Selma was the recent topic of a major motion picture by the same name. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I definitely recommend it! It's out on DVD now. We actually just watched it last night. It's pretty powerful. It tells the story of how people advocated for the right to vote in the 60s, a time when African-Americans had the Constitutional right to vote but were effectively barred from registering due to oppressive and racist policies and procedures. For example, if a black person tried to register to vote, they'd have to pay a poll tax or pass a (purposely impossible) literacy test. In the movie, one character is asked to name all 67 county judges in Alabama, and when she can't, her voter registration application is denied.
Civil Rights leaders strategically chose Selma as the site of protest because there was a defined goal (registering to vote) and a defined opponent (the town sheriff). When they started, less than 2% of blacks in Selma were registered to vote, and in a neighboring county, where the blacks made up almost 50% of the population, there were a total of 0 registered to vote. Zero. That shocked me!!
The point of marching from Selma to Montgomery was to raise awareness about the issue of voter registration and demand legislation that would end discrimination in the registration and voting process in Alabama. (When African-Americans had no voice in electing their public officials, it was no surprise that those officials didn't represent their interests. Also, black people couldn't serve on a jury because jury pools were pulled from the voter rolls.) As you probably know, the peaceful march was initially met with a violent response from local law enforcement. Eventually the march did happen and it achieved its desired result! The Voting Rights Act was passed a few months later.
On our trip, we visited this great little interpretive center along the road before actually arriving in Selma. We saw the churches where the activists gathered, the streets they walked, the bridge they crossed, and drove the highway they eventually marched on all the way to Montgomery.
Selma itself is a fairly small town, and we just spent a couple hours there since there wasn't really too much to do. I'm glad we were able to witness this important historical location, though!
If you'll allow me a slight political rant now, I was dismayed that the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the VRA as unconstitutional in 2013. I would summarize the justices' opinion, briefly, as "it's been 50 years and the law worked. We don't have that bad of discrimination anymore, so this law is now an overreach of power by the federal government." Um, what??? Maybe we weren't seeing evidence of severe discrimination anymore because the law was in place and working!! If I had been a person who marched over that bridge and got beaten up in the name of voting rights, I think I would have felt like I was getting whacked upside the head all over again when I heard that decision come down from the Court.
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, several states moved quickly to enact more restrictive voter laws, including photo ID requirements, a reduction of early voting times, and more. If the VRA were still in effect, these changes would have gone through a review process to ensure that they didn't unnecessarily disenfranchise minorities. But now, there is no oversight, and I'm not sure who is protecting minority rights.
Now lest this all be doom and gloom, let me give a shout-out to my home state of Oregon, which recently announced that citizens in the state will be registered to vote automatically as part of the driver's licensing process, with an opt-out process available if someone doesn't want to be registered. Way to increase the voter rolls, Oregon! The "discrimination watcher" in me feels compelled to point out that not everyone has a driver's license, though, so I hope they have other systems in place to keep actively registering those people as well. All elections in Oregon are conducted by mail, so I think that's also a good way to increase participation - since people can vote on their own time and don't have to appear in person at a polling place.
Chapter 3: Montgomery will be coming next!
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