Part one—
"The shots that inspired the march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge"
The 2025 includes three key anniversaries in Alabama’s fight for civil rights. This December is the seventieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This year also marks sixty years since two events in and around Selma. Next week marks the sixtieth anniversary of the civil rights incident known as “bloody Sunday,” and the shooting that inspired it. An Alabama State Trooper shot activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, who died eight days later. APR news collaborated with the University of Alabama’s Center for Public Television to bring you this account from someone who was there…
“…at that time, we have been singing so we shall overcome and before I be a slave, be dead and buried in my grave.”
If you want to know what prompted the voting rights march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965 asked Bennie Lee Tucker. The Selma residents spoke with APR news ten years ago during the 50th anniversary of the attack, now known as Bloody Sunday.
One name kept coming up.
“They were saying…let us… John Lewis and all of us, let us go to Montgomery,” said Tucker. So what we'll do, we'll take the body of Jimmy Lee Jackson and put it on the state capitol and let Governor Wallace know what he had done his people.”
Tucker knew about the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, but he wasn't actually there.
We met someone who was.
“My name is Vera Jenkins. My maiden name Booker,” said Vera Booker. She’s 88 years old.
“I saw so much segregation,” she recalled. “I saw it and it hurt.”
Booker went to school to study nursing that led to a job at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. Her life changed on the night of February 18, 1965
“…today, I rise to celebrate the life and legacy of Jimmie Lee Jackson,” said Alabama Congresswoman Terry Sewell, speaking on the floor of the U.S. House. “This 26 year old Marion Alabama native was brutally killed at the hands of an Alabama State Trooper on February 18, 1965…”
That night, Vera Booker was the nurse on the floor. Jimmy Lee Jackson was still alive when he arrived at Good Samaritan and he was talking.
“And then, of course, they carried him on up in hospital,” recalled Booker. “And he told me, he said, was the worst night I've ever seen in my life. It was just terrible.”
“…to think that this, that this occurred because of the audacity of this young man and his family to peacefully protest for their constitutional rights, which led to his brutal murder at the hands of law enforcement,” Sewell told her colleagues in the U.S. House.
It took eight days for Jimmie Lee Jackson to die. Vera Booker was there the whole time.
“…and he just went on and on and on and just talked to me, and he said, But you know what he said after surgery, ‘my Booker, I don't ever believe I leave this hospital alive.’”
“It was the senseless murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson that served as a catalyst for the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama. Jimmy Lee Jackson deserves to have his proper place in American history as a true agent of change,” Sewell contended.
“Yes, we're doing better over and we still but have a long way to go, because we have come a long, long way, but still have a long way to go and many more bridges to cross,” said Bennie Lee Tucker, whom at the beginning of our story.
He and planners of the Selma to Montgomery march talked about carrying the body of Jimmy Lee Jackson of the State Capitol, at least that was the initial idea.
“And so, it was decided that the casket were too heavy to carry fifty miles. And, so where we just walk? And we started out walking, and we were met with the tear gas,” recalled Tucker of the voting rights march that was met by an armed police posse.
“We were beaten tear gas. Some of us was left bloody right here on this bridge,” said the late US House member and voting rights marcher John Lewis at the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
Part 2
"Young voting rights marchers recall the days surrounding "bloody Sunday" on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
2025 includes three key anniversaries in the Alabama civil rights movement. This December will mark seventy years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 2025 is also the sixtieth anniversary of the shooting of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, which led to the March 7th demonstration over the Edmund Pettus bridge that culminated in Bloody Sunday. The city of Selma will remember that day with this weekend’s bridge crossing jubilee.
It’s been sixty years since hundreds of protestors attempted to walk from Selma to Montgomery demanding the right to vote. Images of lawmen with billy clubs beating back peaceful marchers on the day now called Bloody Sunday shocked the nation. It also sparked passage of the Voting Rights Act. Each year, thousands of people return to Selma to remember Bloody Sunday. Ten years ago, it was the late Civil Rights leader and Senator John Lewis who stood in front of 40,000 people celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. He told the story of the day he was beaten.
“On March 7th, 1965, a few innocent children of God–some carrying only a bed roll, a few clutching a simple bag, a plain purse, or a backpack–were inspired to walk 50 dangerous miles from Selma to Montgomery to demonstrate the need for voting rights in the state of Alabama,” said the late Congressman and voting rights marcher John Lewis.
