Page 26 - WTP VOl. XII #1

It’s Time (continued from page 12) alone boggle the mind.
1. How many jelly beans are in the jar in front of you?
2. How many windows can be counted at the White House in Washington, D.C.?
3. What does a Writ of Certiorari, Writ of Error Coram Nobis, and Subpoena Duces Tecum mean?
Voter suppression was much blunter in the 1960s, but the methods used today are no less pernicious, including making it harder to vote by mail, proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration, photo ID requirements, limiting Election Day registration, partisan gerrymandering, and voter-purging.
later that night, we found that there were no rooms reserved for us. The hotel staff scrambled to find rooms for some of us, but twenty-three people were still left without accommodations. Arrangements were made at a nearby motel for those people. Around 5:00 AM, some members of that group awoke to the sounds of arguing and then gunshots. Later that morning, they learned that a woman had been murdered—a painful reminder of the scourge of
gun violence and of the ceaseless violence towards women.
The morning before, just before our outdoor concert with the students, we had been told that a member of our group had tested positive for COVID. Another
The voices from Birmingham and Selma are impor- tant not only for their descriptions of the injustices of the past, but also for their celebration of the bravery of those who struggled—all those sometimes-name- less foot soldiers. And to remind us that the work is far from over. Mr. Carrington told us that the National Park Service is in the process of recording these oral histories for posterity.
At the end of our day in Selma, we walked in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of the three well-known attempts to march the fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. The march, initiated in response to the shooting death of civil rights protes- tor Jimmie Lee Jackson at the hands of a state trooper, was also the brainchild of James Bevel of Children’s Crusade fame. The first attempt, on March 7, came
to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” as many marchers, including John Lewis, were severely beaten. JoAnne Bland referred to the second march, on March 9, as “Turn-Around-Tuesday.” Facing an injunction, the marchers stopped, with Martin Luther King kneel- ing before a phalanx of law enforcement officials on the other side of the bridge. (James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, was beaten and murdered later that evening by white supremacists.) On March 21, with the support of National Guard troops, the march successfully began, arriving on March 25 in Montgomery, where the marchers were joined by thousands of people on the capitol steps. Walking up one side of the bridge and down the other, I felt chills, as we reenacted, in our small way, the iconic marches. The feeling from crossing the bridge lingered with me as we drove to Montgomery along the route that the marchers took.
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When our chorus arrived at our hotel in Montgomery
“At the end of our day in Selma, we
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walked in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of
the three well-known attempts to march the fifty miles from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.“
would test positive this day. (Ten people would even- tually get it during the trip and would be left behind to quarantine at various points along the way.) After I had joined the chorus, the only thing that would have stood in the way of my going on this trip was my fear of getting COVID. I had been very cautious through- out the pandemic. This would be my first time on an airplane and my first time being with a large group of people. Some of my friends didn’t think I would really go. But, as an indication of how important this trip was to me, I had put all of that aside. It’s time, I had decided. Now, I couldn’t believe that we were facing
a COVID outbreak on the trip. I briefly thought about returning home, even spending some time looking at flights and talking to my wife about it, but I eventually decided to stay and take my chances—some combi- nation of inertia and fear of missing out.
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