MSC Joins After Incarceration to Build Beloved Community in Alabama
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis led over 600 activists and allies across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. The march, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was intended to draw attention to violations of civil and voting rights in Alabama and across the South. Television cameras recorded footage of law enforcement officers attacking the marchers, beating them with billy clubs, and spraying them with tear gas. The footage of folks being subjected to violence while peacefully protesting in their Sunday best led to increased support of voting and civil rights nationally. Bloody Sunday was the first of three marches that helped lead to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Days before the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, MSC staffers visited Selma to listen and learn with a group of changemakers seeking to complete the still-unfinished business of bridging divides and building Beloved Community.
Selma 2.0
We can think of the Voting Rights Movement as Selma 1.0 — and while the Voting and Civil Rights Movements certainly changed the world, much of their early promise remains unfulfilled, and in recent months and years, our systems and institutions seem less based on love, understanding, and justice; and more on anger, resentment, and revenge.
Enter the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation (CNTR), which envisions Selma 2.0 as a Beloved Community “where there is a spirit of cooperation, where people’s similarities and differences are celebrated, and where policies in government and community institutions, as well as the cultures they created, support fairness, equity, harmony, compassion, and love.”
The CNTR was founded in 2015 in an effort to address ongoing violence and conflicts that continue to plague Selma and the country at large. The Pettus Bridge, site of Bloody Sunday, is visible from the center — a stark reminder of the wounds of the past, the triumphant achievement of the grassroots, and the potential for a future where we all can co-exist in Beloved Community.
An Inspiring, Motley Crew
Frank Gargione and Allison Mudge of MSC’s Communications Team, and Karmella Green of our Movement Infrastructure and Innovation (MIIC) Team landed in Montgomery, Ala., the evening before the CNTR’s Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation and Level 1 Certification Training commenced. Jose Pineda, the executive director of After Incarceration, an MSC fiscally sponsored project based in New York state, had invited us to join his intergenerational group of adults and teens for the training.
At the CNTR, we were greeted by around 40 individuals representing a range of ages, backgrounds, and gender identities; including the aforementioned teenagers, teachers, formerly incarcerated individuals, psychologists, a pastor, activists, and even a four month old. The baby, who was there with his mom, smiled, slept, and laughed his way through the training — a living, breathing reminder of intergenerational healing and hope for the future.
Kingian nonviolence is a social change strategy rooted in the teachings and practices of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout the week, we would learn how King’s approaches to nonviolence and conflict reconciliation were developed and put into practice through readings, heartfelt discussions, role-play activities, and the inspiring presence of a civil rights leader.
What’s Up, Doc?
Throughout the week, facilitators included CNTR staff, others (including Pineda) who had completed previous iterations of the training, and Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., co-founder of the CNTR and SNCC.
Dr. LaFayette was a Freedom Rider and student activist who arrived in Selma — where “the white folks were too mean and the Black folks were too scared” — in 1962, organizing mass meetings and voter registration campaigns. “I knew about scared Black folks,” he told us. “I wanted to know more about mean white folks.”
With over a half-century of experience as a civil rights activist, minister, and educator, Dr. LaFayette (who also goes by Doc) shared stories, lessons, and wisdom from a lifetime on the frontlines of nonviolent social change.
“The movement was my classroom. I was the student.”
Present with his wife, Kate Bulls LaFayette, throughout the training, Doc spoke of his relationship with Dr. King, a 1963 assassination attempt, time spent in jail, his experiences registering voters, helping to organize the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins, and more. “The movement was my classroom. I was the student,” he told us. It is difficult to convey how it felt to be in his presence; he is an affable, wise, and inspiring individual who continues to graciously give so much of himself to ensure others carry the mantle of Beloved Community.
Co-Creating Community
We can’t recommend the CNTR’s training enough. Our learnings were comprised of history lessons on the Civil Rights Movement (the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the aforementioned Freedom Rides and Voting Rights Act), various writings from Dr. King (including his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”), and a number of activities designed to shed light on the movement, nonviolence, and each other — including a fascinating exercise around gaslighting and an expert panel Q&A where our learning cohort was surprised to find that we were the expert panel.
We spoke frequently about what Dr. King referred to as society’s three evils: poverty, racism, and militarism. In “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” King further elaborates on witnessing the “inseparable twins” of racial and economic injustice as a teenager, and becoming “fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.”
We covered Dr. King’s Six Principles of Nonviolence. To King, conflict is an inevitable, neutral, and even essential fact of life — it is how we manage it and what we learn from it that matters. In our society, violent conflict has become so normalized, we often fail to recognize its true physical, spiritual, and psychological harm.