Bloody Sunday wasn’t the area’s only march for voting rights in early 1965.
“My dad was all set and ready and he was talking and watching the news,” said Jeanette Howard-Moore. She remembers that February when the movement came to her town.
“We as children knew something big was happening. We didn't know how big, but it was different than it had ever been in our house,” Moore recalled.
That something included children. Civil rights workers with bullhorns stood outside her high school in Marion telling students to skip class and march to town. Moore and her siblings followed along. She was only fourteen and didn’t know what would happen next.
“The police in Marion marched us from the drug store across the street, around the courthouse, to the jail,” Moore said.
The students were board onto school buses that took them to Camp Selma. That was a county prison camp holding Civil Rights demonstrators. Night came. There was no dinner. No heat. No parents. Moore and her siblings stayed in Camp Selma for four days, but that was just the beginning. A couple of weeks later, their father dropped them off on Sunday, March 7 at Brown’s Chapel Church for the march to Montgomery. Moore didn’t want to go.
“They had mentioned people might get hurt going across the bridge. Kids couldn't swim. It was just dangerous,” she said.
Moore had heard their instructions. Kneel. Stay still. Pray. Then she followed the leaders across the bridge.
We could see the police. People on horseback wearing gas masks with whips in their hands. The horses even had something over their face and they were agitated. They were all across the top of the bridge,” Moore described.
The troopers, horses, and sound of popping cans of tear gas got closer.
“You can't breathe in tear gas billowing in the air,” Moore recalled. “And so everybody got up and started running. I don't know what happened.”
The last thing Moore remembers was looking up at the belly of a horse. She came to at the church with a blanket over her head. She thought she was dead. She was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital for her head injury. A week later, she walked the 54 miles in the final march to Montgomery showing that she was okay.
A few years later, Moore moved to Chicago. Leaving Selma and the memories of 1965 behind. But when her family started asking questions, Moore realized she was a part of history.
“I didn't forget,” Moore insists. “I didn't just tell my story to my children, to my family. Just maybe in bits and pieces, but not just tell my story and all of the events. And I kind of think that the majority is like that.”
“I was arrested on two occasions,” said Dianne Harris, another young marcher. “I proudly wear a badge of honor as being a jailbird.”
So like more, Harris left school for a student March. She was 15 when she was sent to that same camp, Selma, and later to the National Guard Armory, where she was struck by a cattle prod that sent an electric shock through her body. Harris was at Bloody Sunday and the final march two weeks later, when they finally made it to Montgomery, but she got there in an unconventional way.
“A fleet of Greyhound buses that transported us to Montgomery, free of charge,” she recalled. “We were told to bring our quilts because back in the day, Black folk didn't own don't own sleeping bags. Bring your beautiful quilts that your ancestors made because you're going to have to sleep on the grounds of St. Jude Catholic School,” said Harris.
Harris was proud to stand at the capital and hear Dr. King speak.
“We have been told all these marches would never get to Montgomery,” she said. “But Dr. King gave his famous speech and at the end, I'm going to try and quote some of the words he said, ‘They said, we wouldn't get here. We'd only get here over their dead bodies. But we are here and we are here to tell the world ain't going to let nobody turn me around.’”
Just like these girls recorded in Selma in 1965, Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around is the first freedom song Harris learned. Now she guides Civil Rights tours in Selma. On August 6th, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act because of marchers like Jeanette Moore, Dianne Harris, and John Lewis. Thousands are expected to return to Selma and make the bridge crossing this Sunday.
Part three
"The view from Denmark on Alabama's civil rights record"
The nation of Denmark has been making the news lately because of Donald Trump and Greenland. The island nation belongs to the Danish, and the re-elected President wants to buy it or take it over. But, that’s not the only thing Denmark is aware of when it comes to the United States. This year marks key anniversaries in the U.S. civil rights movement. How Denmark views this history can give a window into how Europe sees the United States.
So I’m here in Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city, to discover what some of my peers think about this issue. If you want a picture of how Danes and other Europeans view the US, you could do worse than a five-student focus group at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU).
All students are either undergrad or graduate students in SDU’s American Studies department. Four students in this group are Danish, and one is Italian—Elena Berardi, age 26. She’s finishing her master’s degree. And to hear her, you’d think the initial European impression of the U.S. is a positive one.
