We headed into Selma, Alabama — the flash point for the Civil Rights Movement. Local Historian Alston Fitts gave me a tour. Alston explained that the first Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery turned into Bloody Sunday, as some 600 (mostly) Black walkers were beaten back by state troopers wielding billy clubs. The TV news cameras were there. And as what many would like to believe was a providential coincidence, the “News Flash” from Selma broke into the showing of the movie The Nuremburg Trials (Nazi Germany) on one of the stations. “People were watching a movie about extreme oppression, and then there was this scene of innocent, non-violent citizens being beaten,” said Alston. Numbers for the next march the next week swelled to 25,000, as people from all over the country came to Selma in solidarity. The march went the 50 miles to Montgomery this time and the eventual result was Lydon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act… I told the Selma newspaper that the courage demonstrated by these marchers (including Martin Luther King Jr.) should not only never be forgotten, but the American citizenry should be inspired by it as people continue to fight battles for equal rights, peace and social justice throughout the land today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We headed into Selma, Alabama — the flash point for the Civil Rights Movement. Local Historian Alston Fitts gave me a tour. Alston explained that the first Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery turned into Bloody Sunday, as some …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}