Selma, Ala. was a bastion of
deep-seated racism as the eyes of the world watched state troopers unleash a
violent fury on voting-rights marchers on March 7th, 1965. Annie Pearl Avery
and Warren Harrison were there, fighting on two different fronts.
The
50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” drew Avery and Harris back to Selma,
placing them among tens of thousands committed to commemorating that fateful
day. Their foot-soldier stories conjure images of a sordid era and yield
lessons for a more promising future.
Fighting back…
Annie
Pearl Avery was shy of 21 and sitting in jail in 1965 when Alabama state
troopers clubbed, trampled and tear-gassed 600 civil rights demonstrators
attempting to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., to the
state capitol in Montgomery 54 miles away.
A
mangled mess of bloody human wreckage on U.S. Route 80 signaled just how tough
the road would be en route to securing voting rights. Avery had incurred the
wrath of the state troopers as well and even scrapped with one of them, she
said.
 |
| Annie Pearl Avery talks about her experience in Selma 1965. |
“I
was arrested that day. Me and the police officer had a physical disagreement,”
said Avery, who sat along the same route telling her story and selling T-shirts
and other paraphernalia to visitors who journeyed to Selma to commemorate the
50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
Some
details are sketchy, said Avery, recalling the tussle that got her arrested and
the minor wounds she sustained while fighting back.
“I
was a moving target,” she said. “You can’t seriously hurt a moving target.”
After
Avery was carted off to jail, hell was unleashed on the bridge. Battered bodies
lay helpless and strewn on the pavement while others sprinted to avoid the
rage.
One
of those battered bodies was identified as 54-year-old Amelia Platts Boynton
Robinson, an activist who helped to organize the local Selma Voting Rights
Movement. Boynton lay unconscious after the melee while the world watched in
horror.
Fifty
years later, the world’s eyes were back on Boynton, 104, “the original foot
soldier.” She returned to Selma in a wheelchair to commemorate that moment in
history with other foot soldiers, the sea of marchers and President Barack
Obama on Saturday (March 7th).
As
Boynton and others were being savagely beaten on that frightful day in 1965,
Avery was unaware that lives were hanging in the balance.
“I
didn’t know they were beating people until I got out of jail,” said Avery, who
was the project director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) in Hale County, Ala.
After
spending nearly hours locked up in Selma, Avery moved on to challenge the
status quo in other cities.
“I
can’t remember the exact number of times I got arrested,” she said. “But I
remember I was arrested in Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Virginia and Gaston, Ala.”
In
Danville, Va., for example, Avery spent 90 days in jail for contempt of court.
She fasted the entire time, she said.
Although
Avery forged ahead during the civil rights movement, she looked back over that
part of her life during the commemorative anniversary and acknowledged that she
was afraid.
“I
was always scared,” she said. “But the thing about fear is once you make the
decision to do something, fear dissipates. You just have to make up your mind
that you will accept the consequences.”
Activism by bus…
Warren
Harrison’s mind is sharp, but his body is frail. That didn’t stop the
92-year-old from rolling his scooter through the thick crowd with his oxygen
tank on the back and over-the-ear nasal cannulas attached to his nose.
On
the side of Harrison’s scooter was a sign that read: “It’s A Privilege PLEASE
Vote.” That message was underscored in Selma in 1965 and other parts of the
segregated South where African Americans were denied the right to vote.
The
carnage of Bloody Sunday unfolded before Harrison on a television screen. The
next day he was in Selma trying to make a difference.
 |
| Warren Harrison transported demonstrators during the tumultuous civil rights movement. |
“I
saw that the marchers were badly beaten and needed blood. So I donated my
blood,” said Harrison, who’d left Detroit to assist the injured demonstrators.
When
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a third march, Harrison was still in
Selma and answered the call. He marched with hundreds to the state house in
Montgomery to assert his right to vote, braving the peril of trying to secure
it.
Fifty
years later, Harrison is still concerned about civil rights and human rights.
The commemoration, he said, meant he needed to be in Selma.
On
Saturday (March 7th), Harrison got a chance to shake President Obama’s hand and
got two hugs from first lady Michelle Obama. The next day, his great niece,
Leslie Clapp, spotted Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson on the bridge in the
crowd.
“I
want to say hello to her,” Harrison told his great niece.
Clapp
made it happen.
“He
jumped off the scooter to meet her,” she said. “They held hands for a moment in
the middle of the bridge.”
Born
in Selma, Harrison moved to Detroit at the age of 10 to live with an older
brother – a decision made necessary after he got into a disagreement with a
white man after an encounter with the man’s son. He was more than willing to
tell that story and others, but preferred talking about the civil rights movement
instead.
A
coast-to-coast bus driver, Harrison bused civil rights demonstrators all over
the country. He drove them to the March on Washington, the Albany Movement in
Albany, Ga., Resurrection City in Washington, D.C., back and forth to Selma,
and other places when transportation was needed.
He
even shuttered the entourage of five U.S. presidents. He stopped driving a
decade ago and now lives in Southfield, Mich., where he is an active member of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“This
trip to Selma,” said Harrison, “has added years to my life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment