Article published November 20, 2008
VIOLENCE OVER VOTING RIGHTS
Unitarian minister recalls night in 1965 that changed history
The Rev. Clark Olsen of North Carolina speaks to students at Ottawa Hills High School.
(
THE BLADE/HERRAL LONG
)
|
By DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR
The Rev. Clark Olsen didn't feel like a hero. He was just "an ordinary man," scared he might be killed and tossed into a ditch on a remote Alabama roadside.
Through an extraordinary set of events, however, the former Ottawa Hills resident found himself in the midst of a turning point in American history.
He had gone to Selma, Ala., on March 9, 1965, after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked U.S. clergy to join a voting rights demonstration. While African-Americans had a right to vote, election officials in some areas made it difficult - or impossible - for most of them to register.
In an emotional talk yesterday morning to about 200 students at his alma mater, Ottawa Hills High School, Mr. Clark choked back tears at times as he described how he and two fellow Unitarian ministers were attacked by three "white rowdies" from Selma who were angry at outsiders supporting African-Americans' right to register to vote.
This violent dispute on March, 7, 1965, is what sent the Rev. Clark Olsen to Selma, Ala.
|
One of the ministers, the Rev. James Reeb, 38, of Boston, died from injuries suffered in the attack, and his death led to nationwide protests and ultimately the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
It was a night of terror, intimidation, and hatred, Mr. Olsen said yesterday at the high school and during an earlier interview with The Blade. On Sunday, he will speak at First Unitarian Church of Toledo.A 1950 graduate of Ottawa Hills High School now living near Asheville, N.C., Mr. Olsen graduated from Oberlin College and Harvard Divinity School and was a pastor at a Unitarian church in Berkeley, Calif., when the civil rights showdowns began in Selma.
On March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday," Alabama state troopers and Dallas County sheriff's deputies, some of whom were on horseback, blocked voting-rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attacked them with tear gas, clubs, and whips.
Seven marchers were hospitalized and dozens injured in the brutal attack that was captured on film by the nation's media.
Marching to a service for the Rev. James Reeb, killed by a white mob in 1965, are, from left, Greek Orthodox Archbishop His Eminence Iakovos, and the Revs. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and Andrew Young.
|
Mr. King immediately asked the nation's clergy to come to Selma to join in a peaceful protest. Mr. Olsen, then 32, said he had scheduled commitments and lacked the money for airfare, but when his congregation offered to pay his way, he flew to Alabama.
"I said to my wife, 'Surely there will be no bad incidents because all these ministers, nuns, rabbis, and priests from all across the country are coming there and certainly nobody was going to create trouble'," he recalled.
His plane was delayed and he missed the first demonstration of the day, when Mr. King led a group of ministers and supporters to the edge of the bridge and then prayed before turning back.
Mr. Clark went to dinner with two fellow Unitarian ministers, Mr. Reeb and the Rev. Orloff Miller, at an African-American restaurant called Walker's Cafe, then headed back to Brown Chapel AME Church, the civil rights activists' headquarters.
After walking half a block, they were attacked near the Silver Moon Cafe.
"The three men came at us from across the street. One of them had a club, a heavy wooden club, and was swinging it," he said. "They were shouting at us. We were three white men but they shouted the 'N word,' and we whispered to each other to just keep walking."
Mr. Olsen turned to look at the attackers just as one swung the wooden club at Mr. Reeb, striking him on the side of the head.
"It was a terrible blow. I can remember the sound of it," he said.
He told the Associated Press later that night that, "I am extremely sorry there are people in this country who have as much hate as I saw in their eyes."
Mr. Reeb crumpled to the ground and Mr. Miller also fell to the pavement in a defensive posture. Mr. Olsen ran a short distance and was punched and struck, losing his glasses along the way.
The attackers fled, but the ministers didn't know if or when they would return - and possibly with more people.
"It was very frightening. We didn't know what was going to happen," Mr. Olsen said. He and Mr. Miller helped Mr. Reeb, who was babbling incoherently, to his feet and helped him into a nearby store, where they called for an ambulance.
A doctor at an African-American medical clinic in Selma sent Mr. Reeb to University Hospital in Montgomery for treatment, but the ambulance got a flat tire just outside of town. A group of white men who followed the ambulance parked menacingly behind it.
The ministers again feared for their lives, knowing that three civil rights workers had been found dead in a Mississippi ditch six months earlier.
"I immediately thought of the possibility that my body was going to be in a ditch that night. It was the most frightening part for me," Mr. Olsen said.
The ambulance driver turned around and drove the vehicle, with the flat tire, back into town, managed to call for another ambulance, and eventually got Mr. Reeb to Montgomery.
Mr. Olsen, who showed a brief CNN documentary about the events, said Mr. Reeb died about 36 hours after the attack.
Protests were held across the country, including a rally of 25,000 people in Boston, 15,000 in both Washington and New York City, and thousands more at 13 smaller rallies from San Francisco to Des Moines to Schenectady, N.Y.
President Lyndon Johnson told Congress the following Monday that the death of Mr. Reeb demonstrated the urgent need to pass the Voting Rights Act, which became law in July, 1965.
April Flanner, a 15-year-old sophomore at Ottawa Hills, said Mr. Olsen's talk "really opened my eyes" and said it was sad that racism still exists today. "It's really silly because God created us all equal," she said.
Daniel Wilson, 16, a junior, said Mr. Olsen's talk "was definitely moving. It was actually kind of amazing he was a part of history and to know that he graduated from our high school."
Mr. Olsen will speak Sunday at First Unitarian Church, where his father, the Rev. Arthur Olsen, was pastor from 1942 to 1957. He will talk at the adult Sunday School at 10 a.m. and give the sermon at the 11 a.m. service. The church is at 3205 Glendale Ave.
Contact David Yonke at:
dyonke@theblade.com
or 419-724-6154.
Permanent Link
|
|
 |
|
Search
advertisement
