Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s symbolic march from Selma to the Alabama capital in Montgomery was inspired by a tragic incident. Ignoring a ban on protest marches by Governor George Wallace, some 600 African-American protesters gathered outside Brown Chapel in Selma to march to the state capital on March 7, 1965.
The marchers made it no further than the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away , before state troopers and local deputies stopped and clubbed them. That night, ABC broadcast footage of "Bloody Sunday," and by morning thousands of march supporters were making their way to Selma. On March 9, King led a symbolic march as far as the bridge. On March 21, he led a march from Selma to Montgomery, which is credited as a major reason President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act five months later.
Today, tourists can walk along the route that black activists took with King. They can start at Brown Chapel, first organized by freed men after the Civil War and noted for its striking Byzantine exterior. Another noteworthy site is Selma's National Voting Rights Museum, which opened in 1993. It features the Footsteps to Freedom Room, with photos of the march and Bloody Sunday, and the Reconstruction Room, which honors black congressmen elected to office just after the Civil War.
Selma has also preserved more than 1,200 historic structures, including a great number of antebellum and Victorian homes. One of the most elaborate is Sturdivant Hall, a Greek Revival mansion designed by a cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Selma also has one of the few cemeteries in the South listed on the National Register of Historic Sites.
Several famous women and African Americans rest in Old Live Oak Cemetery, including Elodie Todd Dawson, a staunch Confederate supporter who was also Abraham Lincoln's sister-in-law, and Frances John Hobbs, a leading suffragette married to a jeweler. Legend has it that she saved her fortune from Union Army looters by sewing the jewels into her petticoats.
St. James Hotel
Once an elegant riverfront hotel, the St. James had already fallen a few notches by 1893, the year it started housing various businesses. By the 1965 Civil Rights marches, the St. James was a tire recapping plant. It wasn't until 1994 that Elizabeth Driggers, of the Selma Office of Planning and Development, determined that the place should be restored as a hotel.
With the mayor's blessing (and a healthy dose of skepticism ), she obtained a small grant to begin the work. Driggers and other members of the community worked on the preservation for three years. Preservation architect Richard Hudgens was particularly helpful, because the group wanted to maintain the hotel 's historic integrity while also bringing it up to code.
The tire recapping plant had gutted the first floor, which the group restored to a lobby using heart pine salvaged from a demolition across the street. The paint was professionally analyzed to match the 19th-century colors on the interior, as well as the period antiques and 1850s French silk draperies. The second floor layout was intact, and the group maintained the original sizes of the guestrooms.
The complete restoration cost $6 million, but throughout the process, members of the community donated countless hours. Some also donated money and had rooms named in their honor. The revival of the St. James has inspired further downtown restoration , and has attracted new investors from all over Alabama.
First Baptist Church
A local black architect, Dave Benjamin West, constructed the First Baptist Church in 1894 in the Gothic Revival style. In 1965 First Baptist provided food and rest for Civil Rights marchers as they journeyed to Montgomery. After the historic church was almost demolished by a tornado in 1978, many Selma residents thought it was in such bad shape that it should be torn down.
A group of history lovers intervened , determined that the building's structure was still sound, and set about restoring the church. Volunteers--white and black alike--repaired the roof, rebuilt the walls and added new glass. Today, First Baptist Church is just a few projects away from full recovery.
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