Recalling Selma

Over the first weekend in March, 1965, TV networks revealed to the Nation the brutality of the vicious official violence deployed by the Alabama State Police to stop a few hundred silent marchers on the road from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, seeking to implement their constitutional right to vote. On Monday, Martin Luther King along with leaders of other civil rights groups issued a call for faith communities to join another march on the 21st.

Mike Monin, who was editor of AZUWUR, and I, having just ended my term as editor-in-chief of the Griffin, agreed that we should try to organize a Canisius contingent for the second march. Jimmy Hagan, president of student council, agreed to ask the council to authorize the use of student activity funds to lease a bus.

Mike and I presented the idea to Fr. Gillen, S.J., who was then Vice President of the College responsible for nearly everything other than academic affairs. He agreed to allow student activity funds to be used for the bus if that was what the council decided. He insisted only that a Jesuit be on the trip.

After arranging a bus, the operational details were falling into place. By Wednesday we felt confident the trip would happen, and posted an invitation for students to volunteer for one of the 33 seats on the bus, scheduled to leave the following Thursday. Whatever obstacles we might encounter we expected would occur south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Then I met with Army Captain Lee Fassl, the ROTC faculty advisor for the cadet Tactical Unit, which I led as the cadet captain. My objective was to discuss which of the cadet lieutenants would command the Tactical Unit during the St. Patrick’s Day parade on the same weekend as the march in Selma. When I told him I would be leading the Canisius delegation to march for voting rights in Selma, he immediately interrupted to declare that I could not go because I had to command the TU in the parade.

I expressed confidence that my presence was not essential because any of the platoon leaders could lead in my absence. But Fassl ordered me to command the Unit. I objected, arguing that both the march in Selma and the St. Patty:s parade were college-sanctioned activities and that he could not stop me from participating in Selma. He then threatened through gritted teeth that if I did not command the Unit, he would have me cashiered from the corps of cadets which would preclude my being commissioned as an officer, and ensure that I would be drafted.

I lost it. He was clearly trying to intimidate me to prevent me from participating in Selma. I accused him of being a racist who was trying to interfere with my First Amendment rights as an American citizen. I declared that I was not yet in the Army, I was still a citizen, and that if the Army was in the business of depriving people of their rights, then I did not want to be commissioned. I stormed out of his office in a rage without saluting.

Back at Old Main, I asked to see Fr. Gillen as soon as he was available. We had developed a congenial, although somewhat confrontational relationship through the periodic interviews I scheduled over my two years as an editor at the Griffin to discuss policies and decisions of concern to students. Minutes later, steaming with more than a little bit of anger, I recounted in detail the still fresh conversation with Captain Fassl.

Slow to boil, invariably poker faced, but always strategic, I could not read Gillen as he listened intently. After asking one question to clarify that Fassl had actually threatened to cashier me from the corps, Gillen picked up the phone and called the ROTC commander. Colonel Richardson was on medical leave; Major Ng took the call. Gillen inquired whether it was true that I had been threatened with dismissal from the corps if I led the Canisius delegation to Selma. After some long delay, or explanation, or both, Gillen responded tartly: “if Yuhnke is not allowed to go to Selma, the days of ROTC on this campus are numbered.” He hung up the phone without waiting for an answer. The next day Major Ng called me to his office to explain that I was not required to command the TU in the parade.

That night at the dinner table with mom and dad, I announced that I had helped organize Canisius students to participate in the voting rights march in Selma the following weekend. Dad remained silent as I explained the details. Mom voiced her concern that we would get hurt. The murders of activists in Selma were yet to come, but she anticipated those risks. I could tell Dad’s anger was rising because he was turning red in the face, but I had no reason to suspect that his anger would be directed at me. When I finished, he exploded by declaring that “No son of mine would do a thing like that! If you go, I don’t ever want to see you in this house again.”

The vehemence of his reaction stunned me. It took me minutes to take in the import of this unexpected revelation of my dad’s attitude that had never been discussed about an issue that was rending the Nation, and now was rending my family. The situation did not lend itself to reasoning. I responded from my heart: “Dad, I feel that what is happening in the South affects us all, and that I feel called to bear witness. History is being made, and I want to be part of it.”

In retrospect, I can see that my response to these challenges was a declaration of personal independence. My commitment was to contribute to the building of a different future for America than the world Lee Fassl and my father had lived in. We had to do better. That commitment has been rewarded many times over the last 50 years.

Those rewards included the experiences of connecting with black activists in Selma, the revelation of the bankrupt ideology of states’ rights conservatism, the power of broad-based coalitions, and the respect of my erstwhile adversaries.

