Sunday in Selma
March 3, 2007 — -- Bloody Sunday. March 7, 1965. The day state and local police clubbed and tear-gassed 600 peaceful marchers, black and white, as they tried to begin their 50-mile march from Selma to Alabama's state capital, Montgomery. It's a major part of the story of the struggle for civil rights.
This Sunday it will be hard to separate history from present-day politics. Two hard-charging presidential contenders, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, will be in Selma. So will former president Bill Clinton. The organizers of the 42nd anniversary commemoration first said the former president was not expected to attend. Then came late word he would be there after all. Sen. Clinton's aides deny that she belatedly decided she needed her husband for more political firepower.
The former president will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at Selma's National Voting Rights Museum. A spokesman said he rearranged his schedule so he could accept the honor in person.
Before that ceremony both his wife and Obama will speak at different churches. Obama will speak at historic Brown Chapel AME Church where civil rights activists gathered before their march. At the same time Senator Clinton will speak at the First Baptist Church.
Even this early in the campaign Senators Clinton and Obama are aggressively courting the votes of African-Americans. But few political observers believe either will make a direct pitch for votes in Selma, which is hallowed ground for those who painfully recall the blood spilled there.
Democratic Rep. John Lewis remembers: "They stampeded us with whips, nightsticks and horses. They tear-gassed us. They turned our non-violent protest into blood." A state trooper clubbed Lewis until he was unconscious. Lewis has not decided which Democrat he will support in the upcoming campaign, but he says he is pleased that the two rivals will both come to Selma.
Both Clinton and Obama will have to calibrate their speeches to the mood of the thousands who will come for the ceremonies including the annual march across what was once the most famous, or infamous, bridge in America, the Edmund Pettus bridge. Two days after Bloody Sunday Martin Luther King Jr. led marchers to the bridge, but told them to go no further because of a court order prohibiting the march to the Montgomery. Later that day, a white clergyman from Boston who had come to join the march was fatally injured by attackers.
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