Won't let nobody, turn us 'round!

Today we arrived in Slema. To get into the small town, you must cross the Emund Pettus Bridge. So that was the first thing we saw even before our tour began. It was exactly like in the movie "Selma, Lord, Selma". As we rode through to Selma, we listened to our CD of freedom songs. The girls love one in particular that actually was sung a lot during the march across that bridge to get voting rights. The lyrics say

Won't let nobody, turn me 'round
turn me 'round, turn me 'round
Won't let nobody, turn me 'round
'Gon keep on walkin', keep on talkin'

Marchin' on to freedom land!

The song is the image of the people walkin and continuing their fight for freedom of opression and for justice for all their peoples, even against any attacks on them.

We checked into our hotel, rested a bit, and had some lunch. Then we were off. We began with a walking tour. We saw the church where a lot of meetings were held in Selma. We saw the same homes and neighborhoods that Sheyann lived in, just like in the movie! We got back in the van to drive to the Voting Rights Museum. That was unfortunately closed. But right around the corner was the bridge.

We walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to the other side, hand in hand. It was tricky because the bridge is still very much in use and the cars were going very fast in the roads. So we had to stay as close to the railings on the sidewalk as we could. But that did not stop the feeling of pride and connection to the past on the bridge. On the other side was a sort of memorial of the march.

The memorial had murals of people, some familiar from our research and some new people that we have learned about on this trip, like Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit who was very much a civil rights activist and fought along side Dr. King. There was a fountin made of stones. And then there was a memorial park that was built to go down into the woods.

We climbed down some wooden stairs into the woods that led to a sort of outdoor theatre overlooking the water. We were the only ones there so we took advantage of that and performed for each other: dancing, stepping, cheering, acting like old grandma's. It was fun.

Afterward, we went to dinner at Pizza Hut and talked and laughed. We made it home early tonight, about 7. We began our lesson early, wrapping up the day and sharing our reactions to crossing the bridge. We then began learning about tomorrow's city: Birmingham. We will visit the 16th St Baptist Church where the bomb was set off and 4 little girls died. We read a part of The Watson's Go to Birmingham. This gave us a fictional description of what it would've looked like right when the bomb went off. We also learned about the Children's Crusade that children marched in right when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and put in jail. So we look forward to tomorrow.

Walk through the pages of Sharonda:

" Today went by fast. We saw churches, we walked across the bridge. I was scared because of all that water. During the march, the people was waiting for them at the end. So I was scared cuz I thought they was gonna be there today too. The song we learned was good. Songs helped them realize that they don't need to feel bad when people do something to them. When I sing them I feel happy.

Tonight we learned that innocence is when you not guilty of doing something. For example, if somebody try to shoot an adult and someone standig on the corner and they shoot the child, they don't have nothing to do with it. Tomorrow we are going to the 16th Baptist Church. It wasn't the 4 little girls fault that the bomb was in the church. Today was fun."

Walk through the pages of Markietta:

"Today I saw the Brown something. We saw the bridge. We learned some songs. 'I ain't gon let nobody turn me round' and another song that says 'and before I be a slave I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free' I think that these songs, the people used when they was trying to cross the bridge. It makes me feel brave that they did that and they got across the bridge at another march. It made me feel like I was one of them when I was singing the songs across the bridge with my friend Damiyon.

Tonight we learned about the 4 little girls. The Ku Klux Klan, well two of them, had threw a bomb in the bottom of the church. And the 4 girls were in the basement and the bomb had went of when they was down there and they had died. So tomorrow we are gonna see the church. I want to know did the girls hear the KKK coming when they had set the bomb?"