In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, in an historic address to Congress, said: “At times history and fate meet in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago in Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”

History clearly attests to ranking Selma with those watershed events, for the brave actions of men and women and young people using non-violent direct action to pursue justice changed this country and the world most positively.

LBJ had a Texan’s proclivity to hyperbole, but he was spot on on this one. His advocacy of a clearly needed Voting Rights Act was prompted by national disgust with the ugly violence by state troopers and local sheriffs.

Within days of Bloody Sunday, thousands of clergy and people of good will from throughout the nation were joining to march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, named for a notorious racist, and ultimately, under Federal protection, to Montgomery, where Martin Luther King addressed over 20,000 demanding justice and freedom.

What happened due to Selma —and earlier struggles in Montgomery, Birmingham and other Southern sites—inspired much non-violent change in this country, the Philippines, South Africa, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong and myriad places.

The issues behind Selma were simple and basic: the right of citizens to enjoy basic dignity and respect and to participate in government through voting (and serving on juries!) without fear and intimidation. Sadly, it was a hundred years since the Civil War and 15th Amendment had theoretically resolved those issues.

Also at issue, of course, was the right of citizens peaceably to assemble for the redress of grievances, something guaranteed by the 1st Amendment but defied by Alabama authorities. It took Federal court orders and the nationalization of the Alabama National Guard to establish this right for the 25,000 who came to march from Selma to Montgomery.

The terrible time of Bloody Sunday, an early example of law enforcement gone amuck (as in Birmingham a year earlier), was shown on national television. It shocked the national conscience. Quiet but courageous organizing, mass jailings, gross injustice and outrage against murder proved ultimately to be the catalysts for great positive change.

No wonder it was celebrated on its 50 year jubilee in early March 2015 by tens of thousands of people including Presidents Obama and G. W. Bush, over one hundred members of Congress, families of Selma martyrs, countless civil rights and religious leaders and “foot soldiers” and—most poignantly—the daughter of Gov. George Wallace.

Many celebrities joined common folk of all sorts in honoring this historic event. The crowds for both the Saturday speeches and the Sunday bridge crossing were joyous and diverse. It was inspiring to see that so many still work for the dreams of some very brave dreamers.

Why did so many show up? As one of those people, an ex-sexagenarian (I don’t like the sound of septuagenarian) from California, I thought I would share my perceptions as to why so many would venture to a small town where finding basic amenities—accommodations, transportation, bathrooms, food, parking, water, etc.—was very challenging.

Not only those things were lacking, there was a major presence of the Secret Service and law enforcement due to the appearances of Presidents Obama and George W. Bush. Airport type security was required for any one getting near the bridge whose infamy is still remembered, if hardly hallowed, with a notorious racist name. It should be named for John Lewis, whose skull was fractured on Bloody Sunday. Secret Service and event planners did not seem to understand that when water bottles are prohibited, the sun is warm and bright, and events are long, people get thirsty. They planned for port-o-potties and other things, but apparently haven’t heard of dehydration.

Some might have been attracted to a media circus revolving around many celebrities and a plethora of events (speeches, memorial services, forums, concerts, plays, lectures, films showings) which made many wish for the gift of ubiquity.

But I would suggest that many came for the reasons I did: to celebrate, honor and learn more from the brave souls whose courage changed the world significantly and to be reenergized to continue in the struggle for justice and equality.

As a young white man in the 1960’s I participated in many ways in the civil rights struggle, including attending the March on Washington in 1963.

I did not, however, make it to Selma in ’65, for I was out of the country at the time.

The Civil Rights movement was instrumental in much positive change in this country, but I hoped by now that matters would be much better. I certainly recognize many great advances, especially an enlarged black middle class and a vastly increased presence in entertainment and sports. There has been major progress among some in the social sphere and attitudes in view of increased interaction in work and families, but I am keenly aware of how much farther we need to go. Charlottesville and other Trump-inspired racist events included many young bigots. In many ways matters are worse, especially the escalation of gun violence and the deadly nature of modern weaponry.

I taught high school in Oakland for over twenty years and know first hand how inequality and injustice are alive and well.

I also am aware of the ugliness of some law enforcement attitudes and actions toward minorities. Oscar Grant (“Fruitvale Station”) I knew slightly as he was a friendly butcher in a market where I often shopped. As someone who used to play a lot of basketball in the flatlands of Oakland, I also learned that driving with young black passengers often resulted in traffic stops with ticky-tacky justifications. Suspicious cops couldn’t comprehend friendships based on hoop.

In an age of Trayvon, Ferguson and the Need to Breathe, Cleveland, Baltimore—the list goes on and on and is updated frequently—we came to Selma, hoping to be energized to work harder for justice and peace in still troubled times when it comes to race.

Even the Voting Rights Act has been vitiated by a Supreme Court majority in an act of oblivious arrogance. This twice was re-authorized by Congress and signed by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, in the later case passing both houses of Congress unanimously.

