Thanksgiving Eve

(Bob Franke)

It's so easy to dream of the days gone by
It's a hard thing to think of the times to come
But the grace to accept every moment as a gift
Is a gift that is given to some

     What can you do with your days
     But work and hope
     Let your dreams bind your work to your play
     What can you do with each moment of your life
     But love 'till you've loved it away
     Love 'till you've loved it away.

There are sorrows enough for the whole world's end
There are no guarantees but the grave
But the life that I live and the times that I spend
Are a treasure too precious to save.

As it was, so it is, as it is shall it be,
And it shall be while lips that kiss have breath;
Many waters indeed only nurture Love's seed
And its flower overshadows the power of death.

Copyright (C) 1982 Robert J. Franke
Published by Telephone Pole Music Publishing Co. (BMI) used by permission
Recorded by Sally Rogers on In the Circle of the Sun, Thrushwood records 002.
Full version recorded by Bob Franke on In This Night, FF70563 Flying Fish
  Records
DC

current mood: mellow

Civil rights movement

During the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, Selma was a focal point for desegregation and voting rights campaigns. Before the Freedom Movement, all public facilities were strictly segregated. Blacks who attempted to eat at "white-only" lunch counters or sit in the downstairs "white" section of the movie theater were beaten and arrested. More than half of the city's residents were black, but only one percent were registered to vote.^[4] Blacks were prevented from registering to vote by economic retaliation organized by the White Citizens' Council, Ku Klux Klan violence, police repression, and the Literacy test. To discourage voter registration, the registration board only opened doors for registration two days a month, arrived late, and took long lunches.^[5]

In early 1963, Bernard Lafayette and Colia Lafayette of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began organizing in Selma alongside local civil rights leaders Sam, Amelia, and Bruce Boynton, Rev. L.L. Anderson of Tabernacle Baptist Church, J.L. Chestnut (Selma's first Black attorney), SCLC Citizenship School teacher Marie Foster, public school teacher Marie Moore, and others active with the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL).^[6]

Against fierce opposition from Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and his volunteer posse, voter registration and desegregation efforts continued and expanded during 1963 and the first part of 1964. Defying intimidation, economic retaliation, arrests, firings, and beatings, an ever increasing number of Dallas County blacks attempted to register to vote, but few were able to do so.^[7] In the summer of 1964, a sweeping injunction issued by local Judge James Hare barred any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until Dr. King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2 1965.^[8]

Commencing in January, 1965, SCLC and SNCC initiated a revived Voting Rights Campaign designed to focus national attention on the systematic denial of black voting rights in Alabama, and particularly Selma. After numerous attempts by blacks to register, over 3,000 arrests, police violence, and economic retaliation, the campaign culminated in the Selma to Montgomery marches which represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement.

On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state troopers and local sheriff's deputies attacked them with Billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma.

Two days later, on March 9, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then, civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators.

"The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...," said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways."

On Sunday, March 21, 1965, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, 1965, they were 25,000-strong.^[9]

Less than five months after the last of the three marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

current mood: energetic