"We ought to carry Jimmie's body to George Wallace and dump it on the steps of the capitol," was the angry cry from civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama, after Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed by an Alabama state trooper on February 26, 1965.
Jackson had been trying to protect his mother, Viola Jackson, and grandfather Cager Lee, who had already been bludgeoned by an officer's billy club.
Taking Jackson's body to the state capital didn't happen. But on March 7, 600 civil rights marchers did assemble in Selma and attempted a 54-mile protest march to Montgomery.
Coming out of the city, they funneled across The Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was named for Edmund Pettus (1821-1907), a Confederate general, grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, and US Senator who opposed citizenship and voting rights for freed slaves.
Upon entering Dallas County jurisdiction on the other side of the bridge, the marchers were stopped, beaten, and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers and sheriff's deputies, some of whom were Ku Klux Klansmen sworn into duty that same day.
Among those beaten into unconsciousness was Amelia Boynton, the first African American female to run for public office in Alabama.
The incident gained national attention as "Bloody Sunday."
Two days later, on "Turnaround Tuesday," 2,000 marchers led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., again crossed the bridge, were met by state and county police on the other side, and, after kneeling for a moment of prayer, turned back without violence.
Later that night, the Rev. James Reeb, was attacked on a Selma street and died a few days later. In his eulogy for Reeb, Dr. King said, "Why must good men die for doing good?"
The decision to turn around was unpopular among the civil rights activists who were willing to sway from Dr. King's dedication to nonviolent resistance.
Yet, a week later, on March 16, when other civil rights marchers were brutally beaten in Montgomery, Dr. King responded angrily, "The cup of endurance has run over."
Still, the activists waited in Selma.
Within the next week, President Lyndon B. Johnson called on Congress to pass a voting rights bill.
On the next day, federal district judge Frank Johnson lifted an injunction against further marches in Selma.
With that permission and, ironically, now protected by 2,000 US soldiers and dozens of FBI agents and federal marshals, 4,000 persons (some documents say 8,000) successfully crossed the bridge and began the march to the state capitol on Sunday, March 21. These marchers included Northerners, clergy, whites, Asians, and Latinos.
Due to the challenging logistics of feeding and encamping that many people, march leaders allowed only 300 to walk the entire distance.
They carried nothing but backpacks, wore no special clothing, and camped at four sites along the way. As the core group reached Montgomery on Thursday, March 25, their number swelled to 25,000.
There, Dr. King told the jubilant crowd, "Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda. Let us march on ballot boxes until all over Alabama God's children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor."
As Living Legacy Pilgrimage participants, we walked across The Edmund Pettus Bridge, in silence, just as the original marchers had done.
The bridge is of humpback design, with a high arch over the Alabama River.
My limited view, from near the back of our group, triggered my imagination. I seemed to hear the ghosts of history ask: "Who waits for us on the other side? Will they let us pass? Will we be beaten?"
Later on the pilgrimage, we visited a small plot of graves at Heard Cemetery, an old slave burial ground near Marion, Mississippi, where Jimmie Lee Jackson's body is buried. The headstone has been chipped by bullets.
Quotes from the documentary Eyes on the Prize, disc 3, program 6, "Bridge to Freedom" (1965)
"More than half of Dallas County citizens were black, but less than one percent were registered [to vote] by 1965. Throughout the South, custom and law had long prevented blacks from registering.
In Selma, the registrar's office was open only two days a month. The registrars would arrive late, leave early, and take long lunch hours. A few blacks who lined up would get in, and getting in was no guarantee of being registered." --Narrator
"With [Selma, Alabama, police chief] Jim Clark, it was an engagement between the forces of movement and forces of the structure that would destroy movement. ... Movement meant that finally we were encountering on a mass scale the evil that had been destroying us on a mass scale. You do not walk away from that. You continue to answer it." --Rev. Cordy Tindell (C. T.) Vivian, a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
"He [Jimmie Lee Jackson] was killed by the irresponsibility of every politician from governors on down who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. He was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that can spend millions of dollars a day to keep troops in South Vietnam and cannot protect the lives of its own citizens seeking the right to vote." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Racism Killed Our Brother" --banner hung on the front of the church from which Jimmie Lee Jackson was buried.
Next blog: "Stars of Freedom" rally: City of St. Jude