The current leadership in Congress refuses to “fix” the Supreme Court’s blunder, while Republicans pass voter suppression legislation across the land.

Progress has clearly come, as best expressed by Congressman John Lewis, whose skull was fractured on Bloody Sunday. He said that fifty years ago people would call him “crazy” if he thought he would later, at the base of an infamous bridge, be introducing the first African-American President of the U.S.

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I was told that no hotel/motel rooms were available that weekend in the whole state of Alabama and that church basements and school gymnasia were impromptu dormitories in all sorts of nearby places.

The crowds were friendly and joyous. The only hostility I saw was on a billboard honoring the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. For those who arrived early there were concerts, symposia, movie showings and an extraordinary number of fine museums. Churches and the local Concordia College Alabama had many excellent events.

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Selma to Montgomery is now a National Historic Trail, with the National Park Service having “interpretative centers” in Selma and about half-way to the capitol, once of the Confederacy and later of state-sponsored terrorist oppression. Both centers are excellent, especially the larger one down the road a pace.

If you have children, grand children or friends not well versed in the Civil Rights Struggle you would be well advised to suggest they go to museums in Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Atlanta. Many of these facilities are high-tech, multi-media and quite sophisticated.

Atlanta now has a new street car with superb easy access from downtown to MLK historic sites as well as the new Museum of Civil and Human Rights—all worth visiting.

My favorite museum was not slick but showed the seeringly honest vision of its founder, an artist and activist who has converted a funky downtown warehouse in Selma into a Museum of Slavery and Civil Rights.

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I had never been to Alabama before. Most jarring to me visually was the number of streets, freeways, schools, government office buildings named after civil rights figures. Who would have expected a Ralph David Abernathy Airport in Montgomery? Or a Rosa Parks Museum right where she was famously arrested? Or a major Southern Poverty Law Center facility honoring civil rights martyrs and veterans within easy walking distance of the capitol building where George Wallace proclaimed segregation forever?

Racial conditions have clearly changed in Alabama. To me this was best illustrated by friendly cops of various ethnicities from throughout the state who had come to “police” what turned out to be incident-free events.

But the state is burdened with a weak economy, a tea partyish state government and fierce opposition to immigrants, Obamacare, the federal judiciary and LGBT rights. It is especially sad to know that public schools are overwhelmingly African-American, with white kids going to private, often “Christian” schools.

Many activists with whom I interacted felt that much of the struggle today has to do with poverty and economic injustice and such things as Medicaid expansion and minimum wage raises, but the acrid tear gas, injustice and weaponry of Ferguson, Baltimore, et al, haunt our nation in ways very reminiscent of Bloody Sunday. Only now the armament is much more dangerous and sophisticated.

It was good at Selma events to see many of the surviving leaders of the civil rights era, but most promising to me was seeing and hearing two emerging leaders of the “Joshua generation.” I heard them both at Brown Chapel, starting point of historic marches. Their oratory and their track records remind me so of some of the ’60’s civil rights veterans inspired by biblical faith in their commitment to justice.

One is the Rev. William Barber, president of the No. Carolina NAACP and leader of the Moral Monday movement and the other is the Rev. Cornell William Brooks, until recently head of the national NAACP and a civil rights attorney as well as a pastor.

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With the recent “Selma” film, a 1999 “made for TV” Disney movie “Selma, Lord, Selma”, the excellent “Eyes on the Prize” documentary and many books, there is much that can quickly be learned of events half century ago, but I was especially pleased to learn of several things during the trip.

Probably the most important insight was the overwhelming importance of often anonymous African-American “foot soldiers,” most of which came out of the historic Southern black churches, who provided the numbers that filled the marches and jails. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young Baptist “elder” and martyr is most emblematic of this group. Both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee SNCC were of course very instrumental in the developing events, but there was years of local leadership, including a Courageous Eight, who first raised the voter injustice issue and invited the above named groups in.

Christian lay people and clergy were very important in the Selma struggle, but among white Christian few were from traditional Southern churches, but were Northern “agitators” who grew important tragically because of acts of violence against them. It included brave national denominational and ecumenical leaders, such as Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakavos. On this journey I got a renewed appreciation of the role of Unitarian Universalists (“U U’s”) who were at Selma. Two of the Selma martyrs were from that tradition—the Reverend James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo. There were brave Episcopalians, as well, as the death of seminarian Jonathan Daniels, attests.

I was amazed to learn details about distinguished Lutheran civil rights heroes, a category which might sound oxymoronic.

I had vaguely known of the involvement of the Rev. Joseph Ellwanger, a Lutheran pastor of an African-American church in Birmingham, in the civil rights struggle but knew little of the specifics. (I was a radio journalist in Nigeria when Selma happened and the global village wasn’t wired very well in those days.) He told his story as part of a week long symposium on civil rights at Concordia College, which also included the youthful heroine of “Selma, Lord, Selma”, F.D. Reese, a voting rights patriarch, the first black mayor of Selma and many fine speakers.

