For the last six decades, people have returned to the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge each year. They have come to remember the pain and suffering early Civil Rights Movement foot soldiers endured.
The 60th Anniversary Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, a weeklong event, commemorated March 7, 1965, when marchers were brutally beaten by white Alabama state troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross the bridge en route to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black people.
What started as a ceremony of honor and remembrance has grown over time. Now a full slate of events fills the week prior to the actual bridge crossing, with the ceremonial march across the bridge on a Sunday as part of the Jubilee’s finale.
That shifted last week. The foot soldiers were honored, the fight was remembered, and the gains and price paid for voting rights were noted.
But there was a new sense of urgency and energy to the words being used. Less emphasis was placed on history and more on the threats that a new wave of anti-democratic legislation, a recidivist Supreme Court — and, more pointedly, a second Trump presidency — bring to the battle.
“We think about democracy as something we do every two or four years,” said Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, on March 8 during an afternoon panel discussion at the St. James Hotel, in the shadow of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. “But really, democracy is about having government that is accountable to us. Government that is for us. With us. By us.”
Other speakers at the panel discussion on March 8 underscored the message.
“What was won on the bridge was lost in the courts,” said the Rev. Leodis Strong, pastor of Brown Chapel AME Church, where the original march from Selma to Montgomery started in 1965.
As the orators continued, the message became clearer. This Jubilee was a revival of spirit and purpose, not a retrospective, with the goal of encouraging people in the audience to fight for justice.
Out on the streets
Across Selma’s downtown area on March 8 and 9, street vendors plied their trade as they do every year. Tents shading the wares of T-shirt sellers, artists, and other merchants sporadically lined the sidewalks. Reggae and dub slipped under the soulful wail of vintage R&B from an adjoining sound system as the smell of grilled meat filled the air.
Fortunately for marchgoers on March 9, cold rains that had threatened the bridge crossing event blew through, even as gray clouds continued to stretch in bands across the horizon.
The crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge was done differently this year. Instead of a series of speeches prior to the walk across the bridge on March 9, the crossing kicked off at noon, two hours before the speeches began at the end. Groups began walking, chanting, and singing, then met in front of a soundstage set up on the east bank of the river where speakers took to the stage.
There was no U.S. president or even vice president in attendance, unlike previous years. Instead, other leaders stepped up to the plate to deliver the message that the fight for democracy continues.
“We have to be vigilant,” said U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election to Alabama’s newly formed 2nd Congressional District last fall. “We are seeing this White House consolidate power in ways that will affect your daily lives in ways that you cannot imagine.”
Figures and U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, who represents Selma as part of Alabama’s 7th Congressional District, each spoke about the efforts of the Trump administration to sell the Montgomery Bus Station, home to the Freedom Riders Museum, as part of an aborted “fire sale” of government properties last week.
The Freedom Riders, a group of nonviolent civil rights activists, participated in bus rides across the Southeast U.S. to protest segregated interstate bus terminals. On May 20, 1961, the Freedom Riders arrived at the Montgomery Bus Station and were attacked by a violent mob. The bus station has been restored to how it looked in 1961 to commemorate the Freedom Riders’ activism and sacrifices.
“Our history is not for sale,” Figures said.
Even those things that cannot be sold are in danger, according to National Urban League President and former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial.
“We’re at a moment where the progress of the last 70 years is being attacked by powerful forces,” Morial said at the foot of the bridge on March 9. “I am here in Selma today to recommit. We are not going back.”
Even as the speeches were underway, people continued pouring over the bridge, albeit at a more languorous pace. Groups of Greek letter organization members called to each other, stopping for selfies or group pictures on the roadway. Old friends chatted, looking out over the crowd spilling across the landscape below them. Along the bridge’s southern railing, a few drone operators captured the scene, their aircrafts’ buzzing barely audible over the dull roar of the crowd.
Later that day, Huang was on the median strip of U.S. Highway 80, listening to the leaders speaking on the stage after her fourth year crossing the bridge in Selma.
“This year, it’s not just a memory and a reminiscence about the incredible courage and leadership of the foot soldiers,” she said as she walked. “This year, it is a call to action. It’s a moment when we’re recognizing all of the same threats, all of the same hate and discrimination, that we thought we left in the past 60 years ago. They are coming back under the policies of the new administration. And we’re ready to fight.”
About the author: Dwayne Fatherree is the special projects editor for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This article was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights organization.
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