Today (Tuesday) was not as heavy as yesterday was. We met a few people, both alive and dead, and visited a museum that was dedicated to the Right to Vote. Oh, and we walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Part of the Pilgrimage journey has included speakers who were in different ways connected to the Movement. On Sunday, during dinner, we met a man who was the son of Viola Liuzzo. I had not heard of her, but she was a UU Civil Rights activist from Michigan. I’m not sure she thought of herself as an activist, but she was a housewife and mother of 5. When ML King issued a call for clergy and others to come to Selma, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, en-route to Montgomery, she told her family she felt called to go. She helped with coordination and logistics in the successful Selma to Montgomery march. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the KKK, just outside of Marion, AL. She was 39 years old.
Anthony Liuzzo shared horrific stories of the aftermath of his mother’s killing. The family, in Detroit, was harassed, received death threats and nasty, telephone calls. The children (youngest was about 6) were threatened and for the longest, life was hell for them. We visited her grave site. A monument is erected on the side of the road, near where her body was found. It has a wrought iron gate around it, but that has not stopped vandals from applying graffiti, or others from shooting it with shot guns.
Rev. James Reeb was a UU minister, who worked with the American Friends Service Committee on housing issues in Boston. He too responded to ML King’s summons following Bloody Sunday. He and two Black men had dinner together and were walking back to the Church in Marion AL (Brown Chapel, where the mass gatherings were held), and they were attacked by 3 or 4 white men who bludgeoned them, causing fatal injuries in Reeb, who died 2 days later. 3 men were tried for the attack and were acquitted.
Jo Ann Bland was 8 years old when she told her grandmother she wanted to sit at the counter at Carter’s Drug Store, and have an ice cream cone. She didn’t understand it when her grandmother told her she couldn’t do that, but that one day, when Black people were free she could. She argued with her that there was this thing called the Emancipation Proclamation that said she was already free. When she was 11, in 1965, she joined her sister and other children on the March on March 7. As the marchers crested the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by a sea of blue – the police and state troopers had come out to prevent their going to Montgomery. The Sheriff told the people they would have 2 minutes to turn back. There were so many people, however, those in the front of the line were unable to warn those in the back of the line. The Sheriff, however, gave the marchers only 1 minute before the patrolmen began confronting them, with clubs, batons, cattle prods and guns.
11 year old JoAnn and her 15 year old sister ran as best they could. They too were hit with clubs. JoAnn was not hurt so much as she was terrified. She didn’t know until later, as the two of them finally managed to get away, that the drops falling on Joann’s shoulder from her sister were not tears, but drops of blood. Her sister required 35 stitches in her head and on her face. But, on March 21, when King defied a court order to not assemble and march, JoAnn’s sister was again there, and was the youngest person to complete the entire march to Montgomery. JoAnn had been arrested 13 times by the time she was 13, for her Activist work.
I love and am committed to Jerrett. I love and am committed to Jessica and Stephanie (my step-daughters) and their families. I love and am committed to my sisters, Charlotte, Starla, Audrey and my brother Michael, and their families. I love and am committed to God. The commitment of Viola and James and Viola’s sister, points us all toward understanding justice as more than a concept, more than an ideal to aspire to.
The right to vote was the way to be counted, as a way of having a say. To be acknowledged as a person. The rules were continuously changing for the Black population. Literacy tests and citizenship tests were used to disqualify people. And the goal posts were always being moved. A question on the literacy test might have been, “How many feathers are on a chicken?” If the applicant got a certain number of questions wrong, it would disqualify them. People returned time and time again, to complete the questionnaires.
My heart hurt, just hearing JoAnn’s stories. And I had no words at Viola’s grave, or at the marker for Rev. Reeb. I find that not only do I not understand the kind of hatred a person must have, to want another person killed, I am also beginning to understand some of the anger Black people hold against white people who deny their humanity.
Even though I’ve read a lot, and talked a lot with others about White Privilege, I understood it in another way today. With the Montgomery Bus Boycott that continued for 13 months, the question was asked why the business leaders didn’t try sooner to come to some kind of compromise. They were losing thousands of dollars, every day. The surrounding businesses were losing money. The fines collected for the most inane things couldn’t begin to cover what was being lost. Why wouldn’t the business leaders (white men) try to reach some kind of compromise? The answer, ‘They loved power over the Black people, more than they wanted money. They loved their status and their perceived superiority, more than money.” Privilege is that power, that feeling of superiority. I am profoundly saddened by that understanding.
