We knew we would go to march in Selma this March,
even though we had no idea what to expect. This turned out to be no mere
commemoration or empty celebration. It was neither dreary nor overly dramatic
nor angrily defiant but that rare mix of unflagging love and courageous
determination on which revolutions are made.
While a range of social and political views were
surely represented, a collective spirit connected everyone, the spirit saying
the dream lives on, not in some abstract utopia but in a variety of everyday
struggles. Even though the crowd represented every age, race, religion, or
region one could imagine, its majority was African-American. Marching in Selma,
Alabama on the 50th anniversary of the historic “Bloody Sunday” (and
the two marches that followed)—this weekend adventure transcended every anxiety
and anticipation.
The official sponsor of our journey was the Tree
House Living and Learning Village at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, Tennessee,
and our village officers collaborated with the faculty and administrative
leaders to make this trip a reality; this was our first-ever proper
“alternative spring break.” Our 17-person contingent—that left very early on
the morning of Saturday, March 7 and returned in the wee hours of very early
Monday, March 9—included two Tennessee Tech professors, three administrators
and staff, ten students, and two guests, the seven-year-old daughter of one
staffperson and my 74-year-old mother. My father, who passed last year after a
long struggle with Parkinson’s, had attended the second march on March 9, 1965
known as “turnaround Tuesday.”
Because of the generous hospitality promised us by
Immanuel Presbyterian Church, we planned our trek to start with Montgomery, Alabama,
and some of the historic sites there. The highlights of our first phase included
seeing Dr. King’s first pulpit and the historic Dexter Avenue King Memorial
Baptist Church. Based on some Cookeville connections, we had been prompted to
seek a tour at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), where we were warmly greeted
by some staff attorneys, including one John Dalton, a graduate of Cookeville
High School.
This organization’s brave work both shocked and
impressed us as they labor on behalf of the wrongly incarcerated, on behalf of
the victims of poverty, racism, and strange sentencing practices. But it felt
right going here after seeing Dexter Church, because of the way EJI embodied
the Kingian values of reconciliation and redemption in a secular sphere, the
way they tirelessly advocate for the too-quickly castoff and cruelly-charged
people, not just on the margins of society but behind bars.
Sunday morning, we decided to wake before daylight
and depart promptly at dawn. This meant, among other things, that we were able
to secure some free parking on the street and close to the event. Driving from
an affluent neighborhood in Montgomery where we had slumbered, we found
ourselves in sleepy Selma, the stunning smell of paper mills and the sight of
dilapidated dwellings waking us to the reality that people still suffer from
the institutional ills that motivated marchers then and must continue to
motivate us now.
I’m not sure it’s possible to overstate the
importance of churches in the struggle then or now, so since we made it to
Selma early on a Sunday, checking out some of the religious observances
connected to the movement seemed more than appropriate. While walking the
streets near the Edmund Pettus Bridge before the big crowds descended, we took
a detour down Water Street to find the memorial marker for the Rev. James Reeb,
who had been badly beaten the same day my Dad was in Selma and died later that
week. Having so many white allies join the movement was a critical turning
point in Selma, and some paid the ultimate price for their solidarity. It turns
out we showed up at Reeb’s tribute stone at just the right time to participate
in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Montgomery’s services.
At dinner Saturday night, our group members shared a
little bit about their backgrounds, and our group included several different
traditions and identities, from secular humanist to southern Baptist. Situating
the struggle for civil rights in its historically sacred context is a profound
reminder of the sufferings wrought by slavery and segregation alongside the
ancient stories told as inspiration for modern liberation. One of our students attends
the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Cookeville, so meeting her new friends
at the Reeb memorial site fit nicely with my Presbyterian sense of providence.
From there, we wandered just a few blocks to the
historic Brown Chapel AME church, the moral launchpad of many historic marches,
including the ones that we were remembering from 1965. Even though seating in
Brown Chapel was limited to its members and invited guests, a huge crowd had
gathered outside and the proceedings were being broadcast onto the street where
a large screen had been set up. It was at Brown Chapel where many living
leaders, like the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, were scheduled to
speak. Thanks to an invitation from my friends at the Open Door Community in
Atlanta, we were prompted to walk just a couple more blocks to Shiloh Baptist
Church, where we were able to get seats for a profoundly moving and motivating
service.
