For resident and civic leader Jerria Martin, that means not only commemorating those who devoted their lives to enfranchising African-Americans, “but also continuing the work of justice and unity,” she said. “I hope the world will look at Selma and see that there is hope.”
Selma has struggled in the years since the march it is famous for, where civil-rights demonstrators were beaten by state troopers on March 7, 1965, as they sought to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Montgomery.
It is one of the poorest cities in an economically challenged state. Unemployment was 10.2% in December, nearly twice the rate for Alabama as a whole. About 42% of the population lives below the national poverty level. Its downtown, like many across Alabama’s “Black Belt” region, is lined with boarded-up buildings.
“It’s hard to get a job here,” said Dan Blevins, 39 years old, who was hanging out at the Resurrection Barber Shop, on a glum block off the main street downtown. Unable to find construction work, he said he lives off disability payments.
‘Too many do not understand the long hand of slavery and segregation that is still affecting consciousness today. I hope we can leave here with our children understanding that history.’
About 80% of the city’s population is black. While Selma has a black mayor and majority-black council, white residents continue to own many of the biggest businesses, locals say. “In so many ways, Selma has been left out of the very progress that it helped to create,” said state Sen. Hank Sanders, who is African-American and represents the area.
But Ms. Martin, 26, sees opportunity here. After receiving a master’s degree at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2013, she said, she had job offers in New York and Philadelphia, but chose to return to Selma instead.
She is now executive director of 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, an organization that focuses on economically empowering young people and training them to develop service projects, such as the creation of a community garden. She also is secretary of the board for the Black Belt Community Foundation, which awards grants for initiatives like keeping juveniles out of jail.
“I wanted to use those skills I acquired in Princeton to bring about transformative change,” Ms. Martin said. She is scheduled to lead a youth summit and speak at a unity breakfast as part of the anniversary events, which kicked off Thursday and include a re-enactment of the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Ms. Martin is among a group of youth who are returning to Selma rather than pursuing opportunities elsewhere, said Nisa Miranda, director of the University of Alabama Center for Economic Development, which has worked with the city on workforce development programs.
Unemployment, while high, is down from 10.7% in December 2013. The city and surrounding county have lured a variety of manufacturers, from auto-parts suppliers for the state’s Honda Motor Co. and Hyundai Motor Co. factories to a mill soon to be opened by Houston-based Zilkha Biomass Energy that will make wood pellets used as an alternative fuel source.
In addition, Craig Field Airport—a former Air Force base whose closure in the 1970s dealt the city a devastating economic blow—is in the running for an international pilot-training contract that could bring hundreds of jobs.
The city is now exploring ways to revitalize its downtown, which is part of the largest historic district in the state and full of architecturally significant structures. Real-estate brokers AC Reeves and Mandy Henry have taken advantage of federal tax credits to renovate three buildings in the area that house loft apartments and retail stores.
Ms. Reeves, 49, who has lived all over the country, said she moved here in 1997 at her husband’s urging. “I came kicking and screaming,” she said. “Now I’m Selma’s biggest advocate.”
Arsenal Place Accelerator, Selma’s first business incubator, opened last year. It houses five startups, including a coffee-roasting company and a graphic-design business, launched by a racially mixed group of entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s, said president Dane Shaw.
ENLARGEOne is Robert Armstrong, 29, who returned to Selma after graduating from the University of Alabama and founded G Mommas cookie company. He said he recently landed the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain as a client and is building a new bakery in town.
The newest business in the accelerator is Southern Racks, which makes scentless shampoo, conditioner and lotion for women hunters so that animals can’t detect them. Now, Mr. Shaw and others are exploring the possibility of establishing a microbrewery in town.
“We’re trying to keep the momentum rolling,” he said.
Faya Rose Toure, a lawyer, activist, and wife of Sen. Sanders, said she hoped the anniversary would reconnect youth today with the history of civil-rights struggles in the U.S. Too many “do not understand the long hand of slavery and segregation that is still affecting consciousness today,” she said. “I hope we can leave here with our children understanding that history.”
Lynda Lowery still bears a scar above her right eye from the beating she took from a policeman’s club 50 years ago on “Bloody Sunday,” when roughly 600 peaceful civil rights activists were attacked crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Lowery, who was just 14 at the time, remains proud of her role in the March 7, 1965, incident that appalled the nation and became a catalyst for the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But as President Barack Obama prepares to visit Selma on Saturday to commemorate the event’s 50th anniversary, she is among the marchers who lament what they see as a failure to capitalize on their hard-fought victory for social progress.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Lowery said her frustration extended to those protesting the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black, by a white police officer last year in Ferguson, Missouri.
