Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965: Black Farmers Made it a Reality
By Heather Gray
The 50th anniversary of the devastating 1965 "Bloody Sunday" event in Selma, Alabama that preceded the 54-mile march from Selma-to-Montgomery, not long after, to demand voting rights for African Americans, will be commemorated this year in Selma, Alabama. It is generally not known, however, that Black farmers in Alabama played a central role in the Selma-to-Montgomery March. In fact, it is likely that the March could not have taken place as it did, without the assistance of Black farmers who owned land along Alabama's Highway 80 - the route from Selma to Montgomery.
But first, I want to share a comment from the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In the early 2000's, he spoke in Atlanta at an event organized by Harry Belafonte and others to hear from the elders of the movement. Jackson referred to a conversation he'd had with former Alabama Governor George Wallace quite a few years after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March.
Wallace ordered the Alabama State Troopers to the Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on that fateful day - March 7, 1965 - to stop the marchers from proceeding to Montgomery. Jackson asked Wallace "Why did you send the Alabama State Troopers to the bridge that day?" Wallace responded by saying that he'd heard that whites along Highway 80 were going to accost the marchers and he didn't want that to happen.
The ironic reality of the situation is that instead, the Alabama State Troopers accosted the marchers rather than whites along Highway 80. The New York Times reported the following:
Alabama Police Use Gas and Clubs to Rout Negroes
Selma, Ala., March 7 - Alabama state troopers and volunteer officers of the Dallas County sheriff's office tore through a column of Negro demonstrators with tear gas, nightsticks and whips here today to enforce Gov. George C. Wallace's order against a protest march from Selma to Montgomery.
At least 17 Negroes were hospitalized with injuries and about 40 more were given emergency treatment for minor injuries and tear gas effects.
The Negroes reportedly fought back with bricks and bottles at one point as they were pushed back into the Negro community, far away from most of a squad of reporters and photographers who had been restrained by the officers.
A witness said that Sheriff James G. Clark and a handful of volunteer possemen were pushed back by flying debris when they tried to herd the angry Negroes into the church where the march had begun.
[In Washington the Justice Department announced that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Selma had been directed to make a full and prompt investigation and to gather evidence whether "unnecessary force was used by law officers and others" in halting the march] (New York Times, 1965).
The question Jackson had, that he seemingly did not ask Wallace but that he wisely mentioned at this gathering, was "If the whites along Highway 80 were reportedly planning on accosting the marchers on their way to Montgomery, why didn't Wallace instead have the State Troopers go after those potentially violent whites rather than against the marchers who were demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution?" If Jackson did ask this question of Wallace, I would assume that Wallace would have found it hard to answer or would not have answered.
After the disastrous Bloody Sunday event on March 7, 1965, finally, on March 17, Federal Judge Frank Johnson ruled in favor of the marchers to allow them to continue to Montgomery. Recognizing that Wallace was not going to protect the marchers, President Lyndon Johnson sent one thousand military policeman and two thousand army troops to escort the marchers from Selma to Montgomery. The policemen and troops were to be supervised by Deputy U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark.
The March down Highway 80 took the marchers through three Alabama counties: Dallas (where Selma is located), Lowndes and Montgomery.
The Judge allowed for only 300 to march on the 2-lane portion of Highway 80 through the renowned Lowndes County.
Some of the voting history of Lowndes County gives the sense of the gargantuan struggle for voting rights:
At the time of the march, the population of Lowndes County was 81% black and 19% white, but not a single black was registered to vote. There were 2,240 whites registered to vote in Lowndes County, a figure that represented 118% of the adult white population (in many southern counties of that era it was common practice to retain white voters on the rolls after they died or moved away) (Wikipedia: Selma to Montgomery Marches).