“My maternal grandparents were from the southern part of Italy,” she says. “My grandfather was liberated by the Americans during the Second World War, so he always said, ‘Okay, those Americans, they were very great to us and they helped us.’
“I also think Italians have the American Dream. We also have a lot of icons and figures in the Italian-American community.”
Matthias Vingaard, age 25, is also working on his master’s degree. His interest in American political history is based on how it has impacted Europe’s.
“I'm very interested in history, especially political history,” he says.
“The US Constitution is the longest constitution that still exists to this day, and the (American) Revolution inspired the European revolutions later on, so the US has from the beginning been very influential for European countries as well.”
Meanwhile, undergrad Sebastian Allensen, age 21, studies the US with a global focus.
“We've always talked about politics in my family home, so I've grown up with that. And we've always talked about American politics, because that’s also very important to how the Danes perceived themselves, I think.
“But mainly I'm interested in the role of capitalism in the United States, and also how American foreign policy has had consequences for people around the world.”
It’s when you get into the topic of civil rights in the US that things get dicey.
Graduate student Benjamin Lundgaard, age 26, brings up the concept of the ‘American dilemma.’ “The idea that America has, that everyone is equal, right? Written into the Declaration of Independence,” he says.
“(Americans) claim that everyone is equal, but they don't treat people equally. And that, I think, is the way I’ve been educated about the Civil Rights Movement, in comparison to our movements (separate) from the US.”
This year, Alabama is observing the sixtieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the attack on Black voting rights marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. But it’s not the only anniversary being observed this year.
When the students are asked what comes to mind when they think of the US and civil rights, there’s one figure they repeatedly mention: Rosa Parks, and how she began the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Parks is not only a regular topic of conversation among students, but among their professors too. Dr. Jørn Brøndal is an author, historian, and professor of American Studies at SDU with a long interest in Black history.
He’s even written a textbook on the subject, that covers the story of Black America from Colonial times to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
“When (Parks) died a couple of years ago, there was massive coverage in the Danish mass media,” Brøndal says.
“Danish youth know about Rosa Parks. Know about Martin Luther King. They probably haven’t heard about Fred Shuttlesworth. They probably haven't heard about Bob Moses, and maybe some have heard about John Lewis.”
While Bloody Sunday may not make much of an impression on the focus group, Brøndal says the impact the incident had on the United States was clear to see even from Denmark.
“When Bloody Sunday came around in the United States, as far as I recall, the ABC Network shifted from a documentary about the Nuremberg process against the Nazis, and switched to what was going on at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
“And I think that that kind of shock that you saw in parts of the United States that was probably replicated in many European countries.”
What Brøndal describes in his textbook and his students call the ‘American dilemma’ is as old as America itself. That the United States was founded on a revolutionary promise of equality, but the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ has often failed to deliver that promise to all of its citizens.
Brøndal recites the opening lines to the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."
“That is what sort of interested me, and also the fact that the person who at least was the main author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson, was an enslaver.”
When it comes to Black Americans themselves, Danes tend to hold stereotypes that don’t always line up with reality. The story of Black America is a complex one, marked by tragedy and triumph, discrimination and acceptance, poverty and wealth. Brøndal says these accounts often occur at the same time.
“Many Danes also associate African Americans mostly with poverty. They don’t realize that there's a huge middle class, for instance, in Atlanta and in many other American cities.
“They don’t realize that, but simply associate African Americans with inner city violence and inner city poverty, and with maybe a little bit of Mississippi poverty.”
Back in the student focus group, it seems like undergrad Lukas Fausing, age 22, can’t help but feel what’s going on in the United States is reflected in how Denmark treats its own minorities.
“I think (it’s similar) as in the US, where minorities might feel like second class citizens in some way,” he says.
“In Denmark, I think back to how it’s been covered that when refugees or immigrants with a foreign-sounding name search for jobs and they write their résumé but their name is not something that sounds Danish, they get rejected.”
Vingaard agrees, saying how America’s Black Lives Matter movement focused on racially-based policing, a similar situation to what exists in Denmark.
“Some people have criticized the Danish police for going to the so-called ghettos more often than other places. So although the problem is not the same, or at least it's not that extreme, you still have the debate and something similar is happening.
“And you can find many people in Denmark who have an idea that the Danish police are racists and they are misusing their power to some extent. And then you also have some other people saying, ‘No, no, they don’t, that's not true.’”
