This week on March 7 marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most famous and tragic events of the modern Civil Rights Movement. On that day in 1965 in Selma, AL, non-violent marchers were savagely beaten by Alabama State Troopers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a march from Selma to Montgomery. The march was led by John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and The Rev. Hosea Williams of The Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The purpose of the march was twofold, to protest the recent murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by a state trooper and to advocate for voting rights for Black people. John Lewis was among the many marchers who were seriously injured. He was beaten on the head with a billy club resulting in a severe concussion and thought that he was going to die. That attack on the Selma marchers became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Video news footage of the attack aired on television later that evening and shocked the nation. On ABC a special report on Selma interrupted the popular Sunday Night Movie. Ironically the movie that night was “Judgment at Nuremberg” about the trial of Nazi war criminals. Scenes of Nazi attrocities suddenly switched to the attrocities against peaceful marchers in Selma. Although the marchers seemed defeated at the moment, their witness led to widespread support resulting in the famous Selma to Montgomery March later that month. The video posted below provides a perspective on Bloody Sunday from John Lewis himself.
I had the great privilege of being with John Lewis twice. On one occassion I asked him to sign a photo from the Selma march. It depicts the confrontation with the Alabama State Troopers just moments before the violent attack against the nonviolent marchers. Not only did he sign his name, he also wrote his signature phrase “Get In the Way.” He meant that phrase not just in the context of Bloody Sunday 1965 but as an ongoing call to “get in the way” of racism and injustice at all times. Sixty years after Bloody Sunday, we are seeing a resurgence of government sponsored efforts to outlaw teaching the truth about our racial history, supress voting rights, and deny aid to the most vulnerable in our society and around the world. In memory and honor of John Lewis and all those who suffered on Bloody Sunday 1965, it is time to “get in the way” however you and I can including state and federal legislative advocacy, building genuine relationships across the barriers and race and economic condition, and nonviolent direct action to reveal injustice and demand change.