Lowndes County is also legendary in U.S. Civil Rights history for its significant organizing work. Both Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael) and Jamil Al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown) played a leading role in Lowndes in the 1960s in their leadership roles in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
SNCC in Lowndes organized what became known as the "Lowndes County Freedom Organization" that took the "Black Panther" as its emblem which was in in contrast to the Lowndes County Democratic Party's "white rooster". The "Black Panther", in fact, was inspired, I have been told, by the Historically Black College (HBCU) Clark Atlanta University's band and athletics that were called the Panthers (there remains some dispute about this, however, as to where the name came from, but some former SNCC members have told me that Clark was it).
With the Black Panther, then, as its emblem, the "Black Panther Party", in fact, originated in Lowndes County. M. L. King scholar, Clayborne Carson, writes about this:
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Black Panther Party, was started in 1965 under the direction of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activist Stokely Carmichael.
In 1965, Lowndes County in Alabama was 80% black but not a single black citizen was registered to vote. Carmichael arrived in the county to organize a voter registration project and from this came the LCFO. Party members adopted the black panther as their symbol for their independent political organization.
More than half of the African American population in Lowndes County lived below the poverty line. Moreover, white supremacists had a long history of extreme violence towards anyone who attempted to vote or otherwise challenge all-white rule. Lowndes County Freedom Organization members didn't simply want to vote to place other white candidates in office. Instead they wanted to be able to vote for their own candidates.
White voters in Lowndes County reacted strongly to the LCFO. In many instances, whites evicted their sharecroppers, leaving many blacks homeless and unemployed. Whites also refused to serve known LCFO members in stores and restaurants. Small riots broke out with the local police often firing only on blacks during these confrontations. However, the LCFO pushed forward and continued to organize and register voters. In 1966, several LFCO candidates ran for office in the general election but failed to win. While their attempt was unsuccessful, the LCFO continued to fight and their goal and motto of "black power" spread outside of Alabama.
The movement spread all over the nation. Two black Californians, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, asked for permission to use the black panther emblem that the Lowndes County Freedom Organization had adopted, for their newly formed Black Panther Party. The Oakland-based Black Panther Party became a much more prominent organization than the LCFO. Thus few people remember the origins of this powerful symbol with impoverished African Americans in a central Alabama County (Carson).
As mentioned, it would likely not have been possible for the marchers to complete the journey to Montgomery were it not for Black farmers who owned land adjacent to the highway. The marchers needed a place to stay along the 54-mile route and white farmer cooperation was out of the question. The Black farmers who offered their land as a rest area were David Hall in Dallas County; Rosie Steele in Lowndes County; and Robert Gardner in Lowndes County.
The last and fourth site of the march was not on a farm but at the "City of St. Jude" in Montgomery County.
Here is a summary of these four campsites:
(1) The first day of the Selma to Montgomery march, March 21, marchers walked seven miles out of Selma to David Hall's farm.
Massive amounts of spaghetti and pork and beans were cooked by congregants of Selma's Green Street Baptist church. The food was delivered in new garbage cans. Four large tents housed the marchers as temperatures fell below freezing.
(2) Rosie Steele's farm was the second campsite on the march. Marchers stayed here on the night of March 22.
That evening, curious people from the neighboring countryside gathered to see what the march was all about. SNCC workers returned to Lowndes County after the march to educate and register these new, mostly African American, voters.
(3) Robert Gardner's farm served as the third campsite for the marchers, on March 23. Heavy rains turned Gardner's field into a soggy mess. Dinner that night was barbecued chicken, hash, peas and carrots, and a candy bar.
Here, activists made burial mounds that said "segregation."
(4) This field, belonging to a Catholic social service organization dedicated to supporting the African American community, served as the final campsite for the marchers, on March 24.
More than ten thousand people came to listen to speeches and a concert put on by Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, and Peter, Paul and Mary.
The next day, thousands of marchers entered Montgomery.
