Remembering Selma 1963 With The Selma Bridge Jubilee: All Boots on the Ground

They are calling this year’s commemoration The Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee--All Boots on the Ground which will mark the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday—the day on March 7, 1965, that day in Selma, Alabama when  massed Alabama State Police attacked peaceful demonstrators attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a march from Selma to the state capital at Montgomery to protest suppression of voting rights.

Alabama State Police beat SNCC march leader John Lewis, on ground center, after charging voting rights marchers trying to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma on the way to the state capitol in Montgomery in 1965.

Members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had been conducting voter registration drives in the area since 1963 and had encountered escalating violence.  After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, efforts stepped up.  On July 6 of that year SNCC leader John Lewis attempted to lead a march on the county courthouse to register voters.  He and other marchers were beaten and arrested.  A few days later a local judge handed down a sweeping injunction against more than two people assembling to even talk about voter registration.  

Two SCLC organizers arrived to join the voter registration effort.  Diane Nash like John Lewis was a veteran of the Nashville public accommodation sit-in campaign of 1960.  Her husband, Rev. James Bevel was also a seasoned non-violent activist.  Together they were two of the best the organization had.

SNCC leaders appealed to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  SCLC leaders including the Rev. James Bevel, who had been conducting his own voter registration projects, and his wife, Diane Nash, a SNCC founder who cut her teeth in the Nashville youth crusade sit-ins with Lewis, came to Selma to join the effort.  But the national organization, busy with other efforts, had not yet committed.

Finally, on January 2 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Selma bringing with him the national spotlight and officially launched a new Selma Voting Rights Movement.  Marches on court houses resumed there and in surrounding counties. 

The body of Jimmie Lee Jackson, first martyr of the Selma campaign.  After leading a night march to the Perry County Court House in Marion, Jackson was shot trying to protect his mother and grandfather from a beating by police who charged into a cafe where they had taken refuge.  His death galvanized the campaign locally but attracted little national press attention.

On February 18 a young man, a Baptist elder who had tried four times to register, Jimmie Lee Johnson was shot trying to defend his mother and grandfather from police clubs after a night march on the Perry County Courthouse in Marion.  When Johnson died of his wounds days later, Bevel called for a protest march on the state capital from Selma on March 7.  

On the day of the march John Lewis, the Rev. Hosea Williams of the SCLC, and local leaders like Amelia Boynton led about 600 marchers.  When they attempted to cross the bridge, they were met by massed troopers and ordered to disperse.  Lewis attempted to speak to the commanding officer but was shoved to the ground and beaten.  Police charged the crowd with clubs and gas.  Mounted officers attacked from the flanks.  Scenes of horrific violence were captured on film and soon broadcast on television helping to swing public sympathy to the marchers. 

King responded with a call to rally in Selma for a second march.  Hundreds from around the country, including many clergy, responded to the call.  Lawyers appealed to Federal Judge Frank Minis Johnson, who was suspected to be sympathetic, to lift the local ban on marches.  The judge took the issue under advisement but issued a temporary restraining order against resuming the march until he could make his ruling. 

With thousands gathered, King felt he had to move but did not want to alienate the judge.  On March 9 he led about 7,000 to the bridge but then knelt in prayer and turned the crowd back, a move that was harshly criticized by SNCC leaders. 

Rev. James Reeb, a young Unitarian Universalist minister, was with two others when he was beaten to death by Klansmen in Selma on the eve of a second march.  The death of a white minister did grab attention and President Lyndon Baines Johnson used it to advance the Voting Right Act of 1965.

That evening three Unitarian Universalist ministers, James Reeb, Clark Olsen, and Orloff Miller who responded to King’s call were attacked and beaten outside a Selma cafe known to be a hangout for Klansmen.  Reeb died of his wounds on March 11 in Birmingham after the Selma hospital refused to treat him. 

On hearing of Reeb’s death the Board of the Unitarian Universalist Association meeting in Boston voted to adjourn and re-convene in Selma.  UUA President Dana McLean Greeley and eventually half of the active ministers in the Association headed to the South.

The death of a white minister galvanized public opinion in a way that Jimmie Johnson’s had not.  A shaken President Lyndon Johnson submitted a Voting Rights Act to Congress on March 15 after failing to get Governor George Wallace to back off from attacks on demonstrators. 

A week after Reeb’s death Judge Johnson finally issued the long-anticipated ruling upholding the First Amendment rights to assemble and protest.  

John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, Juanita Abernathy, Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, Frederick Reese and Hosea Williams lead the March through Montgomery to the Capitol.

