On Tuesday of this week, our cohort had the absolute honor of hearing from a foot soldier that participated in the march from Selma. As a 14 year old girl that had been jailed several times already for protesting, Dr. Lynda Lowry decided to march to Montgomery after hearing a speech from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. she was beaten so severely by a police officer that she received nearly forty stitches. When she was shown footage of this incident by a CBS News reporter fifty years later, Dr. Lowry saw anger in the eyes of her assailants that “looked identical to the hatred in Derek Chauvin’s face as he murdered George Floyd.” Despite all of this, and the astounding fact that her book about the incident is now banned in Alabama schools, Dr. Lowry stated that she has “no hate” in her. She then sang for us one of the songs the marchers chanted. I found this to be so moving I could not form words! I will absolutely be showing my students the recording of her talk so that we can have a group discussion about the impact of these event and the connections to modern America.
Yesterday, we also had the opportunity to view the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Nearly five thousand documented lynchings, in eight hundred IS counties, are memorialized in hanging monuments. The imagery reflects the violence of lynch mobs, and simply stated, a picture says a thousand words.
Thank you for this opportunity!
