Hillary vs Obama in Selma
As Apollo Creed says in the original Rocky film, “Sounds like a damn monster movie.”
Today, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama showed up in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the historic voting rights march in 1965.
For the record, Obama made his plans a couple weeks before Hillary, and hubby Bill decided to show up even later. And why not kill two birds with one stone? All above-mentioned outings support a second agenda: The 1965 battleground of Selma is now a 2007 battleground to win the support of the black community.
While two presidential candidates and a former leader of the free world make a circus out of today’s remembrance ceremonies, let’s remember what people were gathering to remember in the first place…
The Right to Vote and Actually Voting: Two Different Things
In 1965, More than half of Selma’s population was black, and only 2 percent of the black population was registered to vote. The people who were born with dark skin were denied the right to vote by poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats on their lives.
During the previous year, there had been a strong effort to get unregistered voters registered to vote. But people don’t like change, and volunteers had been killed, and black churches burned. Add to this the fact that registration at the County Courthouse was open just two days each month. And, and even bigger inconvenience was how Sheriff Jim Clark and the police wouldn’t let black citizens in the courthouse.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was asked if he would help, and he did. By early February 1965, the sheriff and his force were kept busy putting over 3,000 protesters and hundreds of schoolchildren in and out of jail.
Then, on February 18, troopers attacked demonstrator Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson ran to a caf�, and, while trying to protect his mother and grandfather, was shot by trooper James Fowler. He died eight days later.
Bloody Sunday
In light of the fatal attack, a march from Selma to Montgomery was planned for Sunday, March 7. Give the organizers their due: Getting over 500 people to show up for a 54-mile hike is NOT an easy task.
The big day arrived, and John Lewis and Reverend Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (headed at the time by MLK) led the marchers east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. Only six blocks away, they ran into Sheriff Jim Clark, local lawmen, and state troopers sent by Governor George Wallace, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
When the marchers refused to turn around, the troopers pushed the marchers back. Things got rough, and some troopers mounted on horseback rushed in. With the news media catching everything on camera, the bullwhips, tear gas, and billy clubs came out. Some marchers were knocked unconscious, and others were severely injured. In fear of their lives, the marchers returned to Selma.
After the attack, nicknamed Bloody Sunday, was seen on living room TVs across the nation, another march was scheduled for Tuesday, March 9. This time, MLK showed up, along with 2,000 people, and their goal was just to get across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But, once again the state troopers turned them away, this time without injury.
The next week, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on TV and suggested banning restrictions that denied black voter registration. Johnson said:
The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this nation. …Their cause must be our cause too. Because it�s not just Negroes, but really it�s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And — we — shall overcome!
The Final March
The next march was scheduled for Sunday, March 21. Again led by MLK, 3,200 marchers left Selma for Montgomery. They walked 12 miles each day and spent the nights sleeping in fields by the road. On Wednesday, they reached Montgomery.
That night, Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Sammy Davis, Jr., all sang at a “Stars for Freedom” rally. The crowd had grown to 25,000 people by the next day when, on the steps of the state capitol, MLK delivered his famous “How Long, Not Long” speech.
Within five months, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The legislation guaranteed that every American 21 or older could exercise the right to register and vote. In Alabama, the number of registered black voters jumped from 92,700 in 1965 to 250,000 in 1967.
Read More: Selma, Bloody Sunday, Edmund Pettus Bridge, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, MLK, Lyndon B. Johnson, Voting Rights Act
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