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Susan
Burton, recognized in the Los Angeles Times as one of
the nation's prominent civil rights leaders today, will
stand in solidarity with other advocates and movement
builders on the 50th anniversary of the historic March
in Selma.
It was on
Sunday, March 7, 1965 when nearly 600 people started a
planned march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in a well-planned and peaceful
demonstration that resulted in what is known as "Bloody
Sunday."
It had been
one-hundred years since the end of the Civil War, and
many African Americans were still facing barriers to
vote. In Selma, African Americans made up almost half
the population, but only two percent had managed to
successfully register as voters. Discrimination and
intimidation tactics blocked nearly every attempt
to register and vote, and the march on the bridge was a
courageous journey toward such a fundamental right.
John Lewis was a key organizer of the
march. The 25-year-old son of an Alabama sharecropper
was the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), an organization dedicated to ending
segregation and to registering black voters. The
movement practiced non-violence. Lewis and other
leaders asked the demonstrators not to fight back
against anyone who committed violence against them
during the
peaceful protest.
The
marchers paused for a moment, then kept walking. The
sheriff warned the people that they had two minutes to
break up the march, but the deputies attacked sooner.
The demonstrators were tear-gassed, clubbed, spat on,
whipped and trampled by horses. Television and
newspapers carried pictures of the event that became
known as "Bloody Sunday," and a disgraced and horrified
nation witnessed the shame.
Fifty years later substantial barriers
still exist, only now they are instituted in the age of
mass incarceration. This weekend we stand with Susan
Burton and all freedom seekers, truth-tellers and reform
heroes to keep the march for justice alive. Until
we are all free, none of us are free.
Click the link
below for the inspiring article on Susan Burton and other
courageous leaders making substantial impact in the civil
rights movement today.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-civil-rights-leaders-br-20150304-htmlstory.html |