Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what’s inside.

Haley (00:20)
This week, Gary, Mary, and Eryn reflect on an especially important moment in the civil rights movement: the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. We’ll explore how the events of Selma fit into the bigger picture of the civil rights movement and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. What can this event teach us about the significance of turning points in a movement and what lessons from it are still very relevant today?

Mary (00:50)
One way to think about the history of the United States is to consider how we’re constantly working to ensure our country is faithful to these founding ideals of liberty, equality, and justice. This work can be frustratingly slow. It’s argumentative, it’s messy, it could be violent. It requires, in the words of John Lewis, good trouble, necessary trouble. Lewis was no stranger to trouble from his work as a leader in the civil rights movement. And his recent passing gives us an opportunity to reflect on what the civil rights movement means, as well as how do specific moments within this movement capture our imagination? On March 7, 1965, Lewis led a group of nonviolent protesters across the bridge and was brutally attacked by the police. This was just one moment later dubbed Bloody Sunday and the long struggle of the civil rights movement, but it stands out in our memory. So what happened that day? Why this moment? What does it tell us about this larger struggle, this larger saga playing out across American history?

Gary (02:08)
These moments, these elements, when you think of even history classes up here, but they’re part and parcel of a much larger thing. And when we say the word movement itself is a really interesting concept. But I really like the idea of sometimes you need to have drilled down to a moment, a day or two, an event to be able to then take a look at the bigger picture. And exactly like you were saying before, movements take time and people. And I was looking through scopes and sequences, and I think of it in those teachers’ point of view of there’s so much to tackle, and they go into concepts of equality and rights. And so I think that’s a great question to ask in terms of, all right, if you are taking a look at the whole civil rights movement, how does Selma fit into that?

Eryn (03:03)
We talk about turning points a lot. And Selma was definitely one of these turning points because I think just like you were saying, Gary, there are so many elements that led up to something like, of course, after Bloody Sunday, Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, but that was the turning point. But there were all these other things that were kind of bubbling beneath the surface. And we’re also happening to create this momentous movement, and it didn’t all happen in a vacuum.

Gary (03:39)
So should we pull all the way back to what Mary was talking about before, which is what are the big foundational concepts or principles that are going to lead us to this event happening?

Mary (03:51)
We talked about the importance of moments and movements because teachers have so much to cover and there’s just so much there’s so much history. So it’s useful to focus in on one specific thing. And this particular event happens in Selma, Alabama. So why Selma, Alabama? It’s a town in central Alabama. It’s really not that large. But in 1963, African Americans made up roughly half of the voting-age population, but only 1% of voting-age African Americans were registered to vote. So that’s kind of interesting because according to the United States Constitution, the 15th Amendment, in 1870, all men can vote. And in 1920, the 19th Amendment is all women can vote. So why weren’t African American men and women why weren’t they voting in Selma, Alabama? I mean, 1%?

Gary (04:46)
And I think that raises the question. So we then are valuing voting, right, and valuing the extension of voting and the right to vote to all people of a certain age. So can we backtrack there and see to just orient the conversation about this? What is the value there? What is the importance? Why vote?

Mary (05:17)
That’s a big question. If you think about it, your vote is your voice. It’s the only place where everyone is truly is equal. We’re really equal in the voting booth because your name is not attached to it. It’s your chance to elect your representatives, to make changes in your community. So if you don’t vote, then you have no voice. And I feel like I’m getting on my teacher’s soapbox here, but our government is participatory you shouldn’t just observe it. You are an actor. You can affect change.

Eryn (05:58)
I think it’s one of those ideas that’s just completely ingrained. And when we think of, like, what it means to be a citizen of the United States and voting for our representatives is a big part of that. So if you’re denied that, it’s like being denied a quintessential part of being that citizen of the United States.

