A Service by The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Our 1st Reading is taken from the website of the National Park Service, describing the Selma-to-Montgomery Historic Road:
The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended 3 weeks -- and 3 events -- that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement.
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma.
Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators. “The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...,” said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways."
On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000 strong. Less than 5 months after the last of the 3 marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Our 2nd Reading is taken from Selma 1965: A History, by Charles E. Fager:
It was the grandest hour of the civil rights movement, a time when blacks in Alabama, discovering what Martin Luther King, Jr., called “a marvelous new militancy,” took on white officialdom and demanded the right to vote. In the process, they so stabbed the national conscience that the federal government intervened with the celebrated Voting Rights Act of 1965. For those who participated, the Selma campaign became the central event of their lives, a time of self-liberation when they stood and marched to glory with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Before coming to Selma, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had refined their protest techniques in civil rights battlefields across the segregated South. They would select some notoriously segregated city, mobilize the local blacks, and lead them on protest marches conspicuous for their non-violent spirit and moral purpose. Then they would escalate the marches, increase their demands, and even fill up the jails until they brought about a moment of “creative tension,” when white authorities would either agree to negotiate or resort to violence. If they did the latter, King would thus expose the brutality inherent in segregation and so arouse the nation that federal authorities would feel obligated to intercede with corrective measures.
The technique worked with brilliance in Selma in the winter and spring of 1965, when King and his spirited young lieutenants assumed leadership of a local voting rights drive and launched a campaign that they hoped would force Congress to enfranchise blacks across Dixie. The violence King exposed in Selma -- the beating of black marchers by state troopers and deputized posses, the killing of a young Negro deacon, a white Unitarian minister, a white Episcopal seminarian, and a white Detroit housewife -- horrified the entire country.
When King called for support, thousands of ministers, rabbis, priests, nuns, students, lay leaders, and ordinary people -- white and black alike -- rushed to Selma from all over the nation and stood with King in the name of human liberty. Never in the history of the movement had so many people of all faith and classes and colors come to the southern battleground itself. The Selma campaign culminated in a mass march to Montgomery, the state capital, where an interracial throng of over 25,000 -- the largest civil rights demonstration the south had yet witnessed -- gathered to sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Aroused by events in Alabama, the federal government brought forth the 1965 Voting Rights Act, one of the most powerful civil rights measures in American history. The measure outlawed impediments to Negro voting and empowered the attorney general to supervise federal elections in 7 southern states where whites had kept Negroes off the registration rolls. Once federal examiners were supervising voter registration in troublesome southern areas, Negroes were able to get on the rolls and vote by the hundreds of thousands, permanently altering the pattern of southern and national politics.
So end our Readings this morning.
Sermon:
A few hours after the news of Bloody Sunday had been broadcast around the world -- ironically interrupting on one TV channel the Sunday night movie "Judgment at Nuremburg" -- Martin Luther King, Jr., sent a telegram addressed to Northern clergy of all faiths. It read, in part:
In the vicious maltreatment of defenseless citizens of Selma, where old women and young children were gassed and clubbed at random, we have witnessed an eruption of the disease of racism which seeks to destroy all America. No American is without responsibility…The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden. I call therefore on clergy of all faiths…to join me in Selma for a ministers march to Montgomery on Tuesday morning, March 9th…In this way all America will testify that the struggle in Selma is for the survival of democracy in our land.
The Selma struggle for the soul of the nation -- for that was indeed what it was -- was no walk in the park. Bloody Sunday showed the world just how far the white establishment in Alabama was willing to go in order to deny rights and simple humanity to its black citizens. Only 2.1% of the voting age black residents of Selma were registered to vote in 1965; of them, very few had ever actually voted. And it was not just that you could be hurt in the work: the movement for freedom in Selma had already claimed one life, that of 25-year-old Jimmy Lee Jackson, the youngest deacon in the history of St. James Baptist Church just outside of Selma, shot pointblank while attempting to protect his mother with his own body during an attack by state troopers inside a crowded Negro cafe following a voting-rights demonstration.
