To the Editor:

I read with disbelief the statement by the Rev. Alvis Biggs Sr. from the Willow Creek Church near Chicago who was in our fair city with members of Willow Creek and Salem Baptist from Chicago.

Mr. Biggs was quoted in Friday’s Times-Journal as saying that being in Selma on the bridge was “a time of reflection and to give thanks to those who sacrificed their lives on Bloody Sunday.”

Is there anyone in Selma who believes that anyone “sacrificed their life” on Bloody Sunday?

I do not believe there is any record that anyone “sacrificed” his or her life on Bloody Sunday.

We are yet again subjected to historical revisionism here in River City.

If the Rev. Mr. Biggs and his company from Willow Creek and Salem Baptist in Chicago want to visit a site where people sacrificed their lives, they could go about 10 minutes from their front door at 35th Street where the infamous Camp Douglas was located during the War Between the States.

There in the backyard of Willow Creek and Salem Baptist, more than 6,000 Confederate prisoners of war died from smallpox, dysentery, cholera, starvation, guard’s brutality and the cold.

There in Chicago is where men sacrificed their lives.

Camp Douglas in Chicago is a tragic example of man’s inhumanity to man.

Instead of Christians coming to Selma to celebrate and remember something which never happened – in this instance, lives sacrificed on Bloody Sunday on the Pettus Bridge – they would be better served by looking at the tragedies which have occurred in their own backyards. But then, it is always easier to cast the mote out of our brother’s eye than to see and cast it out of our own eyes.

Cecil Williamson

Pastor

Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church