Gary (06:22)
So that’s very powerful that having the voice is a very important part of this humanity that we’re talking about, and humans are equal. And so the concept of a movement is a tough thing to teach because it takes so much time and so many elements, but zeroing in on of all of the things that all the pieces and all the ideas and all the elements that made up this movement to zero in on among these things is a fundamental equality of people. And with that comes a voice. And that voice is manifested in voting. And when it is obvious that there is some obstacle to voting where that voice is being denied, then it is also significant that people are choosing to call attention to and to do something about that. And one of these ways was this moment.

Mary (07:20)
Right. I think that in 1965, we backtrack one year. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 basically prohibits discrimination in public places. So integrating hotels, integrating restaurants, et cetera. The bill did not address voting rights, and this was something that the NAACP wanted in the legislation. And SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was working in Selma to try to get African Americans to register to vote because they recognize, SNCC, NAACP, that voting is such an integral part of our political system. And African Americans, to be equal, have their equal, rightful voice in this democracy, need to have that right to vote. And as I said before, 1% of the population was registered to vote. So why what’s happening in Selma that’s keeping these men and women from registering to vote? The simple answer is they’re afraid to because they’re met with just this disgusting, blatant racism and intimidation when they try to do so. Even black ministers were afraid to host SNCC volunteers holding registration rallies in their churches. They were afraid of white retribution. So Selma was particularly bad in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. I’ll refer to them as SNCC from now on because it’s kind of a mouthful. So these are a group of students that are working within the civil rights movement is targeting Selma for this specific reason. It’s really bad. We need to draw attention to it, and this is their cause. Voting rights.

Eryn (09:08)
They would say, oh, you sorry, you have the wrong polling place, the wrong date, the wrong time, or they give you a literacy test or an application or any sort of other tests that had incredibly convoluted questions.

Gary (09:20)
Those tests are interesting to me because A, they’re not administered to everybody was at the discretion at the polling to administer to whomever they wanted to administer them to. Two, you could fail the entire thing and not be able to vote if you get one wrong. I mean, here’s a sample question from one of them. This one’s actually from Louisiana. I thought this was interesting. Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in same line. Original types smaller and first-line ending at comma, but capitalize the fifth word that you write.

Eryn (09:52)
That sounds like an LSAT question.

Gary (09:54)
30 of these in ten minutes. And if you fail to do it in that time.

Eryn (09:57)
It’s a logic game. Yeah, well, and they were saying that even students who had graduated from universities were getting denied the right to vote. They are incredibly intelligent people. They literally made it impossible. I don’t even know what you just said. It literally just sounded like another language.

Gary (10:18)
So we’ve established that there is a value to understanding the humanity of others that within this, other voices should be heard. And this is manifested through voting. And we can say that for some of the population, there were clear obstacles and in many cases, physical obstacles to being heard and to one’s own humanity. So that leads us then to this idea of, I think, movements in general and how we can locate a moment like Selma in a bigger movement.

Mary (10:57)
I think that’s fair. I think that the other thing that’s really interesting about Selma in particular so that the circumstances of the barriers facing African Americans who are trying to vote. We have all of these tests and things like that. You also have just violence. So if you try to register, SNCC trying to bring people to the courthouse to register and the cops are there with clubs and cattle prods, it’s clearly threatening. And so because it’s so bad, Martin Luther King decides to come to Selma in January 1965. King has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. So where King goes, it’s national news. Of course, Martin Luther King and SNCC are devoted to nonviolent tactics, but they’re still planning a campaign. It’s not a military campaign because they’re not going to be violent, but it’s just as thought out. It’s just as planned. They’re going to go there and they’re going to expose the violence and just the barriers that are facing African Americans when they try to register to vote. So it’s just sort of shining a light to make sure the rest of the country can understand what’s happening.

Eryn (12:12)
Martin Luther King gave a statement to the press and said the goal of the demonstrations in Selma as elsewhere, was to dramatize the existence of injustice and to bring about the presence of justice by methods of nonviolence and to really call attention to that.