The sense of imminent danger was so pervasive that Sheyann Webb, a little Selma girl who participated in the marches, wrote her own obituary:
Sheyann Webb, 8 years, was killed today in Selma. She was one of Dr. King Freedom Fighters. She was a student at Clark School, Selma. Sheyann want all people to be free and happy.
Fortunately, the obituary was not needed in her case.
Martin Luther King’s call to the conscience of the nation was answered. People from all over the country -- New England, the industrial Midwest, and the West Coast; Catholic, Jewish, Episcopalian, Quaker, Methodist, and Unitarian Universalist; clergy and lay -- felt compelled to drop their regular concerns, their congregations, their families, their lives, and flock to Selma. Airports and train stations from Birmingham to Atlanta were jammed. A Methodist bishop told a reporter, "We heard the voice of God from Selma and we came."
Brown Chapel in Selma was packed with newcomers and locals trying to organize places to stay and rides for everyone. The growing numbers of well-dressed, determined white outsiders, committed to join with them in whatever lay ahead, had a galvanizing effect on the nearly demoralized black folks of Selma. Despite the expectation of danger, there was still a sense of confidence in the gathering throng.
Among those who felt summoned by King’s call were Unitarian Universalist ministers Clark Olsen (who has volunteered many times in New Orleans post-Katrina), Orloff Miller, James Reeb, Homer Jack, Clifton Hoffman, James Hobart (whose father served as minister to First Church right before Reverend Albert D’Orlando’s ministry), and Gordon Gibson, and UU laymen Henry Hampton and Robert Hoehler, among many others, for a total of about 100 UUs. Jim Reeb had been associate minister at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., from 1959 to 1964, when he left to become director of an inner-city ministry program in Boston. Reeb was a man deeply driven by concerns of racial justice and equality. For those who knew him well, it was no surprise that he had come to Selma.
Jim and his wife Marie rarely watched television on Sunday nights, but they knew of the planned march from Selma to Montgomery, and they had heard Martin Luther King’s warnings about violence. And so they tuned in Sunday night and were aghast with the rest of the nation at what they saw depicted. The next day, when Jim received word of King’s call to white ministers, there was little doubt that he would go.
Also watching TV that fateful night were Viola Gregg Liuzza and her husband Jim in Detroit, Michigan. Tears rolled down her face as she saw the peace-ful marchers being clubbed and run down by stampeding horses. Viola brooded for days afterwards, and sought advice from her professors at Wayne State University in Detroit where she was taking classes. The next Sunday, at the Unitarian church she attended, she tried to see what she was called to do.
Jim Reeb’s plane left Boston at 11 pm on March 8, leaving behind Marie and their 3 children, aged 3 to 7. On the same plane was Jonathan Daniels, a 26-year-old Episcopal seminarian who had also seen the broadcast and heeded King’s call. They arrived in Alabama in the early morning of Tuesday, March 9. As the newcomers got to Selma, they were brought to Brown Chapel, where they under-went the compulsory nonviolence training taught by a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. About lunchtime, the assembled crowd got word that an injunction had been issued; there was much soul-searching about whether to proceed with what would be an illegal demonstration.
About 2 pm, Martin Luther King appeared before them and said, with obvious emotion:
I have made a painful and difficult decision. I have made my choice: I have got to march. I do not know what lies ahead of us. There may be beatings, jailings, tear gas. But I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience. There is nothing more tragic in all this world than to know right and not do it. I cannot stand in the midst of all these glaring evils and not take a stand. There is no alternative in conscience or in the name of morality.
The march began at 3 pm. They made it, as before, to the Edmund Pettus bridge over the Alabama River, but this time the massed troopers did not attack; they seemed to be waiting for the marchers to provoke them. Instead, King led the group in prayer, and then brought them back to Brown Chapel. Many in the crowd, Jim Reeb included, felt let down. Had they come all this way just for an anticlimax?
