Durham, North Carolina, and Selma, Alabama
In the autumn of 2014, still settling into retirement in Durham, a question began nagging at me: was Barack Obama going to get shot in Selma Alabama the following March?
Now stay with me: was I just being more than normally paranoid?
Consider: March 7, 2015, would be the 50th anniversary of the first march for voting rights over the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, headed for the state capitol in Montgomery.
When that march was attacked by deputies and state troopers, images of the melee were flashed around the world as “Bloody Sunday.” I was there (and recount it in the memoir, Eating Dr. King’s Dinner). Even though my Bloody Sunday assignment was to march with a second contingent — which didn’t happen because of the assault on the first — the experience left its marks on me as well.
Further, even though no one was killed in the bridge attack, the Selma campaign already had a body count: the march itself was planned in protest of the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson a month earlier; and by the time the march finally reached Montgomery later that month, James Reeb, a Unitarian minister, had been clubbed to death. And that night, while returning from the march, Michigan housewife Viola Liuzzo was shot and killed by Klansmen. (There were more victims later.)
Fifty years after, I was sure of at least two things: one, President Obama would be in Selma to mark the anniversary; and two, for the many who hated him, this could be their big chance to take him out.
After all, the Voting Rights Act, which the bridge attack and march brought to pass, had made Obama’s election possible (as it also had enabled the victories of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton). Both had been reviled by reactionaries; but there was, no question, a specially murderous animus toward the first actual Black chief executive.
And the distance for a sniper in Selma was no farther than from the warehouse to the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King had been shot. The Obamas faced at least three times as many threats on their lives ad previous presidents, according to Secret Service sources interviewed by the Washington Post in 2011.
To be sure, Obama would arrive with an extensive, highly trained, well-armed security detail. But still: the moment would come when he had to step up to address the crowd, alone in the sun, somewhere near the bridge.
There he would be exposed as the ideal, once-in-a-lifetime target for the right sharpshooter with the right scope and long-range bullets. (Remember, I’m also of the generation that lived through both the Kennedy assassinations, as well as those of Dr. King and Malcolm X, plus others, less well-known).
Okay, but aside from general feverish anxiety, what did all this speculation have to do with me?
This: when Obama stepped to that podium, I planned to be nearby.
Out of any sniper’s crosshairs, I hoped, but close. I’d be sitting at a small folding table, selling books. But as we know, being close to a sniper’s target is a hazardous location.
Yet I planned to be sitting there, selling the 50th Anniversary Edition of my book, Selma 1965.
I had already done that in 2005, with a 40th Anniversary update. I rented a spot from the Bridge Crossing Jubilee committee, on the sidewalk right around the corner from the downtown foot of the bridge, and that limited edition had sold well. For the 50th anniversary, which would be a bigger deal, there needed to be an update added to it, and by summer’s end I was hard at work on it.
As that fiftieth anniversary approached, Selma’s place in history seemed secure. But if President Obama were to tour the city incognito, he’d quickly find that the history of the place was not secure at all.
In fact, Selma in late 2014, while undeniably rich in heritage and landmarks, was a city poor in most everything else, and sliding steadily downscale.
Its population, which peaked at more than 28,000 in 1960, had dipped to 19,900 in 2013 (17,600 in 2022). The poverty rate, at fifty per cent in 1972, was still above 36 per cent in 2014, the highest in Alabama.
In 2014 a visitor driving west toward Selma on U.S. Highway 80, crossing the Alabama River on the Pettus Bridge to Broad Street, would pass long stretches of closed up downtown shops and shanties, and a sign for a “Bridge Crossing Gift Shop” that wasn’t there.
Downtown, whole blocks of storefronts, busy in 1965, stood empty, a ghost town taking form. The once middle-class Black neighborhoods east of Broad Street were marked by scores of boarded up houses, many folding in on themselves in slow-motion self-demolition. (But at least most of the streets were now paved, an advance from 1965.)
The most thriving line of business was payday loan shops, of which I counted sixteen, all done up in bright colors, to disguise their goal of luring the poor into debt peonage.
What accounted for this bleak record of progress? Here the reflex liberal response is summed up in one word: racism. That is true, yet much too simple. After all, the term “racism” — like “cancer” — covers a wide range of pathologies. Indeed, the comparison is apt: just as melanoma is not lymphoma is not leukemia — each kills differently, so various forms of “racism” need to be responded to in different ways:
Consider, for instance, Alabama’s post-Selma politics. Both scholars and politicians have spoken of the Selma movement’s impact as a kind of new Reconstruction, like the initial, ill-fated post-Civil War effort. In fact, some described Selma’s impact as the third Reconstruction, with the 1930s Depression-era, Roosevelt-New Deal initiatives as the second round — it too, at best only a partial success, with many of its programs sapped by segregation.
