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“Selma”
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister
The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist
This morning I offer some stories surrounding Selma and the 50 th Anniversary of
Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, with the Selma to Montgomery March a few weeks later.
For Women’s History month, let’s begin with Annie Lee Cooper. An African American,
she is best known as the civil rights activist in Selma, Alabama who punched Sheriff Jim
Clark. She then received a beating by the sheriff, was charged with “criminal provocation”,
went to jail for 11 hours, and sang spirituals while there.
Annie Lee Cooper was a Selma native, age 54 at the time of her run-in with Jim Clark.
As a teenager she had moved first to Kentucky to live with an older sister, and then worked in
Pennsylvania running a restaurant.
Three years earlier in 1962, she had returned to her childhood home to care for her
mother. Having been a registered voter in Pennsylvania and Ohio, she was indignant that
she could not vote in Alabama. For attempting to register to vote in Selma, she was fired
from her job in a nursing home.
In January 1965, there was an ongoing protest in front of the Dallas County
Courthouse as blacks sought to register to vote. The Montgomery Advertiser, on the occasion
of Ms. Cooper’s 100th birthday, reported the following:
The Sheriff ordered her and others to vacate the area, at which time, “Sheriff Jim Clark
claimed … (Cooper) slugged him. She said he (had) hit her, and reported, ‘I was just standing
there when his deputies told a man with us to move, and when he didn't, they tried to kick
him,’ Cooper said last week. ‘That's when (Clark) and I got into it.’"
“(Sheriff) Clark prodded Cooper in the neck with a billy club until Cooper turned around
and knocked the sheriff in the jaw. Deputies then wrestled Cooper down as Clark continued
to beat her repeatedly with his club.”
http://archive.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20100602/NEWS02/6020357/Woman-known-runsheriff-turns-100-today
Most but not all the protestors were non-violent, and from time to time there were
lapses in discipline. Oprah Winfrey as a producer of the film Selma initially had no intention
to be a member of the cast, but was convinced to play Annie Lee Cooper.
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About a month later, the provocation for the Selma to Montgomery March occurred in
Marion, Alabama.... Jimmie Lee Jackson, a leader in St. John’s Baptist church in Marion
followed his heart.
One account describes the details this way (Ari Berman in The Nation magazine):
“On February 18, 1965, James Orange … (was organizing) young
people in a voter registration drive (while working) … with Martin Luther King’s
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.… (He) was arrested in Marion,
Alabama, thirty miles from Selma…. [The charge was “contributing to the
delinquency of minors.”] Word spread through the black community that Orange
would be lynched that night in the county jail off the town’s main square.
Two hundred civil rights activists gathered at Zion United Methodist
Church to hold a rare night march to the jail, where they would sing freedom
songs outside. (Rev. C. T. Vivian led the way.)
[They were met at the Post Office by a line of Marion City police officers,
sheriff's deputies, and Alabama State Troopers. During the standoff, streetlights
were abruptly turned off (some sources say they were shot out by the police),
and the police began to beat the protesters. Among those beaten were two
United Press International photographers, whose cameras were smashed, and
NBC News correspondent Richard Valeriani, who was beaten so badly that he
was hospitalized. The marchers turned and scattered back towards the church.
- Wikipedia]
The … [marchers] included 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, a deacon
and woodcutter (and army veteran) who had tried to register to vote five times
in Perry County, where only 265 of 5,202 eligible black voters were on the
voting rolls.
Jackson, his mother Viola, and his 82-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee,
fled for safety at nearby Mack’s Café. State troopers stormed in and began
beating Jackson’s grandfather and mother. When Jackson lunged to protect his
mother, an Alabama state trooper shot him point-blank in the stomach.
He was sent to Selma’s segregated Good Samaritan Hospital, where
Col. Al Lingo of the Alabama Department of Public Safety served him with a
warrant for assault and battery with the intent to murder an Alabama state
trooper, even though the police had been the clear aggressors. Jackson died
eight days later. Historian Taylor Branch called him “the first martyr” of the
Selma voting rights struggle.
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At a mass meeting at Selma’s Brown Chapel, King aide James Bevel
introduced the idea of marching from Selma to Montgomery to protest
Jackson’s death.
