Once We Cross That Bridge

Between the Fall of 2014 and the Spring of 2016 it was my good fortune to visit sites and be with people who were important to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. Half a dozen times I was part of an intergenerational, interracial group journeying by bus singing songs, hearing stories, and reliving moments of that important time in American history. Each trip or Pilgrimage concluded in Selma, Alabama where the last thing we did was walk together across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. That bridge remains one of the most significant symbols and “signposts” in our country’s journey toward justice and freedom for all. On Sunday, March 7, 1965 a group of marchers seeking the right to vote were attacked on that bridge. The images of the teargas and sheriff’s deputies on horseback beating the peaceful protestors galvanized a nation and would lead to the Voting Rights Act being passed by Congress a few months later. It is in such moments that we are reminded that though we return from where we came we are not the same and do not go back to the same place.