When we arrived at Shiloh, a small men’s choir was
just getting started with some acapella songs and chants as deep as the river
of history and hope that the entire weekend represented. Like other
African-American services I have attended over the years, this two-and-a-half
hour experience ebbed and flowed between scripture stories, scripted speeches,
more spontaneous sermonizing, and sanctifying songs. For the anniversary on the
day’s agenda, it was difficult to determine the boundary between religious
observance and organizing for the rally, but this blending was so anchored in
the biblical foundation of the historic black church and its profoundly
embodied deep south spirit, that it was impossible to not feel the spirit
moving within us as the crowd swelled to standing-room only and shouted and
sang, clapped and cried. The closing sermon by the Rev. Timothy McDonald from
Atlanta roused us all and was followed by a freedom song and finally a Dr. King
impersonator who provided a chilling rendition of the speech given at the
conclusion of the third march in 1965, on the steps of the capitol in
Montgomery.
After a brief break to head back to the van for our
sack lunches, it was finally time to march. With a crowd swelling close to at
least 70,000 and perhaps as much as 100,000 people, it took all afternoon for
the people who wanted to cross the bridge to make their way. The several blocks
of Broad Street facing the bridge and the Alabama River were simply packed with
people. The students had left lunch a few paces before us and spent most of the
afternoon in some of the thickest sections of the throng. As I walked with my
wife Jeannie, my colleague Troy Smith, and my mom Barb, they suggested turning
right at Lauderdale Street. This turned out to be a great idea, which allowed
us to join the march towards the front, blending right in at the foot of the
bridge.
The spirit on the Edmund Pettus Bridge was
breathtaking. The shape and structure of the bridge itself on the banks of the
Alabama River immediately stings us with a sense of what those first marches
might have been like. The bridge still bears the name of a deceased Confederate
general and staunch supporter of slavery who won a seat in the United States
Senate because of (and sadly not in spite of) his role as a Grand Dragon of the
Ku Klux Klan. This ugly irony was just one of many harsh reminders that this
last weekend’s marchers embodied a struggle that remains incomplete. It’s no wonder why this embattled bridge has
become one of the foremost symbols of the legacy of the 1960s and our
conflicted struggles for freedom and justice.
At the time of our crossing, the bridge wasn’t too
crowded or congested. People would leave their contingents to observe, take
pictures, or greet friends and strangers. As we were taking our obligatory
snapshots, we saw an elderly man approaching, with a cane. Both he and the one
helping him along, who turned out to be his son, were dressed impeccably in
suits with bowties, as many other marchers were. It just so happens we were
suddenly standing next to this pair as another group stopped to talk with them.
As they were posing for a picture, we overheard that the older man had been
here in 1965, on the Tuesday march, and had come from Chicago.
I asked excitedly, “Were you on the same plane with
my Dad? The one with Martin Marty?” The older man replied, “I am Martin Marty.”
This elder of the movement is a widely respected and retired religion professor
and prolific scholar. He also helped charter the plane that my Dad boarded at
2am on March 9, 1965, in response to King’s call. “Martin Luther King asked if
we could recruit twenty people,” Marty recalled. “I made sure we found at least
one hundred.”
It’s hard to imagine that Professor Marty remembered
Ken Smith, the then 24-year-old Chicago Theological Seminary dropout who was a
math whiz and later became an actuarial consultant, but he acted as though he
did. Kindly he asked us, “Where is Ken Smith now?” We explained that we were
here on his behalf, since he had crossed the bridge to heaven last year. I
excitedly told Martin Marty about my current studies at Vanderbilt Divinity
School, the rainbow stole from More Light Presbyterians that I wore that day,
and about bringing a vanload of students from Tennessee Tech. He seemed
genuinely interested and gave me his email and website addresses. Meeting
Martin Marty and so many others on the bridge seemed more than fitting. We also
met his son Joe Marty, currently a state senator in Minnesota. It was the kind
of day when seasoned friendships were deepened and new friendships began.
Not that many marchers carried signs on Sunday, but
the ones I saw were mostly profound, some reminding us of the ongoing,
unfinished work of civil rights, especially in Alabama. The one declaring
“Someday is Today” sticks with me, echoing and intensifying the refrain of “We
Shall Overcome.” It’s not that all our dreams have been realized or that we
live in a post-racial utopia. Sadly, nothing could be further from true, and we
must resist congratulating ourselves. But the dream does live and thrive in the
bodies of the marchers, some of us descendants of the original marchers.
It’s because we showed up on Sunday that we know we
will not forget the past, and we will peacefully fight for a better future, for
freedom and fairness and for the dream itself, the Beloved Community. Sometimes
despite the evidence, King believed not in a never-neverland but in the fierce
urgency of now, hence his mantra at that famous speech in Montgomery at the
conclusion of the third march: “How long? Not long! How long? Not long!” May it
be soon. May it be so!
—Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith is a poet, blogger, activist, teacher, preacher, and the Faculty Head of the Tree House Learning Village in New Hall North at Tennessee Tech.