Alabama attorney, Tamara Harris Johnson's whose uncle, Robert Gardner, lived on the family farm where the marchers stayed on the third night, had this to say in her recent article in Eutaw, Alabama's "Greene County Democrat":
My family was considered affluent by some standards, yet that did not exempt us from the Jim Crow laws that affected all of us of color. Watching "Selma", I was proud of the acknowledgment of courage of so many people who took part in the Civil Rights Movement. "Selma" touches all of us in some personal way. The image of the marchers from Selma-to-Montgomery was nothing short of awesome. Selma touched my family and me, personally. I am proud that one of the resting places for the marchers was my family's farm in Lowndes County on Highway 80.....
Calls were made to as many of them (the family) as could be reached for permission for the marchers to rest on the farm. I recall that permission was given proudly. My Uncle Robert and his family, who lived on the farm, endured threats to their lives and property as a result of allowing the marchers to rest there. The farm remains the Gardner Family Farm; however, with pride, a sign identifies it as Campsite #3: Robert Gardner Farm (Greene County Democrat).
In the early 2000's, I drove with Reverend Joseph Lowery down Highway 80 from Montgomery to Selma for a meeting about issues regarding the Black farmer lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture that he and I were involved with at the time.
Lowery, in fact, played the leading roll in the organizing of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March. For one, he had been asked by Dr. King to serve as chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's delegation in 1965 to offer demands to Governor George Wallace. Also, at the request of Dr. King, Lowery was asked to lead the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Lowery ultimately served as president of SCLC from 1977 to 1997.
As we drove down Highway 80, Lowery turned to me and said, "This is hallowed ground." Indeed!
References:
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s Cambridge, Harvard University Press (1981)
Johnson,Tamara Harris. Greene County Democrat - Family farm one of rest stops for Selma to Montgomery marchers
National Geographic - Selma-to-Montgomery March http://www.nationalgeographic.com/selma-to-montgomery-photo-gallery/#/city-stjude-990-60168_16970_600x450.jpg
New York Times (1965) http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0307.html#article
Wikipedia: Selma to Montgomery Marches
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#The_march_to_Montgomery
HEATHER GRAY is the producer of "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.
The 50th anniversary of the devastating 1965 "Bloody Sunday" event in Selma, Alabama that preceded the 54-mile march from Selma-to-Montgomery, not long after, to demand voting rights for African Americans, will be commemorated this year in Selma, Alabama. It is generally not known, however, that Black farmers in Alabama played a central role in the Selma-to-Montgomery March. In fact, it is likely that the March could not have taken place as it did, without the assistance of Black farmers who owned land along Alabama's Highway 80 - the route from Selma to Montgomery.
But first, I want to share a comment from the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In the early 2000's, he spoke in Atlanta at an event organized by Harry Belafonte and others to hear from the elders of the movement. Jackson referred to a conversation he'd had with former Alabama Governor George Wallace quite a few years after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March.
Wallace ordered the Alabama State Troopers to the Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on that fateful day - March 7, 1965 - to stop the marchers from proceeding to Montgomery. Jackson asked Wallace "Why did you send the Alabama State Troopers to the bridge that day?" Wallace responded by saying that he'd heard that whites along Highway 80 were going to accost the marchers and he didn't want that to happen.
The ironic reality of the situation is that instead, the Alabama State Troopers accosted the marchers rather than whites along Highway 80. The New York Times reported the following:
Alabama Police Use Gas and Clubs to Rout Negroes
Selma, Ala., March 7 - Alabama state troopers and volunteer officers of the Dallas County sheriff's office tore through a column of Negro demonstrators with tear gas, nightsticks and whips here today to enforce Gov. George C. Wallace's order against a protest march from Selma to Montgomery.
At least 17 Negroes were hospitalized with injuries and about 40 more were given emergency treatment for minor injuries and tear gas effects.
The Negroes reportedly fought back with bricks and bottles at one point as they were pushed back into the Negro community, far away from most of a squad of reporters and photographers who had been restrained by the officers.
A witness said that Sheriff James G. Clark and a handful of volunteer possemen were pushed back by flying debris when they tried to herd the angry Negroes into the church where the march had begun.
