SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
It's been 60 years since the historic Civil Rights March in Selma, Alabama. Protesters demanded equal voting rights for African Americans. State troopers met those calls with shocking violence. That confrontation and that city gave birth to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Today, there's new generations of civil rights activists in Selma, and they're still facing many of the problems those marchers sought to highlight six decades ago - segregation, poverty and gun violence. NPR's Debbie Elliott has more.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Riding through town, it's evident Selma has seen better days. The downtown YMCA building is boarded up. On some streets, houses appear to be abandoned and falling in. Mark Myles grew up here, and he's taking me to a school where he does violence intervention work.
MARK MYLES: We're going to make this left right here.
ELLIOTT: Left?
MYLES: Yes, ma'am.
ELLIOTT: Myles is with the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation. The nonprofit is trying to build on the legacy started here 60 years ago, when peaceful voting rights marchers faced off with violent state troopers on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Yelling).
ELLIOTT: Myles says given the history here, Selma should be a model city for race relations, but it's not.
MYLES: It just feel like we're going back into the '60s. So it kind of reminds me of what our forefathers fought for and the sacrifices they made, that it's time for us, as a younger generation, to make those same sacrifices. I just think it's our time to stand up.
ELLIOTT: We're headed for Ellwood Christian Academy, a private school that takes in students who are not thriving in Selma's public schools, which he says are more segregated than ever.
MYLES: Black kids never talk to white kids, and white kids never talk to Black kids. They're going to believe the worst thing about each other because they've never communicated.
ELLIOTT: Myles, who is 42, says he spent much of his youth in trouble and was incarcerated in his teens. Now he's trying to give students the tools to better navigate life in Selma.
MYLES: How you doing, students? How are you all doing today?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Good.
(SOUNDBITE OF FURNITURE MOVING)
ELLIOTT: He circles up about a half dozen students, and it doesn't take long for them to turn the conversation to the violence that surrounds them. Skyla Withers is just 12 years old but carries a hefty grief.
SKYLA WITHERS: Selma, it's a lot of young people dying at a young age. Make me feel sad because they closer to my age.
ELLIOTT: People don't fight with their hands anymore, she says, but pick up a gun to settle differences. She describes a life on edge, trying not to get caught up in the gun violence plaguing this city.
SKYLA: It's hard when you just can't lay your head down and have a peaceful night without hearing gunshots. When you hear the gunshots, you knows who the person is. Like, a minute later, you go on social media, you see who the person is after hearing the gunshots.
ELLIOTT: On Valentine's weekend, for instance, a 14-year-old was shot to death. And in January, an innocent bystander was killed in a shootout in the Walmart parking lot. Among those charged are two teenagers. Fourteen-year-old Carmecia Spivey says it's no way to live.
CARMECIA SPIVEY: People feel so scared to go outside their own house because as soon as you go outside, you could get a bullet right to your head, and you wouldn't even know who it's from.
ELLIOTT: Selma is a majority-Black city with about 17,000 people. It's lost more than 10,000 residents since the civil rights era, driven in part by white flight. There's not a lot of industry here, other than a paper mill on the outskirts of town. Most of the jobs are in health care, government or the service industry. And the town is still trying to recover from a destructive tornado two years ago. For students like 16-year-old Joshua Peoples, the outlook is bleak.
JOSHUA PEOPLES: It's just sad seeing how Selma is right now. Like, I just don't like it right now. Like, living in Selma is just - man, it's horrible. It's terrible.
ELLIOTT: When the conversation turns to what happened in Selma 60 years ago, several students don't really know the history. Some who do have a cynical view, asking, what good was it for people to risk that bridge crossing for Black freedom when young Black people are killing one another in Selma today? Kimora Fletcher is 12.
KIMORA FLETCHER: I honestly - sometimes I sit down and think that it was a waste because now there's gun violence, gangs, the lack of education about our history. I honestly feel like they wasted their time, but I feel like we need a fresh, new start.
MYLES: If you were the mayor, what would you do? If you could create a new Selma, what would Selma be?
SKYLA: We need a lot of more places for our kids to go and more grocery stores.
PEOPLES: I would like to see arcades here in Selma. I feel like kids need to learn how to have fun, have positive...
KIMORA: Honestly, I believe that we need more educators, you know, in Selma, Alabama. We need people that actually want to help our community, actually teach us about our history. Black people should not be fighting against each other. We should join each other in brotherhood and sisterhood, you know, as one race.
ABRIL JOHNSON: My vision of a new Selma is, like, getting guns and drugs and stuff off the streets.
ELLIOTT: The voices of Skyla Withers, Joshua Peoples, Kimora Fletcher and Abril Johnson.
LYDIA CHATMON: My encouragement to them is, get in the fight now.
ELLIOTT: That's Lydia Chatmon, director of programs at the Selma Center for Nonviolence. From the 1865 battle of Selma at the end of the Civil War to the 1965 voting rights battle, she says Selma has always been at the center of change.
CHATMON: We have been a pivotal place when it comes to thinking about race relations and relationships in general for hundreds of years. And today, the fight is trying to make sure that it's not 2065 when reckoning happens again.
ELLIOTT: Chatmon, who has a teenage son, says she doesn't want to see every future generation in Selma, and the country, have to fight.
CHATMON: We really have got to do this in a better, smarter way to make sure that the changes that need to be in place are done in a way that they are sustainable and long lasting.
ELLIOTT: Her focus has been on economic development. More than 1 in 4 people here live in poverty. Chatmon says it's been heart-wrenching to see what's happened to her hometown, but she holds on to the promise of the future.
Back at Ellwood Christian, Mark Myles wraps up his session trying to empower the students.
MYLES: How many voices we got in here? One, two, three, four, five, so we can change the city, y'all. But you guys have to believe. And I want you guys to continue to use your voice and dream of a better Selma and try to be a part of this change.
ELLIOTT: Joshua Peoples is ready.
PEOPLES: We got to be the inspiration - the big inspiration, the big change. As one, we got to stand up for who we are and what we got to do to make Selma a much better place.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Make Selma great again.
MYLES: I like that. Make Selma great again.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPING)
MYLES: Yeah.
PEOPLES: That could be our motto. One, two, three...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: Make Selma great again.
(APPLAUSE)
ELLIOTT: This weekend, as Selma celebrate 60 years since it gave America equal voting rights, its complicated past informs the challenges for this new generation.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Selma, Alabama.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEZERG'S "NEW STAMPS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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