Washington Post: Selma Is Tired of Being Just a Symbol

April 11, 2022 Hunter Wallace Alabama, Alt-Center, Politics, Populists, Race Realism, Race Relations 31

“All this city got is history. If this bridge wasn’t here, it would just be another f—-d-up place nobody would visit.” – Arsenio Gardner, Selma resident

It is that time a year again.

Oh wait … it turns out that this year the empty ritual of the annual march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma was overshadowed by Ukraine. Every year the politicians from Washington parachute into Selma for a photo op and fly out the same day. Selma continues to crumble into dust.

Apparently, Kamala Harris and Little Pete Buttigieg came down here this year. I didn’t hear about it with all that has been going on in the world. It is not like anything is going to change.

Washington Post:

“SELMA, Ala. — With the blistering Alabama sun beaming down on them, the crowd at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge was growing restless. The mass of marchers, which stretched a full city block, audibly groaned when it was announced that not only would Vice President Harris speak, but so would the five cabinet members and many of the national civil rights leaders present. As the speeches continued, a cry would occasionally ring out from the crowd, echoing the calls made by marchers 57 years before as they tried to cross the same bridge: “Let us march.” …

After this year’s jubilee, Selma City Council member Lesia James demanded an apology from the vice president and other officials because she felt the city had been “walked over” and “disrespected.”

“Someone asked me well why are you so mad, is it because you wanted to take a picture with the vice president?” James said. “No that’s not why I’m mad. I’m mad because we need help in Selma. When these VIPs come they need to meet with the leaders in Selma and ask what can they do to help Selma be what it can be instead of just coming for one day and taking photos and putting it on Instagram. That’s not what we need, anybody can come to a bridge and take a photo, but what are you depositing in Selma?”

A White House official said that Harris has “worked to uplift overlooked communities throughout her career.”

“In Selma, she focused her remarks on the importance of protecting our democracy,” the official said. “She brought with her a delegation of cabinet members, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia L. Fudge, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and Deputy Secretary of Veteran Affairs Donald Remy. Cabinet leaders participated in a meeting before the march with local leaders hosted by Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.). Regional agency representatives also participated. The meeting was focused on regional needs and the Administration’s work to address those needs.”

Selma native Evelyn Manns was among the foot soldiers who put their lives on the line during the protests of the 1960s. She returned for this year’s Jubilee with a broken heart, coming home to a city where progress seems to have halted. But she also came with a mission.

“The struggle has not ended, it continues, and if you think I’m lying just look around Selma,” said Manns, vice president of the New York Christian Times, a Black-owned weekly newspaper. “But I also came back with a message to the young people. I pass the mantle to you, young people, because it’s your responsibility now. You have a responsibility to carry out what we started.”

Selma is a ghost town with a magic bridge.

I’ve spent years watching it slowly revert to the wilderness like Cahaba. Selma has been cursed by John Lewis ever since the Civil Rights Movement. He is probably there now haunting the city.

31 Comments

    • I went into the ruins of Craig AFB and posted a bunch of photos of it on Twitter on a long ago banned account

      • @Hunter Wallace, so do you not support civil rights for Black Southerners?

        In 1876, Forrest was invited to speak at Fourth of July festivities sponsored by a African-American group, the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers. As reported by the Memphis Daily Appeal, Forrest delivered the following speech:

        “Ladies and Gentlemen, I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states…. I believe I can exert some influence, and do much to assist the people in strengthening fraternal relations, and shall do all in my power to elevate every man to depress none. (Applause.) I want to elevate you to take positions in law offices, in stores, on farms, and wherever you are capable of going. I have not said anything about politics today. I don’t propose to say anything about politics. You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office…. I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment…. Go to work, be industrious, live honestly and act truly, and when you are oppressed I’ll come to your relief. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity you have afforded me to be with you, and to assure you that I am with you in heart and in hand.”

        Contrary to some claims, Forrest was not the only white man invited that day to speak, according to the newspaper account. He was joined by other former Confederates and prominent Democrats.

        Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow, followed Forrest, echoing the sentiment that the black and white races were “on the same footing” and that the African-Americans should vote for “honest and capable men.”

        Confederate Gen. Gideon Pillow said;

        “You were misled at the end of the war by bad men of the Republican party,” Pillow continued. “If you had not put yourself in the hands of the enemies of southern white people, but had placed your confidence in them and had cooperated with them in necessary reforms in the policy of State government, they would have been your allies and would have adopted such forms of legislation as would have greatly advanced your interests.”

        “My advice would be to discard all partisan views, to disband all colored political organizations. It was these colored political organizations — in hostility to the white race of the south — that produced the color-line of the white race of the south.”

        Pillow urged them to stay in the South and farm the land, telling them that it was their “fate” and warning against the idea of moving north.

        “You were born and raised in the South,” Pillow continued, as Forrest looked on. “Your constitutions are suited to the mild and genial climate of the south. The native climate of your race was in the tropical region of Africa…. The cold climate and long winters of the north you will not bear. But your race can live and prosper in the States of the south.”

