New Orleans chapter of Delta Sigma Theta taking students to Selma

By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer

Five decades after thousands of marchers descended on Alabama in the spring of 1965 to push for unfettered voting rights for African Americans in the heart of the Deep South, members of the New Orleans-based graduate chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., are making a pilgrimage to Selma on March 8 to reenact an event highlighted by what has become known in civil rights parlance as Bloody Sunday.

In early March 1965, voting rights advocates, shepherded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., planned to trek the more than 50 mile stretch from Selma, Ala., to the state’s capital, Montgomery, to advocate for voting rights. On Sunday March 7, the first of two thwarted marches to the capital ended after state troopers attacked scores of marchers with nightsticks, tear gas, and intimidation as they rode atop horses.

Two weeks later, marchers reached Montgomery under the protection of state and federal troops. The Edmund Pettus Bridge, spanning the Alabama River, where marchers were met with resistance on orders from the state’s governor, is now part of the Selma-to-Montgomery National Historic Trail. Civil rights organizers in Alabama are marking the 50-year anniversary with year-long activities culminating in a three-day celebration of the signing of the Voting Rights Act in early August of 1965.

Local Deltas are taking dozens of students to Selma as part of the group’s commemoration of the march. “We’ll have young women ages 11 to 14, who are a part of our Delta Academy and young women ages 14 to 18, who are participants in what we call Delta G.E.M.S., meaning growing and empowering myself successfully,” says Leslie Howard, president of the local alumnae chapter of the historically Black Greek-letter sorority. “We’ll also have young men with us. They’re part of our EMBODI program, which stands for empowering males to build opportunities for developing independence,” she adds.

“We realize that civil rights are as relevant today as they were then,” Howard says, adding that the trip is part of the sorority’s mission to increase political awareness. “We do this because as Deltas we have five programmatic thrusts, which includes political involvement and we do this for our children.” Howard says informing youths of events like the Selma march is a critical form of political education.

“I’m really excited to be able to walk across the bridge and see the places where things took place and not just see them in books,” says 13-year-old Haley Williams, who will participate in the Selma reenactment. Williams, a student at St. Mary’s Dominican, tells her peers “that without that walk across the bridge, we wouldn’t be able to do a number of things. I wouldn’t be able to go to the school that I go to.”

The history of the Selma-to-Montgomery march is resurrected in the Paramount Pictures drama Selma. “It was really moving; it really captured my attention, particularly the first scene with the three girls who were killed in the church,” Williams says, referring to the movie’s opening scene depicting the 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Ala., of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls preparing for services. Williams encourages adults who lived during the Civil Rights era to discuss the times with youths. “It’s important for them to hold talks and to tell us what they went through and about their sacrifices.”

Williams’ mother, Kenitha Grooms-Williams, chair of the alumnae chapter’s social action committee, believes the recent commemorations of events like the Selma march are only part of the effort to maintain civil rights. “I hope the next chapter in civil rights is returning our churches to the equal rights process,” she says. “They were such an important part of it then and it’s time that they come out of their walls and be a part of our community now. They can help us now with crime and other factors.”

This article originally published in the February 16, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.