http://www2.statesville.com/content/2010/feb/17/college-looks-back-major-moment-fight-civil-rights/
By Jim McNally
Published: February 17, 2010
March 7 will mark the 45th anniversary of one the most brutal battles
of the Civil Rights Movement.
On March 7, 1965, about 600 people started out on a peaceful march
from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery.
They wanted answers, K.C. Caldwell explained during a presentation at
Mitchell Community College Tuesday afternoon.
Caldwell said the famous and infamous march was not so much
precipitated by a push for voters rights though that was a central
issue but by a demand to know why a black man named Jimmie Lee
Jackson was shot and killed by a state trooper.
"His death was really the spark that galvanized the people to march,"
said Caldwell, a computer programming instructor at MCC.
The idea, Caldwell told the group gathered at MCC's Rotary
Auditorium, was to march the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery and
have an audience with Alabama Gov. George Wallace.
But Wallace whose most memorable quote, delivered during his 1963
inauguration, was "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation
forever" was having none of it.
He declared the proposed march a threat to public safety and placed a
wall of state troopers on the southern side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Then, in front of news cameras on hand to record the event, the
police officers launched tear gas and attacked the marchers with nightsticks.
Caldwell said march co-coordinator John Lewis later recounted the
event and said "I thought I saw death."
Lewis who is now in his 12th term as a U.S. representative from
Georgia was a member of the civil rights group Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC and often referred to verbally as 'snick').
On March 7, 1965, Lewis was one of many marchers beaten by Alabama
State Troopers, and the event became known in the annals of the Civil
Rights Movement as "Bloody Sunday."
But the beat down only solidified the resolve of the civil rights
community, and two days later, Martin Luther King became involved in
a symbolic "march" in which 2,500 people gathered at the Edmund
Pettus Bridge, held a vigil and then dispersed.
"Bloody Sunday" also got the attention of the White House, and along
with pushing through his Voters Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson
ordered troops to protect marchers in a march held March 21, 1965.
That march would last four days and attract some 25,000 people.
A quote in a video shown during Tuesday's presentation summed up the
need to get over the Edmund Pettus.
"Not crossing that bridge," the video narrator said, "meant nothing
would change."
Tuesday's presentation was part of a series offered by MCC during
February, which is Black History Month.
On Saturday, in Rotary Auditorium, retired Army Maj. George Shade
will recount his experiences as a member of the famed Tuskegee
Airmen. That program, which is free to the public, begins at 3 p.m.
.
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