Lone Star in Selma

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

New Kids on the Block

A new kid has come to Selma.

The signs are unmistakable, though I tried my best to ignore the "Selma Interpretive Center Coming Soon" poster hanging on an old building on Water Street, less than a block from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I walked past the building almost every day when I first got here last month, but I didn't give it much thought at first. It was impossible, however, to miss the Ranger Roy types who attended the Bridge Crossing Jubilee wearing khaki uniforms and large hats. Yes, the government has moved to Selma and they're bringing millions of dollars with them to build a shiny, new museum dedicated to the local Civil Rights Movement.

What's that you say? Selma already has a museum that serves that purpose? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Nevertheless, the new "Interpretive Center" is coming and I'm not sure what it means for the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, which sits less than a block away from the new place. Now the NVRMI, dedicated to the people who fought the government for their civil rights, has to worry about being taken out by a government-funded museum. Does that qualify as "ironic" or is it just plain sad?

For those of you who have never been to Selma or the NVRMI, let me give you a little background. It's a grassroots museum dedicated to what tour director Joanne Bland calls "the people who marched behind Martin Luther King, Jr." They were the foot soldiers whose names are usually left out of the grand narrative, people like Annie Cooper and Marie Foster, who were organizing in Selma long before the TV cameras arrived. Bland herself attended mass meetings with her grandmother as a child and went to jail for the first time when she was only eleven-years old. Now she gives tourists first-hand accounts of Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery March when they visit the museum. She even gives walking tours, complete with a march across the bridge. It's an unforgettable experience.

One of my jobs here is to organize a media archive in a little room on the second floor of the museum. Since working in there, I have found pictures of Ms. Bland giving tours to people as different as Louis Farrakhan, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Chris Tucker and MC Hammer. Yesterday I found a snapshot of her with a man who I swear is Stephen King. I know it seems that with all these rich or influential people visiting (o.k., maybe not Hammer these days), the NVRMI should be swimming in cash. Well, it's not, and it desperately needs more funding to stay afloat. Oh, and did I mention that the museum has over 300 hours of interview footage of people involved in the Movement in the Alabama Black Belt? With a little money and some elbow grease, these oral histories could make the museum one of the most valuable historical archives of the Civil Rights Movement in the country.

But will this new “Interpretive Center” eat into the tourism that keeps the NVRMI open and make their financial situation even worse?

Any thoughts on this? I'd love to hear what some of y'all think about this situation.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

A Few Pictures



This is the view of the Edmund Pettus Bridge from the rear side of the National Voting Rights Museum. It still gives me chills.




Here's the Alabama River at sunset (taken from a window at the museum).



I saw this child at the march re-enactment on March 5 and I had to take a picture. I loved seeing so many kids participating in the Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Wisconsin Cargo

Early last Tuesday morning, a group of college students were causally strolling down Water Street in Selma when they were greeted by a slave catcher. The black woman, clad in West African attire, strode angrily towards the group and yelled, "You niggers need to fall in line. Move!"

It took a few minutes for the group to realize what was happening. You see, these kids from the University of Wisconsin-Madison had only been in Selma for one day, but they were so accustomed to being yelled at by strange black women that they didn't suspect what was coming. Although this crazy chick in a head wrap called them names and made them face the wall with their legs spread, they thought it was just another day in Alabama. But, by the time the slave catcher had separated the women from the men and led us through a dark tunnel, everyone knew what was happening. The screams and the sound of crashing waves were unmistakable. We were on the Middle Passage.

Remember when I said that there's no such thing as an audience in Selma? I wasn't joking.

The "slave catcher" is named Afriye, and her tour of the Slavery and Civil War Museum isn't something a tourist can easily forget. Afriye enlisted Jerome and me to escort the unsuspecting group of UW students to the museum that morning and I knew that she planned to start the tour early; however, even I was a little rattled when she met us on the street and made us do embarrassing things in broad daylight. I actually felt relieved when she led us into the building (making us stoop because "filthy niggers" like ourselves could not look her in the eye), but once inside I immediately wanted to escape. "Uncomfortable" doesn't even begin to describe the experience. As one student said after the tour, "I felt about one hundred different emotions in twenty minutes."

Now, I don't want to tell you too much about Afriye's tour because I hope that some of y'all will make the journey to Selma and try it for yourselves. What I can tell you is that, like the Voting Rights Museum, what the SCWM lacks in funds it makes up for in pure emotion. Ten minutes into the tour, I could hear sniffles coming from other group members. By the time Afriye turned on the lights and returned to her normal, peaceful self, several people were sobbing loudly.

