Still on the march 40 years after ‘Bloody Sunday’

By Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent



WASHINGTON (NNPA)— John Lewis will never forget March 7, 1965, which would later become known as “Bloody Sunday.” It was the first leg of the 54-mile Selma-to-Montgomery, Ala., march organized to help win passage of a national voting rights law. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was in front of the line as it formed at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, snaked through downtown Selma, and proceeded along U.S. 80 en route to the Alabama state capital.

“We were walking in an orderly, peaceful fashion with no one saying a word,” said Lewis. “It was like military discipline, more than 600 of us walking in twos. We came to the highest point on the bridge, crossing the Alabama River. Down below, we saw a sea of blue—Alabama state troopers. And, we continued to walk. And we came within hand distance of the state troopers. And a man identified himself and said, ‘I am Major John Cloud of the Alabama State Troopers. This is an unlawful march. It will not be allowed to continue. I give you three minutes to disperse to your church.’”

In an interview with the NNPA News Service, Lewis, now a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, recalled what happened next.

“He left. And, in a minute and a half, Major John Cloud said, ‘Troopers advance.’ And, we saw these men putting on their gas masks and they came toward us, beating us with night sticks, bull whips, trampling us with horses, releasing the tear gas,” Lewis recounted. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death. And I sort of said to myself, ‘I’m going to die here. This is my last protest.’ I just heard people hollering and crying. And 40 years later, I don’t recall how I made it back across that bridge, back to that little church.” <snip>

http://www.frostillustrated.com/news/2005/0323/Front_Page/067.html

Selma-to-Montgomery March????


something no one in this adm would ever do