The picture to the right of this writing is so powerful and says so much, but I am so disturbed to say that I knew nothing about what was going on. I saw this picture on Instagram and it captured my attention instantly. I am not (nor have I ever been) a history buff, but it still is not enough for me to not know of some of the most important happenings in our history. "Bloody Sunday", as it is called, occured on March 7, 1965 and is such a monumental mark in the black culture and our history and I am ashamed that I didn't know about it but unashamed of my truth. But this made me wonder, how many other people are their out there that don't know their history like me? How important is it to know how hard people worked back then for us as black people to have the liberties that we have today? To me it is very important. So I did my research and the things that I read about that day made me weep.
Here is a synopsis of what happened to make this event a major part of history:
"During January and February, 1965, King and SCLC led a series of demonstrations to the Dallas County Courthouse. On February 17, protester Jimmy Lee Jackson was fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper. In response, a protest march from Selma to Montgomery was scheduled for March 7. Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7, and, led by John Lewis and other SNCC and SCLC activists, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people."
“Bloody Sunday” was televised around the world. Martin Luther King called for civil rights supporters to come to Selma for a second march. When members of Congress pressured him to restrain the march until a court could rule on whether the protesters deserved federal protection, King found himself torn between their requests for patience and demands of the movement activists pouring into Selma. King, still conflicted, led the second protest on March 9 but turned it around at the same bridge. King’s actions exacerbated the tension between SCLC and the more militant SNCC, who were pushing for more radical tactics that would move from nonviolent protest to win reforms to active opposition to racist institutions.
On March 21, the final successful march began with federal protection, and on August 6, 1965, the federal Voting Rights Act was passed, completing the process that King had hoped for. Yet Bloody Sunday was about more than winning a federal act; it highlighted the political pressures King was negotiating at the time, between movement radicalism and federal calls for restraint, as well as the tensions between SCLC and SNCC.
- See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bloody-sunday-selma-alabama-march-7-1965#sthash.8uLRZwK0.dpuf
It is such a shame what people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others had to go through for us to be where we are today. I sit behind a computer screen with 3 degrees, 2 growing and prospering business and the liberty to come and go as I please as not only a black person, but also a female. I am thankful to pioneers and civil rights leaders such as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks all the way back to Harriet Tubman and the others that fought and risked their lives so that we could have liberty. But how can we truly say that we are grateful when we don't truly know the extent of what they really endured? I owe it to myself, to them and to my kids to be educated about and to teach my children of the hardship that was endured for us to be free. I refuse to be ignorant another day.
I have to say that before I was afraid to know about the beatings, hosing's, lynchings, dog attacks and so much more because of my fear of anger kicking in. I haven't watched many documentaries on what my ancestors went through, but now is not the time to allow what I think I may feel take control of what I feel I need to know not just for myself, but for my children and grandchildren. I want for myself and my offspring to remain humble and not take for granted the liberties that we now have and to respectable to those that fought and died for us to have these rights. I don't want MLK,Jr.'s birthday to just be a day off from school in my children's sight. I want them to understand what it truly means, just like Christmas and Easter. But this, just like everything else, starts with me the parent. I desire for my kids to be better than me, but I have to set the standard AND THEN press for them to exceed it. When you know better, you do better.
Unapologetic is me, L.
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