Dear Visitor,
The 50th Anniversary of the African American movement for voting rights -- embodied in the iconic "Bloody Sunday" march on March 7, 1965 and the Selma-to-Montgomery march from March 21-25 -- is being celebrated and commemorated through a number of special events this weekend.
The media attention drawn to this small Black-Belt Alabama city and its anniversary has been especially magnified throguh the success of Ava Duverya's film "Selma" and its big-name Hollywood backers Brad Pitt and Oprah Wynfrey, which dramatized these historic marches.
Celebration
Star Set to Fall on Alabama This Weekend for Selma50.
Current and former heads of state, policymakers, civil rights leaders and entertainers are in Selma or making their way there to attend star-studded events in honor of the 50th Anniversary of historic events chronicled in part to the star-produced, award-winning movie "Selma."
On Saturday afternoon, President Barack Obama -- as well as several former Presidents, including former President George W. Bush and wife Laura Bush -- are expected to come at least 95 members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. U.S. Rep John Lewis, D-GA, will be among the group with his organization, the Faith & Politics Institute, to reflect on the movement to secure voting rights. Lewis was a leader of the aborted March 7, 1965, march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery that came to be called "Bloody Sunday."
President Obama is set to make his remarks on 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday at the bridge.
On Saturday evening, the Bridge Crossing Jubilee hosts its 22nd annual Hip Hop, R&B and Blues Stage from 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Dallas Avenue near the Selma City Hall in downtown. Musical artists include Big Robb, Brandon Marcel, Young Breezy and Rick Ross. The event features Tickets are $12 in advance, $20 at the door.
On Sunday evening Centric TV/BET Networks, in partnership with the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute, are sponsoring the All-Star Salute to Selma. The free event will be held after the annual pilgrimage across the bridge.
Dr. Henry Panion, III, will lead his orchestra with a choir with star gospel artists. Hip-hop and rap artists will perform a version of "Self-Destruction," an 1989 anthem against gang violence and drugs that was then growing in urban communities across the country. (That was back in the day when rappers were conscious artists rather than mere minstrel entertainers.)
Confirmed musicians and entertainers include: A. J. Calloway the host of the concert, Aloe Blacc, Angie Stone, Anthony Hamilton, Arrested Development, BeBe Winans, Bill Bellamy, Bell Biv DeVoe, Bill Withers, Blind Boys of Alabama, Cicely Tyson, Donnie McClurkin, DeWayne Woods, Doug E Fresh, Eddie Levert, Eric Benet, Estelle, Flava Flav, Gladys Knight, India.Arie, Jasiri X, Keith Sweat, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin, Ledisi (who was played Mahalia Jackson singing "Precious Lord" in the movie "Selma"), Malcolm-Jamal Warner, MC Lyte, Rick Ross, Ruben Studdard, Tamar Braxton, Tank, Tyrese, Tom Joyner, Tramaine Hawkins and Virtue.
More people are wanting to attend the event as its social media factor explodes in the entertainment world, so expect to see more names, like Vanilla Ice, added to the roster.
Some of the original celebrities who came to support Dr. King in the days-long march from Selma to Montgomery are also appearing, including Harry Belafonte, and Peter Yaraw of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary.
The event will be streamed live on BET.com and CentricTV.com. The concert will be replayed March 15 on Centric TV.
See the updated schedule of all Selma50 events and programs HERE.
Read More
Commemoration
Obama's Selma Speech to Focus on the Past and the Future.
President Barack Obama will likely invoke America's civil rights struggles from past to present during his visit to Selma on Saturday.
The nation's first Black president plans a speech from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of one of the Civil Rights Movement's most stirring moments, and will refocus attention on last year's fatal shooting by a white police officer of a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri.
 The president visited the bridge in 2007, when he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois and a presidential candidate. This time, he plans to bring his entire family.
"When I take Malia and Sasha down with Michelle next week, down to Selma, part of what I'm hoping to do is to remind them of their own obligations. Because there are going to be marches for them to march, and struggles for them to fight," Obama said at a White House event on March 26 celebrating Black History Month..
The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached, said voting rights and criminal justice reform were the main topics of a private meeting Obama held with civil rights leaders shortly before his public remarks on his upcoming speech.
"There was agreement in the room that voting rights is crucial, that it is urgent and it ought to be a nonpartisan issue," Rev. Warnock said.
He decried lawmakers for celebrating Selma's golden anniversary while failing to restore the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court in a bitter 5-4 decision struck down the Act's section that determines which states and jurisdictions were required to get Washington's approval for proposed election changes, saying that the 50-year-formula to determine was outdated and therefore unconstitutional. The requirement was an effective way to stop voting discrimination, mostly in the South. Congress has yet to come up with a new formula.
"The worst assault on voting rights since the Voting Rights Act was passed is happening right now," Rev. Warnock said. "You can't celebrate Selma and sit on the reauthorization."
Read More
Continuation
Selma50 Workshops Focus on Today's Civil Rights Issues.
A host of past and present-day civil rights leaders and policymakers are also hosting or taking part in commemorative events and workshops on the Freedom Movement, from voting rights 50 years ago to police brutality, among modern day civil rights challenges including Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter.
