This past week Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City, Iowa, was host to a speaker who addressed students involved with the local TRIO group. A few other adults and interested persons attended this address at the school given by Sheyann Webb-Christburg. Ms. Webb-Christburg talked about being 8-years-old when she participated in Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference led the this protest march for the shooting of one Jimmy Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper. The group planned to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. On the approach to the bridge, the marchers found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around and go back. The protesters refused, led by now Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Freedom Fighters, the officers shot teargas and entered the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and seriously hurting over fifty people. Ms. Webb-Christburg wrote a book about her experience titled “Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civi-Rights Days”.
Her talk was inspiring to all who attended in that she talked about being a person of integrity and character. And where we all fall down on those every now and again, for the students attending, the speech was filled with optimism and hope. Overcoming personal obstacles to achieve a goal. And for Ms. Webb-Christburg that was surviving the march that day in 1965, going to an integrated school, attending college and being the first in her family to graduate and still be able to talk positively without hate. It was a nice speech. Below are two versions of what she said at WIT. The first is an edited 14 minute version, the second, the entire speech unedited. We all have bad days, but a lot of what passes for issues these days where we feel beleaguered pales in comparison to what the Freedom Fighter and other people working for civil rights for all citizens of this country. And as she stated, the United States has come a long way, but there is still a long way to go.
Jerry Mennenga
Sioux City, Iowa
lostinsiouxland 
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