~a column by Colleen O’Brien
In 1965, about 600 people tried to march across a bridge in Selma, Alabama, in what was called by the organizers a non-violent demonstration. Its purpose was to wake people up to the fact that Blacks in the South did not have the same voting rights as white Americans.
The non-violence was coming along okay until the local police started clubbing the marchers, rolling them across the road with fire hoses and chasing them back across the bridge. The peaceful demonstration became known as “Bloody Sunday.” It was televised across the country, so it was no longer a secret how the South treated some of its citizens.
This past Sunday, 50 years after the fact, the march took place again with either 40,000 or 70,000 (depending on your source) marchers, including our African American President Barack Obama.
Symbolic of the long march toward equal treatment of African Americans in this country, the re-march across a bridge in the Deep South was a joyous and serious occasion. Like the Bloody Sunday march of half a century ago, this march received plenty of press. It also generated hundreds of stories about the dumbfounding problem of Americans and their treatment of people of color.
Patti Miller, a Jeffersonian who graduated from high school here in 1961, marched in 1965 on the third try for a peaceful demonstration in Alabama. The first time, on March 7, 1965, the marchers were terrorized. The second time, a week later, the marchers got to a point where Alabama state troopers barred the way. According to Patti, “Dr. King knelt down in front of them, as did all the marchers. He prayed, then he got up and turned the marchers around and they dispersed, to march again another day.”
Which was a week and a half later, according to Patti’s memory. “I came from Drake with a few others to march the last day, the day the protesters this time would finally be marching into Montgomery (Alabama). Dr. King had talked with President Johnson, and federal troops now lined the road from Selma. There were helicopters. There was no violence. And, actually, thousands finished up the march.”
Although, she said, “A white woman, Viola Liuzzo, who was transporting African Americans back to Selma, was pulled from her car and killed by the Klan [Ku Klux Klan].” Whites consorting with Blacks in that era was something the Klan had a major fit about.
The history of African Americans in this country is so violent and hateful I’ve found it almost unbearable to read about in books or watch in movies. But, to refuse to do even that is a wobbly piece of rationalization, for being witness even after the fact establishes at least some kind of sympathy for people abused. And perhaps a willingness to step up and insist on equal treatment for human beings no matter what my politics, what color my skin, what sad or unfair things I may have suffered.
Mamatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, four little girls in a Birmingham church and Patti Miller — these are the folks I side with. . . .
Not with the acquaintance who this winter told me, “Blacks never help themselves, Black brains are not as big as White brains and you, Colleen, are naïve about what goes on in this country because you don’t watch TV.”
The last accusation made me laugh out loud, but not the other two. That anyone, let alone a friend of mine, believes those things is embarrassing, shameful. And scary.
