March 1965, Jack in Selma

Exactly 56 years ago, the world’s attention was on Selma, Alabama. The issue was voter registration. Sadly, here we are again. But this is a retrospective post, so I’ll leave comments on the current state of affairs in the US for those who are living them.

In 1965, both Jack and I were students at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college in Iowa. On a mid-March evening, much of Grinnell’s student body had gathered in Herrick Chapel to hear a report from several of our fellow students who had travelled to Selma in support of the civil rights actions taking place there. Someone had rigged a system to amplify the voices on the other end of the phone line when the students phoned in. One of those students was Jack. 

Protest was in the air those days. Earlier in the same month, I had climbed onto a bus with other Grinnell students to participate in a civil rights demonstration in near-by Des Moines. I begged Jack to join me, but he refused, causing one of the first rifts in our new relationship. Of course he believed in civil rights, he insisted, but protesting wasn’t his thing. So I went without him, singing We Shall Overcome on the bus, and again at the demonstration, arms locked, swaying to the music that we believed would change the world.

The rift between us widened when only weeks later he decided to join three others to drive to Selma. If protesting wasn’t his thing, why was he going? As a voyeur? A hanger-on? Because he was trying to out-radical me? 

He didn’t say so then; maybe he didn’t even know. But he certainly understood when he was older and wiser—chuckling at his younger self—that he was invited to join the group because he had a car, and they needed a driver.

We managed to heal that rift and countless others. A year later we married.

Five months ago, Jack died, leaving behind file drawers stuffed with papers, most of which are going directly to recycling, or into a bonfire. (Yes, he was a pack-rat.)  Sometimes, I’m tempted not to even look as I load decades of tax files and class lists from forty years of teaching into a bin. But two days ago I found a small bundle, lined 5×8 pages, filled with the notes he’d made during those days he spent in Selma. I had never seen them before.

Jack was nineteen. He left Grinnell to go on an adventure—a young man who was gradually shifting from his family’s conservative roots to a more liberal view of the world. (I humbly acknowledge my role in that transition.) He returned sobered by what he had seen, and a giant step closer to becoming a man who recognized the common humanity in everyone he met. He never became an activist. He was never comfortable with marching and demonstrating. But the days in Selma were life-altering for him. The notes I found show that alteration unfolding in real time. 

The pages are not dated, but Jack refers to the murder of “a minister” —presumably the Boston Unitarian Universalist, Rev. James Reeb—which took place on March 11 and sparked a renewed wave of protest. He also refers to a memorial service in the church and being moved by King’s words. King did speak at Reeb’s funeral on March 15, so I think it’s a fair assumption that they were there for that service, which took place after the second attempt at a long march from Selma to Montgomery was thwarted.

He also makes reference to marching. At first, I thought they were part of the large crowd that accompanied the long-distance marchers for the beginning of third march, after the first ended in bloodshed and the second in a peaceful retreat. But that took place a week after the memorial service, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t there that long. So, when he refers to marching I expect these were smaller events organized by the various participating civil rights groups. I’d love to be able to ask him.

Here are some excerpts from the 19-year-old Jack’s notes, along with a few photos that have been in an album all these years. I emphasize his age because we all feel somewhat embarrassed by our young and sometimes self-important voices. I know he would, but know, too, that he’d be happy to have me share this. I also feel it’s important to point out here that “Negro” was not pejorative in 1965. It was the respectful way to refer to African-Americans.

How could anybody ride through a crowd swinging a billy club? Is it possible that these people honestly believe that somebody with black skin is not human!

I came down here wondering what the hell the whole thing was about. Sure, I believed in civil rights, but I wouldn’t spend an afternoon marching in Des Moines, because I would feel embarrassed … So I took the chance to come to Selma because I wanted to get out of Grinnell and because I wondered what it was really like. Then I began to realize I had no idea what the problem was…

I was touched by King when he almost broke down with emotion during the announcement, and I decided I’d go on the march, although I still wasn’t sure why, but I began to feel it was important to go. I began to feel the significance of that march both personally and nationally and sang We Shall Overcome as if I meant it…I walked back proud that I had been there…

The editorials in the Selma paper are fascinating—these people actually believe in subjugating the Negroes. Everything was peaceful in Selma until these outside agitators came in. But there’s not a single white in the community who has spoken out for the negroes.

Just now a lady tapped me on the shoulder and wanted me to come back home with her to eat—never saw her before. Not hungry so let somebody else have food…

I’ve learned what this movement really is, and it isn’t stretching it too far when somebody says it’s a new religion. True in the sense of mass psychology, but also true in a greater sense. The religious…really joined in and said to hell (or heaven!) with their difference…All were here because the death of a minister kicked them in the rear and now the churches have done more than say civil rights is right. They came to Alabama en masse. And lots of them are still around. So these people are doing rather than talking. An on a still higher level, the comparison of groups! SNCC is a bunch of college kids looking for excitement. Overstated but unfortunately not as greatly as I would like. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has it all the way. They work for human rights, and their program want equality…Negro rights is the major part; their program calls for political economy, economic economy, academic opportunity, and only then will there be social equality. 

I haven’t done too much with the camera, although I have gotten a couple of good shots, but I’ve got some great pictures in my brain: a blind man who has been around for quite a long time, led by an old woman who I suppose is his mother; the sight of a young negro boy with a very good orator’s voice reading the constitution to a Selma police officer who was blocking a demonstration from mushrooming into a march; the sight of  4-5 year old negro girls leading a few hundred people in song, adding their own part to the movement; the memory of trying to start a conversation with a Selma cop and not getting anything but curt replies; … and the memory of the spirit of the kids in this town. Every one of them will flunk this year at school because 7 days of absence means automatic failure. … These kids have slept on the streets to maintain the vigil for days on end. It seems it’s got to be more than just going along with the group—they’ve got a hell of a lot of guts…

…Sometimes it’s easier to see at least one facet of the other side more sympathetically. Right now I would be very hesitant to suggest to people that they come down here, as the college population has greatly changed the picture of things down here. The movement at times becomes a high school football rally… Unfortunately, there are too many college student more interested in showing their beatnikness and liberality. …They can wear the beards and the long hair, but it seems they could pay the sacrifice of wearing clothes that didn’t have “beatnik” in huge letters on the front, back, and side. … They may believe that clothes don’t make a difference, but they also ought to know damn well that the movement can easily lose a lot of power if it becomes known as primarily beatniks rather than liberal young people. This is one reason why clergy and teachers are working hard to counteract this effect.

So if people want to come down, that’s great, but let them come down with a very serious intent or a desire to learn what the movement is really about, not as a lark. 

Jack’s not here to defend himself, so I hesitate to say that he, himself, went to Selma as a lark. It may have been a genuine interest in understanding what was going on. I didn’t know him as well then. But whatever his motives for going, he came back committed to a cause and showing what I came to see, throughout his life, as a characteristic desire to get below the surface level of understanding human behaviour. He was, after all, a psychologist.

I’m so grateful to have found this little bundle of paper—a glimpse of that young man I fell in love with so long ago. Along with it, I found all the letters we exchanged during the first six months of our relationship, when I was at Grinnell and he was taking a semester off. Oh dear. I’m getting to revisit my younger self, too!