-Kari Peterson
Selma, Alabama has provided me with an unexpected experience. It is a city rich in history, but poor in human rights. As we drove through residential neighborhoods in the black community and listened to the stories of several residents, I was shocked by the state of poverty that this town is in. Selma was a town that played an instrumental part in the Civil Rights Movement, but did not itself benefit from the movement as much as the rest of the country. Driving through the city, it appears to be in a standstill. There is barely any new development. Many houses and buildings are essentially falling apart. The town, shockingly, is still segregated. The children go to different schools: blacks in public schools, whites in private. The black community lives on the east side, while the whites occupy the west. There is even a country club that is completely white. I knew many whites in the south were still racist but I never realized how deeply ingrained it was in the culture and attitudes of many people. Confederate flags still fly in public areas and monuments to the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan still stand. When they reenact the battle that took place in Selma during the Civil War, the South wins. Many southern whites are still in complete denial of the wrongs that were committed both during the civil war and during the era of Jim Crow segregation. The whole situation was immensely disturbing for me. How can people who were so obviously wrong in their actions in my point of view so firmly believe that they were right? How can it be denied that oppression of people solely based on the color of their skin is okay?
However, there is a light in this dark and struggling city. It lies in the Freedom Foundation, a group of people who work towards establishing human rights through nonviolence. It is a place of joy and love in a town so surrounded in hate. A town where teenagers drew graffiti on a wall depicting the lynching of a black kindergarten girl because she was the first to integrate the private school.
I think we all left Selma feeling differently then we did coming in. Now it’s up to us to take what we saw of the town and what the Freedom Foundation taught us and learn from it. Everyone needs to at least realize that injustice still exists and is a problem that must be solved. But, if we don’t try and solve it, who will?
Selma, Alabama has provided me with an unexpected experience. It is a city rich in history, but poor in human rights. As we drove through residential neighborhoods in the black community and listened to the stories of several residents, I was shocked by the state of poverty that this town is in. Selma was a town that played an instrumental part in the Civil Rights Movement, but did not itself benefit from the movement as much as the rest of the country. Driving through the city, it appears to be in a standstill. There is barely any new development. Many houses and buildings are essentially falling apart. The town, shockingly, is still segregated. The children go to different schools: blacks in public schools, whites in private. The black community lives on the east side, while the whites occupy the west. There is even a country club that is completely white. I knew many whites in the south were still racist but I never realized how deeply ingrained it was in the culture and attitudes of many people. Confederate flags still fly in public areas and monuments to the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan still stand. When they reenact the battle that took place in Selma during the Civil War, the South wins. Many southern whites are still in complete denial of the wrongs that were committed both during the civil war and during the era of Jim Crow segregation. The whole situation was immensely disturbing for me. How can people who were so obviously wrong in their actions in my point of view so firmly believe that they were right? How can it be denied that oppression of people solely based on the color of their skin is okay?
However, there is a light in this dark and struggling city. It lies in the Freedom Foundation, a group of people who work towards establishing human rights through nonviolence. It is a place of joy and love in a town so surrounded in hate. A town where teenagers drew graffiti on a wall depicting the lynching of a black kindergarten girl because she was the first to integrate the private school.
I think we all left Selma feeling differently then we did coming in. Now it’s up to us to take what we saw of the town and what the Freedom Foundation taught us and learn from it. Everyone needs to at least realize that injustice still exists and is a problem that must be solved. But, if we don’t try and solve it, who will?