This pattern was familiar to Bayard Rustin. In 1969, he wrote a Jewish acquaintance who had expressed weariness in opposing antisemitism:
I have seen periods of progress followed by reaction. I have seen the hopes and aspirations of Negroes rise during World War II, only to be smashed during the Eisenhower years. I am seeing the victories of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations destroyed by Richard Nixon. … I have been in a bombed church. My best friends, closest associates, and colleagues-in-arms have been beaten and assassinated. Yet, to remain human and to fulfill my commitment to a just society, I must continue to fight for the liberation of all men.
On the eve of the movement’s fiftieth anniversary it was clear that the Selma Reconstruction, like its predecessors, had crested and in many ways was in major retreat. It was being rolled back faster and more fully in the Black Belt of Alabama than perhaps anywhere else, though here, as before, it was becoming a template for parallel developments spreading across and even beyond the region.
Some of the recent ways the tide has turned are familiar: Supreme Court reversals, health care fights, gerrymandering, and more.
What accounts for this very meager record of progress? Here the reflex liberal response is summed up in one word: racism. That is true, yet much too simple. After all, the term “racism” — like “cancer” — covers a wide range of pathologies. Indeed, the comparison may be apt: just as melanoma is not lymphoma is not leukemia — each kills differently, so racism takes various forms:
Alabama is not South Carolina, nor is it Ferguson, Missouri — or Milwaukee, which has been named repeatedly as America’s most segregated city. No, the “Heart of Dixie” has its own long-simmered and ultra-toxic variety. Yet like many a toxic waste dump, Alabama’s toxins are not walled in: they have been and are seeping and spilling over into the bloodstream of the larger culture.
Anne Permaloff, a political scientist at Auburn University, summed up the state’s system well:
The entire [Alabama] system was built upon and reinforced by a traditional political culture. A traditional political culture reflects an agrarian, pre-commercial attitude. It considers a hierarchical society as part of the natural order of life and limits the role of government to preserving the existing social order and its control over the economic and political systems. The traditional political perspective includes the notion that only those with the correct quasi-aristocratic social and economic background should serve in government or participate in the political life of the community. A system built and maintained on such beliefs is not responsive to the needs and concerns of the average citizen.
Despite the monuments to the Selma movement, the persistence of this “traditional political culture” is by no means gone from the city.
In 2014, Selma even had a major new monument to the traditional political culture: a large statue of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, as the central icon of a large garish shrine to his Lost Cause that occupies a whole acre of the Old Live Oak Cemetery, lurking just several blocks west of the bridge and its freedom ceremonies.
In the last days of the Civil War, Forrest mounted a fierce but futile defense of Selma. Besides uncommon tactical skill, Forrest was also ruthless. He personally killed thirty Union soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, the last two in the fighting around Selma. After the war, he was a co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest has become an idol for those who yearn for a revival of the Confederate impulse.
His new Selma monument was erected by a local coven of Neo-
Confederates, spearheaded by Pat Godwin, whose farm near the city she dubbed “Fort Dixie.” She rented large billboards featuring Forrest’s image on Highway 80 near the bridge. As late as 2022, she held big annual parties for Forrest’s birthday (July 13). The events drew hundreds of people from numerous states, and featured speeches, fried catfish, Irish and Celtic music, watermelon, and often antique cannon salutes in Forrest’s honor.
The movement Godwin celebrates goes beyond simply remembering Confederate ancestors, to glorifying the cause of the Confederacy, and working to resurrect it, some even promoting a new effort at secession from the Union by southern states. In line with Neo-Confederate convictions, she has referred to Barack Obama as “commie obama bin lincoln.” (The name “Lincoln” being a profane epithet to Neo-Confederates, who see him as the instigator of the Civil War, the villainous invader of the South, and a flagrant war criminal.) She has also referred to Selma, with its black mayor and other officials, as “Zimbabwe on de Alabamy.”
In 2014, it may still have been easy to scoff at this movement as weird and politically irrelevant, but Godwin and many other of its supporters were dead serious. And by the time of the infamous “Unite the Right” torchlight rally and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia only three years later (not to mention many more recent events), the scoffers have begun to learn the depth and cost of their complacent myopia.