Gary (12:31)
Now, I think it’s worth noting, and this is a question I’m going to toss out there in terms of, as you’re speaking, I’m thinking this idea that knowing that attention is going to be brought, understanding that the attention of the outside world through the news or discussions or what happens there is so important and yet also the message that it’s not violent, it sounds a lot like that. This movement is part of just civil rights movements in general. And it reminds me of so much of how these ideas were revoked from time long before, like, say, with Gandhi.

Mary (13:12)
Yes. As a former world history teacher, every time I look at Martin Luther King, I have to think about Gandhi. And I think that maybe exploring some of those connections might be worth doing after we take a quick break.

Mary (13:38)
Hello, Fabric of History listeners. Join the Bill of Rights Institute and fellow educators this fall as we explore topics such as women’s suffrage, the executive branch, and how to use Socratic discussion with your students. See the link in Show Notes, and we hope you’ll join us. And now back to the show.

Mary (14:00)
So before our break, we were talking about the influence of Gandhi and this idea of nonviolent protest. So in Selma in 1965, there’s this decision to have a March. So people are going to peacefully nonviolently walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. The capital is 54 miles in protest that they cannot vote. Their voice is being suppressed. They’re being met with all of these obstacles, whether it’s these sort of ridiculous tests as they try to register to vote or outright intimidation. Does your employer know that you’re here to police roughing them up? So this March is planned because it’s going to focus attention on these nonviolent demonstrations.

Mary (14:48)
They are counting on a violent reaction. When I say they I mean, Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and SNCC is counting on a violent reaction, and they want the cameras there so everyone will see it and be shocked by it. And this is something that again, King was really influenced by Gandhi, who wanted the attention, who Gandhi is saying. He says that you have to meet with the expectation is that there will be a violent response. You are going to be met with some sort of violent resistance, but then they have your broken body, but they still don’t have your obedience. And that’s what you have to be ready to do. And I think if you stop and think about what that means, would you as an individual be ready to do that? That’s a huge thing to ask, to know that you are going to encounter someone who’s going to beat the crap out of you or kill you. And are you just going to you’re committed to not fighting back? That’s insanely powerful.

Eryn (15:56)
And it also highlights that the idea that we’re talking about earlier about how much they value the right to vote and having that sense of equality, and it was almost kind of like they still don’t have what you said. They still don’t have your obedience.

Mary (16:16)
Yeah.

Eryn (16:16)
Yeah. So this really, really strong sense of power for them to continue to believe that this was right and fight for that message. And like you said, I think so many of us have now just taken the idea and the right to vote for granted that we don’t really think about what not having that right would look and feel like.

Mary (16:57)
I was just going to say again, just the idea of if you’re talking about a movement and they take so long and we tend to zero in on moments just because it’s easier for us to wrap our head around. And then there are actual moments that are turning points. But something that is easy to forget is that it wasn’t just that SNCC shows up in Selma and is trying to get people to vote, and it’s not working. So we plan a March. People are still protesting. They’re being arrested. They’re treated terribly in jail. There are no toilets. There’s buckets there’s 1965 and there are buckets in the jail and there’s school children in the jail, and there’s teachers in the jail just for trying to register to vote. So this is something that all of these things are still going on, and there’s more violence. There’s a young man named Jimmy Lee Johnson is shot to shot in the stomach for being part of these nonviolent protests. So things are I mean, the emotional toll of all of this, this, I think, just adds to the power of those who decided to go on this march. This all happened. You could be killed, but you are still committed to the cause and to nonviolence. You will not fight back. Going back to Gandhi. There’s this wonderful clip in the movie Gandhi that shows a nonviolent protest where there’s this column of people going up to assault mine, which was part of a protest. And they’re just like beaten row after row. It’s so hard to watch. And by the end, all of the kids just had faces like, oh, my God, could you do that? And a lot of them said, no, I would have to fight back. And it’s really hard to do so to have that control of your reaction.

