Selma to Montgomery - Transcript

James Bevel

SCLC activist

POLITICS STORY

James Bevel: The climate was, I often describe it as about two weeks away from the Civil War in terms of where people have grown emotionally and intellectually. In certain counties like Lowndes County, there was not a black person registered. That’s 15,000 potential voters in Selma, in Dallas County, maybe 200 and some were registered. Perry County next to it had maybe 30 or 40 people registered. If you go out to some other counties, no people registered. And it’s like, so it was the perfect environment to drive home the point to the disenfranchised and to show them how their suffering was related to their disenfranchisement.

GRASSROOTS STORY

James Bevel: So you had this strong community of people, African American people there who were tough. Like Miss Boynton and Reverend Reese and Reverend Anderson, Miss Marie Foster, Miss Moore. You had all of these marvelous Christian people who were like the salt of the earth type people who would stand, but they had no bitterness. The only way we can resolve this anger and disturbance in us, we would have to give ourselves completely to the solution to the problem of disenfranchisement.

MARION STORY

James Bevel: This man is dead -- Jimmie Lee Jackson. We have a duty to join him in death or get the right to vote. We closed down all the schools in Dallas County and we had a banister put up over the church. And it says, “Racism killed our brother.” And we had all of the children to march in the church past the casket. And it was like to say, “Okay, now, listen. This is what happens to a man who was working for the right to vote. He gave his life. We must continue and even if all of us get shot. We must be willing to pay that price as he paid that price.” We have a duty to work until what he died for is accomplished.

BLOODY SUNDAY STORY

James Bevel: There was the Atlanta crew, ABC, NBC. There was the New Orleans crew. It’s like every camera in the state was there poised to take pictures -- still shots, rolling cameras. It was like, these guys ain’t crazy enough to do that, I know. I heard this screaming and then I could see the tear gas. These guys actually rode their horses all the way back, hassling and beating people and rode their horses up on the steps of the church, rode their horses up on people’s back steps at the housing projects and was just riding around generally beating people. And these were the local guys who were, you know, generally members of the Ku Klux Klan, this kind of stuff. So they was there just hassling people.

CONGREGATION STORY

James Bevel: All the Americans were sitting at home watching the Judgement at Nuremberg. And when that film went off, the Selma news clips came in. That was the perfect time. If the American people get the facts on the matter, they will respond. We had to slow them down because they wanted to march the next day. And it was like, no, we are going back. And so the issue was no, no, no, we are not going back the next day because what we need now is the time to mobilize the nation. We need time to get telegrams out to all of the labor unions, all of the preachers, all of the student bodies around this country and ask them to come. And so they can’t get here by Monday, but people could get here by Tuesday. So we’re not going to have a march Monday because we don’t want the state and the sheriff’s department to attack Selma people anymore. Now they must attack America.

NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF FREEDOM STORY

James Bevel: And as we are talking to young people on these issues and showing them how non-violence can be used to address these issues, there’s a lot of enthusiasm. So my challenge to the young people is no, you have a responsibility to create a world where there is not murder in it. a world where there is not mis-education of children. a world where there’s not economic exploitation, a world where there’s not sexual perversity and brokenness in family life. And God has given you the opportunity by being born Americans, freedom of religion, the opportunity to do that. And I’m running up on a lot of young people who are excited about that possibility in terms of what non-violence gives them as a scientific tool for transforming this planet.