L
Part of the Pilgrimage journey has included speakers who were in different ways connected to the Movement. On Sunday, during dinner, we met a man who was the son of Viola Liuzzo. I had not heard of her, but she was a UU Civil Rights activist from Michigan. I’m not sure she thought of herself as an activist, but she was a housewife and mother of 5. When ML King issued a call for clergy and others to come to Selma, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, en-route to Montgomery, she told her family she felt called to go. She helped with coordination and logistics in the successful Selma to Montgomery march. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the KKK, just outside of Marion, AL. She was 39 years old.
Anthony Liuzzo shared horrific stories of the aftermath of his mother’s killing. The family, in Detroit, was harassed, received death threats and nasty, telephone calls. The children (youngest was about 6) were threatened and for the longest, life was hell for them. We visited her grave site. A monument is erected on the side of the road, near where her body was found. It has a wrought iron gate around it, but that has not stopped vandals from applying graffiti, or others from shooting it with shot guns.
Rev. James Reeb was a UU minister, who worked with the American Friends Service Committee on housing issues in Boston. He too responded to ML King’s summons following Bloody Sunday. He and two Black men had dinner together and were walking back to the Church in Marion AL (Brown Chapel, where the mass gatherings were held), and they were attacked by 3 or 4 white men who bludgeoned them, causing fatal injuries in Reeb, who died 2 days later. 3 men were tried for the attack and were acquitted.
Jo Ann Bland was 8 years old when she told her grandmother she wanted to sit at the counter at Carter’s Drug Store, and have an ice cream cone. She didn’t understand it when her grandmother told her she couldn’t do that, but that one day, when Black people were free she could. She argued with her that there was this thing called the Emancipation Proclamation that said she was already free. When she was 11, in 1965, she joined her sister and other children on the March on March 7. As the marchers crested the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by a sea of blue – the police and state troopers had come out to prevent their going to Montgomery. The Sheriff told the people they would have 2 minutes to turn back. There were so many people, however, those in the front of the line were unable to warn those in the back of the line. The Sheriff, however, gave the marchers only 1 minute before the patrolmen began confronting them, with clubs, batons, cattle prods and guns.
11 year old JoAnn and her 15 year old sister ran as best they could. They too were hit with clubs. JoAnn was not hurt so much as she was terrified. She didn’t know until later, as the two of them finally managed to get away, that the drops falling on Joann’s shoulder from her sister were not tears, but drops of blood. Her sister required 35 stitches in her head and on her face. But, on March 21, when King defied a court order to not assemble and march, JoAnn’s sister was again there, and was the youngest person to complete the entire march to Montgomery. JoAnn had been arrested 13 times by the time she was 13, for her Activist work.
I love and am committed to Jerrett. I love and am committed to Jessica and Stephanie (my step-daughters) and their families. I love and am committed to my sisters, Charlotte, Starla, Audrey and my brother Michael, and their families. I love and am committed to God. The commitment of Viola and James and Viola’s sister, points us all toward understanding justice as more than a concept, more than an ideal to aspire to.
The right to vote was the way to be counted, as a way of having a say. To be acknowledged as a person. The rules were continuously changing for the Black population. Literacy tests and citizenship tests were used to disqualify people. And the goal posts were always being moved. A question on the literacy test might have been, “How many feathers are on a chicken?” If the applicant got a certain number of questions wrong, it would disqualify them. People returned time and time again, to complete the questionnaires.
My heart hurt, just hearing JoAnn’s stories. And I had no words at Viola’s grave, or at the marker for Rev. Reeb. I find that not only do I not understand the kind of hatred a person must have, to want another person killed, I am also beginning to understand some of the anger Black people hold against white people who deny their humanity.
Even though I’ve read a lot, and talked a lot with others about White Privilege, I understood it in another way today. With the Montgomery Bus Boycott that continued for 13 months, the question was asked why the business leaders didn’t try sooner to come to some kind of compromise. They were losing thousands of dollars, every day. The surrounding businesses were losing money. The fines collected for the most inane things couldn’t begin to cover what was being lost. Why wouldn’t the business leaders (white men) try to reach some kind of compromise? The answer, ‘They loved power over the Black people, more than they wanted money. They loved their status and their perceived superiority, more than money.” Privilege is that power, that feeling of superiority. I am profoundly saddened by that understanding.
L
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