Greene County Democrat

Tag: Charles Mauldin

  • Newswire : On 61st Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, worries about the future of voting rights and calls to action

    Newswire : On 61st Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, worries about the future of voting rights and calls to action

    A diverse group of people, including several public figures, gathered on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, singing and celebrating while holding signs advocating for voting rights.

    People crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge on Sunday and  Spiver Gordon, Greene County civil rights veteran and foot soldier next to Congresswoman Sewell on bridge

    By Kim Chandler, Associated Press and other sources

    SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Sixty-one years after state troopers attacked Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, thousands gathered in the Alabama city this weekend amid new concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act.
    The March 7, 1965, violence that became known as Bloody Sunday shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the landmark legislation that dismantled barriers to voting for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.
    The anniversary was celebrated in this city that served as crucible for the voting rights movement, with events through the weekend ending with a commemorative march across the bridge Sunday. But the commemoration came as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could limit a provision of the Voting Rights Act that has helped ensure some congressional and local districts are drawn so minority voters have a chance to elect their candidate of choice.
    “I’m concerned that all of the advances that we made for the last 61 years are going to be eradicated,” said Charles Mauldin, 78, one of the marchers beaten on Bloody Sunday.
    Former and current Democratic officeholders, civil rights leaders and tourists descended on Selma to pay homage to the pivotal moment of the Civil Rights Movement and to issue calls to action. Speakers warned of the looming court decision and criticized the Trump administration’s actions on immigration and efforts to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion.
    Standing at the pulpit of the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, said that like the marchers on Bloody Sunday, they must press forward.
    “Years after Bloody Sunday, the progress that stemmed from that sacrifice is now being rolled back right in our faces,” the governor said. Moore is the nation’s only Black governor currently in office.
    “We are choosing this fight because those who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge deserve better than us cowering while the freedoms that we inherited and they fought for, are being ripped away,” Moore said.
    Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, speaking at a rally at the foot of the bridge, said racism is on the rise in America and “Trump’s Supreme Court is gutting the Voting Rights Act.”
    “Let’s march forward today with the knowledge that we are the inheritors of the faith that brought marchers to the bridge 61 years ago. It is now on us to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice,” Pritzker said.
    The annual commemoration in Selma is a mix of a civil rights remembrances, church services and a street festival filled with vendors and food trucks. It is also part political rally with an eye on November’s midterm elections and a longer view to the 2028 presidential race.
    The commemoration included a tribute to the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate who regularly attended the annual Selma march. He died on Feb. 17 at age 84.
    Yusef Jackson said his father’s legacy will be carried forward. “In November, we will go back to the polls and take our government back, setting our country on the right path,” Jackson said.
    The looming court decision cast a shadow over the festivities. Justices are expected to rule soon on a Louisiana case , Calais vs Louisiana, about the role of race in drawing congressional districts. A ruling prohibiting or limiting that role could have sweeping consequences, potentially opening the door for Republican-controlled states to redistrict and roll back majority Black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats.
    U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won election in 2024 to an Alabama district that was redrawn by a federal court to give Black voters a greater voice. His district will likely be targeted if the state gets the opportunity to redraw lines. He said what happened in Selma and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act “was monumental in shaping what America looks like and how America is represented in Congress.”
    In 1965, the Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams walked in pairs across the Selma bridge headed toward the state capital of Montgomery. Mauldin, then 17, was part of the third pair behind Williams and Lewis.
    At the apex of the bridge, they could see the sea of law enforcement officers, including some on horseback, waiting for them. But they kept going.
    “It wasn’t that we didn’t have fear, it’s that we chose courage over fear,” Mauldin recalled.
    Spiver Gordon, Greene County civil rights leader said this anniversary was a little bitter-sweet, since three close friends, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Joanne Bland and Rev. Bernard Lafayette, had all passed in the three weeks leading up to this 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
    A crowd of several thousand filed behind elected officials on this Sunday for the march across the bridge, this time protected by state law enforcement officers.

  • Newswire : ‘Bloody Sunday’ 60th anniversary marked in Selma with remembrances and concerns about the future

    State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., on Bloody Sunday.AP files

    By The Associated Press

    SELMA, Ala. — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965.
    The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion.
    At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. After they approached, law enforcement gave a warning to disperse and then unleashed violence.
    “Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back, back us up, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time.
    Mauldin is the founder of the Saturday morning ‘Footsoldiers Breakfast’ at the Bridge Crossing Jubilee, at which persons who participated in the march tell their stories
    Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration paid homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality.
    For foot soldiers of the movement, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all.
    “This country was not a democracy for Black folks until that happened,” Mauldin said of voting rights. “And we’re still constantly fighting to make that a more concrete reality for ourselves.”
    Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of the first mass meeting of the voting rights movement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. But he said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going.
    “At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration.
    U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said they are gathering in Selma for the 60th anniversary “at a time when the vote is in peril.”