As the film Selma depicts, SNCC – the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee –
had been in Selma for some time, a couple of years, when Dr. King and his colleagues with
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference saw the strategic possibilities there, in part
because of the well-known belligerence of Sheriff Clark.
To reiterate, the issue was voting rights. Darryl Pinckney offers helpful background
and describes the events in his article “Some Different Ways of Looking at Selma.” (New
York Review of Books, 2/19/15}
Dr. King had early on raised the issue saying, “’Give us the ballot,’… at a prayer …
(meeting) in Washington, D.C., in 1957.” However, in the ensuing 8 years, there had been
little success registering new voters or gaining support of Federal courts.
For example, Selma was the county seat in Dallas County, Alabama, and there were
325 blacks registered, with 15,000 eligible, plus 12,000 whites registered. No blacks were
registered to vote in two neighboring counties [of Wilcox and Lowndes].
Protest “marches had been banned.”
Together with Ralph Abernathy, vice-president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Convention, King arrived in Selma on January 2, 1965, hoping for
increased confrontation with southern authority.… To arouse the conscience of
Congress or the nation, he needed the attention, the cameras, which meant
demonstrators risking arrest, sitting in jails filled to capacity, and worse. King
expected bloodshed in Selma – his own.
For those with a good sense of history, you recall 1964 as Freedom Summer with the
Mississippi Summer Project, which had engendered support from college students across the
nation, with the goal of establishing freedom schools and registering black voters, whose
rights had been denied since 1890. Among them were Andrew Goodman and Michael
Schwerner from here in NY, and Mississippi native James Chaney. They were killed in
Neshoba County, Mississippi, and these events were depicted in the 1988 film, Mississippi
Burning.
In January and February, the SCLC began to hold rallies and marches, with Dr. King,
Ralph Abernathy and 250 others arrested on February 1. A week later, black citizens
peaceably marched again, and James Bevel was assaulted by Sheriff Clark with a billy club
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on the courthouse steps. State troopers also used their clubs and cattle prods in making over
50 arrests.
Among those put in jail for a week were three whites, who had joined the march… two
Unitarian Universalist ministers and a catholic lay theologian. (Morrison-Reed, p. 97) That
whites were being arrested made national news.
Many denominations supported the civil rights projects throughout the South and, and
like others, the Unitarian Universalist Association had supported site visits and volunteering
among its staff, ministers and members.
It was one of these visits, which took him to Selma, that our Senior Minister, Donald
Szantho Harrington, participated in a prayer service for Sheriff Jim Clark, who had been
hospitalized for a heart attack. This was held outside the hospital with other clergy and lay
people, including the minister of Brown Chapel, which was the AME church where most of
the rallies and the SCLC organizing took place.
In reporting to our congregation a few weeks later, Dr. Harrington said that the prayer
was “a simple, honest, open action,” heart-felt, without cynicism. He went on to observe that
Selma now seemed to be “the moral hub of the universe.” (Community Pulpit, 3/7/1965)
A week or so after those prayers for the sheriff, the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in
Marion changed everything. Plans for the march from Selma to the Alabama Capitol in
Montgomery began to take shape. It was led by John Lewis of SNCC and Hosea Williams of
SCLC. Dr. King was not there in part because he needed to be at his home church in Atlanta
having missed many recent Sundays.
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, the 600 marchers were brutally attacked and dispersed by
state troopers and locals deputized by Clark. The savage assaults, which led to more than 50
hospitalized, were broadcast across the nation. Amelia Boynton, who had helped plan the
march with Bevel, was among those knocked unconscious.
Dr. King put out his summons for the nation’s clergy to join in a renewed march for the
following Tuesday, and 2500 participants showed up, including over 60 Unitarian Universalist
ministers, about 10% of our clergy then.
From Dr. King: “In the vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where
old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random, we have witnessed an
eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America. No American is without
responsibility. The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation but it is fitting
that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call therefore on clergy of all faiths to join me in
Selma.”
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On that day, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the prior attack had occurred, King
stopped the procession from continuing when halfway across. There was a Federal court
injunction against the march awaiting review of the issues, which King did not want to violate.
In conjunction and cooperation with the state officials, the marchers turned around… thus the
name Turnaround Tuesday.
In the movie, as I recall, this pre-arrangement was not explained… so the powerful
moment as depicted had something of a mystery about it.