Two months after returning from Selma, the senior ROTC cadets practiced the commissioning ceremony scheduled for the day before graduation. Colonel Richardson, who had returned to his post at Canisius’ ROTC, called my name and asked me to come to his office. We had never met in person. I had no idea he knew who I was.

Much to my surprise, he apologized on behalf of the Army for the way I had been treated by Captain Fassl. He warned that if I made a career of the Army that I would encounter many people like Fassl who would challenge me. “Don’t let them take you down,” he advised. “The Army needs leaders like you.” He gave me his second lieutenant bars, and asked me to wear them in honor of the commitment I had shown to the principles for which America stands.

Years later I reconciled with my dad. Soon before his death, he called me into his bedroom for a heart-to-heart conversation. He owned that he would never have chosen to live his life the way I had lived mine, but he confessed pride that “you are your own man.” I have always treasured his acknowledgment that he respected me even though I did not fulfill his expectations for who he wanted his son to be.

Thanks to Canisius, the Selma experience opened many eyes.

And nearly four decades after graduation, without any premonition that he would die within days, I called Fr. Gillen to thank him for the integrity and strength that he modeled for me that day in 1965.

MIKE DENINGER, Canisius University Class of 1968

It has been 50 years since I traveled to Selma for the historic voting rights march with a busload of students and faculty from Canisius University. I was an eighteen-year-old freshman the day of the march and one of 8,000 clergy, students, citizen-activists and professionals of all races and creeds who joined the protest led by Martin Luther King, Jr. The nation’s eyes were keenly focused on the small town 54 miles due west of Alabama’s capitol. It was 12 days after a brutal beating had claimed the life of Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister and civil rights activist, and two weeks after Bloody Sunday, when mounted police bludgeoned marchers on the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. We shared Reeb’s idealism and uncomplicated sense of justice. We also understood our lives could be at risk for demanding voting rights for people of color in the deep-south.

And now, with the release of the movie Selma, my stonewashed memories of those intense days and nights are rising to consciousness, like bubbles up from a seabed below. This is what I recall and how I believe it shaped my life:

Prejudice and discrimination exist in all ranks and settings, in 1965 as now. Not everyone agreed with the march or that we should be going to it. A close friend and dorm-mate of mine threatened termination of our friendship if I were to go. We were never close again. When I called home to Rochester for parental permission (it was required), my mother half-heartedly agreed. I asked her to inform my Dad, but she never did. Because he was an alcoholic with a welfare queen mentality, this led to an uncomfortable conversation with him after we returned. I was learning there were consequences for activism.

The drive south commenced with spirited chants and civil rights hymns, but our enthusiasm moderated in the face of a 24 hour ride and a day’s long march to follow. The first evidence that geography had affected politics occurred when a new bus driver took over below the Mason-Dixon Line. While singing civil rights songs, someone noticed the heater was on high. Strangely, the outside temperature was quite moderate. Our driver was objecting in his own way to our participation in the march. When he refused to lower the heat, it sparked a back-and-forth dispute that lasted a long time. I was in the back of the bus and missed all the machinations, but I do know that the incident was reported to the company.

Up the highway from Selma, we shaved in a truck stop rest room and changed into coats and ties to counter the image in the conservative media of freedom marchers as slovenly trouble-makers. The atmosphere as we disembarked at the rally was electric. Shivers rocketed up and down my spine as I stepped into the crowd. It was a righteous cause and a moment of unqualified conviction.

MLK’s rousing remarks from the porch of the Brown Chapel Parsonage prior to stepping off galvanized the assembly. Energized. No turning back. But this feeling did not stop a shock of fear from passing through me when I first saw the Pettus Bridge. I wager I was not alone in that feeling. Marcher voices quieted as we approached the span. A rise in the roadway leading to the bridge blocked the view to the other side. Heads were raised and eyes alert. What if the military was unable to quash the local rage? If the philosophy was non-violence, were we to simply take a beating? Were these just my private thoughts or held by others as well?

The scene after the bridge was reassuring. Over 3,000 troops and marshals were there to protect us. They lined the earthen berm on the north side of route 80, shielding us from rows of counter-protesters who were hoisting "n----- lover" placards, shouting obscenities and telling white folks to go home. Many more of the marchers were black, but white intruders were the focus of their anger. An occasional rock was flung into our midst from the hill, but troops quickly quieted those disturbances. We responded to their insults and attempts to harm by locking arms tightly and neutralizing their animosity with choruses of We Shall Overcome. On the south side of the divided highway drunken locals idled their pick-ups ominously past us with taunts like "Too Bad Reeb!" and "Go Home Yankee!" painted on the doors.

