‘History Started Here’: A New Voting Rights Movement Rises in Selma and Montgomery

By Shauna Stuart | For the Birmingham Times

When the Rev. Otis Dion Culliver, pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, got the request to host the mass meeting for a national day of action to mobilize a new voting rights era, he knew the church had to heed the call.

In 1963, the historic church was the site of the first mass meeting of the Selma voting rights movement.

On Saturday, May 16, more than 60 years later, the church was the launch space for

“All Roads Lead to the South” — a campaign for thousands of people to return to Alabama’s battleground cities of the historic voting rights movement as a clarion call to protest Republican-led states’ efforts to redraw redistricting maps in a way opponents say will weaken the power of the Black vote.  The effort called for attendees to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, followed by a rally in Montgomery at the Alabama State House.

“So many national organizations felt the summoning in their souls to do something about what’s going on in our country,” said Culliver. “And of course, coming to Selma is symbolic, but it’s also inspirational. And Tabernacle has a special place in history in the movement. So we were honored.”

Organizers and parishioners rallied together to work down to the wire overnight on May 15 to prepare the church and get details in order. Saturday morning, the area outside the church was a groundswell. Buses and cars pulled into the surrounding parking lots as mass meeting attendees made their way to the side doors.  Wearing white shirts with the phrase “history started here,” Tabernacle Baptist Church parishioners stood on the church steps and passed out water bottles as temperatures began to rise.

Outside the church, parishioners Verdell Lett Dawson and Margaret Broadnax sat behind a table, greeting attendees and inviting them to take coffee, donuts, and water.

“It’s a part of the mission of our church to offer hospitality to people who come here,” said Dawson. “This church is where the voting rights movement started with the first mass meeting in 1963 that Dr. Bernard Lafayette and Mrs. Amelia Boynton co-organized. It was also a memorial tribute to her husband, Samuel Boynton, upon his passing.”

Broadnax was a senior at R.B. Hudson High School when Selma’s marches for voting rights started. She says she attended school with LeRoy Morton, the 19-year old activist who was riding in the passenger seat with fellow civil rights Viola Liuzzo when she was shot dead on March 25, 1965 by members of the Ku Klux Klan after shuttling fellow demonstrators between cities after the third march from  Selma and Montgomery.

“I never thought that I would see this day,” said Broadnax. “I thought that we were moving forward. Now, all the gains that we made since the Civil Rights Movement in ‘65 are starting to be eroded. It’s a dark day. It is really a dark day.”

“It moved so quickly,” said Brenda Brown, referring to the states that immediately pivoted to reassess voting maps after the April 29 Louisiana vs. Callais decision struck down a landmark civil rights law that increased minority representation in Congress– a move that politicians and voting rights activists say guts Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Brown, a 20-year member of the church, says she was taken aback. “Our ancestors… everything they fought so hard for. (Now) they’re trying to reverse everything.”

Inside of the church, people filled the pews and lined the walls as they listened to faith leaders from around the country offer prayers to protect attendees who had gathered in the sacred house of worship and condemn the dismantling of voting rights protections that foot soldiers fought and died  for more than 60 years ago.

During his impassioned speech from the pulpit, Rev. Leodis Strong, the pastor of the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, recalled voter intimidation tactics in the Jim Crow South, including jellybean tests, where voting officials would ask Black people to count the number of jellybeans in a jar in order to register to vote.

“When they saw our collective power. They were afraid!” said Strong. “Now, there are no more jellybeans in jars, but jello and jelly in the spines of Congressmen who refuse to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”

“In the battle for the right to vote, the Black church has never been a spectator,” said U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, who said efforts to erase fair voting maps take the country “back to the age of Jim Crow.”

To close the mass meeting, faith leaders offered a final benediction and prayer of protection as attendees prepared to march a mile from the church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Outside of the church, Annie Pearl Avery sat in a wheelchair holding a sign with her fist raised high. Avery decided to get involved in the civil rights movement in 1961 after the Freedom Riders were attacked in Birmingham. She participated in sit-ins and marches, including the  Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.

