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Selma and Voting Rights
June 13th, 2012
So far we have been truly blessed to hear from key people who were there during “The Movement”. Ifeel so fortunate to hear first hand stories that provide a richness to the history of the events. Today was no exception. We were able to hear from Reverend Frederick Reese and Mrs Janne Bland. We spent a large part of the day with Mrs Bland as she served as our tour guide through Selma and Marion. She had served in the Army and had no problem giving us orders. I truly mean this with no disresepct, but in my mind I dubbed her “Sargent Selma”. No, I did not tell her that. While at first she seemed gruff, as I listened to her stories, I heard truth. I also heard a woman deeply devoted to her community. She told us the story of her mother’s death. She was ill and needed a blood transfusion. The “black” hospital her mother had been brought to did not have any blood available for transfusion. Her father took her to the “white” hospital, but they had no “black” blood for a transfusion. While they waited for the blood to arrive from Birmingham, her mother passed.
As part of our tour, she also took us to a simple slab of cement behind the church where marchers in the first Selma to Montgomery march gathered prior to the march. She had each of us pick a small pebble or “rock”. She gave a couple of our rocks names to indicate the people who had stood there prior to “Bloody Sunday”. Mine was apparantly Reverend Reese’s rock. She did this to illustate that ordinary people had stood on that slab of cement. Ordinary people had done the work of the civil rights movement. She told us to take that pebble with us. When we see injustice and feel too ordinary to act against it, remember the ordinary people who stood on the rock and let it give us strength. I kept that rock.
As I return to the routine of my life after this trip, how will I intentionally take the changes that are occurring in how I feel and think and make them a part of the way I act. Perhaps as I have this rock to remind me of those who stood ready to cross that bridge, I’ll also be reminded of the Rock on which I stand. The Rock to whom I am accountable.
Another reminder of how rocks have long been used as an image or means of remembering God\’s faithfullness to His people.
Mrs Bland was 11 years old on Bloody Sunday. Age was not a detterent for violence on behalf of those seeking to stop the march. I couldn\’t help thinking she was \”Sargent Selma\”