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SUSAN YOUNGBLOOD ASHMORE Going Back to Selma Organizing for Change in Dallas County after the March to Montgomery Political action is an inevitable consequence of anti-poverty programs, for any effort to better the condition of the poor raises fundamental issues of citizenship and political influence. . . . In short, how much political revolution can a publicly funded program afford to sponsor? Localized control of programs—to the extent that this has been possible in the antipoverty programs—only exacerbates this political dimension. No giver of money can long remain neutral: it must decide how much to give, and to whom, and for what purposes. Roger H. Davidson, “The War on Poverty,” 1969 The national history of the civil rights movement is often remembered by using specific locations to explain how racial segregation met its end. In popular memory, the dramatic events that unfolded in Montgomery, Little Rock, Birmingham, the Mississippi Delta, Selma, and Memphis are commemorated most. Museums have been built to explain what happened, monuments have been erected to honor courageous leaders, and in some cases, annual celebrations have taken place to ritualize important victories. Every spring, a Bridge Crossing Jubilee is held in Selma, Alabama, to observe the passage of the Voting Rights Act by acknowledging the March 7, 1965, attack on civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As important as it is to recognize achievements and claim public space, celebrations like the one in Selma convey a false sense of accomplishment. While it is true that the Voting Rights Act changed America in fundamental ways, people who think this law removed the last obstacle to southern racial justice will be confused when they cross the Edmund Pettus Going Back to Selma [309] Bridge going into Selma and see a languishing city of once-beautiful houses in need of repair, vacant downtown streets, and boarded-up businesses. The history of the War on Poverty in and around Selma provides an opportunity to explain what happened in this Black Belt town after 1965, during the third phase of the civil rights movement. In this phase, African Americans tried to use the new laws to change their circumstances in fundamental ways. Understanding how President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society program worked in the Deep South enables us to see why racial and economic justice remained so elusive. The struggles over who controlled the programs supported by the Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo) make visible the difficulty of dislodging Jim Crow customs that contributed to the poverty of so many of the region ’s residents. Selma’s longtime mayor, Joseph Smitherman, exploited the divisions within the black community for political gain. The structure of the oeo, functioning through a national headquarters, regional offices, state divisions , and local programs, made it hard for its officials to know exactly what was happening on the ground. What looked like progress from the perspective of the nation’s capital turned out to be the same old story from the viewpoint of rural folk in Dallas County, Alabama. By going back to Selma, many activists in the region learned firsthand that despite the passage of federal legislation , the civil rights movement faced continued challenges in the enforcement of the new laws. Implementing an antipoverty program in a divided city such as Selma brought many forces into play that explain why the War on Poverty could not bring about economic and racial justice in some of the nation’s poorest places. Selma is the seat of Dallas County, located along a bend in the Alabama River in the heart of the Black Belt. Although the city served as an important regional trade center, the county had all the characteristics of a region in transition during the 1960s. The voting rights protests revealed an engaged and active fight against Jim Crow, yet the power of white supremacy persisted. In the spring of 1965, schools, restaurants, and hotels remained segregated despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act the preceding year. Even the names of the city’s public housing projects reflected the racial divide: the George Washington Carver public housing project housed African American families in town, and the Nathan Bedford Forrest public housing project served white families who lived near Craig Air Force Base. White residents of the Alabama Black Belt found it perfectly acceptable to honor Tuskegee’s famous scientist in similar fashion as the Confederate general who created the Ku Klux Klan. [52.14.168.56] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 13:52...

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