In Celebration and Remembrance: Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965

Edmund Pettus Today, Tomorrow, Forever

By: Terry Donnelly

March 14, 2015

Sometimes being a writer is just too easy. Every now and then we get to grab some low hanging fruit that makes plying our trade seem like child’s play.

The recent March 7^th 50-year remembrance/celebration on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama provided just such eye-level apples.

By now we all know that the Edmund Pettus Bridge was the scene of Bloody Sunday, the day Selma Sheriff Jim Clark got his fifteen minutes of fame by having his sworn-in thugs (a.k.a. police officers) beat the daylights out of marchers who were trying to march to Montgomery in peaceful protest over the extreme voting discrimination practiced in the Old Confederacy. Jim Clark, like his governor, George Wallace, was an unabashed segregationist. Governor Wallace famously spoke the words “segregation today, segregation tomorrow (it sounded more like ‘tomarra’), segregation forever” from the steps of the administration building on the University of Alabama campus, and Clark was fond of sporting a jazzy pin on his uniform that read “Never”. The pin succinctly held the same message as the governor’s words.

The low fruit for writers–the far too easy irony that lingers in history is the bridge that represents the turning point in the successful quest for eliminating savage laws that effectively kept black voters out of polling places–an icon now revered as sacred ground to those repressed, is named after a Confederate General and Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

To be sure there were a ton of Klan members on that bridge that day. They were not decked out in their spiffy white robes and hoods, but they were there, many toting both badges and clubs. None of them were marchers. The Klan members and Sheriff Clark may have celebrated that day, but their elation turned to defeat on August 6 that same summer when President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law. Coupled with the previous year’s Civil Rights Act, all legal barriers were torn down. Citizens were henceforth-banned form exercising public segregation in any form.

The drama of the day is well recorded. What is missing is the back-story.

During his time in office, President Johnson had many conversations with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Some were cordial, some edgy, but there was always respect on both sides and a mutual desire to undo Jim Crow laws.

In the months prior to the Selma to Montgomery march, Johnson told King that he really wanted to get the Voting Rights Bill passed and signed that summer. But, he needed some help by getting the public to back the bill and flood his office with requests to do so. LBJ charged MLK with coming up with that public outpouring of support.

King had long ago learned the power of media. Ever since Emmett Till’s mother put her son’s badly beaten body on display after he was killed by Klan members in 1955 for whistling at a white woman, any media display of horrific actions by segregationists (think 1961 Freedom Rides complete with bus burnings) was met with public outrage.

It is highly suspected that MLK planned the march, knowing full well that his group would meet resistance from Sheriff Clark and possibly get the media attention LBJ wanted to spur the public into vocal support; in turn getting Congress to act. I will not go so far as to suggest that MLK knew just how strongly Clark would react, but in its infancy the march that spurred Bloody Sunday was as much a political calculation as a nonviolent protest.

After his conversation with Johnson, King and his team got busy planning. On March 7th MLK led his organized protestors onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Clark overreacted much like was expected, and mega media coverage ensued. LBJ got his public outcry, Congress acted, and Johnson got out his pens on August 6th.

After that date everyone could vote and a genius provision, Article 4 of the act, gave the federal government jurisdiction over the states’ voting laws to quickly act on any digression or backsliding on the intent of the law. The drafters knew any loophole would allow some states to restrict access to the polls.

The 1965 Voting Right Act worked exactly as planned for almost 50 years.

Those laws stood in tact and were proudly and publically renewed in their original form by presidents of both parties protecting civil rights until June 25, 2013 when the Supreme Court of the United States made a critical error in judgment. Five of those nine judges naively stated that “things have changed dramatically” in the South over the last 50 years and foolishly deemed Section 4, the check and balance guts of the act, to be no longer needed to monitor the voting laws in former bad behaving states and counties. Not surprisingly, it took only two months in 2013 for several states that for 50 years had to pre-clear any voting regulation changes with the federal government to start proposing new, un-reviewed, and obviously discriminatory laws to once again restrict segments of the population from voting.

There is some defensive noise about the new laws being designed to keep the polling places free of fraud (there is none in the U.S.), and that one needs a photo I.D. to rent a car or get on an airplane, so what’s the big deal about having one to vote? Those arguments are lame when compared with the magnitude of the importance of citizens having free access to the franchise. Besides, the words of the perpetrators themselves belie any such argument. Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai was checking off Republican political successes in a 2012 speech and included “voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done (accomplished).”

The true motivation for changing voting laws can’t be any clearer than that. If the states are truly protecting the integrity of the polling place, why didn’t they submit the changes for review years ago?

I don’t advocate changing the name of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The situational irony is too appealing to suggest altering how we discuss history. But, restoring Article 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is a much needed cause to champion.