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By Christine Weerts

Special to The Selma Times-Journal

Downtown Selma on March 6, 1965 was a typically busy Saturday, so shoppers didn’t pay much attention to a group of white people walking past them on the Broad Street sidewalks.  They didn’t realize that while they were trying on new shoes, buying a bag of peppermints or enjoying tea on the balcony of the Hotel Albert, history was being made.

The 72 marchers represented the Concerned White Citizens of Alabama, a nondenominational group of men and women from around Alabama, who were the first all-white group to march for African American Voting Rights in Alabama.

The peaceful scene changed dramatically when the nondescript group turned the corner at Alabama Avenue, heading to the center of the Voting Rights protests: the Dallas County Courthouse. Suddenly they walked into a crowd of 100 or more white Selmians “sturdily built and roughly dressed” as described by the New York Times, jeering, threatening and spitting on them, throwing eggs and tomatoes. Some were holding baseball bats and long pipes, while others positioned their running cars to spew smoke on them.

Sara Smith was a 20-year-old student at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, the only white student on campus, when she marched in Selma that day. She returned to the city this week for the Voting Rights Jubilee and to host a reunion of that historic white march for Black voting rights.  Twenty-two people met at the coffee shop at the foot of the bridge in person and by zoom on Thursday March 6 2025 – the 60th anniversary – to recall the day, and the work it inspired.

Smith, who has worked in Liberia, India and now lives in California, said the march helped clarify the value of showing up for a heart-felt cause.

“It was the first time I had taken a public stand on something I believed in,” she said. “I learned that it’s possible and powerful to take an unpopular stand with integrity; even when there is opposition.”

Featured speaker Thursday via zoom was Rev. Joseph Ellwanger from Milwaukee, the Lutheran pastor who led the historic march and stood up to the sheriff deputies who confronted them at the courthouse. His wife, Joyce, who had been five months pregnant with their first child when she marched, also spoke. Al Lingo joined from Atlanta; Lingo was a white field worker for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who taught the group nonviolent tactics before the march.

At that time, Rev. Ellwanger was pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, a Black church in Birmingham, and home church for Chris McNair, congregation president and Sunday School superintendent, whose 11-year-old daughter Denise had been killed Sept. 15, 1963 in the bombing of 16th  Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  Ellwanger had lived in Selma for several years as a young man, and his parents still lived in their family home near downtown.

Five deputies – the easily provoked Sheriff Jim Clark was out of town at a family wedding – stopped the marchers briefly, but let them pass when the pastor said they were there to “stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters” and to speak on the importance of voting rights. At that time only 1 percent of African Americans in Dallas County were registered voters, and there were no registered Black voters in Lowndes or Wilcox counties.

When they walked up the Courthouse steps, they could see the whites angrily pushing in from the sides, while across the street in front of the Federal Courthouse stood hundreds of African Americans in silent witness to their protest.

The Rev. Ellwanger read his statement, saying they had come to show that there are white citizens of Alabama who support voting rights. “By our presence here we affirm our faith in the abiding principles  upon which our nation and state are founded…We are immovable in our determination that this be a ‘nation under God with liberty and justice for all.’”

The marchers closed by singing America the Beautiful, while the unruly white crowd tried to drown  them out by singing Dixie.” Suddenly from across the street came a beautiful sonorous swelling of the song, “We Shall Overcome.”

Police Chief Wilson Baker, who had been trying to keep peace in the city for weeks, advised the marchers to return to their cars by Church Street, as the crowd was getting out of control. Marchers returned home – to Birmingham, Montgomery, Tuscaloosa, and Huntsville — without incident, never dreaming that the next day Black marchers seeking voting rights would be violently attacked by Sheriff deputies, posse-men and State Troopers, a day called “Bloody Sunday.”

Reflecting on their own experience 60 years earlier, the attendees expressed gratitude for the opportunity to march for the movement and to continue to support social justice issues.

“I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be in Selma on that march,” said organizer Sara Smith. “It is one of the things that changed my life, learning to stand up for what you believe in. It is something we can all do.”