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The name of Selma is linked with two
images in the American mythology of race.
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March
7, 1965:
Black citizens of Dallas County, Alabama beaten and
trampled by state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bridge as
they begin their march from Selma to the state capital.
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March
21, 1965:
The same citizens
streaming across the bridge, finally on their way to Montgomery. |
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photo:nvrmi |
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The images bookend an uplifting tale of
two weeks in which the blight of racial segregation was overcome by black
and white Americans working together. The truth is that change was slow to
come to Selma. Many forces swirled and eddied for years, like the Alabama
river, slowly eroding the status quo.
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As one of the South's major munition and
supply centers during the Civil War, Selma was hit hard by defeat.
Yet it was Selma and Dallas
County that sent Alabama's first elected African-American representative to U.S.
Congress.
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In the 1950's, almost half the population
of Selma was black, but it was perhaps the state's most inflexibly
segregationist city. Few blacks could register to vote, and none could
serve on juries or seek employment in law enforcement and other public
services. They certainly couldn't run for office. As a result, the
community had little or no access to public services. At the same
time, the black community was becoming educated at a rapid rate and
"sensitive to the limitations that segregation imposed upon them."
(Thornton)
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One organization quite important in this
process was the Fathers of St. Edmund.
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The Catholic Church
in Selma
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The Catholic presence in
Selma dates back to 1862. In fact, the Queen of Peace was built with
stones from the old Confederate Arsenal. The original parish
attracted few blacks, however, and the Jesuits who ran the parish eventually
recruited the Sisters of Mercy to start up an all-white school.
The Fathers of St. Edmund established
St. Elizabeth school for black children in 1940 and invited the Sisters of
St. Joseph of Rochester to teach there. Working
with the sisters, they turned the rundown Good Samaritan into
a two-story, 32-bed hospital. A nursing program and a nursing
home for the community were soon added.
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In 1947, the
Edmundites founded the Don Bosco Boys' Club, a recreational facility for
black youth which also offered scholarships to Catholic colleges.
It was this
affiliation that assisted me in my conversion to Catholicism
John Crear,
retired administrator
Good Samaritan Hospital, Selma |
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Through the ministry of the Edmundite
fathers and the SSJR sisters, the Catholic Church appeared to be in competition with the Baptists and Presbyterians
for black souls. Taking up the challenge, the Reformed Presbyterian
Church established the Ralph Bunche Club offering
the possibility of spirited competition. Eventually Selma had two private colleges and
a credit union serving a well-educated black middle class which
included physicians and business people. However, racial
segregation and white paternalism continued to shape the city's
infrastructure.
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Segregation &
Paternalism
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Selma's has always been a genteel
and nuanced racism...Why burn a cross when you can foreclose a
loan?
Alston Fitts, historian
Fathers of St. Edmund, Selma
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By the 1960's,
however, white segregationists were becoming more overt and organized.
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On Water Avenue by Edmund Pettus Bridge,
near the scene of "Bloody Sunday," was the Dallas County
headquarters of the White Citizens' Council. The ideology of this
organization was that blacks were inferior and had to be kept in their
place. "Uppity" blacks
found themselves jobless, black professionals developed credit, insurance,
or license problems, and all blacks who tried to register to vote were
placed on a blacklist. The Citizens' Council believed,
above all, in white unity and used their personal network to keep in
line progressive whites among the local merchants and media. In part
due to the stranglehold of this organization, the economy of Selma was
grinding to a halt.
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Young Joe Smitherman was elected mayor
in 1964 with a pledge to "get Selma moving again" by attracting new
industry to the town. As city council member, he had advocated paving
roads in the black part of town. He had also defeated the
longtime incumbent who was supported by the Citizens' Council. The city's black leadership was
behind Smitherman.
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Where race relations were concerned,
Smitherman's was a risky highwire act. He appointed
a segregationist to the post of city attorney and also made the fatal mistake of trusting Alabama Governor George Wallace to
take charge of crowd control in Selma on "Bloody Sunday." At
the same time, Smitherman engaged black leaders in dialogue. When
he
created the office of public safety director to supervise the city
police and fire departments, he said his goal was to "assure the courteous and
fair treatment of all persons regardless of race, creed, or
color."
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Smitherman's appointment to the new post, Wilson Baker,
was a charter member of the White Citizens' Council who had evolved into an expert
in modern methods of law enforcement. In the matter of civil unrest,
he wanted to be proactive, to take the "iron fist in the velvet glove"
approach. (Fitts) Unfortunately, his city police force had only 30 men.
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The large Dallas County posse of Citizens' Council faithful, on the other hand, was led by Sheriff Jim
Clark, an ardent segregationist of the "knock their fool heads off" style of law
enforcement. (Fitts) Clark's allies were the chief of the
Alabama state troopers, and Judge Hare of the Alabama District Court in
Selma.
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U.S. District Judge Daniel Thomas also added fuel to the fire by delaying the
civil rights cases that came to him. Along with Wilson Baker and other
progressive whites, he saw that racial integration was inevitable.
They just
wanted Selma to go there in her own time and "with dignity."
So, in
spite of skirmishes over strategy and jurisdiction, these men were held together by their
distaste for "outside intervention."
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The black leaders of Selma, on the other hand,
welcomed "outside
intervention."
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For two years, the workers of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had kept the pressure on the board
of registrars by organizing daily appearances of black voters at the
county courthouse. At the same time, the sisters of St. Joseph
ran a voter education program to circumvent the county's
discriminatory use of the "literacy test." Then the Dallas County Voters' League invited
Rev. Martin Luther King to draw nationwide attention to their
cause. King's Southern Christian Leadership Council was their
answer to the White Citizens' Council and helped implement the black boycott of white
businesses. In 1965, the strategies of nonviolent civil disobedience
allowed blacks to set the agenda--for two glorious weeks in March, they were in
charge. Their struggle forged an international brotherhood of people of
African origin.
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Ignoring the segregationist
ministers who claimed that white supremacy was divinely ordained,
Judge Hare of Dallas county deplored their effort to "to give
color of religion or morals to the problem of segregation."
"Segregation may be defined as a way of life," he said,
"which has been worked out through the centuries in the South
whereby two highly divergent races of people may live in the same
community in peace and mutual advancement..."
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On March 8, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther
King's appeal on behalf of Selma's black citizens made the issue a
moral one. Men and women religious would see a moral struggle as
part of their responsibility. Even the Pope issued a decree regarding the equality of
races in the eyes of his church.
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Besides, until then, Edmundite
Father Maurice Ouellet had been the only white person who had
spoken out in support of black Selmians. For many of them, the outpouring of
support from white America was
a novel and invigorating experience.
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