John P. Pettaway ferried freedom fighters to mass meetings in Selma

John Pearlie Pettaway and his daughters, Cheryl Pettaway
Colvin (left) and Brenda Pettaway Henderson (right).
Photo courtesy of the Pettaway family.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a two-part series on the life and legacy of John Pearlie Pettaway, who left an indelible mark on Selma, Ala., during the Civil Rights Movement.

 

MEMPHIS, TN – The late John Pearlie Pettaway was 95 years old when the pastor at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Selma, Ala., eulogized him on May 31, 2025. After the service, he was laid to rest in Pineview Memory Gardens in Valley Grande, Ala.

Pettaway was a deacon at Shiloh and had a penchant for singing. But he was more than that to Cheryl Pettaway Colvin and Brenda Pettaway Henderson, who remember their father as a foot soldier in Selma during the turbulent Civil Rights Movement.

“He was a master of many trades,” added Colvin, the youngest of Pettaway and his wife Jeanette James Pettaway’s four children, including Ronald Pettaway, who is deceased, and Deborah Pettaway.

Pettaway was born in Autauga County, Ala., on April 20, 1929, according to his birth certificate. But he would use May 20, 1929, as his date of birth. However, before his death on May 16, 2025, he’d eked out a modest living and raised a family, even during perilous times for a Black man in Selma.  

In Selma, Pettaway was known for his work ethics. It wasn’t unusual for him to work several jobs and purchase vehicles to repair for resale. His last position was with Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. He was also an entrepreneur and drove a cab.

But it was Pettaway’s work in the movement that garnered the most attention and kindled in Colvin and Henderson fond memories and a sense of pride. He didn’t march, per se, but he was active, nonetheless.

When Henderson was born, Jeanette James was 15 and living with her mother. But that didn’t stop Pettaway from visiting his first born. “I was 10 years old when he and my mom married,” she said. 

Henderson described her father as kind, the “fun-type,” and interactive. “He made sure I got to school…had food…and got my homework done,” she said, recalling when he escorted her to the debutante’s ball. 

“Everybody loved my dad,” Colvin added.

Pettaway drove the cab at night for both South Wind Cab Company and Deluxe Cab Company. His passengers included freedom fighters for whom he would ferry to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church and First Baptist Church for mass meetings in Selma.

Pettaway met a white woman from up North who was intrigued by Southern culture. She was a woman of means, Henderson said. “I can remember her saying, ‘You know, I need my daughter to be a part of this.’” 

Colvin was relatively young at that time but could sort through a few names of people who fought for justice and a few who visited the Pettaway home, such as “Jennifer,” the white woman’s daughter.

“She was a very small and timid white girl who lived in the same house with us. She slept in the same bed with me,” said Henderson, who eventually became a foot soldier herself. A retired educator, she is the current chair of Elmore County Democratic Party.

When Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister and civil rights activist from Boston, came to Selma in 1965 to participate in the marches for voting rights, “My dad brought him to the house with his good friend,” Henderson said. “He came to the house twice.”

On March 9, white segregationists brutally beat Rev. Reeb following "Bloody Sunday” two days earlier. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had urged the minister to come to Selma, delivered his eulogy at Brown Chapel.

Pettaway himself was nearly caught up in the melee on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He was fortunate, though, because he’d hung back at the foot of the bridge and ran for his life.

Though Colvin was born in 1962, she was cognizant of the movement via stories that were told by her father and sister. She is now active in the Annual Foot Soldiers Breakfast Foundation in Selma. 

“I appreciate Mr. Charles Mauldin, the founder,” said Colvin, a certified end-of-life doula providing support to individuals during their final days. “He has done a superb job of making certain that foot soldiers receive recognition.”

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Campbell’s ‘Foot’ Man Character Honors ‘60s ‘Foot Soldiers’

 

Stanley Campbell Sr. as the Memphis 
“Foot” Man on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
in Selma, Ala. (Courtesy photo) 

MEMPHIS, TN – A small town in Mississippi felt eerie to Stanley Campbell Sr. in March when he was scouting for a spot to film a character that he’d created to pay tribute to the “foot soldiers” of the civil rights movement.

He described the area as wooded with trees hovering over him. He’d mistakenly turned down a beaten path and noticed that pieces of clothing were strewn where he’d ventured a quarter mile on foot.

“I’d turned down the wrong road,” Campbell said. He was looking for an ideal location to shoot video of himself as the Memphis “Foot” Man – but not down this eerie path into nothingness.

He was unaware that he’d veered not far from Philadelphia, Miss., where civil rights activists Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were murdered and buried in 1964.

He shuddered just thinking about their gruesome death and regretted that he’d gone off course. “I don’t want to do that again,” he admonished himself. “I didn’t know what I was thinking.” 

He’d begun imagining Black bodies swinging from taut tree limbs, the Klan, the worst. His nerves were frayed. Then Billy Holiday’s hauntingly graphic song, “Strange Fruit,” came to his mind.

