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By: Floyd L. Griffin Guest Blogger
Back in the 1950s, when I was coming of age, walking the streets of Milledgeville, Georgia, there were only two named generations. My parents’ generation which we now call the “Greatest Generation,” and mine.
Many members of the “Greatest Generation” were born in the” roaring 20s.” They endured the hardship of the “Great Depression,” a time when millions of Americans were out of work and struggled daily to put food on the table.
Selma, emotionally moving!
Fifty years later, Selma is as emotionally moving, as that Bloody Sunday many years ago. I was twelve years of age back then. I had survived a decade of the Jim Crow south on a farm in central Georgia. My family was a few years removed from the farm. Yet city life did not bring about much change in the way the ruling society related to us.
The decade of the 1960s began with riots in Watts, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, a prince of a black liberation fighter named Malcolm X, a tireless advocate for “black lives matter,” Medgar Evers, a Tuskegee Institute student named Sammy Younge and three little girls with bright futures in Birmingham, Alabama.
Then, came news of the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Marion, Alabama, as a result of mob violence, led by the local law enforcement department. Jackson’s death coupled with threats to James Orange and Rev. C. T. Vivian sent out a bleak prospect that things would ever get any better.
Suddenly, a news flash reported policemen on horseback with cattle prods had beaten a group of peaceful protestors on a bridge named in honor of a Confederate General. Tears streamed down my twelve year- old cheeks as I cried out to God, “Will things ever get any better. Oh God, will we ever be free!”
Fifty years later, I had to come to honor the blood shed that day, to bear witness to both the shame of Selma and the triumph of Selma; in short, to finally wipe the tears from my twelve year-old eyes.
Near the spot where John Lewis laid bleeding and thought that he “was going to die,” I came upon the Brown sisters: Gail Delaney, Robin Thomas, Felicia Powell and Renee Brown from Ferguson, Missouri. They had made the trek to honor Michael Brown (no relation), and to drum up support for their city’s efforts to remove the police chief and district attorney.
Gail Delaney summed up the problem in Ferguson as being a lack of communication with what is happening in the world outside their community. “There was no information about this event,” she said. “We just found out about it two weeks ago. More people from Ferguson wanted to come but they did not have enough time to plan,” she said.
Near the spot, where Hosea Williams laid bleeding from a cattle prod to the head, I encountered three young ladies studying at Tuskegee University. They came to honor the past as they looked toward their futures.
Not far from the spot, where Amelia Boynton-Robinson was given up for dead, I met the young people of UNITE. They are spearheading a petition at change.org to remove the name of Edmund Pettus from the bridge that leads from Selma to Montgomery. They are black, white, Latino, bright and filled with the promises of tomorrow’s suns.
A little distance from this spot, I met three Japanese Americans carrying signs which read: “Yellow Pearls Support Black Power!” Ryan, the group’s spokesman told me, they came to show their support to black people because of the rich tradition of support the two groups had in the 1970s.
Then near the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., kneeled to pray following Bloody Sunday. The spot where he had received a message from God. A message that said the troopers had laid a trap for the marchers at the bottom of the bridge. The spot where he had decided to turn around, I encountered a fellow journalist who had stopped speaking to me eight months ago.
We had fallen out because he disagreed with my analysis of the results in last year’s Georgia Democratic Primary for U. S. Senate. We met in the middle of the bridge. We shook hands. We hugged. I told him I regretted all offensive things that I had said during our public disagreement on Facebook. He said, “No problem. It’s forgotten. It’s a beautiful day.”
Selma, emotionally moving is an understatement.There in the middle of the bridge from Selma to Montgomery, where much blood was shared so that he and I could work as journalists, we found forgiveness and redemption.
Harold Michael Harvey, JD, is the author of the legal thriller “Paper Puzzle,” and “Justice in the Round: Essays on the American Jury System,” available at Amazon and at haroldmichaelharvey.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Obama connect dots. Standing at the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, President Barack Obama connect dots. He made the case for restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This bridge, which bears the name of a Confederate General made the perfect backdrop for President Obama to connect these dots.
“This speech,” my 86 year-old mother called to say to me, “will be repeated for years to come by the children, just like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, ‘I have a dream’ speech.”
Undoubtedly, this speech will. By connecting these dots, Obama freed Selma from the burden of shame, her segregated past has carried the past 50 years.
Indeed the whole nation carries this shame, drenched in the blood of Lewis, Williams, Boynton, and nameless-faceless others.
While President Obama connected these dots, he wove every constituent part of America into the rich fabric of the expanding American dream. He implored conservatives in the nation to make room for the immigrant, the former Negroes, the women, the Gays, the Muslims; in short, every living breathing human being, who was not part of the equation when the framers drafted the Constitution of the United States of America.
He did it with a flare and a style unmatched by any president in the history of the country. At times, he spoke presidential. At other times, he spoke like he was sitting in my family knook, chatting over morning coffee while discussing the issues of the day.
Then there were times his speech was reminiscent of a political stump speech, as he urged the 100 congress men and women in the audience, to go back to congress and get 400 other members to restore the Voting Rights Act.
There were times he spoke like a parent, chiding the young people for not voting after so much blood had been shed to gain them the right to vote.
Finally, he spoke like a brother on the corner telling the brothers, that they give away their power. He concluded his speech in the tradition of the great ministers of the Gospel, quoting Isaiah, in the cadence of Jesse Jackson, to the roar of the crowd, connecting dots, making the case that black lives matter and we too are Americans.
Harold Michael Harvey, JD, is the author of the legal thriller “Paper Puzzle,” and “Justice in the Round: Essays on the American Jury System,” available at Amazon and at haroldmichaelharvey.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]