The first, and only, time I met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in March 1965 in Selma, Alabama. Back in those days I was a young student and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination, we had come to Selma to help overcome barriers to voter registration implemented by local white officials aimed at obstructed and discouraging African American, who were legally allowed to vote, from voting. Additionally we worked on getting as many as possible registered to vote (Steele, 1965).
Naturally, we had known of Dr. King and his civil rights work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Obviously we supported their work and in fact, we shared many of the same goals. We just had a different theory as to the best way to accomplish those goals. Dr. King and the SCLC were a religious grouping that operated mainly through the church and its deep influence in the African American community. We were more secular and focused on gaining political power (Steele, 1965). Indeed, our plan was to find and train a leadership group among local African Americans that were not necessarily part of the church but who would continue the work of organizing and register voters long after we left.
We arrived in the late winter and set up our office in the basement of Brown’s Chapel in the heart of Selma’s African American community (Steele, 1956). It was the only place big enough for our group. Furthermore, since most of the community came to chapel at least once a week on Sundays, it was a great place from which we could contact young people, who were the main focus of our campaigns For most of those early months, we were the only civil rights group working in Selma. By March, we had established a significant base of support for voter registration.
We soon heard, however, that Dr. King had also decided to make Selma the “testing grounds” for his own voter registration campaign and as a way to pressure President Johnson to introduce a voting rights law (Stoddard, 2015). At first we were a bit wary of this development, because as mentioned while we shared many of the same goals we had different methods and different memberships. We also felt that many in the SCLC, but not necessarily Dr. King, wanted us to join their organization and become the SCLC youth group (Stoddard, 2015). Moreover, many of us did not agree with Dr. King’s allowance of non-African Americans to participate in his campaigns (Stoddard, 2015). Nevertheless, as two of the foremost civil rights groups at the time, both located in the same town, working on similar campaigns, it was inevitable that we would meet.
I and two other SNCC leaders met Dr. King a few days after he arrived. We were in our basement office going over some campaign strategies when the one of chapel’s staff entered and said that Dr. King wanted to talk to us. Of course, how could we refuse? The staff member led us to the chapel pastor’s office. When we entered, Dr. King was seated behind the desk talking to, who I later learned was one of his top assistants the Reverend Ralph Abernathy (Lewis, 2011). As soon as the door closed behind us, Dr. King stood up and said, “Are you the boys from SNCC?” “Are you Tom, Dick and Harry?” To which we nervously responded, “Yes.” I’m not sure about the others but I was amazed that he knew my name. He then walked over and shook each of our hands and congratulated us on the work that we done so far in Selma as well as the accomplishments that we had been able to achieved. He said that he had not wanted to come to Selma, as he thought we were doing well enough, however members of several of the local ministry’s had called and asked him to come down to see if we could help out. He agreed to come down but, naturally, wanted to hear from us about the situation and work on ways to best integrate our approaches. The meeting did not last longer than 20 minutes but afterwards, I came to realize that Dr. King was as deeply passionate in advancing the rights of African American and every bit the worthy partner in the cause.
Works Cited
Lewis, John. “John Lewis on Martin Luther King: A ‘Big Brother to Me’.” National Journal. nationaljournal.com, 15 Aug. 2011. Web. 08 Jul. 2015. http://www.nationaljournal.com/mlk/john-lewis-on-martin-luther-king-a-big-brother-to-me-20110815
Steele, Jonathan. “United Front against State Troopers.” The Guardian. theguardian.com, 15 Mar. 1965. Web. 08 Jul 2015. http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/20/1426850941801/Selma-15-March-1965-Jonat-001.jpg
Stoddard, Katy. “Selma to Montgomery Martin Luther King and the march to freedom. The Guardian. theguardian.com, 20 Mar. 2015. Web. 08 Jul. 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/from-the-archive-blog/2015/mar/20/selma-montgomery-freedom-march-martin-luther-king-1965
