A Student’s Persecutive: 57th Anniversary of the March From Selma

“Let’s march!” Rev. Al Sharpton yelled at the start of a 11-mile march along the Selma-Montgomery Highway in honor of the 57th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Dozens of students in the Atlanta University Center including myself took part in this march during our Spring Break.

We got the opportunity to march alongside many civil rights leaders such as Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ben Crump, Wanda Cooper Jones (Ahmuad Arbery’s mother), and Philonise Floyd (George Floyd’s brother). As well as many of the original marchers from Selma in 1965.

The march was broken into three sections, with a 10- 20 minute break in between each section. The first section was 2 miles long, and minutes into the march heavy rain began to fall. Myself being unprepared for this type of weather got completely drenched by the rain, but remembering the challenges those faced on the original march motivated me to keep moving forward no matter how hard the rain got.

Even with the heavy rain everyone still seemed to have high spirits throughout this leg of the march. A group of Morehouse students began to sing gospel songs, and as the rain got harder it seemed as if they got louder.

The first checkpoint was at an abandoned gas station. We hydrated, used the restroom then got right back to the march. It was here where I got to meet Wanda Cooper Jones and Philonise Floyd personally. Floyd kept a smile on his face and had the jokes rolling even with the severity of his circumstances. Jones had such a motherly spirit to her, and reminded me a lot of my own mother as she checked on me and other students to make sure that we were okay.

I got to walk shoulder to shoulder with Jones on this leg of the march. As well as Al Sharpton as he wore a tan trench coat, and had a plastic bag wrapped around his hair. This leg of the march was four miles long, and a lot of the high spirits that were there in the first leg slowly began to dwindle amongst the students. Surprisingly to me those that were the most high spirited were some of the oldest people on the march.

Old Man General as he called himself was one of those that stayed the most high spirited. General road on the bus along with us from Atlanta to Selma. General wore a jacket with buttons with several pins from marches that he had done in the past, one being the March on Washington. Throughout the bus ride he told us all types of stories, and even some about the march from Selma in 1965.

Along with General, other Selma vets rode on the bus with us from Atlanta. They all continued to go back and forth singing songs and telling stories starting at four o’clock in the morning, and continued until we got to Selma at 9 a.m. The others wore blue overalls and red shirts. The blue overalls represented the work that still needed to be done, and the red shirts represented the blood that was spilled.

At the beginning of the second leg of the march General had so much spirit he was dozens of meters ahead of the banner until his legs gave out on him. General fell out, and for safety reasons he continued the rest of the march sitting in a police car.

The next checkpoint was at the Selma to Montgomery Trail Center. Here we got lunch which was Subway, and rested for 20 minutes. At this checkpoint is where me and a few other students gave up out of fear of getting sick from walking in the rain all day. The rest of the group went on to walk seven more miles in the rain, and a part of that group was a 74-year-old man in blue overalls and a red shirt.