A few miles from the city, the number of roadside hecklers diminished, although the parade of threatening vehicles across the median continued to pass. The troops had taken positions at the front and rear of the march and patrolled up and down our flanks in armed jeeps. Away from Selma’s hostility, and under military protection, the mood lightened. Between songs marchers traded success stories and news of struggles in other cities. A common narrative was emerging, a collective conscience being honed, a movement was coming of age. When the sun on our faces dropped closer to the horizon, talk among us shifted to concerns for safety. All but about 50 of the thousands of marchers had to be shuttled back to Selma that night. By court order, only a small contingent could continue to Montgomery the next day.

The return buses arrived after sundown. I waited too long in a sandwich line and got separated from my Canisius cohorts. It was then dark as sin. The buses were full and departing. I was on my own, anxious and ill at ease. Following several inquiries, an Episcopal priest offered me a ride, which I gratefully accepted. While driving back, he spoke of the need for vigilance. A friend of his had been knifed on the edge of the neighborhood where I would be staying. I rejoined my group at the First Baptist Church, a designated food and rest center for marchers. The pews were filled with sleeping bags whose owners had traveled from every corner of the nation. There was no sleeping that night though. Fear of violent reprisals and people coming and going with news of the day kept me up until daybreak.

The trip back to Buffalo that morning was noiseless, save for murmured conversations and the snores of exhausted young men. Seeds of change had been sewn in our lives for future germination.

I have had 50 years to process the effects of Selma on our nation and my life. I was different after being the target of racism. Unequivocally. I imagine we all speak with pride about our participation in the March. I further assume that many of our individual trajectories were altered by the experience. As a Gallaudet University dean, I pressed for the hiring of professionals of color, established the first diversity programs on campus and became a trainer for the National Coalition Building Institute, an organization with a goal of eliminating prejudice. This past year, I co-led a diversity training with a Deaf colleague at the Kentucky School for the Deaf. I also composed a chapter for a multicultural text (in press) about the status of LGBTQ deaf and hard of hearing students in our nation’s schools.

The Selma March schooled us all in prejudice and discrimination. It was up to us to put what was learned into practice.

THOMAS MARRIOTT, Canisius University Class of 1966

We went through Nashville, early morning, 2 maybe 3 a.m.?  The chatter had stopped, just bus sounds now.  I decided to walk up and talk to the driver, the Southern guy.  Why?  Did I feel sorry for him in his situation?  Maybe.  Or maybe I reckoned that a hostile bus driver, acting out with the controls, was not in the interest of the greater good.  Did I think that a bit of chat could bring conversion to a presumed bigot?  Maybe I thought I could arrange a chat with George Wallace the next day.  I mean, come on.  I was just 21.

Anyway, this was Nashville, and even then even I knew what that meant.  "Hey, are we going past the Grand Ole Opry?"  "No.  (pause)  It's a few blocks that way.  (pause)  You wanna see it?"  "Yeah!"  So he drove over there and slowed way down.  We got a pretty good look.  (Cool old building, by the way, all wood.)  And on we went.  "Thanks."  I went back to my seat, probably shivered through the night.  Twenty-one years and 22 days to be precise.

Do I remember a Catholic church in Birmingham?  I would have known enough to be a bit surprised that they had Catholics in Birmingham, but not enough to know that of course they have Catholics in Birmingham.  It was morning.  Did we go in?  Was there Mass?  I know we got off the bus.  There was cordial conversation between clerics, brothers in faith.  The sight of a Catholic church would have calmed my growing anxiety.

It was a handsome church that would have looked in place anywhere back home.  But this was not back home.  This was a church in Birmingham, Alabama, where churches could be blown to pieces and little girls murdered.  This was Birmingham, 100 miles from Selma and Pettus Bridge where two weeks previous the whole world watched as the authorities kicked and punched and clubbed 600 protestors who were armed with nothing but hunger for justice and bottomless courage.  Sixty were hospitalized.

We bused out of Birmingham and headed for Selma.  Over the next hour my brain liquified.  Acid fear captured my imagination.  The longest, straightest road in the history of roads.  Was that water at the base of all those trees?  (Probably not, by the way.)  Was I in a swamp?  This was not my earth.  Straight, slender road, countless straight, slender trees, just wide enough to conceal spying eyes under pointy hats.  Were those broken-off branches or shotgun barrels, and what was I doing in a window seat, and on and on for what seemed like 1000 miles.  I was scared.  And then--Selma.

It is a fairly big town.  I had complete faith in our leaders.  But where do we go, did we know?  Why should hostile driver-guy know?  What do we do?  Disconcerting talk at the front of the bus.  Raised voices?  Did anyone know then that we probably wanted Brown's Chapel, but it wouldn't be famous until the 6 o'clock news later tonight.