Ellwanger headed a demonstration of 72 Alabama whites (including his pregnant wife) in support of voting rights in Selma the day before Bloody Sunday. About half the group were “UU” members. Ellwanger was no stranger there, for much of his childhood his father was president of what is now Concordia College.

Some racists showed up with nasty taunts, pipes and baseball bats, and some blacks showed up to see what might happen, both in groups of about 500. It turned out to be a bizarre singing competition with his group singing “America”, the crackers belting out “Dixie” and the third group presenting “We Shall Overcome.” What a wondrous tri-aural choral expression of the American dilemma!

The police chief, who, unlike Sheriff Jim Clark, had some anti-confrontational moxie, then escorted Ellwanger’s group back to the church where they had gathered.

Both the local pastor of Ellwanger’s denomination, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and its district president made it clear they disapproved of his methods. The DP even sent a telegram to Sheriff Jim Clark saying so.

Ellwanger was so trusted by SCLC and SNCC leaders that he was the only white Southern pastor included in key meetings with LBJ and George Wallace.

I highly recommend his 2014 book, “Strength for the Struggle: Insights from the Civil Rights Movement and Urban Ministry.”

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It was also heartening to learn that the Montgomery Bus Boycott had a white Lutheran Pastor hero, The Rev. Robert Graetz, whom I first learned of at the Rosa Parks Museum. His story is told in “A White Preacher’s Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

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On another matter, I was pleased to learn that Delta Air Lines in ’65 worked closely with SCLC leaders to facilitate charter flights nationwide to get religious leaders to Selma for the Ministers’ March on Turnaround Tuesday. Martin Marty, again at Selma, was one involved in getting over 100 Chicago area clergy quickly involved. He was both a participant and a journalist, for Christian Century, who came with a portable type-writer strapped to his neck. I hope there’s a photo somewhere; it could revive interest in the long dormant field of Lutheran iconography.

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I also learned that when the head of Coca Cola found out that the Atlanta business community was slow to buy tickets to a dinner honoring Martin Luther King for winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he threatened to move company headquarters, saying Atlanta needed Coca Cola more than Coca Cola needed Atlanta. The dinner sold out quickly. This is enough to engender my newfound disloyalty to a lifetime in the Pepsi synod.

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It was noteworthy to hear Ambassador Andrew Young (who like other SCLC and SNCC leaders went into distinguished careers in public service) giving special tribute to Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakavos, who marched in liturgical regalia right next to MLK in the Ministers’ March and participated in the funeral of the Rev. James Reeb. Those with an eye for historic detail will relish his sartorially correct treatment in the recent “Selma” film. Many in his denomination were confused by and unhappy with his involvement, but he proved a very brave and prophetic leader, both of his church and as a President of the World Council of Churches. He related his understanding of the oppression of blacks with his youthful experience as a Greek in a land controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

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Did you know that before the Voting Rights Act only 240 blacks were on the voting rolls of Dallas County, of which Selma was the county seat, out of a “Negro” population of 19,000? In two neighboring counties, zero African-Americans were enfranchised to vote. This disparity was maintained through poll taxes, absurd “literacy” tests and systemic intimidation. Hours allowed for new registrants were severely restricted. See the film, “Selma”, if you haven’t, partially to appreciate the absurdity of the indignities.

When law enforcement, judges and government officials, in our lifetime, could wear day time uniforms of power while donning night times robes of terror, they had few things to fear. Immunity and impunity were built into the system.

It took some mighty brave people to fight and topple that system. There were four martyrs, all people of faith, three of whose families spoke during the jubilee.

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I personally have not especially been into pilgrimages in my life, although I have enjoyed key sites in the lives of people I admire, such as recently visiting Dag Hammarskjold’s Sweden.

For me, this pilgrimage to Selma and some other Southern cities has been most important, re-energizing me to continue the good fight for justice which is an important part of Judeo-Christian faith.

I understand that Selma jubilee events will continue annually. I would encourage all Americans to attend some year. We all could benefit from learning more about people whose courageous lives were inspired with a holy anger at injustice learned from Jesus and biblical prophets.

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One last thought: Over the years, I have wondered about Concordia College, Alabama in Selma. I was very impressed by its current status. Its third annual civil rights symposium was wonderful and “justice” is included in its Vision Statement. It was also the lead “title sponsor” of an excellent 50th anniversary booklet published by the Selma Times Journal . The school is offering affordable quality education to many students. It also hosted student/faculty delegations from Lutheran sister schools, including Valparaiso University, Concordia, New York and Concordia, Irvine who came for the Jubilee festivities. And, back in the days, three of the “Courageous Eight” whose work for voting rights preceded that of SNCC and SCLC were from its staff. This record should make justice-loving Lutherans proud.

By Robert O’Sullivan