Essays | Themes | Research
The Selma March
Guest article by
Frédéric Grevin
In March 1965, I went to Selma, Alabama, to march with several thousand people and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the state capital in Montgomery. This was the third and last of the marches that had been organised.
The purpose of the march was to assert the right of Black people in Alabama and Selma specifically to vote in elections. This right had been denied them for generations.
I was a freshman at Lake Forest College (Lake Forest, Illinois) and had just turned eighteen. The word had come to the school that a bus to Selma had been organized and participants were solicited.
By a fortunate coincidence, my parents were in France. I say “a fortunate coincidence” not because they would have objected to the cause on behalf of which I would march, but rather because they would have been worried that I would come to harm. Over the previous ten years, a number of people working for civil rights had been severely beaten or even murdered, and Alabama was notorious for its violent opposition to this cause. Earlier in the month, three ministers were attacked in Selma and beaten with clubs by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members. One of them died.
So, I got on the bus with my dorm roommate Eugene White, and after many hours of overnight driving, we came to Selma.
Selma was not a large city (about 30,000 people at the time), but it was very crowded with people preparing for the march. I slept in a church and ate baloney sandwiches on Wonder bread. We attended lectures and workshops on nonviolence and how to deal nonviolently with attacks if they were to happen. The mood was keyed up but “ready to go.”
For some reason, I was asked to be a marshal for the march. This meant that I would walk along the side of the highway, help people in need and get them to lie down if the shooting started (it was thought this was possible).
It also meant I walked right in front of the men of the Alabama National Guard, who had been put under the control of the federal government to ensure the marchers would be protected from violence. This was not entirely reassuring, as the National Guard soldiers wore the confederate battle flag on their uniform and their looks made it quite clear they were in no sort of sympathy with us. In all fairness, they never attacked anyone during the march and stood armed with their rifles, facing us, on both sides of the highway during the three-day march. In retrospect, I wonder if the rifles were loaded…
While parts of the highway were four lanes wide, one was only two lanes wide, so the march started with about 8,000 people, but was reduced to 300 for the two-lane section. I was in that small group, probably because I was a marshal, and also one of the few white people in the march. We camped in the rain and got rather wet; our sandwiches were wet, too.
The feeling of the people on the march was sober. While we sang songs (“We Shall Overcome”) and hymns, it was not a mood of joy and dancing. I believe everyone was thinking of the potential for serious injury or even death on a large scale but were determined to carry it through.
I didn’t see Dr. King much, as he and the other organisers were at the front of the procession, and I was somewhere in the middle. But I felt his presence; it was felt by all.
On the evening preceding the march into Montgomery, a rally and concert was held just outside the city. Many famous performers participated; the ones I remember were Harry Belafonte and the Peter, Paul and Mary trio. I particularly remember Peter, Paul and Mary, because I was asked to be part of the security cordon around the stage and, when this tall man came striding towards me, I refused to let him through. He said to me (as I recall) “I’m Peter” which meant nothing to me, so I wouldn’t let him through the cordon. He was irritated and then said to me “I’m Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, and I have to get through because we’re performing” (or something to that effect). Being somewhat innocent, I let him through. Other performers included Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joan Baez, Nina Simone, and The Chad Mitchell Trio .
On the last day, some 25,000 people marched into Montgomery and to the State Capitol. There were speeches, but it was a bit anticlimactic for me. However, everyone was relieved that the march had been successfully carried through and without a massacre.
That night, a small group of us went to the Montgomery bus station to go home (the bus trip to Selma had been arranged, but we were on our own for the return trip). The bus station was small, but the atmosphere was very tense: it was made clear to us by the locals present that we were not at all welcome. A man got up and walked past us, whistling ‘Dixie’; he clearly intended to be provocative. We had been well trained in the techniques of nonviolence and smiled tightly. But on that night, Viola Liuzzo, a white mother of five from Detroit , was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members while she was ferrying marchers from Montgomery back to Selma. Eugene and I learned about this after we got back to Lake Forest. This was just as well, as our return trip would have felt dangerous.
I don’t remember what – if anything – my parents said about this venture after they got back from France. I DO remember that my maternal grandfather, who was no sort of liberal, just warned me that my name and photograph were certainly now in an FBI file and I would be “tainted” in the future. As far as I know, nothing ever came of that. However, given the culture of the FBI at that time, there probably IS a moldering file somewhere (unless a blessed records retention schedule intervened to see it destroyed after decades of non-use!).
Frédéric Grevin, a dual national (France & USA), was brought up and educated in France, Canada and the USA. He earned a Licence ès lettres in Archaeology and Art History from the University of Dijon, France. As an adjunct, Fred has taught in master’s programs at Long Island University, the City University of New York, and Columbia University. On Technical Committee TC171 (Document Management Applications) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Fred worked on several standards and provided liaison with the US archives and records management communities for the ongoing development of the PDF/A standard. Originally hired by the NYC Department of Finance for document conversion expertise, in his 26-year career with the City of New York, Fred also worked with multiple agencies on content management and records management.
This guest essay was sent to his lifelong friend, editor Theresa Sokol. OLLI Connects published an account of their youthful excursion to Newfoundland in 1973 in Theresa’s story My “Come From Away.” — Editor
Leave a Reply