 Then we stop.  "Okay, everyone out."  We're on the side of the road.  There's a little kid, maybe there were two or three.  They're waving for us to follow.  We do.  We're weaving quickly, down unpaved streets, cutting between houses, across backyards.  The kids are waving us on.  "Come on!"  We were being led by children--laughing, excited, self-possessed, purposeful children.  "Come on!"  Thirty-five men in Roman collars or coats and ties, men from another planet, following a short cut trail that only kids could devise.  Could there be anything more beautiful than this.  I was no longer afraid.  Thanks, kids.  ". . . and a child shall lead them," or two or three children.

At this point my memories become even more spotty.  We stood around a lot.  We took a picture of the group.  It seems we were told to stay close and not get lost, but Bob Pfohman ‘66  and I (I think it was Bob) headed off to see if we could get a look at Dr. King.

We found him.  It must have been when the actual march was forming because my memory-picture somewhat matches the now-iconic photo of Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, Ralph Bunche, and the other leaders of the march.  I think they were sitting on the ground at the front of the assembled thousands.  The atmosphere was dense and felt very serious, of course.

Here I'll interrupt my personal recollection and note some historical facts.  My sources are simple Internet sources.  There were actually three Selma marches.  The first was Sunday, March 7, 1965.  "Bloody Sunday."  I referred to it earlier.  Some 600 were shockingly beaten on Edmund Pettus Bridge by Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark, a crowd of deputized white citizens, and some Alabama State Troopers.  There were kicks and clubs and there were horses and there was tear gas.  I wonder would Clark and his gang have attacked if Dr. King had been there?

Two days later, March 9, came "Turnaround Tuesday."  This was a hastily organized demonstration of defiance.  There were no permits for this march, and when ordered to halt by Clark Dr. King turned the marchers around and returned to Brown's Chapel to begin preparations for the much greater effort of Sunday, March 21, the march in which we participated.

This march actually lasted for five days and covered 50 miles.  On March 25 in Montgomery Dr. King and 25,000 marchers representing millions of U.S. citizens presented a petition to Alabama Governor George Wallace demanding an end to discrimination in voter registration.  More importantly, however, a demand was being sent to President Johnson and the U.S. Congress that the Voting Rights Act must be passed without further delay.

I should point out that we Canisians only participated in the first day of the third march.  After the symbolically important act of re-crossing Pettus Bridge, we returned to Selma to prepare for our trip back home.

 As for the march itself, I remember moving very slowly, in fits and starts.  I couldn't see much for the people around me.  Was there taunting from the sidelines?  There was encouragement too, I think.  I remember unceremoniously finding myself on the bridge and as we rose up a bit the view opened and I felt a touch of vulnerability.  But with 2000 U.S. Army and 1900 Alabama National Guardsmen on hand I knew that violence was not at all likely this day.  There is indeed strength in numbers.  A few days later, away from watchful eyes, Ms. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights fighter from Detroit, was murdered on a highway as she ferried people back to Selma from Montgomery.

The strongest memory I've taken from the march itself was the impression made on me by the marshals.  Here were young students our age doing the real work of the civil rights movement.  Were they SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) members?  They walked beside us and instructed us on what to do and what not to do in the event of active opposition.  I admired them so much and trusted them completely.

After nine miles and after crossing the bridge we left the march and returned to Selma.  (Although I've never read or heard anything to confirm this, I absolutely recall boarding a passenger train to carry us back to Selma.  It felt very very strange.  Did it happen?)

Except for one other powerful memory I'm afraid I have nothing more to offer by way of specific memories for until we arrived back at the Student Union at Canisius I remember absolutely nothing about our return to Buffalo.  As for that one remaining image from Selma . . . perhaps we slept overnight.  I remember waking up lying on a church pew to beautiful bright sunshine and an unaccountable swishing sound.  I pulled myself up and peered over the back of the pew in front and saw a dozen or so black women dressed in sky blue (known here as Carolina blue) choir robes.  Sure, you sticklers for detail will deny it but, for an instant, I knew I was in heaven.

So back we bused to the "City of No Illusions."  I wonder how much thought I gave to the fact that as we drove north the Selma marchers walked out Highway 80 to the east.  I know the only regret I felt about the whole trip was that we couldn't go on to Montgomery.  Knowing myself now as I must have been then, if we had trucked on I might not have come back at all.