On March 21 the final and successful march on Montgomery set off with King, Lewis, Bevel, and Williams leading the way with a bevy of national clergy. They were protected by 2,000 Federal troops and U. S. Marshalls on the four-day march through hostile territory to the capitol. 

After a triumphant rally on the capitol steps, Viola Liuzzo, a young Detroit mother and U.U. laywoman was driving a black marcher back to Selma, when she was shot by Ku Klux Klan members.  A federal informant was in the Klansmen’s car.  She was the final fatality in the Selma campaign.  

Tennessee born Viola Liuzzo, a white U.U. laywoman and mother from Detroit marched from Selma to Montgomery often barefoot as in this photo.  She was murdered driving a Black Marcher back to Selma after the final rally at the State Capital.  She was the third of four of the Martyrs of Selma who also included Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels who was shotgunned to death on August 30 after spending a week in jail for a Lowndes County, demonstration, a part of the greater Selma campaign.

The Voting Rights Act passed Congress and was signed into law by the President on August 6.  Within a year 7000 new Black voters were enrolled in Selma’s Dallas County. 

In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark, who was responsible for much of the early violence in Selma, lost his bid for re-election.  John Lewis went on to be elected to Congress.  The Edmund Pettus Bridge is now marked as part of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, a National Historic Trail. 

The 50th Anniversary march included President Barack Obama and his family, Congressman John Lewis and other veterans of the original march and former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.  Always outspoken, Diane Lewis boycotted the reunion march to protest Bush's inclusion. 

In the 50th Anniversary year of 2015, tens of thousands joined Congressman Lewis and other veterans of the original marches along with President Barack Obama, his family, and former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura in a symbolic and triumphant march across the Bridge.

The same year the film Selma directed by Ana DuVernay and starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and Oprah Winfrey opened to high praise, great reviews, and a slew of awards and nominations.

Ana DuVernay's acclaimed film Selma was an accurate depiction of the voting rights campaign and marches.  Unlike earlier popular movies about the Civil Rights campaigns, there was no white savior and the vision was unfiltered by white eyes.  The film also honored the work and sacrifice of ordinary folk as well as Martin Luther King and other marquee movement names.  

In 2020 Congressman Lewis, who was battling pancreatic cancer was joined by four Democratic presidential candidates—Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the march.  In his comments Congressman Lewis said:

Fifty-five years ago, a few of our children attempted to march ... across this bridge. We were beaten, we were tear-gassed. I thought I was going to die on this bridge. But somehow and some way, God almighty helped me here…We must go out and vote like we never, ever voted before…

I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give in. We’re going to continue to fight. We need your prayers now more than ever before.  We must use the vote as a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America…

To each and every one of you, especially you young people ... go out there, speak up, speak out. Get in the way. Get in good trouble. Necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.

Fisk Freedman’s School Rise to a Premier Black University

The historic Fisk University gate and sign. 

Within months of the end of the Civil War the leaders of the northern American Missionary Association (AMA) which was affiliated with the Congregational churches including John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, field secretary; and Reverend Edward Parmelee Smith, founded the Fisk Free Colored School, for the education of Freedmen in Nashville, Tennessee. It was one of several schools and colleges that the AMA, which was led by ardent abolitionists, helped to found. 

Classes opened on January 9, 1866 with about 200 students.  As word spread, the enrollment quickly jumped to more than 900, a testament to the thirst for knowledge among recently freed slaves. The all-male students ranged in age from 16 to more than 70 years old. 

                                    The school was named for General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau and an early benefactor.

The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen’s Bureau, who made unused barracks available to the school, as well as establishing the first free schools for White and Black children in Tennessee. Later he endowed Fisk with a $30,000 which gave the school a firm early financial base that was wanting in other newly created Freedmen’s schools. 

In response to a Reconstruction Era Tennessee state law to support public schools—a deeply radical idea in the South, Fisk was incorporated as a Normal School for the college training of teachers in August 1867.  The college was co-educational and James Dallas Burrus, John Houston Burrus, Virginia E. Walker, and America W. Robinson were the first four students to enroll.  Broughton and the two Burruses were the first African Americans to graduate from a liberal arts college south of the Mason–Dixon Line and all went on to distinguished careers. 

The AMA’s Rev. Erastus Milo Cravath organized the College Department and the Mozart Society, the first musical organization in Tennessee. 

Rising enrollment added to the needs of the university. In 1870 Adam Knight Spence became Principal of the Fisk Normal School. To raise money and meet the needs of the growing student body and ambitious building plans his wife Catherine Mackie Spence traveled throughout the United States to set up mission Sunday Schools in support of Fisk students, organizing endowments through the AMA. 