One student seemed particularly affected by the tour. A Nigerian who grew up in Madison, she cried throughout the de-briefing. I kept glancing at this young woman -who would look at home in any one of my family pictures - because her reaction to the tour seemed familiar. The first time I ever visited a plantation, I couldn't control the tears that seemed to burn a trail down my face. This student, and a few others, looked like I had felt on that day in Louisiana when I stood in the rain and cried for my enslaved ancestors. Afriye’s tour was especially touching because it hadn’t ended with her telling us about African Americans' eventual freedom; she stopped it while we were still "slaves." No bright bows wrapped around pretty little packages here. So we carried the weight of that morning for awhile, and not even the fried chicken we ate for lunch would cheer us up. In fact, the entire group would remain somber for the rest of the day. We couldn’t wash the stink of that morning from our bodies, and maybe we weren’t supposed to.

Ashe.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Uncle Earl

Uncle Earl liked to say that he was the first person I ever called the "n-word." When I was four, the story goes, he was taking a nap and I wanted to play. I tried to wake him, and when he didn't budge, I knocked him upside the head and said, "Wake up, nigga!"

If you felt even slightly uncomfortable when you read this story, then imagine how I feel. Uncle Earl loved to share this delightful little tale with everybody every year during the holidays. The last time he told it was when I brought Jerome to meet him and his wife, Aunt Bobbie, for the first time in January. He was standing at the stove frying up a batch of catfish when he turned to Jerome and said, "You know what your girlfriend told me when she was little? Well, I was taking a nap one day and..."

Personally, I think Uncle Earl took pleasure in bringing me, the PhD student, down a peg or two. Here's another example: when I told him that I was writing about the Jim Crow era, he scoffed and said, "What do you know about that? Why don't you go to the country and pick cotton for a few months? Until then, you can't tell nobody about Jim Crow." He was always raw with me, which is why we always ended up talking (and arguing) about history during my visits. But, he said these things out of love, and that's what made him so great. When I asked him once why he moved away from Texas as a teenager, his reply was simple, yet hardcore: "Have you ever heard of eye rape?"

So, I'm going to try not to make my eulogy for Uncle Earl syrupy sweet 'cause he just wasn't that kinda man. Instead, I'll use this space to just say goodbye to the man who cooked the best food I've ever tasted (gumbo, pork fried rice, ribs, greens, ox tails, and most of all, his famous homemade rolls) and who made me watch Roots during a summer vacation when I was 13 so I'd think twice before casually using the "n-word." We're gonna miss ya, Wat.

Monday, March 06, 2006

12 Things I Saw, Heard and Tasted at Selma's 2006 Bridge Crossing Jubilee

- An 8-year-old girl with a grille

- Willie Nell Fail Avery, a veteran of the Marion Movement, marching in the Bloody Sunday re-enactment and telling us, "We're still struggling"

- Crips throwing up gang signs and waving blue bandanas in the same place where non-violent civil rights activists marched 41 years ago

- Al Sharpton's perm

- Deep-fried gator on a stick (delicious)

- Andrew Young calling 95-year-old Amelia Boynton Robinson "fine"

- Gospel singer Dottie Peeples singing "Beat It" on stage. (I guess even church ladies can't resist a good Michael Jackson song.)

- Bored teen girls (wearing sunglasses at 9:00 p.m. indoors) talking on cell phones while seldom-recognized elders of the Movement received awards

- Spoken word poets from Milwaukee ripping it up on the steps of Brown Chapel AME church

-Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses, representing for H-town

- Rutha Harris, perhaps THE voice of the SNCC Freedom Singers, leading "I Woke Up This Morning" at the Dallas County Courthouse

- Chuck D, a recipient of the Freedom Flame Award, saying that the South gave the United States the best food, the best music and the best leaders in history

Sunday, March 05, 2006

A Day in "Court"

At the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, there is no such thing as an audience. You may be sitting at an awards dinner listening to an address by Andrew Young when a festival organizer asks you to take her to Wal-Mart. Right now. You could be waiting for an induction ceremony at the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute to begin when you learn that you are doing the inducting. In five minutes.

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. I came to Selma to work. So, when I found myself sitting in the witness stand at the Dallas County courthouse Friday night being cross-examined by attorney Rose Sanders, I could only try my best not to screw everything up.

Friday night's event was a mock trial, meant to educate the Jubilee audience about the circumstances leading to Bloody Sunday in 1965. During a night march in Marion, Alabama (just west of Selma) , a police officer shot a young black man named Jimmie Lee Jackson in the stomach as he tried to protect his mother, who was trying to save her 82-year-old father from being clubbed to death. When Jackson died in a Selma hospital, angry civil rights protesters decided they would march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the young man's murder. State troopers met them on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that Sunday afternoon with tear gas and bull whips. The NVRMI commemorates that march every year during Jubilee, so it's only fitting that Jackson's story take center stage.

