Reflections of ‘Bloody Sunday’ from the daughters of a foot soldier

John Pearlie Pettaway, who was nearly caught 
up in the melee on ‘Bloody Sunday,’ and his 
daughter, Cheryl Pettaway Colvin. (Photo
courtesy of the Pettaway family) 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of a two-part series on the life and legacy of John Pearlie Pettaway.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – On March 7, 1965, pandemonium swept across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. From John Pearlie Pettaway’s vantage point at the foot of the bridge, he could see a horde of people scattering in fear and trepidation.

“Dad never got to cross the bridge that day,” said Cheryl Pettaway Colvin, recalling the fury that her father described on that fateful day. “As he was standing at the foot of the bridge, he said he saw people at the top turning in slow motion.” 

Colvin illustrated the horrid scene based on her father’s recollection. “He said it was almost the way it looks in a hunter’s eyes when one shoots into a pack of birds. They ripple off to avoid being shot.”

Fearing the worst, Pettaway broke and ran. “He always told the story that he and his friend, Dan Jones, out-ran everybody,” said Brenda Pettaway Henderson, the oldest of Pettaway and Jeanette James Pettaway’s four children.

Henderson was on the scene near the bridge. At 15, she was actively involved in the movement and marching with the adults. “All I could think about was getting home,” she said. “I was not going to the church, because you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Returning to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where marchers had begun their trek, wasn’t Henderson’s first thought. So, she ran and kept running. “Everywhere you went you heard sirens. I was scared,” she said unabashedly. “The church was a safe place, but home was safer.”

Pettaway finally made it home to the George Washington Carver housing projects, where the Pettaway family and other civil rights leaders and marchers lived. “He said, ‘We got to get your mom,’” who was working at The Walton Theater. “So, he went and got my brother and my two sisters.”

When Pettaway returned home with his wife and children, he exited the car and encountered burly state troopers on horseback. “He (state trooper) pulled that horse in front of my dad and that horse reared,” Henderson said.

The brute size of the white man straddling a huge horse frightened Henderson. She thought he was going to beat them. “We’re just trying to get to the house,” she remembered her father telling the state trooper. “I remember him (state trooper) saying, ‘You better get there fast! Right now! And you better not come back out!’”

 What transpired on that day in Selma was echoed around the world, etched in the annals of American history, and seared into the consciousness of the surviving foot soldiers. Known as “Bloody Sunday,” that day was absolute mayhem.

The Civil Rights Movement also yielded innumerable arrests. But Pettaway, Henderson said, was never arrested. But she was arrested once, taken by patty wagon to a detention site, and released after 12 hours. 

Henderson contends that detention was a horrible experience for some detainees. “Girls were actually raped in those jails,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Boys were raped too,” Colvin added. “I had the opportunity to interview people in Marion, Ala., who had been raped. Many people didn’t want their names mentioned. They didn’t want that over their heads.”

When Colvin moved back to Selma after a stint elsewhere, she learned more about her father as his caregiver. “I got to understand why he did certain things,” she said. “He said I was different — not in an admirable way.”

Colvin loves farming, riding horses, the outdoors, and once sheared sheep. Her father, she said, abhorred that life. “He didn’t want his children to ever become farmers. He wanted all of us in school to get an education.”

 

Both Henderson and Colvin did just that.

 

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Selma and the promise of youth

      Drawn by an acknowledged “need” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the multitude in Selma, Ala. amply reflected the promise of youth.

      When Tamara Williams first heard that plans were being developed to call attention to the beatings of 600 civil rights demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7th, 1965, the 13-year-old Soulsville Charter School student quickly concluded she knew that she needed to be in Selma.

      “I expected to go on this trip. I wanted to see for myself and didn’t want nobody to tell me,” said Williams, who made her way to the Dallas County town with a busload from Memphis.

Temeshia Washington, a resident of Columbus, Ga.,
photographed her experience in Selma, Ala.

      “I love history,” the self-proclaimed history buff said. “ I love talking about history. And I love writing about it.”

      College students Damou Traore and Ashanti Carr, both juniors at The LeMoyne Owen College, sauntered amid the massive crowd, observing the frenzy. Each was impacted by the events in Selma in personal ways.

      Traore’s view of Selma’s 1965 voting rights campaign was juxtaposed against the military domination of Guinea Conakry in West Africa, where he was born.

      “The images in Selma leave you with a bitter taste,” said Traore, 21, whose father forbade him to attend a political rally that ended with people getting shot by the military.

      “I was 14, and that’s when I got interested in politics,” he said.

      Born in San Diego, Calif., Carr, 22, had seen replays of the hard-to-watch TV images of the atrocity unleashed in Selma. She’d also watched Alex Haley’s “Roots” and preserved those searing memories as well.

      “My mom wanted us to be proud of our roots,” said Carr. “And she wanted us to know where we came from.”

      Both Traore and Carr assessed the commemorative anniversary as a learning experience that they could recall at a moment’s notice.

