Hashtag: Selma
Here’s something crazy about Selma, Alabama: doing an internet search about this city will land you on the fun fact that it is known for the Battle of Selma, as a top result. WT(serious)F. Selma is known for many things, and most of them are tied to historic events leading to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For instance, there’s a whole history chapter, verse and refrain, called the Selma-to-Montgomery March, which was enormously pivotal. There is the famed Edmund Pettus bridge, the site of Bloody Sunday and Turnaround Tuesday, landmarks like the National Historic site Brown AME Chapel where planning and strategy sessions for the March were held along with worship, singing, training, and organizing. There’s the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, with incredible still footage from the attacks on Bloody Sunday, and firsthand accounts from footsoldiers who marched. If you go, please note, there’s also terrific barbeque at Lannie’s and try the frozen hot chocolate at the downtown Coffee Shoppe.
“If you go” are the key words here. Go — go to Selma. And when you go, talk to the people there. Every single day, tour buses full of tourists and students and church groups pull up in front of Historic Brown Chapel AME Church on Martin Luther King St. in Selma. People hold cameras up against the bus windows and take pictures of the gorgeous unmistakable exterior, with red and white brickwork towers soaring against the blue Alabama sky. Their tour-guide might tell them, this is the site where Dr. King and others organized events, including the March. Maybe they step out of the bus onto the sparse lawn in front of the church, and look around cautiously at the housing project across the street and next door. They take a few extra photos and clamber back on the bus, off to their next stop. They miss a lot. Oh, you can’t go in the church right now; it suffered serious mold damage while it was shuttered during COVID-19, and is awaiting renovation (more on that in a minute). And since you can’t go inside, you miss the education about the George Washington Carver Homes Project housing. These homes, now sporting signs of serious distress, were federally-funded low-income housing for many families in the 1950’s. Many of those families were participants in the Civil Rights events that were planned at Brown Chapel AME, and they welcomed leaders into their homes to eat and stay when segregation made options severely limited. Good news though: the homes district received grant funding for improvement in 2023, and those initiatives are underway.
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They miss meeting Bruce Holmes, Sr., and his wife, Linda, both who grew up in the George Washington Carver Homes neighborhoods, and who are working to raise funds to repair Brown Chapel AME Church. They miss listening to Miss Linda talk about being a sixth-grader in the youth groups at the church, learning the Freedom Songs, planning the youth component of the March, listening to Dr. King, and sharing meals with movement volunteers. They miss seeing Miss Linda’s face light up when she hears a recording of “Oh Freedom!”, recorded at Brown Chapel AME, waft out from a little Bluetooth speaker in the fellowship hall behind the church. Right now, the fellowship hall is where visitors are hosted; they can hear first-person accounts from people who lived the movement, and are passionate about Selma’s place in history. They can meet Mr. Bruce, who led the charge to have Jefferson Davis Blvd. changed to J.L. Chestnut Street (you can look up Mr. Chestnut, he’s worthy of a boulevard), and who also led the process to have the George Washington Carver Homes designated as historic landmarks. Now, his focus is on Brown Chapel AME repairs, before the 60th anniversary of the historic march, happening in March 2025.
Selma is one of the poorest cities in the country. One in three residents lives below the state’s poverty line; the average income is $35,500 — far below the state average. Three years ago, the Washington Post called it a “ghosttown of the South”. This seems incongruous — Selma has been the backdrop for historic events, campaign launches and visits, anniversaries of Civil Rights milestones, worship events, for high-profile stars filming award-winning movies and documentaries, it is the subject and refrain of songs and poetry, and a single-word ode to history. Yet, Selma looks as it did in the 1960’s — despite the influx of visitors and Hollywood, the scenes and stills are shot, and the guests move on. Most don’t stay in Selma, opting for hotels in Montgomery or Meridian, when they visit. Even tour buses today pull to the side of the road, and tourists snap photos or walk (in traffic) across the symbolic arched bridge, then load in and roll out, their time in Selma recorded on their phones and posted to social media: hashtag Selma. Money does not flow into Selma, and it shows. So now, Selma has this iconic church in need of significant repair, and it is painfully obvious Selma herself cannot shoulder this burden.
Much has been taken from Selma: history, blood, beatings, actual lives, movie footage, memories, backdrops, posturing, and photo-ops. In the center of it all, there is this church in need of about four million dollars in repairs. If you know a millionaire, this would be such an ideal cause. Repair the site where Civil Rights leaders and organizers created a pivotal moment in history. And think of the jobs the renovations would provide, the impact on a community that does nothing but welcome visitors whether they stay for minutes or hours, whether their visit is a one-off, or they return again and again. What is needed is repairs done in such a way that people can come inside — not just a metaphor. Like all of Selma, they need visitors to walk in and truly visit, hear stories, share coffee and community, buy a meal, make a donation, and understand the people who live in the shadow of this church built this movement out of their own front yards and dinner tables and chicken potluck and Sunday best. The movement belongs to everyone; it happened here, but reaches far beyond this little 14-square-mile community.
While in Selma, here’s the thing about walking across the Edmund Pettus bridge (and this becomes obvious to you as you do it): you cannot see what is ahead of you. Selma residents had no way of knowing the series of historic events nearly 60 years ago would be cornerstones of a movement. Today, they don’t know what will happen to the iconic church at the center of much of this history. They do know that they have been gifted an enormous monument of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, which was installed in the Confederate cemetery in a predominantly Black neighborhood (spoiler: Selma is predominantly Black, like 85%), on the day the first Black mayor of Selma took office. Over the years, the statue disappeared, then was reinstalled. So, there is a moneyed group that wants that chapter in history to be prominent. Where is the support for preserving the history most widely associated with Selma? That is the question. The donation link at brownchapelame dot org is a starting point, and Mr. Bruce, actually at the church, is the champion behind getting this story told.
Please visit their website, read their story, share it, support them, and get a little more understanding on what it means to be without resources and at the same time charged with preserving such a significant resource. If you share this story, please be sure to #Selma — this is not a drive-by moment, or a drive-by movement.
