October 18, 2000
Selma, Alabama: A tale of two cities
Reverend Walter Scott recounts 1965 civil rights struggle; return to 'city of hope'
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
"On a spring evening in March of 1965, I came face to face with Selma."
So began the firsthand account of the infamous Bloody Sunday and a subsequent march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by the Rev. Walter Scott, a retired United Church of Christ minister. Speaking Sunday to members of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Grand Traverse, Scott recounted how the bloody images of clubbed and trampled civil rights marchers flashed on his television screen as he and his wife, Rachel, watched the evening news.
"We knew trouble was brewing and that King continued to lead daily marches on the courthouse to register voters and had called for a quiet, non-violent march to Montgomery," Scott recalled. "But when those images were shown, we sat tense, unbelieving, immobilized; we couldn't believe the depth of violence that had been played out before TV cameras on the streets, what we had seen in our country."
The stark and stunning pictures of the failed march on Sunday, March 7, 1965, were followed by Dr. King's plea for help from the American people. King's words galvanized Scott into action. After a brief deliberation with his wife, he packed and left his Newaygo home, heading for the Muskegon airport. The next morning, he landed in Selma with groups of other justice pilgrims, hundreds of others drawn from around the country for a showdown.
They stepped into a battle zone. In the early 1960s, Selma's population was more than 50 percent black yet 99 percent of the voting rolls were white. King decided to make a stand there for voting rights and in early 1965 began a daily voter registration drive that saw more than 2,000 men, women and children arrested during the seven-week campaign. King himself was arrested and refused to make bail for four days to draw attention to the civil rights violations.
Despite some advances in desegregation in the South during the early 1960s, the forces of discrimination vowed that voting would remain the last bastion of their control.
"The Klan and others vowed to protect to the death the wall of whites-only voting," recalled Scott, now a resident of northern Minnesota. "They refused to give blacks the right to vote for sheriff, dog catcher, mayor or President of the United States. Selma became the rallying point, the last stand for continuing racism and separation of races."
Scott and others stepped willingly into this drama on March 8, lending their presence and support to Civil Rights Movement.
The Brown Chapel AME Church, which became the headquarters of the march, was packed that day, humming with song, fellowship and determination. The leadership decided to hold a second march the next day and King and other civil rights veterans gave everyone a crash-course in non-violence.
The next day, marchers set off in a line, four abreast. Scott said marchers were tense but brave as they walked the six blocks to the Edmund Pettis Bridge, the sight of the previous atrocities. At the foot of the bridge, the singing stopped and the line slowed. As he crested the bridge's rise, Scott saw why. Spread out below were lines of armored tanks, dozens of militia, state police cruisers, mounted police and military helicopters.
"We gasped as we saw what awaited us," Scott said.
Scott recounted the charged silence that followed as the front line of the march and the military faced each other. Then Martin Luther King stepped forward to talk to a police representative.
"King walked slowly back to the silent marchers and knelt. We all knelt and the word was passed: 'Pray,'" Scott said.
The marchers turned back, singing their way back to Brown Chapel, assuaging their disappointment in freedom songs. Scott spent the next three days helping with the courthouse vigils before returning home to his family and congregation, but the trip changed his life forever, he said.
Two weeks later, a federal order forced the Alabama Governor George Wallace to allow the march, which went forward without conflict. Two months later, the Civil Right Act was signed into federal law.
"Whites-only voting fell and the crash shook the South and the nation," Scott said.
The violence and fear he saw during his brief stay in Selma haunted him for decades until last year when he traveled to Selma for a second time. This time, he went as one of more than 500 volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, helping to build 20 houses in 10 days.
In the Selma he saw 34 years later, he found a city of hope. When his crew, which included blacks and whites, finished building their house on the 10th day, everyone sang 'We Shall Overcome.' He saw that the song, which had been detested by so many whites decades ago, had become the symbol of Selma.
"Even though the city had been trying desperately to make their town a city of love, it was still awkward for some people to go one-on-one with each other," Scott said. "That's why the black and white churches invited Habitat to be the instrument."