It is a very ordinary bridge, really, a short span of steel and concrete spanning a muddy tree lined river, a bridge that at the same time separates and connects a sleepy Southern town. Main Street and downtown is on one side of this bridge and a few businesses, auto repair shops and motels on the other. If you have traveled by car through the South you have crossed bridges just like it so many times that you would hardly notice it at all. There is nothing extraordinary here and yet when you walk across that particular bridge you are on sacred ground. You walk in the footsteps and shadows of hundreds of ghosts, foot soldiers of a non-violent army that was met with brutality, dogs and Billy clubs on this same ordinary bridge. For this is the Edmund Pettus bridge and it is the beginning of the road from Selma to Montgomery, the capitol of Alabama. This was the road that Martin Luther King and the voting rights movement wanted to walk to make their point. A very simple one really: black people had a right to vote, a right long denied by restrictive and unjust laws in much of the South. And yes, they won that price at last but it was paid for in human suffering, in lives lost and blood spilled. This bridge where the battle was joined, where the best and worst of human nature met moved me more than I ever expected it to. The physical reality of the place so familiar from old black and white photographs brought home to me that this was real, real children and women marching, getting beaten and wounded and coming back again, teachers putting their jobs on the line and doing this for two whole years before the national spotlight hit them. For voting rights! The persistence, the courage and the willingness to risk so much for a right we take for granted and often do not even use, struck me. It is an example we can use here and now in these days where violence and war has the upper hand in the national dialogue and where we seem to have forgotten that change can happen in other ways. For me this bridge is a place of gritty and tough but real hope. Yes, ordinary people can do extraordinary acts when called upon and yes, enough people in a just cause can move a nation, can change a town, can save the lives of future generations. The slogan for the Selma March anniversary was “the hands that once picked cotton now pick presidents”.

I invite you to come with me to Selma. As you listen think about places that inspire you and move you to act upon your beliefs with courage. Think about what you hold to be of such value that you would do what these people once did. Listen to the price won and the price paid and the battles we still have to fight when it comes to civil rights, for all of us. And do not think that racism is dead. It is different yes, but far from gone.

The trip began in Birmingham where some 50 Unitarian Universalist ministers boarded a Greyhound bus for this pilgrimage to Selma. We had with us ministers who were there those many years ago including Orloff Miller and Clark Olsen who were with Rev. James Reeb when he was beaten and later died of those wounds. Our first stop was the Birmingham Unitarian Church where many of the marchers who had answered Martin Luther King’s call to action also gathered for breakfast before they drove to Selma. Gordon Gibson, at that time a young seminary student, recalled how crowded the place was with people eating and sleeping in shifts. The women of the congregation were cooking and the phone kept ringing. Gordon overheard one of the matriarchs answer the phone with a rather curt response: Well you will just have to take a number! Who was that? He asked. Oh, she answered, calmly, just another bomb threat! Like other congregations in the South that were integrated back then they paid the price. Their annual canvass dinner was interrupted by a bomb scare for several years and their new member class as well. But yes, the building is still standing. My point though is that the danger was real, four little girls, as you know were killed by a bomb in Birmingham but this did not stop them. They knew what was right. We forget sometimes when we speak of those days that yes, people came from other parts of the country, the North to help in the civil rights battle. But the Southern churches had to live it every day. And yes, bomb scares did tend to put a damper on recruitment of new members.

On the way to Selma we discovered that our driver had himself marched in Selma when he was 12. Children often marched because they could not lose their jobs as adults would if they did the same thing. He was beaten and bloodied then but today he wanted to look ahead. For our young people, he said, this is ancient history. What matters now is that they learn from our experiences that they too can change the world for the better so they do not get lost in materialism and drugs. He hoped they would find meaning and purpose in something, God, religion, a cause, a reason beyond themselves. Then Clark Olson and Orloff Miller spoke of how this experience had changed their lives. It was time travel in a way, and a lot like war scarred veterans sharing their memories, their pride and their pain. A reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser was with us and he later wrote: (By Alvin Benn)