Perhaps most enlightening was a discussion on the differences between non-violence versus nonviolence. While non-violence subtracts violence, it is quite passive, merely protecting the status quo and providing temporary solutions that avoid conflict. In contrast, nonviolence is active: It resists the status quo by addressing the root causes of conflict and creating justice. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King wrote of the “appalling silence” of good people (non-violence) and the need for “powerful ‘action’ antidotes to combat the disease of segregation” (nonviolence).
Most of our peers attended a five-day certification that culminated in a weekend of 60th anniversary events. Our group attended a two-and-a-half day training, but agreed we would return without hesitation to complete the longer training.
A Painful but Necessary Journey Through History
Following our training, we had a day to explore more of Selma and Montgomery, where we were staying. Following a mini “graduation” ceremony at the CNTR Wednesday afternoon, we visited the bridge that had loomed large from the windows of the CNTR (literally and figuratively) all week.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge was named for a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan member. Despite a recent attempt to alter its name, the moniker remains unchanged, in what is a sobering reminder of the CNTR’s commitment to Selma 2.0.
While we missed the larger bridge crossing marking the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the three of us were surrounded by the ghosts of the past, fears for the present, and the promise of the future as we crossed the bridge in silence. On the other side, we visited a small memorial garden, which a man was busy raking and cleaning in preparation for the weekend ahead.
Located about 50 miles from Selma, Montgomery is home to The Legacy Sites, which consists of a memorial, sculpture park, and museum. At a time when history itself is being erased to support a narrative upheld by a vocal group of people in power, The Legacy Sites remind us “the power of history is in telling the truth.” They present America’s history of the slave trade, racial terrorism lynchings, segregation, and institutionalized racism unflinchingly.
“The power of history is in telling the truth.”
More than 4,400 Black people were killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877-1950. Their names are engraved on over 800 steel monuments — one for each county where a lynching occurred — at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Some memorials contained the names of the victims, while others were marked “Unknown.” One member of our MSC group located a memorial from the county Texas where she currently resides. A series of plaques noted the “reasons” behind some racial terror lynchings, which included “allegedly writing a note to a white woman,” and “organizing Black voters.” The scope of the steel memorials, many of which are suspended from above, and the realization that some of the racial terror lynchings memorialized here occurred less than a century ago, was breathtaking.
Freedom Monument Sculpture Park sits on the Alabama River, where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked. The site includes artifacts, including dwellings inhabited by enslaved people and brick walls created by enslaved artisans, and original art pieces. The sculptures themselves are massive in scope, capturing the resilience and pain endured by Indigenous and enslaved people. A massive wall, where more than 100,000 names honoring millions of Black families who won freedom after the Civil War are engraved, stands at the exit of the park, “forging a connection to the courage, strength, and resilience of ancestors that you can reach out and touch.”
On the morning of our final day in Montgomery, on the grounds of what was once a cotton warehouse, we visited The Legacy Museum. It is suggested that visitors spend a full day sitting with the heavy weight of 400 years of history that includes the slave trade, racial terror lynchings, the Jim Crow Laws and segregation, and the current state of mass incarceration. A range of exhibits included first-person narratives, shocking signs from the Jim Crow era, “advertisements” from slave traders, and a voting room. In order to register to vote, Black people were often required to answer questions such as “how many bubbles are in a bar of soap?”
At the end of these sobering exhibit spaces, visitors enter a stunning art gallery, followed by a Reflection Space. After traveling through hundreds of years of painful history, we sat — surrounded by images of Black visionaries, activists, artists, and changemakers — in our grief for the past and and with hope for the future. While it was extremely difficult to make it through this museum, erasing, ignoring, or misrepresenting our nation’s shameful history will never allow us to reconcile our past and create a better future. As Dr. King himself reminds us, “No lie can live forever … The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Looking to the Future
Our time at CNTR, the Pettus Bridge, and The Legacy Sites were filled with connection, sadness, history, resilience, and hope. It was a privilege to learn from Dr. LaFayette, and to co-create community with others who are committed to building bridges in a political and social climate that is fixated on tearing them down. One visitor to The Legacy Sites wrote, “The heroes of the Civil Rights Movement — then and now — are people who embrace a kind of enduring optimism for the future, while refusing to water down the truth of the present.”
In addition to Kingian nonviolence training, the CNTR offers other in-person and virtual programming. To stay up-to-date on the latest offerings, follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. For more on Dr. LaFayette, you can explore his book, “In Peace and Freedom.”
If you are able, please consider making a gift to support the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation’s ongoing work.
