Supply: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / Getty
Pricey Aunt Selma,
It was so good seeing you and different relations this previous weekend down in Alabama. My daddy would’ve been so joyful. I do know he smiled actually large on Saturday morning. Talking of mornings, I loved breakfast with all of your classmates on the Annual Foot Troopers Breakfast held at Selma Excessive Faculty. Oh, I simply laughed and listened the entire time. Mrs. Givan shared these tales of how y’all used to simply stroll out of sophistication whereas watching your little brother main the packs to Brown Temple Church for these mass conferences. Mrs. Chisom additionally taught me about Mr. Charles Maulin, an area organizer earlier than Bloody Sunday who educated his classmates and different youth on what to anticipate from the motion. And I used to be so honored that they trusted me to share your tales with TVOne which will likely be airing quickly.
Earlier than coming all the way down to see you this time final, I solely knew of Bloody Sunday via the eyes of built-in faculties and HBCUs with white racist professors.
Talking of HBCUs, I by no means knew that you simply had been a foot soldier on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. What’s even crazier is the truth that you had been simply 12 years outdated that day on the bridge.
Fading photos documented by the Alabama State College Professor and Founding father of Freeway.Org documenting the work main as much as and thru Bloody Sunday Dr. Robert White.
And a few of y’all R.B. Hudson Excessive (town of Selma’s first public highschool for African-Individuals that was accomplished in 1949) graduates, had been simply energetic, concepts and good vitality. Or like y’all say, “a blessing to be round with” form of people.
Supply: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Properly, I do know what the spotlight of your day was having breakfast with Maxim Waters and Martin Luther King III since you couldn’t cease speaking about it. And also you had been proper, It was a superb 10,000 folks crossing that bridge. It appeared prefer it by no means stopped coming over that hill. I can’t consider that Miss Annie Pearl nonetheless goes over that bridge to at the present time after being the one Black lady arrested on Bloody Sunday.
In any case our folks have been via on that bridge, the least they’ll do is rename the bridge named after a Klan member to Foot Troopers Bridge or one thing extra becoming, you recognize?
I’m simply sending you like and lightweight via a letter since your cellphone doesn’t work that properly after these tornadoes just a few years again. And say hey to your classmates. Simply ship my like to everybody down in little Selma, Alabama. From those who’re nonetheless with us to those taken too quickly. To those nonetheless in Dallas, Lowndes and Perry County preventing the nice combat with our folks in direction of Black energy from Tuskegee to the George Washington Carver Public Homes. I see you and now the world will see our wrestle and triumphs collectively.
Supply: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE / Getty
Too dangerous there isn’t a nationwide motion organizing the Black grassroots to the grass tops like SNCC and SCLC did in Alabama within the Nineteen Sixties below Ella Baker. It truly is a disgrace.
Possibly you’re proper Aunt Selma, possibly I ought to mud off my organizing hat and do some one thing extra about it.
P.S. Inform Damien he owes me a plate from one of the best spot in Alabama after I get again.
Love You Extra,
Tory Russell is a Ferguson Rebellion organizer, internationally acknowledged Black motion chief, speaker and political strategist. He at the moment serves because the Director of Organizing on the Worldwide Black Freedom Alliance. He has beforehand written and created content material for NewsOne, similar to iOne Digital’s groundbreaking podcast collection, “Witness to Historical past: Ferguson 10. He has beforehand been seen on and contributed to media retailers like Ebony, Essence, BET, Revolt TV, Black Agenda Report, CNN, MSNBC and lots of others globally.
SEE ALSO:
The Battle’s Not Over: We Walked Edmund Pettus Bridge 60 Years After Bloody Sunday
‘Bloody Sunday’: Commemorating The Selma To Montgomery Marches From 59 Years In the past
