Word: selma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...King deputy, rallied 600 blacks and a few whites outside the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Sunday, March 7. They would march despite an order from Alabama Governor George Wallace, who had earlier declared that mass demonstrations "led by career and professional agitators" would not be permitted. Selma Mayor Joe T. Smitherman also opposed the march. The crowd at the church included Jesse Jackson...
...both sides seemed to anticipate, the Selma march would become a turning point in the civil rights movement, prompting Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, eliminating literacy tests and leading to the end of poll taxes, + which discriminated against blacks...
...when we were thirsty. We could not use the rest room when we had the urge." Yet, Jackson declared, "we stand here today because of unfinished business." Wilbert Thigman, a municipal worker who bears a scar on his arm as a result of the 1965 march, said conditions in Selma are much better now. A job then, he recalled, meant "50 cents a day and ten hours a day. You can get a lot more money now." Selma was once almost totally dependent on agriculture, mostly cotton. Now, observed Smitherman, still the mayor 20 years later, "there are 65 different...
...anniversary march crossed the Pettus bridge, black and white Selma police officers and state troopers held back the automobile traffic. Blacks constitute 35% of the Selma police department and 45% of the fire department. Two of Selma's six present councilmen are black. A black woman, Jackie Walker, was elected tax collector last fall, becoming the first of her race to win a countywide election since Reconstruction. Walker died in an auto accident on Feb. 1. Selma's minority community is waiting to see if the white county commissioners will appoint another black to take her place...
...What happened was unjust," said Selma Librarian Patricia Blalock. "Some people reacted badly. But I think you should give a town another chance. We've tried to change." To the Rev. Frederick Reese, a Selma black leader who had invited King to check out the city's denial of voting rights in the first place, the 20-year evolution has been "miserably slow." Now principal of the Eastside Junior High School, Reese pointed to two private white academies that have opened since the public schools began to integrate in 1965. "There is toleration," he said. "Toleration is a step forward...