March 30, 2015
Selma Celebrant Observes: State of Selma Belies Civil Rights Victories
By Zenitha Prince
Friends of Forrest billboard. (Courtesy photo)
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Afro American Newspaper
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - During the recent spring break, Alexis Toliver, a senior neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins University, forewent the sandy beaches of Cancun, Mexico, for the southern climes of Selma, Ala. Toliver said she wanted a hands-on volunteer experience in a place that defined a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. But she was shocked by what she saw.
“After a few days in Selma, I felt like Jim Crow was still in effect…everything felt separate and unequal,” Toliver told the AFRO.
The Baltimore-based co-ed said she was “perplexed” by the “disorder and horrifying state” of the city, particularly in light of the nostalgic and triumphant media coverage accompanying the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday,” demonstration that precipitated passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The first thing she noted was an “air of White supremacy,” with which she was confronted almost immediately upon crossing the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge to enter the city. There she was met by a huge billboard honoring Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general remembered for his brutality, including the massacre of hundreds of Black soldiers.
With a Confederate flag as the backdrop, Forrest’s image was accompanied by a quote adopted by his men: “Keep the skeer on ‘em.”
Additionally, during the recent commemoration of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, thousands of KKK fliers were distributed to Selma homes, according to local media. Robert Jones, the grand dragon of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, told AL.com the campaign was meant to remind people that the White supremacist group still existed and to recruit new members.
“The Klan is still out there and we are watching,” Jones said.
Toliver also cited ongoing school segregation and economic blight as continuing concerns in the historic city.
According to the Los Angeles Times; Dallas County, where Selma is located, ranked as the poorest in the state last year, with unemployment at 10.2 percent. In the city itself, 40 percent of families live below the poverty line, and violent crime is five times that in other towns around Alabama.
Toliver has appealed to media to cover the current state of Selma in an attempt to make a difference.
“The current state of Selma Alabama is appalling. If nothing is done, future generations will have to fight for civil rights rather than regard it as a successful movement of the past. Activists have fought and died, yet Selma is in a state similar to that of 1965,” she wrote in her appeal. “Please educate your readers on the severity of this situation. Raising awareness will incite a movement…. Start a national discussion that will lead to the end of discrimination and poverty in Selma, Alabama.”