Selma anniversary draws Ferguson comparison

In this March 7, 1965 file photo, S.W. Boynton is carried and another injured man tended to after they were injured when state police broke up a demonstration march in Selma, Ala. Boynton, wife of a real estate and insurance man, has been a leader in civil rights efforts. The day, which became known as "Bloody Sunday," is widely credited for galvanizing the nation's leaders and ultimately yielded passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In this March 7, 1965 file photo, S.W. Boynton is carried and another injured man tended to after they were injured when state police broke up a demonstration march in Selma, Ala. Boynton, wife of a real estate and insurance man, has been a leader in civil rights efforts. The day, which became known as "Bloody Sunday," is widely credited for galvanizing the nation's leaders and ultimately yielded passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

WASHINGTON -- They lasted only minutes, but the beatings of civil-rights marchers in Selma, Ala., permanently seared the inhumanity of Southern segregation onto the American conscience.

The images were televised and captured in photographs: Police tear-gassed kneeling protesters, clubbed them and attacked them on horseback behind a civilian posse on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. Five decades later, many were struck by the resemblance as police lobbed tear gas at protesters last year in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting death of black 18-year-old Michael Brown.

President Barack Obama and some surviving marchers are going back to Selma this weekend to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" assault on the bridge and to talk about how the country has -- and has not -- changed since then.

Several Ferguson protesters also plan to go to Selma, hoping to ensure that more Americans will draw parallels between yesterday's and today's struggles.

"It is clear that the struggle continues," said human-rights attorney Nicole Lee, who was in Ferguson during the unrest after police decided not to charge officer Darren Wilson in Brown's death.

A similar situation was seen in Selma after the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, who died a few days after being shot in the stomach by Alabama Trooper James Bonard Fowler while trying to protect family members during a melee that broke out after a voting-rights protest in February 1965. A grand jury later declined to indict Fowler.

But in 2004, Fowler confessed to a newspaper reporter that he shot Jackson, saying he fired in self-defense after Jackson hit him on the head with a bottle. In 2010, Fowler pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months in jail.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., then a student activist who was severely beaten in Selma, also sees parallels between the 1965 marches and the protest movement that sprang up after Brown's death. He also sees a major distinction.

"The only thing that is so different today, I don't think many of the young people have a deep understanding of the ways of nonviolent direct action," Lewis said.

Other Selma marchers said they fear their sacrifices are being wasted by those who fail to vote, leading to lack of representation in government and on police forces.

"Racism never went anywhere. Racism just took a nap, and when it woke up, we were watching ... all those stupid reality shows. We let everything pass by us, and then we complain," said Lynda Blackmon Lowery, who marched in Selma at age 15 and said she was one of the youngest marchers beaten on the bridge.

"There was nothing magic about Selma," said Andrew Young, one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest aides and an organizer in King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "Selma just gave us the right to vote. But if you don't vote, and don't take advantage of that right, you're still living in a pre-Selma age," Young said.

Blacks voted at a higher rate than non-Hispanic whites in 2012 -- 66.2 percent versus 64.1 percent -- with Obama on the ballot. But voter turnout was down in last year's midterm elections, roughly three months after Brown was killed, and low in local elections.

In Ferguson, fewer than 1,484 of the town's 12,096 registered voters cast ballots in the last mayoral election.

In 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference targeted Selma as an area where it should challenge the lack of voting rights, Young said, and King called Selma "the most segregated city in America."

Young said the organization came up with the idea to march from Selma to Montgomery at the funeral for Jackson.

A few days after the Bloody Sunday assaults, King led a second march to the scene of the violence. A third march, on March 21, actually made it from Selma to Montgomery.

Information for this article was contributed by Alex Sanz of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/06/2015

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