Reviewing the 50th Anniversary postscript to Selma 1965, which I finished in early 2015, it reads in 2024 not only as a portrait of a city ravaged and landmark achievements rolled back, but also a portent of what was spreading across the region and beyond. In fact, maybe the earlier comparison of this other pandemic of racism to a variety of cancers was overblown; maybe these political tumors have more in common than I thought:
The signs are now obvious and widely in evidence: rivers of anonymous “dark money” from untamed billionaires, to buy lobbyists, campaigns, and supreme courts; social media-driven gerrymandering and populist propaganda (especially “religious”) to deepen factionalism among races, classes, and genders, strengthening minority rule state by state; regulators and courts captured and used to limit public health, voting, and safety net services; taxes, education and criminal laws all skewed to favor the affluent; and to cement a “new” adamantine “traditional political culture” that keeps it all churning and metastasizing.
And this week in 2024, the program’s further advances will be trumpeted, and its complete triumph forecast, for days, not in Deep South Selma but in “Deep North” Milwaukee.
But I digress.
When Obama came to Selma in March 2015, I was there too as planned, having rolled across the bridge a day see if the spot I had reserved and forked over good money for was still there, close to the bridge as before. The local Jubilee festival officials nodded and smiled and assured me it was. That eased my mind, because I had several cartons of newly printed books in the trunk, and needed the huge crowd to see and get them moving.
But even as I left their office, the familiar unease returned: had the Jubilee folks cleared all this with the federal security people? Surely, they had.…
Maybe they did, but it didn’t count.
The Secret Service and who knows who else came to town and were all deployed by dawn the next morning. The rising sun showed they had sealed off a several-block area around the foot of the bridge: it was now surrounded by sinuous lines of interlocked barricades, with portable airport-style TSA entrances, magnetometers, electric wands and patdowns, everything but taking off our shoes and belts.
The whole of inner downtown was behind this magic barrier, and nothing extraneous got in, only properly vetted individuals. As most buildings in that part of town were already empty, there were likely dozens, maybe hundreds, of armed personnel scattered through them and on the three-story high roofs, carefully out of our sight from below. More were probably stationed around the other end of the bridge.
My speculations about security were borne out almost completely, though with no one to applaud my foresight: the threat extended east across the river and beyond the scattering of roadside shops there, into the woods along the river’s east bank. Those woods were not even a quarter of a mile away, well within range for an expert sniper, and offered near-perfect cover. Outside occupation and defense would require a couple of battalions.
From his first campaign, Obama’s presence and success had stirred violent threats. As his second term unrolled, the murderous sentiments kept leaking out. A Republican senator from Georgia, David Perdue, repeated out loud a wink-and-nod-and-smirk death-meme that was circulating widely among “Christian” conservatives.
Beginning by saying we should pray for Obama, Perdue did so by quoting a verse from Psalm 109:8 (it was also printed on T-shirts), to wit: “Let his days be few, and another take his place of leadership.”
Then Perdue smirked and paused, letting the listeners who were in the know fill in the following taunting verses : “9 May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. 10 May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes. 11 May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor. 12 May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children. 13 May his descendants be cut off, their names blotted out from the next generation.…” (And on it goes).
Psalm 109 is called an “imprecatory psalm,” in which as one description says, “the author imprecates; that is, he calls down calamity, destruction, and God’s anger and judgment on his enemies.” A pseudopolite euphemizing of a death curse.
(Perdue’s “imprecations” didn’t help his political future, though; he was defeated in 2020 by a Democrat. But was he foretelling the future in Alabama?)
So, yeah, I was nervous in Selma, in March 2015. Yet dignitaries had been coming to the bridge each March for decades, and the security pros knew what to do. If the podium were placed in just the right spot, the bridge itself gave the needed cover: its span arched a hundred feet above the river bank, and the roadway’s descent to downtown presented a solid backdrop of concrete and asphalt, blocking the aim of anyone hidden in the woods. I knew the layout well enough.
But what about all the vendors, including me? After a couple of hours of frantic inquiries, I discovered that the food trucks and sales tables had been unceremoniously pushed several blocks west, outside the barricades and away from the multitude, into the commercial wilderness, to weep and gnash our teeth.
Behind us, the big crowd was indeed streaming in: lines were long, the gatekeepers were moving people along briskly, but guiding them right past us, beyond the barricaded perimeter toward the bridge and the eventual chance to see Obama.
