Last night we had the most enormous thunderstorm where the whole sky went dark, we had thunder and lightning overhead and rain just like you get in the tropics, it was so heavy you could hardly see the building opposite, then just as quickly as it came it went and within about 10 minutes the streets were completely dry as if we hadn’t seen the rain I don’t think we would have believed it had happened. Our drive today was straight down the Interstate as we wanted to call in at Selma on the way. We actually drove past Montgomery on the way but as we wanted to follow the path of the marchers we had to do it. We drove over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and to the visitor centre to pick up a map for the walk around Selma. They actually have a display in the visitor centre showing footage of the walk from Selma to Montgomery which we sat and watched before we started walking round the town. We walked to the first Baptist Church before we realised there are actually two of them and we had walked to the wrong one, so we then continued to the other one which is in a not particularly salubrious part of town but if you think about it the white population wouldn’t let the coloured population live in a nice part of town. We finally found the correct First Baptist Church which was the Headquarters for the Student Non violent Coordinating committee , they had asked Rev. Martin Luther King Jr to help as in 1961 of the 15,000 voting age African Americans, only 156 were registered to vote. They had been blocked by unforeseen registration requirements and intimidation, one African American who was told he could not register to vote said “I am 65 years old. I own 100 acres of land that is paid for. I am a tax payer and have six children. All of them is teachin’ workin’, if what I done ain’t enough to be registered to vote then Lord have mercy on America” All of this came to a head on 2nd January 1965 when Dr King defied an injunction against large gatherings of coloured people to address a mass rally at Brown Chapel African Methodist Church. On the 18th some 400 people joined the first voter registration march from the chapel to the county courthouse. Sheriff Clark directed the marches to an alley, then allowed no one to register. The next day the marchers refused to stand in the alley, Clark ordered them to move and when one of them responded too slowly Clark grabbed her collar and shoved her towards a patrol car, then he arrested 67 other marchers. Later in the month Rev. Frederick Reese led 105 teachers to the courthouse. Clark and his deputies pushed them from the steps twice, jabbing them with nightsticks. In February Dr King again defied a ban on marching to lead a group of supporters to the courthouse, Clark and his men again arrested 3,000 people trying to register to vote, many were held outside of town as the jails were full. In February people were marching at night in Marion, northwest of Selma, they were attacked by state troopers and one of the demonstrators Jimmie Lee Jackson was fatally shot while defending his grandfather. A call to carry Jackson’s body to Montgomery (the state Capitol) is what created the idea of the march from Selma to Montgomery. Governor George Wallace vowed to stop this and succeeded on Bloody Sunday. In early March 600 people moved slowly up over Edmund Pettus Bridge, they had left the Brown Chapel and having crossed the bridge were met by ‘a sea of blue’ where Sheriff Clark’s troops waited on horses. They told the marchers they had 2 minutes to return to their homes and churches and when they didn’t move they charged them on horseback and released tear gas, they continued to beat the marchers with nightsticks, whips and rubber tubes to drive them back over the bridge and into Selma, they kicked any that went down and they chased them all the way back to the Church. A court order bared the marches from attempting the walk to Montgomery so on the following Tuesday Dr King reluctant to defy the court led about 2,000 marchers to the bridge where they Knelt and prayed and turned round to return to their church. One of the people that took part observed that if they had continued they would have been beaten with the courts blessing. That evening Rev. James Reeb was attacked on Selma street and later died. A week later President Johnson eventually called on Congress to pass a voting rights bill, this caused Judge Johnson to lift the injunction against marching, that same day marchers in Montgomery were brutally beaten. Governor Wallace refused President Johnson’s request for state protection for the marchers, so the president federalised 1.900 Alabama national guard troops and sent 2,000 soldiers and dozens of FBI agents and federal marshals. On March 21, 4,000 marchers set out from Selma, they marched until US80 narrowed to two lanes, then the march was restricted to 300 people, as they approached Montgomery their numbers swelled to 25,000. We walked the route to the bridge then got back into the car and drove the 54 miles to Montgomery. It wasn’t until we stopped at the bridge that we finally found out who Edmund Pettus was, he was a General in the confederate army who never agreed with freeing the slaves so at the end of the war joined the Klu Klux Klan and eventually became a grand wizard or something, the bridge was only named after him in the mid 1940s and although the local community have petitioned to have it changed, both the whites in the area and the daughters of the confederacy have quoted the national register of historic places that says that something that has had the name for more than 40 years should not be changed! We then drove to Montgomery, Campsite 1 was owned by Black farmer David Hall who allowed the protesters to sleep at his property on the first night of the march. Campsite 2 belonged to Rosie Steel a black woman who owned the farmland, her house was later fire bombed for helping the marchers. Campsite 3 belonged to Farmer Robert Garner who’s farm is also alongside Highway 80. The final campsite was at the City of Saint Jude. This Catholic Church was the only church that supported the marchers, as a result the church lost many of its long time supporters. A concert was arranged by Harry Bellefonte for those that made it to Campsite 4, it was called the starts for freedom concert and had people such as Sammy Davis Jr, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary as well as Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine and Nina Simone. The journey took us almost an hour, a lot quicker than the five days it took the marchers. We finally got to the hotel about 6pm and went straight out for something to eat as somehow while walking around this historic area we had missed lunch!