Gary (18:44)
And I think a significant point is that question is so powerful. And as you ask it, I think of myself as an individual, and to say, could I do that? What would that be like? But then to think. But then you’re talking about hundreds, if not thousands of people making those decisions. Supporters. Yeah, those individuals, those individual human beings making those individual, not insignificant decisions is a huge part of that. And I think that’s why the idea of movement is interesting because it’s so encapsulated in a literal movement of a March of so many people and what they encounter. And I think that’s something as you were talking about Gandhi and you’re talking about all of this, I was thinking about an artifact of history that I remember reading years ago, and now, which is a comic book that would have existed. It was published in the 1950s, and it’s the Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. It was a ten-cent comic book. And in it, they not only have a bit of biography of Martin Luther King Jr. But they also go into Gandhi. They have a huge section on this concept. And at the end they print out what’s called the Montgomery Method and how it works. And I think it speaks so much to what we’re talking about with this image of hundreds and thousands of people who are intending to March together with the knowledge that it is dangerous, that there will likely be opposition that can be violent, but also that eyes will be upon them. And I think it’s just interesting imagining how we get from this huge concept of equality down to standing outside on a bridge. I was just looking through this and thinking about this and that’s sort of in here. Right. So in this comic book. There’s a section that starts off with how it works. And just very briefly, the first part is first remember that you can do something about the situation, not just the government or some big organization, but you another thing is that you have to see your enemy as a human being like yourself to try to understand him and sympathize with him, but also to have your enemy, your opposition, stop seeing you as anything other than human. And it goes on to just say like just call attention to what’s going on. Just have eyes through cameras, through thousands of people watching through newspapers, and see that we are standing together in a large group and that we are walking and it is about our fundamental humanity. And then see what happens.

Mary (21:40)
I think, again, you talk about like you said, Gary, you talk about movements and there’s all these individual actors there whose names are sometimes lost, or maybe they’re never put down to begin with. But if we’re going back to Selma, it’s March 7, 1965. This March is going to start. So we’re starting in Selma. We’re going to Montgomery. Martin Luther King is actually not there on the first day. He’s back in Atlanta. He’ll return in two days. And John Lewis, who is the chairman of SNCC, is leading the procession as at the March as it’s going to start out, and they reach the apex. They don’t see anybody at first. And it’s kind of eerie, like what’s going on, because we’re expecting some sort of reaction. And then as they sort of reach the crest of the bridge, they see the state troopers and they have gas masks on their belts, and they are like slapping billy clubs. And they just said, you’re not going to cross this bridge. This March can’t happen. And they say, well, we’re going we’re just peaceably walking. And that’s when the violence starts. And this is what’s termed Bloody Sunday. And the cameras are rolling. So the rest of the United States that evening, once the footage gets back to New York, is going to see what happened on that Edmund Pettus Bridge. And I have this quote from this eight-year-old who was there. All I could see was the outburst of tear gas. I saw people being beaten and I tried to run home as fast as I could. An eight-year-old. And then another woman said the horses were more humane than the troopers. They stepped over fallen victims. So just the scene of, again, incredibly shocking. And it plays on the networks at night. So the United States, if they were watching ABC that evening, which many people were doing in 1965, sees this, and the wrath of the nation comes down upon Selma, Alabama. So if the goal of SNCC was to have to expose this violent reaction to a nonviolent protest demanding a right that was theirs, the vote, they’ve succeeded in that. But again, the cost the personal courage to do that. These individuals making that choice to be part of this movement is really something.

Gary (24:17)
And what an image. And it’s so much why in trying to understand the complexity of things that take centuries and thousands and thousands of people, why even a photograph of a moment in time in this huge mass of people and a huge amount of time is so powerful. And like you said, in a way, that imagery is so key to all of this that people see it and see immediately from the story, large amounts of people who were walking peacefully and then images of tear gas and billy clubs.

