Jesse Jackson talking:
Ms. Boynton invited Dr. King to Selma. She was head of the Dallas Voters League. And along the highway is the letter she wrote to Dr. King. At Christmas time, she came to Atlanta, inviting Dr. King here. He came on the strength of her invitation.
Amelia Boynton Robinson talking:
it was something that I figured that I could not resist, because we were trying to get people to register and voted, long before Dr. King was born. And we were working to get them to know that. And I say today, if you’re not a registered voter and you’re 18 years of age, you are a hopeless people, definitely hopeless, because you have nothing to say about your county, your city, your state, your nothing. So don’t be hopeless. Be a human being, a city, a citizen of the city of Selma, of the state, of Selma.
(What gave you the courage that day to face those state troopers?)
I was born that way. My mother was a civil rights activist back then, when I was born. And I worked with her at 11 years old. I worked with her when women’s suffrage became reality.
Theresa Burroughs talking:
My name is Theresa Burroughs, and I’m from Greensboro, Alabama. And 50 years ago today, I was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I was 21. we were beaten on that bridge. The courage—of the treatment, how they were treating us. They were treating us like we were foreigners, like we—in a strange country, and that we had no rights at all. And I was determined to do something to let this generation of young men and women not to have to go through what we had to go through with. Fifty years ago, we had no rights.
Mae Richmond talking:
This is a medal for foot soldiers who participated in the 1965 voting rights movement. I was 13. Many of the youth were between the ages of about nine, eight or nine, to about 16. I participated in all three marches—the Bloody Sunday, the Turnaround Tuesday, the Selma to Montgomery March. Bloody Sunday, We were on the bridge, and we confronted the sea of blue. We ran into the sea of blue, which were the state troopers. And after we—John Lewis and Hosea Williams told us to kneel down and pray, after they would not—the state troopers would not let us through. And as we knelt down to pray, the state troopers threw tear gas beside us, and we proceeded to run back to the church and to other areas, trying to get in security.
— source democracynow.org
Amelia Boynton Robinson, 103-year-old civil rights activist who was beaten in Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday.
Theresa Burroughs, marched in Selma in 1965 and joined the 50th anniversary commemorative event.
Mae Taylor Richmond, marched in Selma in 1965 and joined the 50th anniversary commemorative event.