And just a few notes about the film Selma, which I found profoundly moving and
powerful. It is chilling in its depiction of violence… the bombing of the 16 th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, with the deaths of four girls, the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the
brutality on Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge… and its horror is palpable.
At the same time, there is the conviviality and camaraderie among the inner circle of
protest leaders: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, James Bevel, Diane Nash, Hosea
Williams, Bayard Rustin, Andrew Young, and C. T. Vivian. It’s not always easy to identify
each, but their spirit reflects passionate commitment, at times fear, and dedication to the
movement.
On the night of Turnaround Tuesday, three Unitarian Universalist ministers were
attacked outside a diner where they had eaten, and one died two days later from his injuries
– Rev. James Reeb from Boston. In the film, Selma, he is referred to as a priest, then as a
minister later on. He is also shown speaking with just one other colleague when attacked,
rather than as a group of three. Small historical details… not very important.
With regard to the controversy over the depiction of President Johnson, I had little
sense of LBJ opposing Voting Rights legislation, despite his being shown as advising Dr.
King that it might be slow-going…. As he says to Dr. King, “You‘ve got one thing, and I’ve got
101 things.” This did not, in my mind tarnish, LBJ, or imply total resistance. To me, it
reflected that as President, Johnson would likely never have shown his hand or allow it to
appear that he was not in total control… even as he was wheeling and dealing and scheming,
with staff already working on the desired legislation prior to Bloody Sunday. (When I see the
film again, I’ll see if that’s still my impression.)
What is clear is that with leadership from Dr. King and his colleagues and President
Johnson, with the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, and the violence on Bloody Sunday, and the
death of James Reeb (and with the earlier deaths of Medgar Evers, and of Chaney,
Goodman and Schwerner, and so much more), the time had come.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was introduced on March 15 with passage a few
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months later. President Johnson began:
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress:
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.
I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors,
from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a
turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and
Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma,
Alabama.
There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their
rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of
God, was killed.
Still to come was the actual march to Montgomery a week later, and sadly another
murder… the killing of Viola Liuzzo, who following the rally on the steps of the Alabama state
Capitol, was driving marchers back to Selma. She was a Unitarian Universalist from Detroit,
a civil rights activist there, a part-time college student, wife, and mother of five. Her murderers
were convicted in Federal court.
… The success of the Voting Rights Act can be seen – sadly in our times – with the
concerted efforts to curtail and discourage black and Latino/Hispanic voting in many states
across the nation. The US Supreme Court decision in 2013 struck down pre-clearance of
any new voting provisions by 15 states that had a history of voter discrimination. Chief Justice
Roberts in writing for a 5-4 majority declared that things had changed… and this remedy was
no longer needed.
New legislation to address discriminatory measures such as voter identification cards,
early voting suppression, residency requirements for students, cutting voting hours, or
eliminating same-day registration, and other changes has been introduced but not gaining the
widespread Republican support necessary for passage.
All of which is to say, the struggle continues, and such issues will be part of the
conference and commemorative march I am attending next week in Birmingham and Selma.
I commend to you again The Selma Awakening by my colleague Rev. Dr. Mark
Morrison-Reed who was with us last month for a couple of Sundays. The subtitle of his
superb history and analysis is How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian
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Universalism. I understand there are a few copies still available at our bookstall.
As he nears the end of his account, he affirms:
It is not possible, nor necessary, to know the outcome of our actions;
therefore we act in faith. Faith asks not that we succeed, but that we try. We try
because we yearn to live out our values. Conscience urges us on, for we have
dreamed of a better, more just tomorrow. We care therefore we act. In acting
we risk having our hearts broken a thousand times; therefore, we are sustained
by hope. That is the price those who cleared the way for us accepted. It is what
living fully, deeply, and with integrity demands.
This day, we give thanks for the bravery of so many: Annie Lee Cooper, Jimmie Lee
Jackson, Amelia Boynton, Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy and their colleagues, John Lewis,
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner… and James Reeb and Viola
Liuzzo, and so many others.
Mark Morrison-Reed concludes this way:
The second half of the second verse of “Life Every Voice and Sing,” the
African American national anthem, begins, “We have come over a way that with
tears has been watered.” That is the way our spiritual ancestors came. The
way we follow will be different, and its outcome undreamed of. But, just as it did
for our forebears, the way will require of us courage, sacrifice, and tears. (pp.
221-2)
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