was described as the most monstrous example of brutality, when in fact it was one more instance in a long series. Men who had not taken the time to meet any young people praised them for their courage. The men and women who had come “thousands of miles” for the memorial were extolled. I thought that it was not too difficult to come and go in 24 hours and have the vicarious experience of heroism through singing a few freedom songs.
When King began to speak, however, it suddenly seemed right that we should all be there. Everyone moved a bit in his or her seat when King asked rhetorically, “Who killed Jim ReebReeb?” and answered: "An irrelevant church, an indifferent clergy, an irresponsible political system, a corrupt law enforcement hierarchy, a timid federal government, and an uncommitted Negro population."
He exhorted us to leave the ivory towers of learning and storm the bastions of segregation and see to it that the work Jim Reeb had started be continued so that the white South might come to terms with its conscience.
We rose to sing “We Shall Overcome” yet one more time, and close to a thousand voices united in a mighty chorus. The verse “Black and white together” took on a deeper meaning for us as we thought of Jimmy Lee Jackson and James Reeb united in the democracy of death. As we hummed a final chorus, the Hebrew prayer for the dead was intoned and then translated for us, with its phrase, “Peace for all with justice.”
Afterward, a new figure appeared at the microphone to make the electrifying announcement that the federal court had upheld our right to march to the Dallas County Courthouse and hold a service there.
A mighty cheer went up, and we tumbled out of the chapel to form our lines once more. Close to 3,000 marchers lined up on Sylvan Street. This time, as we drew up to the police presence, we were told we would be permitted to march if we stayed on the sidewalks where possible and marched three abreast. This we were willing to do, and the procession was on its way. We were escorted all the way by police cars while angry people muttered on the other side of the street. We arrived without serious incident at the courthouse.
That evening, the sense of victory was heavy in the air. A march on Montgomery no longer seemed like an unrealizable dream. Also that night, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress. By 9 o’clock every television set in the Carver Houses, the public housing project where many of us stayed with host families, was banked with as many persons as could squeeze into the room. Johnson began: “At times history and fate meet in a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”
Forty-five minutes later he concluded his ringing address, in which he had urged Congress to help him pass a new voting rights bill. Everyone in the room where we had stood throughout was crying, men and women, old and young, black and white.
In the evening, there would be long and rousing speeches. Well, some of them were fairly liturgical and boring. But they were culminated by speeches by Dr. King himself. As he spoke, the cultural cleavage between the locals and out-of-towners melted away. There was always an undercurrent awareness that we Northerners could and would inevitably, after the end of the march, jump on a plane and fly out of Dixieland, leaving SCLC and their local black constituency to deal with Jim Crow on their own resources. But that sense of division and separateness dramatically evaporated in the first 24 hours. We became one community.Each day ended with a climatic worship service, packed into that church. I have to say something about the singing. Southern Negro Choirs were a new discovery. By God. My God: I was well-versed in folk songs and movement songs. We could sing them all, all the time. But not like in Selma. They knew those old songs and more that I had never heard before. Every night the worship services ended with the whole crowded assembly in locked arms, singing and moving until we were exhausted.
I specifically remember one afternoon meeting in the sanctuary of the church. There could not have been more than 20 of us younger-college-aged guys present. In the middle of it, Dr. King comes in, escorted by Ralph Abernathy, and says a few instructional or inspirational words about whatever the specific purpose was for which this meeting was called. Very few words. And then Rev. Abernathy stopped as the two were leaving, and turned and asked, as if it were an afterthought, "How many present would be willing to stop a bullet for Dr. King?" My hand shot up. I looked around. No one present had their hands in their pockets. Not one.
It's difficult to express certain feelings from a perspective removed by almost half a century. People who would be standing in a crowd, maybe a mile away from Dr. King, would cry during his speeches. To those of us in Selma, it rapidly ceased being a novelty. When he spoke, it was absolute truth and absolute love which he communicated to hundreds or thousands in the audience. So, what was it like to be in one room with him and just 20 other people? It was an inexpressible benediction and an absolute validation of who one was and what one was about. There was no daylight for self-doubt. We had passed through a doorway.
On March 21st the 3rd and penultimate March on Montgomery began under the watchful eyes of the National Guard and Network TV. It was a tremendous relief to be actually stepping off and moving across that infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge we had seen so much of on national TV. We were 3,000 strong, white and black, northerners and southerners, bent on changing history. Music, songs, chanting, clapping.The bad news was that, at the end of the day, most of us had to be bussed back to Selma. The National Guard had signed on to insure the safety of just 300 - no more - enroute to Montgomery. Another explanation was this: Because the highway leading out of Selma was four lanes wide, everybody who wanted to could march the first day to the border of Lowndes County, — out past Craig Air Force base. But the road through Lowndes County was only two lanes wide, and so only 300 people were allowed to march that stretch, — no more than that. And then once the road hit Montgomery County, it was four lanes wide again, so as many people as wanted could march.