As the world gets closer to December’s sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks may come up in conversation more and more in Denmark and Europe.
Based on my conversation with the students, she’s clearly a powerful figure in a mass movement that has impacted and inspired people all over the world to this day. But why? Berardi has a simple answer.
“I think it's because she was a woman, and I’m very proud to say that as a woman.
“She just switched seats on a bus. I think that was actually the very revolutionary move that she made.
“She did something that I think a lot of people wanted to do, but she had the guts to do it.”
Part four
"Rosa Parks and the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott"
Rosa Parks is often called the mother of the modern day civil rights movement. Her refusal to stand up on a city bus so a white man could sit down sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This month marks the 70th anniversary of the movement that ended segregation on public buses. APR Gulf coast correspondent Cori Yonge takes a deeper look at Parks life and the act of defiance that came at great personal cost to the civil rights icon.
“Who can tell me what Rosa Parks did? Why she’s famous,” asked Donna Beisel to a roomful of fourth graders.
These youngsters from Tuscaloosa’s Rock Quarry Elementary School sit cross legged on the floor of the Rosa Parks museum in Montgomery. The room is full and the students wave paper fans as if they are the ones on a crowded public bus. Museum director Beisel sets the stage for their tour.
“That’s right, she refused to give up her seat to a white man, and she was arrested for her defiance,” She continued.
Most of the students already know that Parks was on her way home from work when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested for her defiance. Here, these youngsters watch captivated as a movie recounts Parks’ actions. It plays against the back drop of a real, 1950s Montgomery public bus.
It clearly makes an impression – leaving the fourth graders with a better understanding of Parks’ courage and the people who joined with her to end segregation. Here’s Sadie Young, Harrison Hurd, and Callie Spring.
“She was a great person,” said Sadie.
“Very serious woman and she stands her ground,” said Harrison.
“Very big impact,” said Callie.
A big impact is what many Americans remember about Parks and her role in the bus boycott. But the fine details of her life are often forgotten. At the time of her arrest, contrary to newspaper accounts of the day, Parks wasn’t physically tired. She was just tired of being mistreated. Parks explained it this way in a 1956 public radio interview with KPFA journalist Sidney Roger.
“What made you decide at the first part of the month of December 1955 that you had enough?” asked Rogers.
“The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose.”
The interview was one of many Parks gave as a board member for the Montgomery Improvement Association. That’s the organization founded to run the boycott. After her arrest, Parks crisscrossed the country promoting the bus boycott and raising money for the cause. Though soft spoken, her words were fierce.
“Why weren't you frightened?” Rogers inquired.
“I don't know why I wasn't but I didn't feel afraid I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen even in Montgomery, Alabama,” Parks responded.
When police arrested Parks, she was a 42-year-old seamstress for the Montgomery Fair department store. That’s where Black citizens were allowed to shop but not allowed to try on clothing or eat at the lunch counter. Her husband Raymond was a barber at Maxwell Airforce Base. Museum director Donna Beisel says the 1956 bus boycott wasn’t Parks first foray into activism.
“So she really got started in the 1930s with the Scottsboro Boys case,” she said.
The Scottsboro Boys were nine young Black men wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Alabama for raping two white women. Rosa and Raymond worked to free the men. Parks next civil rights role was as an active member of the Montgomery Chapter of the NAACP. But Beisel says Parks would pay her steepest price for her part in the boycott.
“She and Raymond lost their jobs,” Beisel recalled. “They were constantly receiving threats.”
Though only a small child at the time of the boycott, 73-year-old Meta Ellis remembers those threats to Parks and other organizers. Her father was Reverend Robert Graetz – the white minister of Montgomery’s all- Black Trinity Lutheran Church. Like Parks, Graetz was instrumental in organizing the boycott.
“And there were a lot of times when the Klan would be driving by our house slowly, letting us know that we were being watched with the rifle out the window and the phone calls coming every day,” said Ellis.
The intimidation didn’t deter Parks. She and Raymond were among the first to arrive when the KKK bombed the Graetz family home in 1956.
“She was there in the midst of all the chaos, uh, sweeping up messes in the kitchen and picking up broken glass. Um, this was the kind of person she was,” said Ellis.
