Selma Tour
The Selma to Montgomery story is one of the most well-known events in the history of the civil rights movement. It happened on Sunday, May 7, 1965 when 600 marchers were beaten bloody as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Cameras filmed the chaotic scene later broadcasting the images on television news stations across America. Pictures of men, women and children being tear gassed as are trampled by horsed backed troopers as forcing them back across the bridge. It was this event that lead to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Voting Rights Bill into law. The name “Bloody Sunday” was used to describe the scene during a live interview on that day by Attorney J.L. Chestnut who witnessed, “It was the worse day of my life. I did not believe America could ever be saved. I saw a sea of law enforcement officers, at least 200, on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were arguing over who was in charge. I saw Marie Foster, John Lewis and others crest the bridge. They came face to face with the might of Alabama stretched out across the 4-lane highway. Suddenly a white voice barked out, “Turn around. Go back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go!” John Lewis kneeled as if to pray. The others behind him began to do likewise. From somewhere in the Cluster of law enforcement, a tear gas canister hit the pavement and exploded. In that moment there was absolute bedlam. IT was worse than the war and I was a veteran. I saw grown men on horseback wielding Billy clubs the size of baseball bats and splitting the heads of women and children like they were watermelons. One could hear ribs cracking as horses trampled on their bodies. I dropped the telephone that I was on to inform the NAACP Legal Defense Fund of what was happening. I pulled Mrs. Boynton, who was almost unconscious and bleeding, off the road. John Lewis was lying in the street 3 feet away from me with 3 concussions and bleeding like a stuck hog. People were crying out in pain and in fear. It was a Bloody Sunday.” Live Account by J. L. Chestnut. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Alabama Attorney). These images are now infamously etched in the minds of not just Americans but people the world over. Each year the National Voting Rights Museum sponsors the “Bridge Crossing Jubilee” a reenactment of that day. The event draws thousands of civil rights past and current pioneers, leaders, activists, popular entertainers as well as elected officials coming to Selma paying respect to the history making world changing event. There Broderick and Silk joined in marches and sang freedom songs with many famous current and long time pioneers of the civil rights movement. The event ended with a crossing of the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge. The couple was also given an opportunity by the President of NVRM to address the assembled audience during the traditional “Bridge Crossing Speakers Forum.” Other speakers who addressed the crowd were US Congress Members John Lewis, Maxine Waters and Sheila Jackson-Lee along with Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King as well as FD Reese and National Voting Museum founder and President Attorney Faya Rose Sanders. The Selma trip rejuvenated the Arlington couple providing for them with a clearer understanding of the prophetic leadership they’d found in their Pastor Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III. The couple came back more determined to see the struggle through to its completion.