[In Washington the Justice Department announced that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Selma had been directed to make a full and prompt investigation and to gather evidence whether "unnecessary force was used by law officers and others" in halting the march] (New York Times, 1965).
The question Jackson had, that he seemingly did not ask Wallace but that he wisely mentioned at this gathering, was "If the whites along Highway 80 were reportedly planning on accosting the marchers on their way to Montgomery, why didn't Wallace instead have the State Troopers go after those potentially violent whites rather than against the marchers who were demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution?" If Jackson did ask this question of Wallace, I would assume that Wallace would have found it hard to answer or would not have answered.
After the disastrous Bloody Sunday event on March 7, 1965, finally, on March 17, Federal Judge Frank Johnson ruled in favor of the marchers to allow them to continue to Montgomery. Recognizing that Wallace was not going to protect the marchers, President Lyndon Johnson sent one thousand military policeman and two thousand army troops to escort the marchers from Selma to Montgomery. The policemen and troops were to be supervised by Deputy U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark.
The March down Highway 80 took the marchers through three Alabama counties: Dallas (where Selma is located), Lowndes and Montgomery.
The Judge allowed for only 300 to march on the 2-lane portion of Highway 80 through the renowned Lowndes County.
Some of the voting history of Lowndes County gives the sense of the gargantuan struggle for voting rights:
At the time of the march, the population of Lowndes County was 81% black and 19% white, but not a single black was registered to vote. There were 2,240 whites registered to vote in Lowndes County, a figure that represented 118% of the adult white population (in many southern counties of that era it was common practice to retain white voters on the rolls after they died or moved away) (Wikipedia: Selma to Montgomery Marches).
Lowndes County is also legendary in U.S. Civil Rights history for its significant organizing work. Both Kwame Ture (the former Stokely Carmichael) and Jamil Al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown) played a leading role in Lowndes in the 1960s in their leadership roles in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
SNCC in Lowndes organized what became known as the "Lowndes County Freedom Organization" that took the "Black Panther" as its emblem which was in in contrast to the Lowndes County Democratic Party's "white rooster". The "Black Panther", in fact, was inspired, I have been told, by the Historically Black College (HBCU) Clark Atlanta University's band and athletics that were called the Panthers (there remains some dispute about this, however, as to where the name came from, but some former SNCC members have told me that Clark was it).
With the Black Panther, then, as its emblem, the "Black Panther Party", in fact, originated in Lowndes County. M. L. King scholar, Clayborne Carson, writes about this:
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Black Panther Party, was started in 1965 under the direction of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activist Stokely Carmichael.
In 1965, Lowndes County in Alabama was 80% black but not a single black citizen was registered to vote. Carmichael arrived in the county to organize a voter registration project and from this came the LCFO. Party members adopted the black panther as their symbol for their independent political organization.
More than half of the African American population in Lowndes County lived below the poverty line. Moreover, white supremacists had a long history of extreme violence towards anyone who attempted to vote or otherwise challenge all-white rule. Lowndes County Freedom Organization members didn't simply want to vote to place other white candidates in office. Instead they wanted to be able to vote for their own candidates.
White voters in Lowndes County reacted strongly to the LCFO. In many instances, whites evicted their sharecroppers, leaving many blacks homeless and unemployed. Whites also refused to serve known LCFO members in stores and restaurants. Small riots broke out with the local police often firing only on blacks during these confrontations. However, the LCFO pushed forward and continued to organize and register voters. In 1966, several LFCO candidates ran for office in the general election but failed to win. While their attempt was unsuccessful, the LCFO continued to fight and their goal and motto of "black power" spread outside of Alabama.
The movement spread all over the nation. Two black Californians, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, asked for permission to use the black panther emblem that the Lowndes County Freedom Organization had adopted, for their newly formed Black Panther Party. The Oakland-based Black Panther Party became a much more prominent organization than the LCFO. Thus few people remember the origins of this powerful symbol with impoverished African Americans in a central Alabama County (Carson).
