Selma lesson: Continue to tie voting rights to economic justice

Contact: Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org 

In Selma, Poor People’s Campaign youth leader focuses on need to link voting rights & economic justice as his ancestors did 

A descendant of two civil rights heroes said in Selma on Sunday that activists today must focus on both voting rights and economic justice, just as his ancestors did. 

Or he tried to. 

Elliott Smith, who co-directs student and youth engagement for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, was to speak at the 57th anniversary of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But that didn’t work out because of confusion with organizers. 

Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the PPC:NCMR, spoke in his stead with Smith watching and listening from the front of the crowd. 

Speaking for Smith, who is the great-great grand nephew of Robert Smalls and the grand nephew of Amelia Boynton, Bishop Barber said the 1965 Selma march “was not just about voting rights.”

“Dr. King linked the right for voting rights to the fight for living wages and economic justice,”  Bishop Barber said. “Selma was about a commitment to bring the masses of Black people and poor white people together in the South to build a mighty voting bloc that could rebuild the economic architecture of the nation toward justice.” 

Selma also wasn’t just about Black people, Bishop Barber said, “because whites, Blacks, Jews, Catholics, young, old, female, gay and straight people built the campaign so if we are going to move in their memory we must have the same posture.” 

In 1862, Robert Smalls commandeered a Confederate ship and sailed 17 slaves to freedom. He later served in the US House of Representatives. Amelia Boynton

was brutally attacked by sheriff’s deputies as she marched with other young activists known as foot soldiers during the orignal Selma march in March 1965. 

The PPC:NCMR has called on President Biden and VP Harris to meet with poor and low-income people representing the 140 million who live in poverty or are one $400 emergency from falling into poverty.

Earlier Sunday, Bishop Barber preached a message entitled “God Always Has Somebody” at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma. 

“We are not of those who shrink back unto destruction,” Bishop Barber said in his sermon, quoting Hebrews 10. “We must know who we are and whose we are. We can’t give in to destructive individuals, destructive intentions, or destructive endings. As people in the love justice struggle, we must refuse to ever shrink back.” 

“We belong to those who worked for voting rights and economic justice,” Barber continued, connecting the ancient text to today’s struggles. “We belong to the beloved community that included disenfranchised African-Americans in Alabama and white folks living in poverty in Appalachia. Dr. King didn’t just talk about voting rights for Black people when they got to Montgomery 57 years ago. He talked about white folks in Appalachia. He talked about economic justice for everyone.”

“We can’t give in to destructive individuals, destructive intentions or destructive endings,” he said. “As people in the love and justice struggle, we must refuse to ever shrink back.” 

On Monday, the PPC:NCMR, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Transformative Justice Coalition will lead the next leg of  Selma-to-Montgomery recommitment march.

The three groups – along with Repairers of the Breach and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, which co-sponsor the PPC:NCMR – will take the baton at 9 a.m. CT. They and their allies will march 11 miles to symbolize the recommitment to the urgent fight for voting rights in an era when voters have less access to the ballot box than they did when the marchers in the original Selma march in 1965 were beaten and tear-gassed on what became known as Bloody Sunday. 

The groups will pause the march at noon to join with students and youth leaders for a town hall at Southside High School, located at 7975 US-80 in Selma.

The three groups will be led by: Bishop Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the PPC:NCMR; Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of Rainbow PUSH and attorney Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of Transformative Justice. 

Bishop Barber also is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and Rev. Dr. Theoharis is director of the Kairos Center. 
For the PPC:NCMR, the march is another step on the way to the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th. The assembly and march will be not just a day of action but a declaration of an ongoing, committed moral movement to not just voting rights but also against poverty and for living wages, the right for workers to form and join unions and health care because the same politicians who oppose voting rights also oppose these other issues.