Selma: The Valley of Death

by Carlyssia Beavers (United States of America)

Making a local connection USA

My mother had told me of the atrocities of the South. Of course I knew the stories; I had been here my whole life. I just didn’t know how lethal their way of life was. Every year, my church took a pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the Bloody Sunday attacks. I was junior minister one year, so I had to take the trip seriously. As a junior minister, I had to know about everything and everyone we would see or meet. The people, places and events were key to my knowledge. I studied hard about the tactics the local government used to prevent black people from voting. I thought the tactics were just institutionalized racism. I was ignorant to think such things. The tactic used to hold them back were racial genocide. When my eyes were opened to this, Death followed me everywhere. He was in every museum we went to. We saw the hands of death in every lash they took. I didn’t see life and light in the eyes of the oppressed. I only saw them as entities between two worlds. The wonderful world of Egypt and Death’s enticing home. When we got back on the road, there are acres on acres of empty land. They weren’t. They were unmarked graves for three-fifths of people. I saw them. Death consumed their pupils. They were all staring at me. They wanted me to go back home. Men and women, girls and boys of all ages. Dead. Some hung, shot, brutalized, raped. They all had names and stories. Now they were just blood stains on the American flag. The flag is soaked in it. I became suspicious of every tree we drove past. My eyes were tricking me. I couldn’t tell if the magnolia trees had hanging branches or if they were hanging trees. I passed by hanging bodies at different times. I could see the makeup on their faces. They were dressed nicely. They were puppets. The strings were, of course, around their neck. The tree wasn’t the puppet master. We went to Birmingham before we planted in Selma. We went to the same church we always did. I understood what happened here, even as a little girl. Four girls and two boys died that day. I also understand that thier bodies were pedestals for me. When I was a little girl, I played freely at the Kelly Ingram park. The girls on the statue made sure I could. When we made it to Selma, a silence came over me. The marchers walked the same route we traveled in half that time. There are small trenches where they slept for their basic rights. I was glad that there were many of them. There wasn’t a single street light. How could the blind fight the eyes and find light? The answer was love. It was the love that silenced me as I crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge. The love for country, freedom and respect. The police couldn’t beat it out of them. They didn’t raise an arm nor a fist. They didn’t fight back or say a bad word. Love was their tactic to fight. It won them much more than the right to vote. All the blood, tears sacrifice and love; it went to me. The bodies pile for my stance until I can the light. I wear the flag with blood and dance in the streets with the pride of my country. I can forgive the past sins of the nations. I won’t forget the journey we all took to freedom. The connection we all have to blood. The connection we all have to the journey. Selma will always be apart of my five senses. I breathe in the hate and exhale a new future of love energy. I know that’s why they died. Their lives are the energy that progresses our worlds to the new. I will never forget the journey.