Tabernacle Baptist in Selma 1963

 I thought I knew most of the Civil Rights stories but a new one for me registered yesterday in a travel piece about Alabama on PBS. The Selma march was march of 1965 but in 1963 at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma there was a mass meeting. Sheriff Jim Clark showed up and he had deputized a bunch of white boys some as young as 18 years old to line the walls of the sanctuary. Think about that, think about your church having a meeting and the police show up with eighteen year old boys with pistols. I was ten years old in Gaffney SC when that happened in the fifth grade with Tommy Brittain among others at Central School.

   Tommy became a Trustee at Wofford. The next year we discovered the Actress Andie Macdowell.

    But Down in Selma the police surrounded the sanctuary and then went in the parking lot to take down all the tag numbers. They followed up threatening and taking the jobs of many of the folks who were in attendance.

     No Wonder Fannie Lou Hamer went to the Democrat Convention the next year and asked the pertinent Question: Is This America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

    Question is What is Ralph Norman and his critical race theory charade gonna do if students at Gaffney High School who just won the state championship in Football and gonna send their QB to Duke year after next, is Ralph Norman gonna encourage some trumper on the local school board to bully a classroom like Desantis is doing now in Florida with the aid of Tim Tebow's Eagle Forum Momma?

    Google religion dispatches, Robert Jones for last Monday report. Also see Steve Cothran on CRT in the Newnan Times. Cothran Dad, John Cothran is a trustee emeritus of Furman and the family of considerable influence at FBC Greenville.

    I visited the Old Gaffney Post office Friday to see the Welcoming Center Ive read about a good bit this last year, and to see the Black Preservation Exhibit they are featurying during Black History Month. Proud of All. Was delighted to see the profile and recognition of Popsicle Mayberry in the exhibit and the Explanation of How Tank Branch got its name.

    All this mess about Critical race theory. If Norman is okay about a conversation of Tabernacle Baptist in Selma, exploring the rabbit trails of my recent blog Tribute of MLK and review of the latest bio of him, Watching the PBS Doc on the Blinding of Isaac Woodard and having the State Championship Gaffney High Indians memorize what thirty year Bama Archivist and Furman grad Ed Bridges said in his recent bicentennial history of Nick Saban's Bama about the Daughters of the Confederacy distortion of Civil War and Jim Crow and Civil Rights history for 150 years in Americas Public Schools (have the local school board memorize too cause who needs an ignorant elected administration); if Norman and the SC GOP US Congress Delegation okay with all that, then we Down. We Good, CRT is a ruse a joke on working class voters. If we have a mutual understanding about this elemental truth, then Nikki Haley can go ahead and tell her Clemson trustees what she wants to cause if Gaffney can send their QB to Duke, Sky Foster to BMW  and Johnny Dawkins to LA to write early script for Denzel Washington, And Fletcher Smith to Law school at Carolina and on to be a power broker in the Dem Presidential Primary in SC, then this generation is smart enough to figure the rest out for themselves.

   PS I walked across the Selma Bridge in 2012 with John Lewis and Ethel Kennedy and 20,000 other people from all over the world. Went back in 2015 with 100 thou including Obama and Bush 43 for a booster shot.