I knew that Sanders had planned a mock trial in which an actor portraying Jackson's murderer, "Mr. X," would be "tried"; in fact, I'd planned to attend the event as an audience member. A couple of hours before the trial, however, Sanders saw me at the museum and said, "I need you to be a witness at the trial tonight." I would portray Jackson's sister, a participant in the night march and a witness to her brother's murder. Since I didn't even know the woman's name, let alone what she really saw that night, I tried to call on any skills I'd learned about improvisational acting in high school. 12 years ago.

My testimony began smoothly. I was oh-so proud of myself as I busted out my knowledge of the Movement in Marion. "Yes, sir. There were 500 of us that night. They'd arrested James Orange, so we planned to sing freedom songs in front of the jail. Then, the street lights went out."

And then Rose Sanders took over. I saw her smirk as she approached me in the witness stand. This is a woman dubbed "Rose-zilla" by her enemies, but I only know her as the kind-hearted, take-no-mess activist/lawyer who founded the NVRMI and Jubilee.

"Well, since you seem to have such a fantastic memory, can you tell me what color pants Mr. X is wearing today?" The defendant was outside of my view, but I had this one.

"Yes. He is wearing denim."

"What color denim?"

Hmmm. This was harder. I gestured to the Gap jeans I was wearing. "Same color as mine?"

I was wrong. Although I kept repeating, "But I got denim right! I got denim right!" Sanders showed no mercy. She tripped me up. She called me out. She all but mopped the courtroom floor with my ragged, limp body. It was a great time.

At the end of the testimonies, the audience served as the jury (fittingly) and found "Mr. X" guilty of the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Everyone was talking, laughing and congratulating each other on their fine performances when Rose stood to make an announcement. She reminded us that what we had just accomplished was fictional. The police officer who shot Jackson was never tried or convicted. He even went on record saying that he did shoot the young man and that he had done nothing wrong. He still lives in Alabama.

For me, that trial is symbolic of my experience at Jubilee so far. I've flown by the seat of my pants and stepped completely outside of my comfort zone. I've laughed until my belly ached and met fabulous people. But, most of all, I've been constantly reminded that this struggle ain't over. Not by a long shot.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Oddball

"So, where did y'all two migrate from?"

The friendly man behind the counter at the post office decided that we must be new in town before we even opened our mouths to speak. He was right. It was our third day in Selma, Alabama and we had already become accustomed to the stares of our new neighbors. Not that curious gazes are shocking or new for us...My boyfriend and I moved here from Madison, Wisconsin, a town that's almost 90% white (and if it ain't technically, it sure feels like it), where I expect white folks who have never seen cornrows, afros, or dreadlocks worn by flesh-and-blood black people to gawk at us. The stares in Selma, however, are more than a little unsettling. In Madison, we're usually the only African Americans in the room. Selma, on the other hand, is a southern town with a black majority - and we are both black southerners. So, why do we stand out like a couple of hookers in church?

The truth is, we've been Yankee-fied.

After six years in Madison, people down South think we're just plain weird. Here's a brief list of Yankee eccentricities that I've accepted in my life: I walk to work if the weather's nice. I share a plot in an organic community garden. I co-host a news show on a leftist community radio station that features stories on why Wal-Mart is evil. I wear my hair natural. I recycle.

That may not sound strange to some of the Yankees out there, but believe me, it's quite different from the life I led growing up in Houston. Yeah, I've always been a bit to the left where politics are concerned. I grew up in a household where JFK was unquestionably great and Clinton is as good as it's gonna get for now. But still, growing up in Texas meant that some folks called me liberal because I only considered homosexuality to be a minor sin - you know, like gossiping or wearing white after Labor Day. I changed. By the time I graduated from UT, I was an unabashed liberal, but once in Madison, I became what most folks back home would consider "radical." The nappy hair is the final touch.

I'm especially aware of my weirdness when I visit Houston after being away for awhile. Back home, I am the only woman around who doesn't sport a "perm." My 'fro draws so many stares and jeers that I started getting cornrows before making a visit. In Madison, ALL of my black girl friends wear their hair natural. Selma women also tend to straighten their hair, with the exception being a few of the hell-raising ladies at the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, where I'll work for two months before returning to Madison. There, dreads and naturals aren't strange at all. There, I feel a little less like an oddball.

So, yeah, it pains me that my temporary community doesn't have a recycling program or that my hairstyle makes me quirky. But you know what? For lunch I feasted on a huge catfish sandwich with a side of fried okra for only $5. When I stroll down the street, perfect strangers shout greetings at me like we're old childhood friends. On the last day of February, I walked to work without a jacket. And, yesterday, I watched the sun set over the Alabama River in the same spot where civil rights activists marched for the right to vote 41 years ago.

Yep, I'm back down South and I don't wanna be anywhere else in the world.