As we headed home the amorphous history-machine was properly turning the Selma marches into an historical triumph.  However, I for one completely out of media range and only near the eye of the storm was unaware of this and so was just befuddled by the greeting we received back at school.  What were all these people doing here?  Reporters and photographers.  The band?  Friends and most happily a big bunch of my beloved family, all who could make it.  My mom, three or four brothers and sisters, a brother-in-law, a niece and nephew or two, and even my dear, dear grandma.  What the hell?  What had we done to get all this attention?  "Hey what are you all doing here? . . . Really?!  Let me hold the baby."  Kerlack--a photo was taken that would appear the next day in the Buffalo Evening News.  Lots of smiles, no doubt lots of jokes.  I love my family.

So, that was the end of my trip to Selma, Alabama, to march behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Except not really, of course.  A day or two later my father told me I should go down to the church (we probably called it "the colored church") at the corner of Humboldt and Utica.  They wanted me to tell them about going down to Selma.  Sunday.  Ten o'clock.  "Huh?  Uh . . . okay."

I should say here that we, happily, were non-flee-ers in a white flight neighborhood.  We lived at 276 Humboldt Parkway and were neighbors to both "the colored church" and Canisius University.

On Sunday I walked the ten or so blocks to Utica (or was it Ferry?) and went inside.  It was a big, airy, beautiful sanctuary, much bigger than the church in Selma where I slept the week before.  I was intro­duced from the pulpit by a man who was probably a transcendent orator.  Here I was speaking from his pulpit, speaking to people some of whose lives were no doubt epic in scope.  I hope to God I didn't embarrass myself too badly.  What could I have said?  I was so young, so inexperi­enced, so ignorant.  I do know, however, that my heart was open with love, so perhaps that saved me.  I know I wanted deeply to be thought a good and worthy neighbor.

A few days later I got a letter.  Pitiful handwriting on the envelope.  Inside was a copy of that picture of my family and me from the News.  The sender circled my sister's face and wrote, "How would you like her to marry a nigger?"  I laughed at this.  I wish I had known enough to weep.  I should point out that this photo from the Buffalo Evening News was not likely sent from Alabama or Mississippi or anywhere else "down south."

Maybe a month or so after our return, philosophy professor Fr. Francis Courneen (I believe it was he), a most courageous man, asked me to accompany him and one or two others to a meeting with homeowners in the neighbor­hood.  I had assumed it would be another version of the speech at the church, but I was left feeling uncomfortable, as if there were problems.  I understood it was to be the first of several such meetings, but if there were others I wasn't brought along.

I believe, with this, the direct consequences of my Selma travels ended, with one interesting exception.  Several years later, my mother, after a change of residence, downsizing, was bedeviled by mystifying telephone problems and, after a frustratingly fruitless series of complaints, a sympathetic repair man told her that her previous phone had been bugged and her move made it difficult to re-set the tap.  This was a result of my public support for the right of people to vote in Selma, Alabama, U.S.A. (my words, not his).  I have no evidence to prove that the family phone was bugged and I've never taken the trouble to ask for my file, but the uselessness of it all gives the story the ring of truth.  We are to take comfort I suppose in knowing that some poor FBI functionary kept America safe with his or her detailed knowledge of my late mother's (a Republican) shopping habits and my little sister's dating contacts.  They must not have noted that I moved from Buffalo to Chapel Hill, N.C., in August of 1966.

How did Selma affect the rest of my life?  First, here's how it didn't.  I didn't come back from Selma and change my major at school and I didn't spend a summer registering voters in Mississippi, or in Buffalo for that matter.  The attitudes I brought home, however, have proved life-defining. 

Here's how I explain it to myself.  My psyche is inhabited by two warring armies of gods--the life gods and the death gods.  The life gods arm me with courage so that I'll do the things that would be easier not to do, get out of bed, for example.  They tell me they want me to work, to be an actor, maybe even an artist, so that I can relay their glories to people.  Or maybe they just want to piss off the death gods who also seem to want something from me, because they also gave me gifts.  They armed me from childhood with layer upon layer of fear and isolation.  At different times I have loved all these gods dearly.

The death army--the fear gods--ruled gaudily throughout my five years of high school (yes, five years).  But in college the "good guys" started their comeback.  They gave me terrific courses with some great teachers.  They gave me inspiration which bought me decent grades.  They gave me a squadron of serious friends, and even a terrific girlfriend.  They gave me sips of clear air, and I was ready for more.  And so in a maneuver shocking to me they Hoovered me into a bus, they leashed me to a greyhound that ran away with me to Alabama.  It was an eye-popping gambit and it worked.  They made me a citizen, a public person.

It would be years before the death guys caught up with me again and in their absence I began to examine their favors, to peel back the smothering stack of deceits.  The most timely one was race fear.  Wintering.  Deadening.  Race