The original Fisk University Jubilee Singers toured the North and Britain to support the school and its construction program. 

A student choir was organized which became known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers.  In 1871 the Singers began to tour the North in support of the school and then sailed for England in 1872 where they performed for Queen Victoria.  The successful tours, the first of many, raised more than $50,000, enough to construct the school’s first permanent building, Jubilee Hall, which was completed in 1876 and is now designated as a National Historic Landmark.  Through the rest of the 19th Century the school continued building programs that resulted in a modern campus. 

Jubilee Hall, Fisk's first permanent building and now a National Historic Landmark,

Early in the 20th Century Black teachers were finally added to the Faculty, including the Burrus brothers from the first graduating class. 

From 1915 to 1925 Fayette Avery McKenzie, a Progressive Era sociologist and expert in and an advocate for Native Americans, served as President of Fisk.  He was notably successful in developing Fisk as the premier Black university in the United States, securing academic recognition as a standard college by the Carnegie Foundation, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, raising a $1 million endowment fund to ensure quality faculty.  Despite laying a firm foundation for Fisk’s accreditation and future success, McKenzie’s on campus authoritarian management alienated students and much of the faculty resulting in protests that led to his forced resignation. 

In 1930, Fisk was the first African-American institution to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Accreditations for specialized programs soon followed. 

                                    Charles Spurgeon Johnson, Fisk's first Black President.

But it was not until 1947 that Fisk had a Black President—Charles Spurgeon Johnson, an acclaimed sociologist and scholar who had also been the editor of Opportunity magazine, a noted periodical of the Harlem Renaissance. 

In 1952, Fisk became the first predominantly Black college to earn a Phi Beta Kappa charter and honored its first student members on April 4, 1953. 

In 1960 students from Fisk including John Lewis, Dianne Nash, James Bevel, and C.T. Vivian organized the Nashville Sit-ins at the lunch counters of major dime and department stores downtown.  It was the largest and most sustained such non-violent civil disobedience campaign yet in the South which after a long, sustained effort, led to the city becoming the first in the South to de-segregate public accommodations.  Lewis went on to be Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  He and the others became key figures in the Southern Civil Rights Movement, most notably in the Selma campaign for voting rights. 

Civil Rights pioneer Dianne Nash, third from left, and other Fisk Students in one of the 1960 Nashville lunch counter sit-ins.

Despite Fisk’s notable achievements in academics and as training ground for Black leadership, the school has struggled financially in the 21st Century as opportunities for talented Afro-American students opened up at all of the country’s elite and prestigious universities and as liberal arts colleges in general fell out of favor to career-focused educational programs. 

From 2004 to 2013, Fisk was directed by its 14th president, Hazel O’Leary, former Secretary of Energy under President Bill Clinton and just the second woman to serve lead the university. Under her leadership, Fisk successfully raised $4 million during the 2007-2008 fiscal ending nine years of budget deficits and qualified for a Mellon Foundation challenge grant. 

Fisk University graduates in 2008.

Despite this respite the wolf was soon at the door again and a succession of short-term presidents failed to stem the tide.  Trustees have warned that the school might be in danger of closing.  With only 700 students, a significant decline from peak attendance. 

In June of 2020 the University announced that it was renaming its Institute for Social Justice in honor of one of its most distinguished graduates, late Congressman John Lewis.

in 2017 SACS the university’s regional accreditor placed it on probation citing failings related to financial responsibility, control of research funds, and federal and state responsibilities.  Fisk announced a fundraising record and increased enrollment the following year.  In 2020, it was taken off probation and since then has maintained its accreditation, academic standards and is still included in lists of both top historically Black schools, and liberal arts colleges.  Attendance bounced back to 1055 students in 2022. 

Among the many distinguished graduates of Fisk are Lil Hardin Armstrong, pianist, composer, and wife of Louis Armstrong; former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry; William Dawson powerful Chicago South Side Congressman from 1943 to 1970; Repetitive Charles Diggs of Michigan 1955-1980; W. E. B. Du Bois, leading Black intellectual and co-founder of the National Association for Colored People (NAACP); James Weldon Johnson, author, civil rights activist, and poet  who wrote the verse on which the song Lift Ever Voice and Sing is based historian; Ida B. Wells, civil rights leader and writer known for her anti-lynching campaigns and her Women’s Suffrage advocacy; John Hope Franklin; poet Nikki Giovanni; Julius Lester, children’s author, musician, photographer, and professor; Congressman and senior Civil Rights figure John Lewis; Dianne Nash;  Hazel O’Leary; and best-selling novelist Frank Yerby.