        “Without this land to cultivate you could not live. There is therefore a dependence between the races — the one on the other — which make the prosperity of either impossible without the well-being of the other. If you cease your hostility to the white race of the south, and fall into the general policy and intents of the south, and identify yourself in interest with them, and vote for none but honest and capable men for office, we would correct the abuses which have crept into every department of business. The wisest statesmanship would adopt measures which would in the end enable you to get homes of your own, and land to cultivate.”

  2. This stupid scumbag politician moral grandstanding ritual is going to die with these geezers much like Selma itself. Very fitting.

  3. >Selma is a symbol of the failure of the Civil Rights Movement

    Any city that’s nearly 85% black like Selma is going to be deemed a failure when evaluating pretty much any metric relevant to civilization — Liberia, independent for 170 years, and where Whites are not allowed to be citizens, is no different.

    More phenomenal dishonesty about the reality of race.

    • Excellent link. Like the rest of Africa Liberia has huge unrealized potential. If all races were equal in human potential, if Africans were like Japanese people and Japanese like Africans then Africa would be the wealthiest place on earth and Japan the poorest.

      Africa is a mineral treasure house, has ample fertile land to grow crops and many other natural advantages yet the place is mired in violence, stupidity, superstition, degeneracy, corruption and eternal failure. Japan lacks mineral resources, has limited arable land, must import everything yet is one of the most prosperous, orderly, peaceful, productive, honest countries on earth. What accounts for the difference?

      The honest answer, that Africa is full of Africans and Japan full of Japanese cannot be admitted in the GloboHomo Shopping Mall Empire. Since the 1960’s the U.S. has bet the farm on the demonstrably false proposition that All Men are created Equal. Now that bet is being cashed in as the country comes apart from all the debt and all the Third Worlders. All by design, too, it’s not an accident or a mistake.

      • >Africa

        The nation sending the most refugees to the US for many years now is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, estimated average IQ of less than 80) — think about that for a moment: an entire continent full of nations, many of them majority black, and they cannot find a single one that’s suitable for resettlement of DRC refugees — instead they are shipped by the thousands across the ocean to the US.

        • @eah,
          I’ve always wondered why these people can’t just relocate to nations that are closer geographically, culturally and racially. They would fit right in. Instead, they’re in the West where they go from being ‘persecuted refugees’ to suddenly being these empowered ‘oppressed victims’ that are fighting for yet more change. Well, really I know the answer:- there are no whites in Africa to be ‘victims’ of, so they have nothing to gain there. It’s ironic how we can be simultaneously the most racist people on earth whilst also being the ones most will risk their lives to live near.
          They were given back Africa, now they want to flee it.
          You will NEVER please these people.

        • Congolese refugees are part of our greatest strength, as they help to put the capable and honest Democrat Party in power.

    • Birmingham has been a post-industrial disaster for my entire life. Very few people in Alabama work in coal mines. I also live in the BlacK Belt

  6. I attended a fish fry in Selma with a now deceased friend who was in the LOS and SCV in the summer of 2004 at the home and property of a certain person who was, shall we say, a race realist. I’d guess at least 200 people were there. Might you know who I’m talking about, Brad? No names, of course.

  8. “If this bridge wasn’t here, it would just be another f—-d-up place nobody would visit.”

    You mean just like every other majority black city?

  9. Amen! Trying to remember who it was, but someone made a video showing the daily auto and foot traffic in Selma on an average nice day. I hadn’t been down there in a couple of decades and I was genuinely shocked how much worse things had gotten in that time.
    It is DEAD.
    John Lewis controlled the district in ATL where I was born. It’s now too dangerous to even drive into the neighborhood. It’s been 5 decades since it was a safe, white area.

  10. There are thousands of southern communities all throughout the south that are a victim of integration. In a very real sense the United Sates government has made whole sections of the country unlivable. This is what liberalism does. On the other hand white people are expected to cheer for their own demise and not only cheer but help finance it and speed it along!

  11. ” This is what liberalism does”

    Do you mean the hidden hand of judaism, behind the curtain of liberalism ?

  12. “Selma continues to crumble into dust.”

    Replace the Afican fauna with krauts and it would look like those picturesque Bavarian villages in south Brazil or Agentina.

    Yep, yep, race doesn’t matter.

  13. It wasn’t just civil rights, although God knows these commie crap asses caused enough trouble. Every place the Africans showed up in mass, they took over and the industry and business left, wound up like this. I live within 60 miles of East St Louis, it was a pretty good industrial town of about 100,000 people 80 or 90 years ago, now it’s a black rat trap, one of the worst in the country.

  14. ” the United Sates government has made whole sections of the country unlivable”

    Zog infested US gov.

    Since the mid 60s, the decline of America has been a macabre spectacle, like watching an animal eaten by maggots.

  15. “white people are expected to cheer for their own demise ”

    They passively tolerate their own execution by a thousand cuts.

  17. We owe it to blacks to make Selma, Alabama, into Wakanda. They would do it themselves, but, you know… racism.

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