Selma Is Still Relevant 60 Years Later

This year marked the 60^th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” the culmination of the voting rights march on March 7, 1965, which was met with extreme violence.

“It’s imperative that we recommit to civil engagement,” said Alabama State Sen. Robert Stewart (D-Selma). “Political engagement is not a spectator sport. We need all hands on deck. I think people should come to Selma every year.”

Stewart said, especially under our current president, we are seeing constant political attacks in the form of voter suppression and efforts trying to silence our voices.

“We see attacks on the labor movement, attacks on the civil rights movement, and we are seeing attacks trying to undermine the progress that we have made,” Stewart said.

This year’s theme “Ignite, Inform, Impact” highlighted to a weekend filled with impactful efforts to mobilize African American voters and featured members of the original group such as the Rev. Jessie Jackson and Sheyann Webb-Christburg, a Selma native who participated in the march at the age of 8, along with thousands of first-time marchers who came from throughout the country to attend events March 7-9 in Selma and Montgomery, Ala.

“This year we had a lot of young people,” Stewart said. “We had campus queens, young people with the American Civil Liberties Union, a lot of labor union members, and Divine Nine members,” Stewart said, adding that there was a children’s march on March 7, which included “children from all over America.”

Stewart said it was the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement and his grandparents’ participation in the various demonstrations that led him to seek political office.

Webb-Christburg who has discussed her experiences over the years and has her story featured in the movie “Selma Lord Selma” recalled meeting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. months before Bloody Sunday while playing with a friend in front of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, when King arrived at the church for a strategy meeting.

“He immediately began talking with us and invited us into the meeting,” she recalled, explaining how that chance meeting immediately impacted her life. “Even when I listen to Dr. King’s speeches today, I still get a chilling sensation. I remember how he would hold my little hand and kiss me on the cheek and tell me he would see me again when he came back.”

Despite her enthusiasm for the march and that of her sister, at the time her parents were fearful of their participation because of the constant threats of violence. In fact, her father told her to stay away from King and the movement.

“I was a very disobedient child,” she said. “My parents couldn’t do nothing with me.”

The first attempt by the people to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge occurred on March 7, 1965, but after the violence erupted the march ended and was repeated two days later on March 9, 1965.

This was the day that 25-year-old John Lewis, a native of Troy, Ala., was brutally beaten by a policeman with a Billy club as he led more than 600 marchers across the Edmond Pettus Bridge.

“I wrote my parents a note and left it on the washing machine telling them where I went and why I had to go,” Webb-Christburg recalled of that morning during a recent interview.

Lewis, who would later serve as a U.S. Congressman from Atlanta until his death in 2020, led the people in singing freedom songs before giving special instructions to the participants to march in silence, she recalled.

“I could see whites on the sidelines saying bad words trying to discourage the marchers. We had been instructed not to sing,” she said. “People came and spat on us and threw things at us, but we continued. When we got to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I was in the middle, and I could see state troopers on horses. I could see the dogs. I could see police officers with gas masks. We were asked to kneel down and pray.”

Lewis and the late Rev. Hosea Williams, who were leading the march, were asked to turn the marchers around, but they refused.

Then the violence her parents had feared erupted.

“Teargas was in the air. People were being beaten down with Billy clubs. The horses and dogs were pushing their way into the crowds trampling over people. The teargas was burning my eyes. People were falling, crying, bleeding,” Webb-Christburg said. “This was a devastating sight for me to see. I was trembling, running, trying to make my way home. I could still see the horses and the dogs.”

When she got to her home in George Washington Carver Projects, she could see her parents.

“I could see both my parents standing in the door and my father had his shotgun. They opened the door wide, and I ran to my room. They came to try to comfort me,” she said.

Those who attended the events in Selma say they did so to be a part of history.

Margaret Jones, traveled from Detroit, Mich., to attend the Bridge Crossing Reenactment and Gospel & R&B Explosion featuring Asher Havon, Ceelo Green and William Murphy in Selma, as well as the Black Legislative Agenda Roundtable at Alabama State University.

“This was an eye-opening experience,” Jones said. “There is still so much work to be done and it was great to be among people who feel the same way about civil rights and voter rights as I do.”

The Associated Press has a collection of photos from this year's celebration as well as those in the past and can be seen here: https://apnews.com/world-news/general-news-domestic-news-73cc43c70e9a2a37c3e08730d356f844