When Obama spoke, without incident, I was on my folding chair, next to a folding table, stacked with copies of my updated book (which makes a great gift by the way). They were for sale, but almost nobody was there to buy. My table had been exiled to a far corner of a large church parking lot. The booklovers, and almost everyone else, were downtown, well out of sight, cheering for Obama.
Only a trickle of visitors came past me, not superannuated movement alums or misdirected dignitaries, but those skipping the oratory to look for the food trucks dispensing fried fish, fried chicken, fried potatoes, and fried other stuff. Those who found them were wanting to feed their physical appetite, not a historical one. (Maybe if I’d deep-fried a few copies, the books would have moved better.)
I was hungry too, while working at being stoic. Stuff happens. (Or doesn’t.) Chairs were sparsely distributed here; the next one several feet away, near an empty table.
I didn’t feel bad about missing Obama’s speech; sure, I was a fan, yet ever since my days on Capitol Hill, at the turn of the 1980s, I found ceremonial orations mostly tedious.
But I did have an incongruous, yet welcome moment of distraction in the midday sun. As my attention lagged, a young Black girl, of eight to ten I’d guess, walked past the table, then turned and sat down. I paid no attention; doubtless she was waiting for an adult to bring a plate of fried something.
I soon perceived she was staring at me. When I glanced over, her brows knit, and she spoke, almost accusingly:
“Are you Santa Claus?”
I was in a bantering mood. Santa Claus? It was, after all, March; almost spring. Except for a middle-length white beard, and the bowl-full-of-jelly paunch, I was completely out of yuletide uniform.
“No,” I answered. “I’m trying to be the Grinch.”
She shook her head, firmly. “Nuh-uh,” she said, as if she’d ripped the mask off a rank impostor. “You’re Santa Claus.”
‘What the hay?’ I thought. She was clearly sure enough for both of us. “Okay,” I said. “I’m Santa Claus.”
Now she was certain, but not finished.
“Well, what are you doing here?” The tone was still almost accusatory: I was in the wrong place, wrong time, in the wrong livery. Now outed despite all the camouflage.
I shrugged. “I’m on vacation,” I said.
This almost satisfied her. But after a few seconds, the eyes narrowed again: “Well, then,” she said, “where are your elves?”
I feigned shock. “What? Do you think they want to go on vacation with me?” I gazed off toward the downtown. “I think they went to Florida.”
Next, I figured, she’d demand to know about the reindeer; and I didn’t have a quip ready about Rudolph recovering from a nose job. But no question, she had a future as a federal prosecutor.
At that moment, a woman walked up, with two paper plates, redolent of hot french fries. I would gladly have traded a couple Selma copies for one. Thus distracted, the girl stood up, and the pair wandered off to find an unoccupied table.
I was relieved. But made thoughtful. Several years earlier, a visiting writer had interviewed me at Quaker House, as background for a book about wives of U.S. soldiers in the Iraq War. (While They’re at War, by Kristen Henderson.) In the book, she described me as looking like “a melancholy, off-duty Santa.”
I figured she about nailed it.
I also recalled that it was definitely past time for my once-every-four-months-whether-I-need-it-or-not haircut and beard trim. I knew a barber shop which had half-price specials for geezers on Mondays. As soon as I get back to Durham, I decided.
Along with almost all of my newly-revised books, and relief that the security forces had foiled what I was still sure were aspiring Obama assassins, that signal of survival was about the only flicker of hope that came back with me from Selma in 2015.
As I crossed the Pettus Bridge heading east, behind me in Selma’s Old Live Oak Cemetery, in its bronzed glow, the recently erected specter of Nathan Bedford Forrest was smirking, and perhaps murmuring the mantra emblazoned on the billboards about him Pat Godwin had rented near the Pettus bridge: “Keep the skeer on ‘em.”
Adapted from Tell It Slant, by Emma Lapsansky-Werner, with Chuck Fager.
More Excerpts from Tell It Slant are online at:
–Excerpt #1: A Quaker’s Life in Our “Interesting,” Tumultuous Times:
— Excerpt #2: “Fighting for A Future”:
— Excerpt #3: A Whippersnapper & His Elders
— Excerpt #4: “Tell It Slant”: Author Emma Lapsansky-Werner Speaks
— Excerpt #5: San Francisco & “Going Naked for a Sign “ — or at least a job
–Excerpt #6: Going Postal on EEO & Vietnam at USPS