      “To watch people’s reactions, people who were there, it feels wonderful,” said Carr, an English major planning to enlist in the Navy. “It’s the same feeling you get when you visit the National Civil Rights Museum.”

      “It was my first time attending a civil rights movement,” said Traore, studying political science at LeMoyne. “It’s been one of the best (feelings) seeing people come together to celebrate – not just one person’s rights, but the rights of people as a whole.”

      Traore is looking forward to the future when he can work with the American government and “contribute as much as possible as a politician.”

      Determined to “keep up with everything” in the way of life-changing events, Carr is still holding on to the newspaper coverage of President Obama’s inauguration.

      Alice Knight, a great-grandmother, made the trip to Selma from Pensacola, Fla., with her son and grandchildren, including eight-year-old LaBron Baldwin.

      “We have made some progress,” said Knight, “but we still have a long ways to go.”

      Grandson LaBron said he was happy just to be in Selma to witness history unfold. He knew what the demonstrators were trying to accomplish in 1965 and tried to sum it up.

      “People should have the right to do what they want,” he said.

      With her 6-month-old baby cradled in a baby sling, Temeshia Washington and her husband, Chris, made their way through the dense crowd with their other five young children to witness the historic event. With her Nikon, she preserved some special moments.

      The 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday is part of the ongoing struggle, said Washington, a resident of Columbus, Ga.

      “It’s history.”

Selma's foot soldiers retrace their steps

      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.”

Selma's historic call: Looking back, marching forward

      

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II leads marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.

      A helicopter hovered above, a small plane zipped across the airspace and a tiny drone flew over the throng of marchers making their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday afternoon (March 8th) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”

      As far as one’s eyes could see, the throng – perhaps as many as 70,000 – stretched up and down U.S. Route 80 and in between cross-streets drawn by the memory of that horrific event in 1965 Selma, Ala., when blood was spilled in pursuit of the right to vote.

      Men, women and children from myriad parts of the country formed a 2015 chorus of multi-generational, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic marchers singing in unison the freedom songs that set the tone and temperament of the tumultuous civil rights movement: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” and “We Shall Overcome.”

      The Edmund Pettus Bridge stretches across the Alabama River, standing as a symbol of defiance and a stark reminder of the tragic events that still wrench hearts 50 years later.

      The death of Jimmy Lee Jackson ignited the movement in Selma, said the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and leader of the North Carolina Forward Together Moral Movement, a healthcare initiative.

      Jackson was a civil rights activist in Marion, Ala., and a deacon in the Baptist church when an Alabama state trooper shot him on Feb. 18th, 1965. He died eight days later; the victim of what Barber calls an “assassination.”

      Selma’s hate also claimed the life of the Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who was beaten to death. Seventeen members of Reeb’s family commemorated Bloody Sunday and reminded the marchers of Reeb’s gallantry and commitment to the “movement.”

      “We came here, 17 of us, to stand with you in love and solidarity,” Reeb’s daughter said. “We are going to keep marching with you until justice is served.”

      A group of white supremacists attacked her father on March 9th, 1965, after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for the nation’s clergy to support the second attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery. Reeb died two days later.

      About five months later (Aug. 6th), the price paid by the Selma-connected faithful helped usher in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1966 bolstered that landmark legislation. Now, said Barber, “It’s time to fight again.”

      Barber’s resolve is tied to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2013 decision striking down Section 4 as unconstitutional. “Chief Justice John Roberts said there was not enough racism in America to justify the Voting Rights Act,” Barber told the marchers.

      “They did more with less. We have to do more with more,” said Barber, referring to the leaders and foot soldiers that fought and died for the right to vote in 1965 and encouraging the leaders and foot soldiers of today to call upon the moxie within themselves.

      He blamed the Tea Party and the Koch brothers (Charles G. and David H. Koch) for today’s voter suppression tactics, saying the brothers, in part, are duly responsible.

      “Voting is a right, a responsibility that we must exercise, and a ritual that everyone does,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers and a member of the AFL-CIO.

      While Barber and Weingarten both emphasized the importance of voting, Lucille Price lamented that young people don’t always participate in the political process.

      “You know, young people piss me off because they don’t vote,” said Price, part of the Memphis contingent that joined people from all over the country at the historic event. The influx swelled the small Dallas County town up to its fringes.

      Throughout the day, a cadre of young men tapped a rhythmic beat on djembe drums, entrepreneurs hawked food items and souvenirs, and the media swarmed over the humongous crowd.

      “My feet are tired,” said Memphian Carolyn Matthews, who walked around almost non-stop for more than three hours until she finally tuckered out.

      Matthews was part of a contingent of 50 Memphians that bussed into Selma on Sunday at noon. All, including the youngest marchers, were just as drained. Elaine Lee Turner, owner of Heritage Tours of Memphis, who chartered the bus to Selma, noted that she, too, could use some rest.

      On Sunday evening, after a day none of them will ever forget, the travel-weary but soul-filled Memphians re-boarded their bus, recalled what intrigued them in Selma, and then slumbered as much as they could on the way back home.