As mentioned, it would likely not have been possible for the marchers to complete the journey to Montgomery were it not for Black farmers who owned land adjacent to the highway. The marchers needed a place to stay along the 54-mile route and white farmer cooperation was out of the question. The Black farmers who offered their land as a rest area were David Hall in Dallas County; Rosie Steele in Lowndes County; and Robert Gardner in Lowndes County.
The last and fourth site of the march was not on a farm but at the "City of St. Jude" in Montgomery County.
Here is a summary of these four campsites:
(1) The first day of the Selma to Montgomery march, March 21, marchers walked seven miles out of Selma to David Hall's farm.
Massive amounts of spaghetti and pork and beans were cooked by congregants of Selma's Green Street Baptist church. The food was delivered in new garbage cans. Four large tents housed the marchers as temperatures fell below freezing.
(2) Rosie Steele's farm was the second campsite on the march. Marchers stayed here on the night of March 22.
That evening, curious people from the neighboring countryside gathered to see what the march was all about. SNCC workers returned to Lowndes County after the march to educate and register these new, mostly African American, voters.
(3) Robert Gardner's farm served as the third campsite for the marchers, on March 23. Heavy rains turned Gardner's field into a soggy mess. Dinner that night was barbecued chicken, hash, peas and carrots, and a candy bar.
Here, activists made burial mounds that said "segregation."
(4) This field, belonging to a Catholic social service organization dedicated to supporting the African American community, served as the final campsite for the marchers, on March 24.
More than ten thousand people came to listen to speeches and a concert put on by Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, and Peter, Paul and Mary.
The next day, thousands of marchers entered Montgomery.
Alabama attorney, Tamara Harris Johnson's whose uncle, Robert Gardner, lived on the family farm where the marchers stayed on the third night, had this to say in her recent article in Eutaw, Alabama's "Greene County Democrat":
My family was considered affluent by some standards, yet that did not exempt us from the Jim Crow laws that affected all of us of color. Watching "Selma", I was proud of the acknowledgment of courage of so many people who took part in the Civil Rights Movement. "Selma" touches all of us in some personal way. The image of the marchers from Selma-to-Montgomery was nothing short of awesome. Selma touched my family and me, personally. I am proud that one of the resting places for the marchers was my family's farm in Lowndes County on Highway 80.....
Calls were made to as many of them (the family) as could be reached for permission for the marchers to rest on the farm. I recall that permission was given proudly. My Uncle Robert and his family, who lived on the farm, endured threats to their lives and property as a result of allowing the marchers to rest there. The farm remains the Gardner Family Farm; however, with pride, a sign identifies it as Campsite #3: Robert Gardner Farm (Greene County Democrat).
In the early 2000's, I drove with Reverend Joseph Lowery down Highway 80 from Montgomery to Selma for a meeting about issues regarding the Black farmer lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture that he and I were involved with at the time.
Lowery, in fact, played the leading roll in the organizing of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March. For one, he had been asked by Dr. King to serve as chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's delegation in 1965 to offer demands to Governor George Wallace. Also, at the request of Dr. King, Lowery was asked to lead the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Lowery ultimately served as president of SCLC from 1977 to 1997.
As we drove down Highway 80, Lowery turned to me and said, "This is hallowed ground." Indeed!
References:
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s Cambridge, Harvard University Press (1981)
Johnson,Tamara Harris. Greene County Democrat - Family farm one of rest stops for Selma to Montgomery marchers
National Geographic - Selma-to-Montgomery March http://www.nationalgeographic.com/selma-to-montgomery-photo-gallery/#/city-stjude-990-60168_16970_600x450.jpg
New York Times (1965) http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0307.html#article
Wikipedia: Selma to Montgomery Marches
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#The_march_to_Montgomery
HEATHER GRAY is the producer of "Just Peace" on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.
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