They are carrying the torch for a new generation discuss strategies to fight new versions of the same old issues of discrimination and equality under the law.
SATURDAY, MARCH 7
SERIES OF POWERFUL WORKSHOPS ON THE STATUS OF CIVIL & HUMAN RIGHTS 50 YEARS LATER
WORKSHOPS--BLOCK ONE
9:00 am – 10:30 am, Wallace Community College, 3000 Earl Goodwin Parkway
-
Medicaid Expansion Matters: The Lives of 300,000 Alabamians Depend On It;Sophia Bracey Harris, Executive Director, Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama; Joe Keffer, retired Labor and Community Organizer, Service Employees International Union; Tammy Thomas, Field Organizer, Center for Community Change
-
Still Separate, Still Unequal: Combating Racial Segregation Under the Fair Housing Act and Other Civil Rights Laws;Sara Pratt, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Programs and Enforcement, HUD; Faith Cooper, Director, Central Alabama Fair Housing Center; Tafeni English, Fair Housing Specialist, Central Alabama Fair Housing Center
-
Federal Sentencing and Over Incarceration: Thirty Years of Failed Policy and What We Can DoTo Fix It Now;Christine Freeman, Executive Director, Middle District of Alabama Federal Defender Program; Kevin Butler, Federal Public Defender; Northern District of Alabama; Carlos Williams, Executive Director, Southern District of Alabama Federal Defenders Organization
-
A Society That Works for All: Not Just the Corporations and the Wealthy;Ying Gee, Assistant Director for Civil & Human Rights International Union, United Auto Workers; Representative, SEIU, Rise Up for $15 Campaign; Representative, Amalgamated Transit Union
·The Role of Education in the Liberation of a People 50 Years Later,Tony Browder, Dr. Johnnetta Cole, Dr. Robert White, Dr. Adelaide Sanford
SERIES OF POWERFUL WORKSHOPS ON THE STATUS OF CIVIL & HUMAN RIGHTS 50 YEARS LATER
WORKSHOPS--BLOCK TWO
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Dallas County Courthouse, 105 Lauderdale Street OR Dallas County Court House Annex, 102 Church Street
-
From Slavery to Mass Incarceration,Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative, Courthouse, 2ndFloor Courtroom
-
-
Fighting for Economic Justice in the Black Belt;Lawrence Gardella, Director for Advocacy, Legal Services Alabama; Geraldine V. Turner-Wofford, Managing Attorney, Selma Office, Legal Services Alabama; Terrika Shaw, Staff Attorney, Legal Services Alabama; Annex, Commissioner’s Courtroom
-
Alabama Unafraid: Latino Immigrant Activism Post-House Bill 56;Dr. Carlos Aleman, Assistant Professor of History and Director of Latin American Scholars Study Program, Stamford University, Annex, Courtroom Two
-
Change Is Gonna Come: Advancing an Environmental & Climate Justice Agenda in the South, Jacqueline Patterson, NAACP Climate Change Program, Richard Moore, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform; Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network; Harold Mitchell, Regensis; Cynthia Peurifoy, Environmental Justice Division, Region IV, Annex, Courtroom One
4:30 pm—5:00 pm The Charge: Fighting for the Future and the Soul of the Nation,Rev. William Barber, Moral Monday Movement, Courthouse, 2ndFloor
INDEPENDENT WORKSHOPS & PANELS—
Times and Locations As Indicated Below
9:00 am—11:00 am Voting Rights & Elected Officials of Color from 1965 to 2015, and Beyond,Joint Center for Political Economic Affairs, Black Belt African American Genealogical & Historical Society, Selma Public Library, 1103 Selma Ave.
2:00 pm, approximately • Voting Rights Workshop—Keeping America’s Promise: Advancing Democracy, AND
Voting Rights Act @ 50 Unity ReceptionNAACP Legal Defense Fund Lawyers and Special Guests, Brown Chapel, 410 Martin Luther King Jr. St. (immediately following President Barack Obama’s Address)
See Website · State of the Black Race Post-Obama,Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law,
10:00 am– 12:00 noon • The Drug War: Its Role in Mass Incarceration & Disenfranchisement of African Americans, Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, TOPS, Asha Bandele/DPA, Dorsey Nunn, Daryl Atkinson, First Baptist Church, 709 Martin Luther King St, Selma
12 noon – 2:00 pm • Southern People’s Initiative—Two Year Action Plan,Stephanie Guilloud & Emery Wright, Pastor, Project South, Kenneth Glasgow, TOPS, First Baptist Church, 709 Martin Luther King St.
5:00 pm-8:00 pm AND Welcome Reception & DinnerPastor David Perry, New Selmont churuch, 215 Selmont Avenue.
2:00 pm—4:30 pm LIVING LEGENDS SHARE THEIR WISDOM ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF TODAY: Panelists: Claudette Colvin, Dorothy Cotton, Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Worth Long, Robert “Bob” Moses, Diane Nash, Dr. C.T. Vivian, Harry Belafonte, Selma Convention Center, 411 Washington St.
Read More
|