It was announced that the march to Montgomery would be held in 2 days, on Thursday. Jim Reeb felt torn -- should he stay, or should he go? His suitcase was already in the trunk of Clif Hoffman’s car, who was returning to Atlanta that night; from there, Reeb could catch a flight back to Boston. At the last moment, as Hoffman was leaving, Reeb retrieved his suitcase. He had decided to stay.
After the assembly broke up, Reeb met a black woman, Mrs. Webb, mother of the little girl who wrote her own death notice, who invited him to come to her house for coffee. Reeb replied that he would be glad to come after dinner.
Reeb and Orloff Miller, director of college centers for the UUA, and Clark Olsen, minister of the Berkeley, California, UU Fellowship, inquired of the folks at Brown Chapel as to where to go for dinner. "Would you prefer a place of your own?" they were asked delicately, meaning did they want a white restaurant. Miller said no, so they were directed to a black cafe just around the corner. The place was crowded and it was some time before they were seated. Reeb used the pay phone to call Marie and tell her he was staying another day.
It was 7:30 and dark when they left. Reeb was near the curb; Miller in the middle; Olsen on the inside as they strode toward the corner. Four white men moved in front of them from out of a doorway, calling, "Hey niggers, hey you niggers!" Olsen looked over just in time to see one of the men swing a 3-foot club, hitting Jim Reeb in the head, just above the left ear. At that moment Olsen and Miller were set upon; Miller went down into the tight fetal position that had been taught to the demonstrators. Olsen was felled by blows to the head and chest, his glasses flying. He recalls hearing one of his attackers say, "Here’s how it feels to be a nigger down here." After a few last kicks, the attackers vanished.
Reeb was conscious, but just barely -- his eyes were glazed and his speech incoherent. The others managed to get Reeb to a black insurance office that was a kind of headquarters for the movement. An ambulance from the Selma black hospital came, and Reeb was treated briefly at the infirmary there, but the situation was dire. The hospital in Birmingham was called, but said Reeb could not be treated without a $150 entrance fee, and nobody had that much money. (That was a LOT of money in 1965.) There was delay as a check was procured, and another delay in obtaining transportation. Reeb did not arrive in Birmingham until after 11 pm.
Martin Luther King arrived at the hospital at 12:30 am and led the waiting group in prayer. Reeb was diagnosed with a massive skull fracture, and was pronounced dead at 6:55 pm on Thursday, March 11th. He was 38 years old.
That evening, 4 white Selma men were arrested on charges of assault with intent to murder, later upgraded to murder. The Selma city attorney secured their release on modest bail. At the grand jury hearing, the judge gave a 45 minute speech, 43 of which were devoted to a tirade against the federal government and civil rights groups.
Five days after Jim Reeb’s death, and 2 days after the memorial service held for him in Washington, D.C., attended by thousands and broadcast live on national television, southern-born Viola Liuzza, 40, made her decision. "I’m taking off for Selma," she told her husband. It took her 3 days to drive from Detroit to Selma in the family Oldsmobile, leaving her husband and oldest daughter, then 18, to care for the other 4 children, who were 16, 14, 10, and 7.
On her arrival in Selma, Viola was immediately pressed into service as a shuttle driver and was housed in the apartment of the Jackson family in the Carver Homes project in Selma. Later, Mrs. Jackson was to say, "She was real sweet, no stranger. She came right in and picked up our ways right away." The organizer of the elaborate transportation system for the freedom workers was LeRoy Moton, a 19-year-old Selma native.
Viola spent 6 hectic days as chauffeur and staff member for the Selma movement, staffing the hospitality desk, running errands. A clergyman from Michigan met her in Brown Chapel on his first arrival, and appreciated her warmth, saying, "I never will forget the attention we received from her and her kindness."
Viola phoned home every night, talking to her husband and children, sometimes asking for money. On the last day of the march from Selma to Montgomery, March 25, she called to say she would soon be starting for home; Jim wired her $50, which she never received.
Father Edward Cassidy, a Catholic priest from Chicago, remembers Viola from that day:
People were exhausted from walking, and several were fainting. The priests permitted use of the basement of the church and school as a temporary first-aid station. Mrs. Liuzza was ministering, taking people in from that crowd, giving all the help she could, doing marvelous work. We were amazed at the amount of energy she had.
