{"id":991,"date":"2015-03-02T21:51:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T21:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/?p=991"},"modified":"2015-03-03T17:36:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T17:36:57","slug":"road-to-selma-why-im-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/?p=991","title":{"rendered":"Road to Selma: Why I’m Going"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday morning, I leave for Selma, Alabama.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had this dream for longer than I could remember. I saw grey pictures of its arching bridge in LIFE magazines at my grandparents\u2019 house, magazines that were already old before I was born. The people in their prim, archaic clothes were darker grey than the bridge, darker than the pavement on which they fell when beaten and gassed by racist police.\"pettus\"<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t understand why walking would get them beaten. They looked tired and strong and wise and full of grief. And the white people\u2014the people who looked like my family and my neighbors and my teachers\u2014looked enraged. I didn\u2019t understand at all.<\/p>\n

\"Selma1\"<\/a>35 years later, I\u2019m not sure I understand any better. I still fail to understand why white people treated them with disdain and cruelty and brutal indifference. I fail to understand why white people still treat black people that way.<\/p>\n

I mean, I know<\/i>. In my head, I know all the reasons: the history, the psychology, the structural imbalance, the crackpot pseudo-science. And I know it comes down to power. I\u2019ve read, I\u2019ve listened, I\u2019ve studied, I\u2019ve debated, I\u2019ve considered. I\u2019ve even done something close to praying, praying for insight like a lens I never owned.<\/p>\n

If I understand anything, it\u2019s why the marchers braved that bridge. I\u2019ve been moved to take up the middle of the street with other people, insisting on being seen, shouting truths that had to be said. I\u2019ve locked arms with people as different from me as possible, yet the same, and refused to be moved until we felt heard.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve never been as invisible, as endangered, as unvalued as the people in those black-and-white pictures. That\u2019s my privilege.<\/p>\n

So why am I compelled to walk in their steps on this fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday? The atmosphere there couldn\u2019t possibly be more different\u2014it\u2019ll be a re-creation of that march in geography only. The road won\u2019t be grooved with the weight of their footsteps, like pilgrimage stairs furrowed\u00a0by centuries of the faithful. City and state leaders will be there in support. Police will block cars, not bodies. No one will be injured. No one will risk their lives to be there.<\/p>\n

But the names of men and women killed by racism are fresh in our mouths today. Explosions and gunshots and dying words ring in our ears right now. Social and economic pressures choke communities of color into slower submission, and still white people refuse to see the oppression that parades in front of us at this very moment.<\/p>\n

So, like a white woman named Viola Liuzzo, I ride south to answer the call. Like Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. James Reeb, I go with those of my faith who place justice for the living on the same altar as reverence for the dead. But I\u2019m not a Freedom Rider or any other brave person doing dangerous work. I\u2019m not trying to expiate white liberal guilt. It’s not\u00a0about me.<\/p>\n

I just want to look out from that bridge, through the crowd of strong shoulders, and see the water and trees that stood there 50\u00a0years ago. I want to be a witness to the powerful flow of history, and its maddening intransigence. I want to take pictures in full, living color of black and white people marching together to remember, to resolve, to recommit to the necessary work of being fully, fairly human to one another. And I want my grandchildren to see those pictures, and know that I was there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday morning, I leave for Selma, Alabama. I\u2019ve had this dream for longer than I could remember. I saw grey pictures of its arching bridge in LIFE magazines at my grandparents\u2019 house, magazines that were already old before I was born. The people in their prim, archaic clothes were darker grey than the bridge, darker […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[547,544,545,548,530,35,34,546,549,281,550,542,543,526,97,18],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-studies","tag-50th-anniversary","tag-alabama","tag-civil-rights","tag-commemoration","tag-equity","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-march","tag-pilgrimage","tag-race","tag-racial-justice","tag-road-to-selma","tag-selma","tag-social-justice","tag-uu","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profbanks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}