Roy S. Johnson: Now, Selma may finally be seen and restored
This is an opinion column.
Maybe now they’ll see. See Selma. Finally.
Maybe now they’ll do.
Do what should have been done a long time ago to restore one of our state’s historic treasures.
To restore Selma.
No one’s screamed, pleaded, demanded that state and national officials see Selma more than the city’s homegirl, Rep.Terri Sewell. No one more than the daughter of the city where, as a child, she was inspired to become a lawyer after peeking into a courtroom while Momma Sewell waited to renew her car tag and saw C.J. Chestnut, the city’s first Black attorney, “mesmerizing those white people and weaving this amazing story,” she tells me.
The city where so much happened. Where so much that mattered happened.
Where people moved this nation to see them, moved this nation to do right by Black Americans. Where they gathered, strategized, worshipped, organized, and, of course, marched.
Marched across that dang bridge. Marched and risked their lives marching across that bridge. Marched 54 miles to Montgomery to demand to be seen. To demand to be.
I shouldn’t have to recount the importance of Selma to anyone. Not even to our school children, who should be well versed in Selma—save for those who strive with their first and last breaths to shield them from history’s full truths. Yet with the meteoric rise of The Legacy Museum in Montgomery (now the second most popular paid tourism site, State Tourism Director Lee Sentell revealed last week), Selma is rarely even an afterthought for visitors seeking to tread Alabama’s historic soils.
All while few state and national leaders heeded Sewell’s cries. Oh, they offered polite nods and occasional votes offering meager crumbs—appropriations, sorry. But not enough to stem the starving city’s sad decline.
Maybe now they’ll see. Now that Selma is decimated. Now that a freak EF3 tornado—two categories below the worst kind of cyclone—ripped through Selma, en route to tragically killing nine people in two states and several Alabama counties.
Sewell was in the air last Thursday, on a previously scheduled flight from Washington, D.C. to Birmingham following the final vote of the four-day work week. Her 7th district encompasses Selma, so she and her team huddled at the airport around early news that bad weather looming in Alabama might hit her hometown. They sent staffers in the city home and tweeted a heads-up to constituents before taking off.
Alabama Rep. Gary Palmer was on the same flight.
“Nothing prepared me for, two hours and 15 minutes later, to land in Birmingham and get all those text messages,” she recalled. Various traffic delays transformed a normally 90-minute drive to three-and-a-half hours, ending with Sewell and her party crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge into downtown Selma at dusk.
MORE ON THE ALABAMA TORNADOES
Map: Where did the tornadoes hit in Alabama?
How to help Alabama tornado victims
Storm chaser in Selma on what he’s seeing: Damage from possible tornado about ‘a mile wide’
Alabama teen home alone rides out deadly storm in underground shelter: ‘Everything was gone’
“It was almost dark, and it was like a ghost town,” she said. “I crossed the bridge and saw just darkness, darkness, darkness because no one had power. The first three streets were okay but, as we drove down Broad Street, it just became worse and worse.”
“Every disaster is bad,” she said. “We have to rally the resources and assistance to help our constituents no matter what, but [Selma] was personal. It was my neighbors. It’s my schoolteachers, my Sunday school teachers. Around every corner was a piece of my heart.”
MORE ON THE ALABAMA TORNADOES
Selma begins digging out from devastating storm: ‘It’s just like a bomb had blown up’
Gov. Kay Ivey declares state of emergency in 6 counties
She noted the typical, random nature of the storm—how it destroyed Chestnut’s stately brick home, yet left surrounding shotgun homes untouched; how it passed over historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. (“My beloved Brown,” Sewell calls it) yet leveled the Reformed Presbyterian Church two blocks away.
“It was indiscriminate of socio-economics or race,” she said. “It hit the white west side, which tends to be more affluent, and the east side, which is where during segregation African Americans had businesses and lived. It just brought me to tears.”
9
Selma recovery
King Lane, the street Sewell grew up on, was barely tossed about. “My home heat and lights were on, the Internet was working, everything,” she said. “But two streets over, decimated—to the right of me and to the left of me, they were just.”
The response, though, was swift—once they saw. Once they saw Selma scroll across the bottom thread on CNN and other news networks. It was swift and unique. Because it was bipartisan. Because nothing halts partisan pettiness like the stark realities of disaster. At least for a time.
RELATED: Drone footage shows devastation in Selma
Sewell received calls from new U.S. House Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Hakeem Jeffries and Republican Speaker of the House Sen. Kevin McCarthy, and many others. “Selma is one of those iconic cities people know about,” she said. “I got calls, multiple calls from colleagues on both sides. of the aisle, which was really great.”
Gov. Kay Ivey quickly declared a state of emergency for six counties, which triggered President Joe Biden to sign an expedited emergency declaration order for the state on Sunday. That opened the spigots to federal aid, including a Blackhawk helicopter that flew Sewell, Selma mayor James Perkins, Jr, city council President Billy Young and staffers from the offices of Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville and the governor.
“For the next hour, I was on the headset going, Can you hover over this spot? That spot?” Sewell recalled. “We must have gone back and forth—from north to south, east to west. We went down Highway 14. Huge trees snapped like they were chopsticks. We hovered over the country club and the Winn Dixie, the main source of groceries for the west side of Selma. It was breathtaking. It was just unbelievable.
“It’s unbelievable we didn’t have any casualties, but for the grace of God go all of us and it was nothing but God.”
I wasn’t the only person to call attention to the unusual international “trio of ladies” (Sewell’s term) that toured Selma Friday—Sewell, Ivey, and Britt, whom the representative has known since the junior Senator’s days as chief of staff for retired Sen. Richard Shelby.
“I was so happy to see both of those ladies because it’s going to take a massive, coordinated effort on the local, state, and federal levels to address the immediate relief that’s needed by the citizens of Selma, and then to recover and to rebuild,” Sewell shared. “Selma is a resilient place. We are fighters. We are resilient and we will get through this. It will take time. it will take resources We’ve all talked about the things Selma has needed for years. If we do it right, with the support of local county, state, and federal, we will build back better.”
If they’re finally seen.
While Sewell was on the ground last Friday, veteran Rep Jim Clyburn called. “He was like, ‘I know there’s a lot of pressure for y’all to ask for the President to come to Selma, but I think he could come with checks.”
Sewell hopes to see Biden for the annual Blood Sunday commemoration on March 5. “We don’t need a full photo op,” she says. A month from now, that’s when we really need to remember Selma.”
Finally. And yes, bring checks.
More columns by Roy S. Johnson
Tired of dreaming? Wake up with MLK’s ‘urgency of now’
For one man, Birmingham’s tiny home initiative to address unhoused is emotional
Gov. Ivey’s execution moratorium is indeed chance to ‘get it right’, or stop
Think guaranteed-income policy isn’t fair? The Birmingham mom may change your mind
We’re saying goodbye to 2022, but can’t shed its legacy of deadly violence
Though my ancestors are listed on Choctaw rolls, tribe won’t let me belong
Put the brakes on illegal street racing foolishness in our killing streets