“While you were walking with your hand up, you should have had your hand in the voting booth or on that ballot,” she said, referring to protesters’ “hands up, don’t shoot” chant, while noting that Ferguson is a majority-black city run by whites.
“You are the majority ethnic group and you don’t get out and vote. You have elected what you hate, or what hates you,” said Lowery, now a mental health counselor in Selma.
Ricky Brown, 59, who returned to Selma last year from Michigan after three decades away, recalls being kept home by his mother on the day of the march. He watched the violence unfold before getting his BB gun and firing from his window at the horses of white state troopers and local police who shot teargas into the crowd and beat dozens of protesters.
Brown, a landscaper, said the racial tensions that he remembers from the Selma of his youth persist.
“They don’t speak unless I speak,” he said, referring to white residents in town. “When I speak, they are surprised or irritated by it.”
However, he sees the election of Barack Obama as the United States’ first black president in 2008 as a sign of how far the country has come.
“I’m just happy that things are changing gradually,” he said. “I’ll be gone before things ever change the way they really should be, where we can all be people.”
In addition to a speech by Obama this weekend, events to mark the anniversary in Selma will include a music festival, workshops on topics from voting rights to environmental justice and a march across the bridge.
Joanne Bland, 61, the co-founder of a voting rights museum in Selma who also marched on Bloody Sunday, said she regrets that fewer young people seem to be pushing for social justice than in her time but remains hopeful the dynamic will change.
“They have more rights than we had in the ’60s. They have more money, all this modern technology,” she said. “Man, if we would have had that, we’d have had a black president in ’72.”
FRENCH VERSION
Lowery, qui n’avait que 14 dans le temps, reste fier de son rôledans l’incident du 7 mars 1965, qui a choqué la nation et est devenu un catalyseur pour le point de repère Voting Rights Actde 1965.
Mais le Président Barack Obama s’apprête à visiter Selma samedipour commémorer le 50e anniversaire de l’événement, elle estparmi les marcheurs qui déplorent ce qu’ils considèrent commeun échec de capitaliser sur leur victoire âprement disputée pourle progrès social.
Dans une interview à Reuters la semaine dernière, Lowery dit safrustration s’étendue à ceux pour protester contre la mort deMichael Brown, 18 ans, qui était noir, par un policier blancl’année dernière à Ferguson, Missouri.
« Alors que vous marchiez avec votre coup de main, vousauraient dû votre main dans l’isoloir ou sur ce scrutin, » dit-elle,se référant au chant « hands up, ne tirez pas » des manifestants,tout en notant que Ferguson est une ville de la majorité noiredirigée par des blancs.
“Vous êtes le groupe ethnique majoritaire et vous ne sortez etvoter. Vous avez choisi ce que vous détestez, ou ce qui vous hait, » dit Lowery, maintenant un conseiller en santé mentale à Selma.
Ricky Brown, 59, qui revint à Selma l’an dernier du Michiganaprès trois décennies de suite, se souvient gardée la maison desa mère le jour de la marche. Il a vu la violence se déroulentavant d’obtenir son pistolet de BB et tiré depuis sa fenêtre àchevaux des cavaliers État blanc et de la police locale qui a tirédes gaz lacrymogènes dans la foule et beat dizaines demanifestants.
Brown, un paysagiste, dit persistent les tensions raciales qui sesouvient-il de la Selma de sa jeunesse.
« Ils ne parlent pas à moins que je parle », dit-il, en se référantaux résidents blancs dans la ville. « Quand je parle, ils sont surprisou irritée par ce dernier. »
Cependant, il voit l’élection de Barack Obama comme premierprésident noir des États-Unis en 2008 comme un signe de dansquelle mesure le pays est venu.
« Je suis juste heureux que les choses changent peu à peu », dit-il. « Je serai parti avant que jamais, les choses changent la façon dont ils devraient vraiment être, où nous pouvons tous être desgens. »
En plus d’un discours prononcé par Obama ce week-end,événements pour marquer l’anniversaire à Selma comprendra unfestival de musique, des ateliers sur des sujets de droits de votepour la justice environnementale et une marche sur le pont.
Joanne Bland, 61, le co-fondateur d’un musée des droits de voteà Selma, qui a aussi marché sur Bloody Sunday, a dit qu’elleregrette que les moins jeunes semblent pousser pour la justicesociale que dans son temps mais reste optimiste, que ladynamique va changer.
“Ils ont plus de droits que nous avons eu dans les années 60. “Ilsont plus d’argent, toute cette technologie moderne, dit-elle. « L’homme, si nous aurions eu qui, nous aurions un président noiren 72. »