    Sewell noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County vs. Holder, effectively abolished a key part of the Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to pre-clear new voting laws with the Justice Department
    Sewell this week reintroduced legislation to restore the requirement. The proposal has repeatedly stalled in Congress. The legislation is named for John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman who was at the lead of the Bloody Sunday march.
    The annual celebration will conclude with a ceremony and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At the time, the Bloody Sunday marchers walked in pairs across the Selma bridge. Mauldin was in the third pair of the line led by Lewis and Hosea Williams.
    “We had steeled our nerves to a point where we were so determined that we were willing to confront. It was past being courageous. We were determined, and we were indignant,” Mauldin recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. Mauldin, who took a blow to the head, said he believes law enforcement officers were trying to incite a riot as they attacked marchers.
    Kirk Carrington was just 13 on Bloody Sunday. As the violence erupted, a white man on a horse wielding a stick a chased him all the way back to the public housing projects in Selma where his family lived.
    Carrington said he started marching after witnessing his father get belittled by his white employers when his father returned from service in World War II. Standing in Tabernacle Baptist Church where he was trained in non-violent protest tactics 60 years earlier, he was brought to tears thinking about what the people of his city achieved.
    “When we started marching, we did not know the impact we would have in America. We knew after we got older and got grown that the impact it not only had in Selma, but the impact it had in the entire world,” Carrington said.
    Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson, who grew up in Selma, remembers a time when she was expected to lower her gaze if she passed a white person on the street to avoid making eye contact.
    Dawson and Mauldin said they are concerned about the potential dismantling of the Department of Education and other changes to federal agencies. Trump has pushed to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government.
    Support from the federal government “is how Black Americans have been able to get justice, to get some semblance of equality, because left to states’ rights, it is going to be the white majority that’s going to rule,” Dawson said.“That that’s a tragedy of 60 years later: what we are looking at now is a return to the 1950s,” Dawson said.

  • Foot Soldiers Breakfast always a high point of Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee

    Special to the Democrat:
    John Zippert, Co-Publisher

    IMG_0755There are many exciting and challenging events at the Bridge Crossing Jubilee, each year, but the event that I consider best is the ‘Foot Soldiers Breakfast’ held on Saturday morning at R. B. Hudson School on Summerfield Road in Selma.
    The Foot Soldiers Breakfast is coordinated by Charles Mauldin, JoAnn Bland and Richard Smilee, who themselves ‘foot-soldiers’ and are veteran participants in the Selma Voting Rights Movement starting in 1965. Their goal is to bring back actual participants in the “Bloody Sunday March” and related marches that were part of the Selma Movement and resulted in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.The Foot Soldiers Breakfast presents the testimonies of persons who participated in the history-making events in Selma. Many of the past breakfast speakers like Amelia Boyton Robinson, Marie Foster, Attorney J. L. Chestnut and others have passed onto glory.
    Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old African-American man who accompanied Viola Luizzo, when she was killed on Highway 80 in Lowndes County by Klu Klux Klansmen at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery March was to be the main speaker at this year’s Foot Soldiers Breakfast.
    Due to illness, Leroy Moton, was unable to attend. Deanna Morton, his sister, who now resides in South Carolina attended and gave his story and her own. She said, “the car carrying the Klansmen passed Ms. Luizzo and her brother, on Highway 80, which was two lanes at that time. The car turned around and came back and found the car that Luizzo was driving. The Klansmen fired into the car killing Luizzo. Moton was alive and covered in blood but pretended to be dead until the Klansmen left. When they left, he flagged down a car to get help.”
    Deanna Morton said as a 14-year-old girl she marched on Bloody Sunday. She said, “ When we came across the bridge, I never saw so many troopers in all my life; but I was willing to give my life for freedom. We learned how to outrun horses, cattle prods and billy clubs that day. I ran back across the bridge and hid behind some buildings.” She thanked the teachers at R. B. Hudson for supporting the young people.
    Moton also said she was present for the ‘Turnaround Tuesday’ march which was led by Dr. King after Bloody Sunday. King agreed to turn around on the bridge because he did not have an official permit to march and he did not want to risk another beating of the marchers. Dr. King and SCLC later secured a permit and Federal protection to march from Selma to Montgomery later that month. Viola Luizzo was murdered on Highway 80, together with her brother – Leroy, in the aftermath of the successful march.
    John Moton, another foot soldier said, “Do not make up excuses for not voting. We marched in the rain, in the mud and in the sunshine for you to have the right to vote.”
    Richard Smilee said, “When I was on the bridge in 1965, you knew God was there. We were not afraid. We were looking forward to a brighter future. Tell the young people, the millennial to stand up; that your vote counts. Stand up for what you believe even if the current President wants to send us back. We will not go back!”
    Willie ‘Mustafa’ Ricks, a SNCC worker who was in Selma for the voting rights campaign said, “ We are still catching hell. The Black man is still on the bot tom. We have been raped and robbed but we still have to keep marching. Bring your children and grandchildren to march. Revolution is the answer not giving people food stamps. Africans must be united!’
    Herman Johnson said after SNCC workers came to the school to organize us, we marched from his high school school in Marion Junction to Selma (about ten miles) to participate in the movement.
    Calvin Thomas, another foot soldier said he was arrested in Selma and taken to the old National Guard Amory. “There were too many people there so the took us to a camp in Thomaston. They let the prisoners out of the camp to watch us and put us in the camp.”
    Horace Huggins, a retired teacher, commented on the January 21, 1965, ‘Teachers March’ in Selma. “This is the forgotten march, when 200 teachers from Selma and Dallas County marched for voting rights. Very few teachers took part in the movement for fear of loosing their jobs, but many teachers walked in this march to support the right to vote.
    Joel Ellwanger, a white Lutheran minister from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reported on the march of 72 concerned white people on March 6, the day before Bloody Sunday, who marched in support of Black people in downtown Selma. Ellwanger has written a book about this march.
    There was so much to learn at the Foot Soldier Breakfast about the depth and breath of the Selma voting rights movement. I am planning to go again next year!