James Baldwin and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the March to

James Baldwin and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the March to Selma, 1965“A half century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo, spoke of the “creative battle” that twenty-two million black men and women in the United States were waging against “the starless midnight of racism.” A few months later, in March, 1965, that battle came to Selma, Alabama, the birthplace of the White Citizens’ Council. The issue was voting rights. As King pointed out, there were more blacks in jail in the city than there were on the voting rolls. James Baldwin, who was among the marchers, had written, “I could not suppress the thought that this earth had acquired its color from the blood that had dripped down from these trees.” The series of marches there––the first was Bloody Sunday, a bloody encounter with a racist police force armed with bullwhips and cattle prods; the last, the fifty-four-mile procession from Selma to the State House, in Montgomery––pushed Lyndon Johnson to send voting-rights legislation to Congress.” -- source link
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