The great-nephew of a civil rights matriarch is leading a multiracial delegation of millennial and Gen Z activists who intend to reshape the ongoing voting rights debate around their generations’ access to political power and socioeconomic justice.
“If our national narrative is just focused solely on voting rights and an attack on Black people, then our message is too narrow. We are missing it,” he said, previewing a message he intended to share in Selma.
Along with the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Transformative Justice Network, Smith planned another reenactment of the 1965 marches on Monday. The group will take on an 11-mile stretch of the original route toward Montgomery. Whether it’s civil rights history in Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham or tiny Greensboro, nearly every part of the Alabama racial justice movement depended on the willingness of people as young as high schoolers to take risks and make sacrifices, Giggie said.
With midterm elections approaching this fall and narrow Democratic control of the House and Senate on the line, some fear the window of opportunity has nearly closed to beat back state-level voter suppression. And with stakes so high, advocates see this year’s Selma commemoration as a crucial rallying point.
On March 7, 1965, before King could arrive in Selma, state troopers and members of the Dallas County sheriff’s posse stopped demonstrators at the foot of the Pettus bridge. A trooper bashed the head of John Lewis, the late congressman who was then a student activist, during the fracas that left dozens injured.
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