By Adam Dodson
The Selma Times-Journal

Selma’s history and monuments will be on full display this weekend as the city will be featured on C-SPAN’s popular “Book TV” and “American History TV” for Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

For the entire week of April 23, the crew was in town to get the footage they need, visiting multiple historic locations spaces throughout Selma and Dallas County as well as speaking to local public figures.

The visit and upcoming episodes are part of what is known as their cities tour, where they pinpoint cities such as Selma that are rich in history both known and unknown to the world.

“We strive to introduce people to the small-to-mid-sized cities that are so interesting and have so much history,” producer Ashley Hill said. “We got to see all the places that played a role in this city’s history.”

The C-SPAN crew met with foot soldiers, talked to current and former mayors Darrio Melton and George Perkins and visited historic sites such as the Edumund Pettus Bridge and the National Voting Rights Museum.

For the Book TV program, the 4:30 p.m. Saturday episode will feature the C-SPAN crew visiting the house Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used, an interview with Jawana Jackson and a sit-down with, the first African-American Fire Chief in Selma history Henry Allen, the author of “Marching Through the Flame.”

For 12:30 p.m. Sunday, viewers can tune into American History TV to watch an in-depth look into the voting rights movement. For this segment, C-SPAN toured Brown Chapel AME Church, the National Voting Rights Museum, Edmund Pettus Bridge, Live Oak Cemetery and the Old Cahawba Archaeological Park. Interviews will include Brown Chapel Pastor Leodis Strong, Perkins, an oral history from Joyce Parrish O’Neal and Rep. Terri Sewell.

Hill says that one thing she especially enjoyed was meeting the natives.

“A lot of the people we talked to were normal people, and they had such interesting stories,” Hill said. “This city also has a lot of history people don’t know. One of our Vice Presidents is buried here.”

Book TV is Spectrum channels 85 and 764, and American History is channels 99 and 765.