Last Sunday, Dilip D’Souza was in Selma, Alabama, in time for the march in memory of the events of the Black Sunday of 1965:
Selma, where several hundred marchers began a march to Montgomery in late March 1965, a march that would end up breaking the back of segregation. There’s some history there: they first tried to march on March 7 1965. The Alabama police beat them back at the other end of the bridge: the infamous “Bloody Sunday”. Led by Martin Luther King, they did a symbolic march two days later, and the full trek to Montgomery later that month. But by the time they reached Montgomery, they were no longer several hundred. They were 25,000.
“Through the day,” he says, “I’m simply struck over and over by the ironies.”
I mean, if 42 years ago the Alabama police beat back the marchers, today they are respectfully directing people and the crowds in general, keeping the peace.
If then the Alabama establishment and many of its white residents tried every trick in the book to to deny blacks the right to vote, today there are white men with T-shirts saying “Al-Obama!”, a woman holding up “Bama for Obama!” [...]
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