By Tyra Jackson

The Selma Times-Journal

ArtsRevive sponsored its third and final lecture concerning the Voting Rights Movement on Thursday at its Carneal Building.

Dr. Maurice Hobson, an assistant professor at Georgia State University, facilitated the discussion. Panelists Dr. Billie Jean Young, an author and playwright; Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Time executive editor Howell Raines; and journalist and author Frye Gaillard joined him in explaining their experiences in the Voting Rights Movement.

Young discussed the experiences she had while working in Selma for the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association. Young heard the stories of the whole Black Bel3t, and she felt compelled to learn how to organize people and ideas.

“One of the good things I learned in Selma was that you could organize, and you could make change,” she said. “There were decent people of all races who could help you.”

Conversations about the Voting Rights Movement dove deeper, as Raines mentioned journalism and photography and how Southern law enforcement officer like Jim Clark and Al Lingo knew how powerless newspaper reporters were in capturing police brutality with just pen and paper because the written word couldn’t capture as much as a camera could.

“They didn’t understand a man with a movie camera on his shoulder [or] a Nikon at his nose was powerful because that person was in touch with the world in a way a local print reporter could not be,” Raines said.

Gaillard remembered watching the pictures of Bloody Sunday. The images of the march printed by The Birmingham News never left his mind.

“We say in school we’re all equal in the eyes of the law,” Gaillard said. “That’s what we learned in civics class, but we didn’t act like that either. The Civil Rights Movement raised the question in a way they simply could not be avoided.”

Audience members questioned whether the world could move on if people kept commemorating events that happened in 1965. Gaillard said some of the events that took place during the movement were awful, but in remembering the movement people can move on.

Retired educator and audience member Carrie Grider enjoyed some of the points made at the event.

“Strides have been made, but we’re not done yet,” she said. “We need to continue to work with and open up with each other and be positive and encouraging.”