Eryn (25:04)
We were just talking that they knew that they were almost likely to meet be met with violence. But it just kind of calls to mind this idea of even though it’s a nonviolent protest and that’s the way that they choose to stand up, it’s almost always when it affects change, met with the opposite, which is violence, which I think is ironic or interesting.

Mary (25:38)
No, I definitely think that’s interesting. And that’s something that I mean, I think that’s your question is one of those timeless questions that I always liked posing to students. And I think you’re not going to get one answer, like does violence lead to change or nonviolence, or is it both? And I think as you said, once America sees the violence on Bloody Sunday, President Johnson, Lyndon Johnson commits to putting the Voting Rights Act legislation before Congress, and it is passed in August. So I think there is a good argument to be made that the violent reaction helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which was a major victory. But it wasn’t the be-all, end-all, of course. So it’s just this movement, this stepping stone. The work is still continuing. And what does it take? What is a proper way to demand change or to protest? Is it peaceful? Even looking at the civil rights movement and other movements for change in American history, you’re going to find, I think, elements of both.

Gary (26:47)
I think that’s really important to think about the idea of movements as a flowing I don’t want to say the word river, but that’s the image that I have. Right. These estuaries, it requires, again, that imagery of time, of direction, of commitment, of large numbers of people. And like you said, sometimes slowly moving forward. Right. But these snapshots, these moments in time to try to capture what the bigger idea is, this idea of, again, equality and togetherness is fascinating. But I think that is important to maybe tease out a little bit of the legacy. Right. So if this is a movement, if this is a long thing happening over time and we took a snapshot here in 1965, what happens after even in the short term you mentioned the act, but even in the short term or somewhat long term after that, in the movement itself.

Mary (27:52)
Maybe we should take a quick break and then we’ll talk about the civil rights movement after summer when we come back and wrap things up.

(28:11)
Securing the Voting Rights Act was a major victory for the civil rights movement, but it’s only one part of the larger struggle for dignity, equality, and justice.

Eryn (28:23)
Yeah, absolutely. And when Gary mentioned this analogy of the river, I was like, yeah, because a river doesn’t stop flowing. Right. And I think it’s the same idea with movements like the civil rights movements. And it is still going on today, and it’s not something that is static. John Lewis posthumously had this letter published, and in it he wrote, Democracy is not a state. It is an act. And each generation must do its part to help build what we call the beloved community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. That’s huge. And it’s going to take forever, right. We are constantly probably going to be doing things to realize what that looks like. So we continue to push onward and push for equality and push for our rights in a democracy.

Gary (29:29)
I think that speaks to the beauty and complexity of movements to hold into your head these two concepts. One, that these individual moments come together to be part of a much larger whole, to try to understand, ‘whole’ w-h-o-l-e. This big concept of this ever-moving thing. And I love that quote. And it’s not a state, it’s not static. It doesn’t just stop. It’s something that continues because everybody continues to work on it. So that’s the significance of a March like this and what we refer to as a snapshot moment of a big thing. But what a significant moment, because wrapping your head around this idea of movements of so many over so much time, overcoming so much. And yet within this giant movement, this river, as you said, you have to have every single element in piece. And by ‘piece,’ P-I-E-C-E. In terms of it all comes down to the choice of a person. And I think that’s amazing. That imagery of a decision by a human being to risk themselves for something greater and then multiplying that by so many over so much time is a really hard concept, but a powerful one to think about.

Mary (30:52)
So now it’s our turn, right? It’s up to us and our individual choices to work towards a more perfect Union. So how can we make that happen? How can we honor those who have come before us in that important work? And how do we play a role in making sure that work continues? So that’s your homework, everybody. Make it count.

Intro/Outro (31:20)
The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exists in a free society. Check out our educational resources and programs on our website mybri.org. Any questions or suggestions for future episodes? We’d love to hear from you. Just email us at comments@fabricofhistory.org and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay connected and informed about future episodes. Thank you for listening.