The next morning, March 25, Viola told one of the priests that she had a bad feeling about the day. "Something is going to happen today; I feel it. Somebody is going to get killed." After the victory celebration on the capital steps, Viola and LeRoy ferried volunteers around, and then began the trip back to Selma. During the drive, a car filled with whites came up behind her car and bumped it several times before speeding off. "Those white people don’t have any sense," Viola told her passengers.
After dropping off the Selma group, Viola and LeRoy separated for dinner and then rejoined for the trip back to Montgomery to pick up more marchers. Around 7:30 pm, as they crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge, they discovered they were being followed. For about 20 miles, Viola kept ahead of the pursuers, singing "We Shall Overcome" and other freedom songs to keep her spirits up.
In the trailing car were 4 Ku Klux Klansmen, among them a paid FBI informer. At about 8 pm, they drew alongside, and Viola turned and looked straight at them. Three of them fired into the car; Viola was dead instantly from 2 bullets to the head. LeRoy was covered in her blood, and played dead when the Klansmen returned to check their results, and thus escaped with his life. Viola was further victimized in death by the Southern press, which reported that she was an "immoral" woman -- for what kind of white woman would leave her husband and children to come work for civil rights for black people?
The trial of Viola’s murderers was held in May; it ended with a hung jury and a mistrial. The new trial occurred in October; despite the eyewitness testimony of the FBI informant, the defendants were found not guilty after deliberations of one hour and 45 minutes. At another kangaroo trial in December, all 4 of the men who attacked Jim Reeb, Miller, and Olsen were found not guilty to the sound of courtroom applause after a deliberation of only 90 minutes.
The 4th Selma martyr, Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, lived at the home of Rachel West, best friend of Sheyann Webb. Despite the murders of Jim Reeb and Viola Liuzza, he bravely stayed on, trying to work on the hearts and minds of white Episcopalians in Selma (with little success), teaching in the voter registration schools, and acting as a volunteer driver. He was killed by a shotgun blast from a white storekeeper on August 20, 1965. His murderer, who turned himself and readily admitted the shooting, claimed self-defense, spent 11 hours in jail, and was acquitted.
Forty-five years ago. A lifetime for some of us who were not yet born then; an eyeblink for some of us who lived through it. Many things have indeed changed -- but too many have not. Despite the election of President Obama, people of color are still disproportionately represented in the populations of prisons, the homeless, and the poor in our country. Even middle-class people of color are subject to harassment by law enforcement, receive lower pay and fewer promotions. Inner city schools filled with children of color lack proper facilities, up-to-date textbooks, and modern technology. Too many whites, and not just in the Old South, still feel comfortable waving the Confederate flag and using disparaging terms for those who are different. We have not yet overcome.
Sweet Honey in the Rock used to sing a song that was inspired by another civil-rights great, Ella Baker. The chorus of that song is: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes." Those of us who claim to be on the side of the angels, those of us who say we want justice, who say we believe in equality and freedom, cannot rest on our laurels. There is still too much work to be done if we are to redeem the lives of Jimmy Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzza, and Jonathan Daniels. Although they lived and died for justice, they themselves never received any. And they left to us the work that remains.
May we take up this burden, as compelled to work for freedom as they were, no matter our age or life conditions. May we hear the voice of God that comes from all our modern-day Selmas, and come forward to do what must be done. So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM -- SALAAM -- NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fager, Charles E. Selma 1965: The March That Changed The South. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985 (1974).
Howlett, Duncan. No Greater Love: The James Reeb Story. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993.
Mendelsohn, Jack. The Martyrs: 16 Who Gave Their Lives For Racial Justice. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Niebuhr, Gustav. “A Civil Rights Martyr Remembered,” The New York Times. Saturday, April 8, 2000.
Ross, Sonya. “Clinton celebrates 35th anniversary of Selma march,” The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Monday, March 6, 2000.
Webb, Sheyann and Rachel West Nelson, with Frank Sikora. Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil-Rights Days. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980.
