Page 8
BLACK
HISTORY
MONTH
February 22, 2017
Images of bloodied men, women and teenagers in 1965 who were
beaten by police in Selma, Ala., for protesting voting restrictions
shocked the nation.
‘I Marched in Selma’
C ontinued FroM F ront
ents took him to a lot of the meet-
ings. He said that out of his entire
extended family, his parents were
the first to try to register to vote.
Moore himself was arrested
as a teenager on Jan. 19, 1965
when he joined his mother for a
sit-in at the Selma courthouse to
register to vote. Throughout the
South, SNCC concentrated much
of their efforts on getting young
people involved with the Civil
Rights Movement. On some days
during those years, high school
classrooms in Selma would clear
out as students went to volunteer
their time for Civil Rights work,
Moore said. Dallas County Sher-
iff Jim Clark, a vocal opponent to
integration in Selma, often wore
military style clothing and worked
with the Ku Klux Klan. Clark and
his officers arrested the young
Moore along with other protesters
that day, the first time Moore went
to jail fighting for the right to vote.
He recalled how police offi-
cers took him and his friend and
neighbor Willie Travis Bonner to
a cattle yard. There, police or-
dered the protesters to put their
hands up against the barn walls.
Officers told everyone to be quiet,
and when his friend kept talking,
a police officer took a 6 volt cattle
prod to Bonner’s leg until the skin
broke and bled.
All of the arrested protesters
were next taken to the Selma jail,
Moore remembers.
“Lucky I had money on me; be-
cause I think they kept us in jail
for three days or so,” he said. “I
was able to have the guards go
to the vending machines and get
some stuff out of them so I could
eat. I also had a long jacket to
sleep under. You have nothing to
sleep with, just a bare cell.”
On March 7, 1965, activists de-
cided to march from Selma to Ala-
bama’s capitol, Montgomery in an
event that would become known
as “Bloody Sunday.” The first leg
of that journey meant crossing the
Edmund Pettus Bridge. Moore
remembers the reaction by a sher-
iff’s posse to the first attempt to
cross the bridge:
“They shot the teargas, set the
dogs and horses on us. I’d nev-
er smelled teargas before. It was
scary. My eyes were watering.
We just all took off and ran across
the bridge and tried to get to the
church. Matter of fact, when I
went into the church, there was
teargas in the church. I couldn’t
breathe in the church and I had to
get out of the church.”
The images of beaten and
bloodied men, women and teen-
agers shocked the nation and Dr.
King was able to persuade Pres-
ident Johnson to pass the voting
rights act.
Moore went on the final march
from Selma to Montgomery, a
54 mile long journey made safe
by President Johnson’s National
Guard troops who were sent to
protect the Civil Rights protest-
ers from Sheriff Clark and the Ku
Klux Klan. By the end of the five
day trek, Moore was exhausted.
He snuck into a press tent, where
he was offered food and comfort-
able rest. From inside the tent he
heard the sounds and voices of an
all- star concert put on by Harry
Belafonte, Nina Simone and oth-
ers.
As a student, Moore picked
up a love for history which con-
tinues to this day. Swept up into
a defining moment of strength and
bravery in black history, Moore
looks back, proud he was able to
participate.
“I was young at the time and
it was fun for a while, because
they let you out of school. When
they turned the dogs and teargas
on us, it wasn’t fun no more,”
he said. “The whole thing about
it is that things do change. Since
that happened, the same building
that where my mom and dad tried
to register to vote, where they
blocked them, since then, there
have been three black mayors.
There’s a black mayor there now.”