This is Brown Chapel AME Church, where on March 7, 1965, a group led by future Congressman John Lewis began a march to Montgomery to demonstrate their desire for equal voting rights. As they crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge, sheriff's deputies and state troopers awaited them on the other side. The group was violently stopped as the troopers attacked with tear gas, billy clubs, and dogs. The day became known as "Bloody Sunday."

The church is currently under renovation, so we didn't get to go inside.

On March 21, 1965, a successful march to Montgomery began. Over the next four days, over 300 people marched the 47 miles from Selma to Montgomery with many others joining for part of the route. Their demonstration yielded fruit when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. 

As we drove from Montgomery to Selma, we stopped at the Lowndes Interpretive Center, a National Park Service site. We got to view a film about the march and the passage of the Voting Rights Act and engage with interactive exhibits. 

"The interpretive center was great, but inside we saw these troubling signs. Excising negative information from our history? I'm trying to imagine a Bible with 'anything negative about either past or living' characters cut out. There wouldn't be much left! Fortunately, the content of the exhibit did not seem to be affected, despite the signs."

-Heather

Not far from the Interpretive Center, we visited a small house out in the country that was used as a meeting place for SNCC workers. After their youngest child got involved, Matthew and Emma Jackson agreed to let SNCC use an empty house they owned. Emma Jackson considered this kind of support to be part of her Christian witness. "Your duty is to serve people and I have always wanted to do that. I was taught that."

After we explored the inside of the house, we spent some time on the lawn learning about an important justice issue that plagues properties like this one all over rural Alabama. Lori read to us from Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret by Catherine Coleman Flowers. Many people in Alabama lack an affordable way to dispose of waste from their toilets. Ms. Flowers has been working to bring attention and solutions to this problem.

Just as in Montgomery, we encountered two very different stories, told side by side. In the heart of Selma, Live Oak Cemetery contains a section called "Confederate Circle" with monuments to the Confederacy. Reading the plaque for the monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest (re-dedicated in 2015) demonstrates how different a story can be depending on who is telling it. Encountering evidence of the Lost Cause Narrative in places like this one brought home the importance of the stories told at the Legacy Sites. While the Lost Cause Narrative paints a picture of a traditional Southern life based on chivalry where enslaved people were happy and well-treated, the Legacy Sites tell the true story of brutality, cruelty, and racial terror.