“It’s been 37 years since three Unitarian ministers walked along a Selma street, wondering what the future held for them in a town where hundreds of civil rights marchers had been clubbed and whipped two days earlier. Within a few seconds, they would know. One would die. Two would be beaten and, to an extent, emotionally scarred for life. On Monday, they retraced their steps. The Revs. James Reeb, Clark Olsen and Orloff Miller had just eaten at the Walker Cafe and were heading back to Brown Chapel AME Church when they spotted three men rushing toward them from across the street. 'We were told that if they attack, you fall to the ground and cover your head,' Olsen said. 'I hadn’t forgotten those instructions. But, then, I turned around and saw the fellow swing the club.' One of the attackers yelled a racial slur, Miller said as he focused his eyes on the spot where he first saw the three. Reeb was struck a violent blow on his head and crashed to the ground. The next thing Olsen and Miller knew, they were attacked, too. 'I ran down to the corner over there,' Olsen said, pointing to a spot a few feet away. 'A fellow came after me and slugged me a couple of times.' 'I wasn’t kicked, but one of them knocked my glasses a bit.'" The three Unitarian ministers, in Selma to help with the voting rights movement, had been told to ignore angry shouts from whites upset with any effort to change "their" way of life. They were among thousands of ministers, priests and rabbis who flocked to Selma in the days after "Bloody Sunday" when black marchers were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they attempted to walk to Montgomery. Reeb died two days later. Three men, Elmer Cook and two brothers, Stanley and O’Neal "Duck" Hoggle, were arrested, tried and acquitted on murder charges. This was despite Clark Olsen’s eyewitness testimony. Cook and Stanley Hoggle have died in the years since the incident, but O’Neal Hoggle continues to operate a used car dealership in Selma. It is by the way a dealership that mostly sells to blacks. We passed it in the bus near the projects that now surround the Brown AME chapel. If angry ministerial stares could do anything he did not do much business that day. I confess that later that day, as we ate a great Southern meal of fried catfish, coleslaw and sweet, sweet iced tea in the restaurant, just steps from where Reeb was beaten; I tried to talk some of my colleagues into going over and forming a human prayer chain around that car dealership so no one could go in and out, but cooler heads prevailed. We had not been invited to do this. It was not any longer our battle.

But what is our battle today? In the chapel Orloff spoke of how the first two civil rights martyrs of 1965 had the same first names, Jimmy Lee Jackson of Marion and Jim Reeb of Washington, D.C. “One was white and one was black and, in a way, they lie together, I’d like to make that point by linking the two Jims.” Is this our role? To link all of us together so that any ill that is done to one is done to all? Or is our role to ask the hard questions of ourselves as well as of others? Yes, things have changed. The mayor of Selma today is black. But the battle is far from over.

Civil liberties and civil rights must, it seems, be won again by each generation. It is for me a religious issue. The inherent worth and dignity of every human being means just that. And racism, prejudice comes in many flavors. The “black and white flavor” I did not grow up with and I was almost annoyingly naive when I came over here. Like a Danish friend of mine who came to this country in the sixties to the South and went to the laundry mat where she saw a sign: whites only. So she very carefully took out all her colored clothes thinking the water must have bleach in it. She then went home and told her husband what a stupid laundry mat they had over here. She was right.

In a climate of fear it is easier to throw stones at each other. Fear and anger drive people to do terrible things. As I mentioned a few weeks ago the White Mountain Apache community here in Arizona has suffered from prejudice and blame since the terrible fires this summer. Signs in the windows saying: “no Indians served” have appeared, eerily similar to the signs in Selma long ago. Arab Americans are often looked upon with suspicion. People still judge others by whom they love. To be accepted, welcomed and affirmed as we are is rare. None of us are free of prejudice. But we can all fight it. God in my mind has no color, no race and certainly no national or racial preference. Life is a gift. It is too short for hate.

To fight hate with songs, marches, prayers and non-violent actions seem old fashioned doesn’t it? In this age of terror how can this be a weapon? Well Gandhi’s movement won independence and overthrew the British in India. Non-violence and moral pressure ended apartheid in South Africa. In Northern Ireland old enemies sat down in one parliament to govern together. No, none of these places are now free of problems. But they are examples of what can be done. Maybe that is the meaning behind Jesus’ tough admonition: love your enemies. Look into their faces. See their fears. The truth is that the act of oppression will demean and diminish the very humanity of those that do it. Maybe that is why 500 Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the occupied territories. How do we fight fear? Like the matriarch in the Birmingham Church who told the terrorist "Well take a number!” And went right back to cooking eggs for breakfast.

James Reeb was only one of five civil rights activists who died violently in Alabama in 1965. Each death added to momentum for the Voting Rights Act. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law in August that year. To quote Clark Olson: “To have been connected to that change in American history through almost happenstance was enormous.” As happened often on this visit tears filled his eyes and those of many of his colleagues. “Every time you choose to stand for something that’s right, enormous good could come from it. Perhaps, something profound, deep and wonderful could happen.” Orloff Miller recited a poem that helped put things in perspective for him. “He (James Reeb) died, but we must do a harder thing than dying. We must think and work and ghosts will drive us on. Jim’s ghost has been with me ever since (Selma),” he said.

It is an ordinary bridge, really. A short span of steel and concrete spanning a muddy tree lined river, a bridge that at the same time separates and connects a sleepy Southern town. If you have traveled by car through the South you have crossed bridges just like it so many times that you would hardly notice it at all. There is nothing extraordinary here and yet when you walk across that particular bridge you are on sacred ground. You walk in the footsteps and shadows of hundreds of ghosts, who kept their eyes on the prize.