Whatever. This restriction also simplified SCLC's logistics considerably: tenting and feeding was much simpler in Selma. But this caused an awkward situation: You had 2,000 people, all of whom wanted to march, whether or not they were able: there were the SCLC/SNCC movement people from the surrounding counties, and there were hundreds of people who had flown in from around the world, literally. King assigned some poor bloke in SNCC to pick the full-time walkers, and he was very popular for a couple of hours. There was one one-legged white trucker from Detroit, I remember. He was an automatic favorite of the media who want photoshots of him among the walkers every day. So recognizable notables like him were a slam-dunk. And so I was one of many who got bussed back to Selma after the first day's march. And I think others were bussed ahead to Montgomery to set up for the final day. Okay by me, since it was rainy and cold almost the whole week. Besides, Dr. King himself walked only the first and last days.
I seem to recall our time in Selma was structured. There was work to be done preparing & organizing the marchers' food. Breakfast and dinner, was all cooked in Selma. And they had bought these huge galvanized steel garbage cans. Brand new, of course, so they were clean, and the food was dumped into these trash cans and then driven to the campsite. Then there were security details, even in town. And then there were meetings or teach-ins and, of course, always singing. And in the evenings, a rallying worship service with plenty of singing and fellowship.
I also remember some quiet time. Some of us walked away from the two-block hub, into the community. There, residents were going about their daily business. Bringing groceries in from the car, off loading kids from school, etc. Mundane things. Life goes on. I Thought about other hinges of history, such as Lenin before the October Revolution. Blocks away from the open air historic speechifying, 90% of the Russians must have surely been going about fixing wheels on their carts, mending fishing nets and buying bread from merchants. History may turning a right corner, but the greater mass of humanity was contemporaneously oblivious of it - for the simple reason that the vast majority of people cannot afford a time-out from hand-to-mouth day-by-day struggle for survival.
But as the March progressed, more attention was riveted upon it. As for the local scene, I would guess that was as much or more by word of mouth than by TV coverage, which was tremendous. And the faces in the crowds of African-Americans standing along the route varied from stoic and appreciative. But what was critically important to MLK's strategy is that everyday there were more and more faces who showed up. Along the way, workers would stop doing what they were paid to do and watch, even cheer, as their white bosses scowled. Some joined the walkers. We could see that as we impatiently waited back in Selma, glued to the B&W TV's.
So, for three nights and two days, more than a thousand of us were thusly stranded in Selma. But then on the fourth day, the March left Lowndes and entered Montgomery County. With the highway now expanded again to four lanes, the spigot was open. By buses, cars and trucks, we were lifted out of Selma and infused into the ranks of the dirty, dusty, muddy and exhausted walkers. By the time the March arrived in the evening of its next to last day at St. Jude, this transfusion of fresh blood had swollen our numbers to 5,000!
On the last two days, the route became much less rural than it had been in Lowndes country. All along the highway, there were now folks standing abreast and two or three deep cheering us on. Then there would be swatches of whites glaring, sneering and jeering. All this made me feel acutely and intensely engaged in this historical civil rights struggle to a degree which I had never before expected to be in my previous five years' involvement.
St. Jude was some kind of African-American-Catholic medical school/educational institution or facility. There was a huge tented complex rigged for this event called a "Stars for Freedom" rally featuring national figures such as Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, James Baldwin, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Dick Gregory, Sammy Davis, Jr. and a whole lot of others I don't remember. Broadcasting networks were there filming so it should be available somewhere. All I remember is not getting to see any of them stars, because there was not nearly enough space under that circus tent to get 5,000 of us in out of the mud and rain. I did get to hear all of the singing and speeches and preaching, though, standing or sitting in the ankle-deep mud. It was an awesome night.
Looking back on it over the decades, I want to say Stars for Freedom was Woodstock on wheels and steroids. Well, maybe not quite: the next morning people were passing around copies of the local Alabama papers which reported that the Alabama State Legislature had unanimously passed a resolution noting that at St Jude “the marchers were conducting wild interracial sex orgies at the camps, exposing themselves, kissing, and copulating.” Shit, all of us wondered: could we had been all that tired to have slept through that?
The day of walking the final distance to the State House in Montgomery remains a blur to me. The crowds on the route side deepened. Cheers drowned out the jeers. Southern whites were vocal, but mainly scowled and just waved Confederate flags. In the end, 15,000 marchers deployed themselves at the foot of the steps of the Capital Building. I was standing miles from where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was speaking - when he finally did take the podium.
After the rally. I rode back to Selma that night on a bus, a local young cheerleader leaning her head, asleep against my shoulder. Transportation was a challenge with so many people leaving Montgomery at the same time. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights activist from Michigan, was one of the drivers of the innumerable private automobiles involved in the massive shuttling of marchers back to Selma that night. Because her car carried both white and black passengers (why would it not?), she was shot and killed that night. She was a Unitarian-Universalist lay minister.
I flew out of Atlanta the next day.
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