Selma sprang from an obscure Southern town to the front pages of world newspapers”
This Alabama Town will go down in the history books as the turning point in the Civil rights
drive...In Selma there is a lesson to be learned”
That was a news report from March of 1965 about Selma, Alabama when the city was at
the epicenter of a civil rights campaign.
The actions that took place in Selma helped to reform laws hindering black citizens from
voting in the South.
But while Selma helped progress the civil rights movement in the 1960s, some argue that
the city and it’s problems, got left behind.
So is Selma really just a footnote in history?
It was in Selma, that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference organized a march to the state capital of Montgomery.
But on Sunday March 7th, 1965, as marchers walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on
the outskirts of Selma, state and federal authorities attacked the group with tear gas
and clubs.
Undeterred by the events of “Bloody Sunday,” as it came to be known, protesters decided
to march again.
As one demonstrator recalls, everyone in the crowd was determined to make it all the way
to Montgomery.1
“You had to do it, because you saw the suffering...you know you live in America and why should you
be treated any less than a citizen?”
When marchers finally reached Montgomery on March 25th, 1965, their success became a pivotal
and emotional turning point in the civil rights movement.
Their actions helped to usher in the Voting Rights Act, legislation designed to ensure
that black Americans could register to vote, unhindered.
“The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or
his color.
We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution.
We must now act in obedience to that oath.”
Fifty years later, in 2015, Selma found itself in the news once more.
In honor of the original civil rights march, U.S. President Barack Obama crossed the Edmund
Pettus Bridge.
But while this was a celebration of what civil rights had achieved, it was also a sobering
reminder that for the residents of Selma, and for many black citizens across the U.S.,
the work is far from over.
Today, Selma’s population of 20,000 is 80 percent black.
Unemployment is above the national average and around 40 percent of residents live in
poverty.
And the stats for Selma aren’t outliers.
In 2013, the rate of poverty for black Americans was 27.2%, almost three times that of white
Americans.
Which is why for many, civil rights today is as much about poverty as it is about voting.
According to one NAACP spokesman, “There is no way to talk about civil rights without
talking about economic rights.
They are all tied together...here in the South, the new civil rights movement has to take
on poverty.”
And that might be happening.
On the 50th anniversary of the march, a number of protesters also crossed the Edmund Pettus
Bridge.
They were there to call attention to discrimination and poverty in Selma, and around the country.
And the people of Selma are themselves working hard to once again be the example, to prove
that there are still lessons to be learned here.
“If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called
to possess their moral imagination.
All of us will need to feel, as they did, the fierce urgency of now.
All of us need to recognize that change depends on our action, on our attitude, the things
we teach our children.
And if we make such an effort, no matter how hard it may sometimes seem, laws can be passed
and consciences can be stirred and consensus can be built.”
The recent deaths of black men and women at the hands of police in America has some groups
campaigning to change the U.S. criminal justice system.
To find out more click this video.
We’ve also got a video on what race discrimination today.
You can check that out here.
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