In 1957, with the boycott over, the families separated. Unable to find jobs in Montgomery, the Parks moved to Detroit where Rosa and Raymond’s luck was no better. A 1959 federal tax return shows the couple earned a combined income of little more than 600 dollars. And a 1960 Jet Magazine profile describes Parks as “a tattered rag of her former self. Here’s Donna Beisel.
"For probably about 20 to 30 years after that, she was kind of shuffled to the back and, you know, thank you for your service kind of thing. Now, step aside. Um, we're going to have other leaders kind of take the spotlight,” she said.
Despite the hardships, Parks never wavered in her dedication to human rights.
“She had 20 years of activist experience before the bus boycott and decades after, really, until she physically couldn’t anymore,” said Beisel.
Parks died in 2005 at the age of 92. Today there are new efforts to unfold the Rosa Parks’ story beyond her seat on the bus. With the 70th anniversary of the bus boycott, the museum is kicking off a campaign to acquire the Rosa Parks archives from the Library of Congress.
“Kids have this, and some adults, have this idea of her as this almost mythical being that you know, I can never do what she did,” said Beisel.
Beisel says housing the archives at the museum will round out the Rosa Parks’ story - perhaps inspiring future generations to reach for change in their communities.
Part Five— An insider's view of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
This month marks seventy years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a muncipal bus to a white passenger on December first of 1955. Four days later the boycott began. The event made both Parks and Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior into international figures. A lot has been said and reported on the Montgomery Boycott. But, only a few can say they were there. APR student reporter Torin Daniel has more on someone who planned the boycott and one witness who saw it.
“The greatest planning I did, as far as planning for a a an event, was the planning that Joanne and I made in her living room for the Montgomery bus boycott,” said Fred Gray.
He was the attorney to both MLK and Rosa Parks. As far as the Montgomery Bus Boycott was concerned, Gray was in the middle of it. The Joanne Robinson he referred to, plays a big role later in this story, APR News spoke with gray about the Montgomery Bus Boycott back in 2018 This is the first time this audio has been heard in public.
“There's some misunderstanding on some people, part because some people think he came to Montgomery to start a civil rights movement,” Gray continued.
He was referring to his client, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. He recalled how choosing King to lead the bus boycott wasn't guaranteed. Two other names came up, Ed Lewis and Rufus Nixon. They were both well known civil rights activists. Remember the Joanne Robinson that Fred Gray mentioned earlier. He says she was the group leader who made her feelings known.
“Joanne said, ‘Well, why don't we get my pastor, Martin Luther King. He has not been involved in civil rights activities. He haven't been here long, but one thing he can do, he can move people with his words,’” Gray recalled.
“He not only could speak, but he was a very good listener, and he had a good sense of humor, even to the extent of telling some jokes sometimes that he wouldn't be able to tell in the pulpit. But he was a very good practical person,’ Gray continued.
“One of the best things we decided to do was to ask the people just to stay off of the bus for one day. Most people can make arrangements to get to where they need to go for a day,” Gray recalled.
The problem of transporting people during the longer boycott was solved by enlisting black owned funeral homes in Montgomery. They had cars and offered rides to African American city residents who needed a way to get around town, along with red gray APR news heard from another Montgomery resident with a unique relationship to Dr King.
APR listeners first met Nelson Mauldin in 2018 we visited the barber shop he owned in the 1950s it was here and who he first met in 1954 one year before the bus boycott. That's the point.
“Well, the first thing it came in the shop like any new customer,” said Nelson Mauldin, Dr King's barber in Montgomery.
“When I finished cutting his hair. I gave him the mirror to say it like his haircut. So he told me, pretty good. So when you tell a barber pretty good, that was an insult,” Malden said.
Dr King became a regular in Maldon's barber chair, and he recalled the first day of the Montgomery bus boycott.
“Oh, yeah. Well, you could tell, because the first day the boycott started, we was in the barber shop, and one of the customers a heck on the bus, and we all ran to the wonder to see there was a black man standing on the corner across the street from the barber shop. And we looked, we couldn't see what the man got on and off,” Malden said. “When the bus pulled off, the man was still standing. We saw, Oh, Lord, awake. We thought (boxer) Joe Lewis had knocked out Max Schmelling.
381 days later, King called for an end to the boycott. The event became engraved in civil rights history, and Fred Gray says, King became an international figure.
“…and all of it happened here in Montgomery, Alabama, and Dr King was serving as spokesman of the group during the Montgomery bus boycott. And I'm happy that I served as his legal advisor.