She sang: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/ Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees…”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t see bodies hanging from trees,” said Campbell, adding, “I was in a time zone that went back to the 1960s.”

Then it dawned on him that the wooded area was conducive for a video shoot after all. 

“It was the best decision I’d made,” said Campbell, a visual artist, playwright, producer, activist, humanitarian, and owner of The House of Mtenzi, a museum that honors his late mother, Thelma Brownlee.

Campbell, the youngest of nine children, had been to the 58^th annual [Edmund Pettus] Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, Ala., and wandered through the heart of Mississippi en route to Memphis.

“I was in the Deep Delta,” said Campbell, and transformed himself into the Memphis “Foot” Man, one who travels “one step at a time” to “remind, educate and rebuild,” his motto.

Since his character’s creation in March, Campbell’s Memphis “Foot” Man has traveled to once turbulent areas during the civil rights movement where gallant foot soldiers trod by day and night seeking justice and freedom.

He’s been to Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., where The Little Rock Nine in 1957 were confronted by an angry white mob and the Arkansas National Guard for trying to enter the school building.

He also traveled to Tulsa, Okla., where a white mob in 1921 rained down bombs on “Black Wall Street” in the Greenwood District and massacred scores of Black residents in this wealthy Black community.

At home, in Memphis, the “Foot” man called attention to Room 306 at the National Civil Rights Museum, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying on that fateful day in 1968 when it was The Lorraine Motel.

The Memphis “Foot” Man, Campbell explained, embodies “the image of all the civil rights fighters – the 1960s trench coat, the skinny necktie, the shades, the brim” – who fought valiantly to change the status quo.

“When I see the face, the image, of the Memphis ‘Foot’ Man, it gives me a visible illusion of the past, the present and the future,” said Drew McCraven III, CEO of Millennial Entertainment and a Campbell ally.

“The picture from Selma, Ala., that he took puts you in the mindset of what our ancestors had to go through in the process of their struggle when they marched across the bridge in Alabama, in Selma,” McCraven explained.

He continued: “When I look at the picture of him in the mask with the flag of the United States, it takes me through the struggle of where we are now and where we are going. That’s what he represents.”

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-bound Memphians ready to roll

      Elaine Lee Turner didn’t need words to describe the pandemonium that broke out on U.S. Route 80 in Selma, Ala. However, those who reported the news on March 7, 1965, and thereafter, were calling that moment in history “Bloody Sunday.”

      On that fateful day, more than 600 civil rights marchers were pummeled with billy clubs and tear-gassed in a horrendous show of force by state and local lawmen hell-bent on stopping the determined marchers from crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge into neighboring Montgomery.

      Turner, a 20-year-old junior at LeMoyne College that year, wasn’t there on Bloody Sunday, but was disturbed nonetheless by those horrific images of wanton injustice at the behest of law enforcement.

Elaine Lee Turner

      “They just wanted the right to vote,” said Turner, who heeded the call from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to join the nationwide throng of freedom fighters for a third attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery’s state capitol.

      Although the 54-mile Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended tragically the first time, Turner was among the sea of freedom fighters making their presence felt and their demands known. Those images of Bloody Sunday, however, still tug at Turner every now and then.

      On Sunday (March 8th), Turner, the owner of Heritage Tours of Memphis, will return to Selma with a busload to commemorate Bloody Sunday and to reenact that pivotal moment in history 50 years ago that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

      A reporter from The New Tri-State Defender will also be among the group to offer a unique perspective via Twitter feed, photos and news stories to reflect the journey from Memphis to Selma and back.

      The pre-march rally will start at Brown Chapel AME Church, the site of the now famous march in 1965. Marchers will also cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma and return for a rally at the foot of the bridge to salute the “foot soldiers.”

      In 1965, Turner was stirred to action before the fight for justice, freedom and equality was beginning to gain traction. She is still just as spry, dedicated and duty-bound to make life better for African Americans in 2015. The trip to Selma, she said, is a reminder of how far African Americans have come.

      “It’s hard to describe my feelings now,” said Turner, who was arrested numerous times in the ’60s for participating in the civil rights movement. Many of her siblings were arrested a number of times as well, which caught the nation’s attention as a family of freedom fighters.

      “In reflecting on the beatings and severity in 1965 Selma, we won our rights,” said Turner, “but some of them are being challenged today.”

African Americans, she said, should not put aside their marching shoes. “We still have to march to maintain the rights that we fought so hard for. We have to be the guardians of those rights and not take them for granted.”

      Turner alluded to today’s justice system and its inability to administer justice in the recent wave of police-associated deaths involving young African-American men. Cases in point: Michael Brown Jr., Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.

      “We’ve fought for a lot of rights, but there is still trouble in our justice system,” Turner said. “We just have to continue the struggle.”

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.