Day 3: Infinite Hope

How do we find infinite hope when our disappointment overpowers it?

Each and every time I see this bridge and think about what happened there in 1965, I find hope. This is the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where on March 7th, 1965, marchers were attacked by police as they attempted a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the treatment of Black Americans.

A couple of weeks earlier on February 18, 1965, in nearby Marion, Alabama, Alabama State Troopers clubbed protesters and fatally shot 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather from being attacked.

In response to this atrocity, civil rights leaders decided to march to the state capitol in Montgomery to bring their protest (originally to bring Mr. Jackson’s body) directly to Governor George Wallace. Hosea Williams, representing the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), and John Lewis, then a young SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) organizer, were selected to lead the march.

What they saw when they crested the bridge would cause even the most courageous to retreat—a wall of state troopers, county sheriff deputies, police on horseback, and a mass of white spectators jeering and waving Confederate flags. But instead of retreating, Williams and Lewis, followed by 600 marchers, pressed on.

When the marchers reached the impenetrable line on the other side of the bridge and tried to talk to the trooper in charge, the police line advanced, pushed Williams and Lewis to the ground, and then rushed the other marchers as they beat and chased them with clubs and whips. Tear gas mixed with screams to make it appear that people were being massacred.

Joanne Bland, who tells innumerable tour groups the story of being on the bridge that day, wants to make sure that people know that the beating didn’t stop at the end of the bridge. They chased them into town, back to their churches, back to their homes. It went on all night, according to Bland.

Fortunately, no one died that day, although two White allies, the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo, would be killed in the days that followed.

Did the people who were fighting for their rights back down at this overpowering show of force on the Edmund Pettus Bridge? Did they say, “We’ve been defeated. There’s no way we can succeed. How can we fight the entire State of Alabama?”

They had no way of knowing how close to or far from victory they were. I’m sure many were asking how many more would be beaten before they achieved their goals. How many more would die? How many more generations would have to fight for the right to equal treatment under the law? Is it even worth hoping for?

I’ve visited this bridge many times over the past sixteen years leading tour groups we call pilgrimages (Living Legacy Project) to share the stories and walk in the footsteps of Hosea Williams and John Lewis as they led 600 hundred peaceful marchers into a violent mob. And every time I do think about what courage it took for them to keep walking. What determination. What commitment.

Me at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama...

And then I think about the 2,000 people who, just two days later, marched again across the same bridge toward a similar line of police. This march is referred to as Turnaround Tuesday, because the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who led this march chose to turn the marchers around rather than defy a temporary federal injunction against further marches. Many people were disillusioned again—this time with their own leaders who they perceived as giving into pressure instead of pushing forward.

But then, just two weeks after Turnaround Tuesday, the same Alabama State Police who beat people on Bloody Sunday, escorted the triumphant marchers fifty-four miles over four days to Montgomery. Over 10,000 people gathered to see the marchers off in Selma and thousands greeted the 300 who made the full march at the other end in Montgomery.

They still didn’t know if their actions would make a difference, but it didn’t take them long to find out. On August 6th, 1965, just five months after Bloody Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Although that was not all that had to change, it was a major victory—one definitely worth celebrating.

What would have happened if the Bloody Sunday marchers had given up hope? What if Dr. King had said, “No, this is too dangerous and we’re not going to win, so there will be no more marches.”

What if all the people from around the country who descended on Selma after Bloody Sunday to provide support for the Movement had stayed home. “It’s hopeless,” they might have said. “What difference will it make if I’m there?”

What I’ve learned about hope throughout my life is that it is nothing without action. We can’t hope and then wait for something better to come along. We have to make it happen. The people of Selma and Marion, Alabama, and all those who got on planes, trains, buses, and into cars found ways to not give up despite their disappointments, despite their disillusionment, despite their internal struggles to stay hopeful.

Whenever I walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, whenever I think about what happened there, I’m reminded that if people who participated in the Selma Voting Rights Movement didn’t give up hope, how can I?

Today’s Reflection

Think about a time when you felt like giving up, when hopelessness pervaded your soul. What, if anything, helped to ground you? Was it something small like a smile from a stranger, something routine like my friend Annie at

Nomadic Life Scribbles

writes about watching the sunrise each morning, or is it something else that drives you forward? Whatever it is, how can you have more of that in your life?

With hope in my heart,

Annette