Read more:  65 Years Later, the Freedom Riders Are Ready for Another Battle: ‘This Movement Has to be Reopened’

Avery said she wasn’t surprised to see the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in her lifetime.

“I talked to Reverend Joseph Lowery some time ago– before he died about 20 years ago–and Joe said we dropped the ball. See, we stopped doing what we needed to do to secure ourselves,” said Avery. “After we got the Voting Rights Act, they started right then to try to tear this down. And we got comfortable.”

As marchers walked across, many chose to walk in silence to pay homage to the foot soldiers who crossed the bridge during the Selma to Montgomery Marches of 1965. On the other side, they gathered to hear more prayers and remarks from activists who were brutally bludgeoned by Alabama State Troopers as they peacefully attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge 61 years ago.

Charles Mauldin was one of those 600 foot soldiers. In his speech, he told marchers about his great grandfather who registered to vote in 1885. Another member of his family wouldn’t register to vote until after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mauldin’s parents would go on to become the first and second African Americans to register to vote in Selma.

Like Avery, Mauldin isn’t surprised about the race to redraw redistricting maps.

“I wasn’t sure when it would happen, but it was inevitable” said Mauldin, who referred to current events as “the second reconstruction.”  “So, it wasn’t a matter of if. It was a matter of when.”

A Political and Spiritual Revival 

That afternoon, 54 miles away in Montgomery, thousands of people gathered in front of the Alabama Capitol to hear the rallying call of activists and politicians from Alabama and around the country.  The event’s host, Deanna “Dee” Reed — the political strategist who was removed from the House Chambers on May 8 for protesting the special legislative session that would eliminate the state’s only two Democratic majority legislative seats– called the rally “a political and spiritual revival.”

Brenda Paige Ward, the director of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation of Alabama, drove from Birmingham to attend the mass meeting in Selma that morning and then drove out to Montgomery. Ward, an organizer who worked with civil rights activists including Coretta Scott King, Dick Gregory, Jessie Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy, said she was glad to see unity that afternoon.

“Everybody had to come together collectively to bring this on and let them know that we are not going to take this anymore.”

“You need to get candidates talking about this all the time,” said Alabama gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones. “They need to be looking toward November to make sure people remember their vote counts.”

Jefferson County District 2 Commissioner Sheila Tyson brought three buses of people from Birmingham to the rally in Montgomery. Tyson said Alabama lawmakers’ hasty efforts to redraw its voting maps don’t surprise her, because political leaders in the state have made a series of decisions that disenfranchise Black and brown constituents.

“Look at how they are dropping all the funding for education. Look how they are building more prisons, getting rid of our grocery stores, bringing in all of these technology centers to poison up our soil,” said Tyson. “So what are they trying to do? And they’re only putting these centers in the Black and brown communities.”

Siblings Collins Pettaway III and Candice Pettaway grew up in Selma, attending Ebenezer Baptist Church. F.D. Reese —  the minister, educator, and civil rights leader who was one of Selma’s “Courageous Eight” and served as president of the Dallas County Voters’ League — led the congregation at the church for 50 years until he retired in 2015. James Perkins Jr., the Pettaways’ uncle and the first Black mayor of Selma, is the current pastor of Ebenzer.

The Pettaways, both under age 40, come from a legacy of community leaders, historians, and civil rights advocates. While they say they grew up mentally preparing for a “worst-case scenario,” they never believed they would see it happen in their lifetime.

While the Pettaways were pleased to see the “All Roads Lead to the South” campaign come together so rapidly, they know the real next steps must continue the momentum. They have also heard some criticism from senior civil rights advocates who say the modern voting rights movement lacks a singular, visible leader like the movement in the 1960s.

“This movement is being led by many people at one time,” said Candice. “A lot of different entities and organizations are coming together as one voice. We all have a moral responsibility to not just depend on one person to come and save us.”

“When you think about Selma, there was not one person who spoke. There were several leaders, several people, and everyone worked together as a unit, said Collins. “We have great leaders and great people. You’ve got people in NAACP doing good work. You have people in the state house doing good work. You have community activists doing good work. There is not going to be one leader. We are the leaders.”

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