Step by step, Pinellas students mark anniversary of civil rights march
CLEARWATER, Fla. - Pounding the pavement just like those who came before them, hundreds of Pinellas County students marched across Memorial Causeway in Clearwater on Tuesday to mark the 55th anniversary of the civil rights march that began in Selma, Alabama in 1965.
“It was amazing just looking back and seeing everyone behind me,” said Lyric Williams, one of the student organizers. “It was a lot of people.”
The walk was organized solely by students who were inspired by a class on civil rights, and by those who actually marched.
Lynda Blackmon Lowery was one of them.
“I feel like I’m on top of the world right now,” she said after the march.
Lowery was just 15 when she walked across the Edmond Pettus Bridge, where civil rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement in what became known as Bloody Sunday.
“When I saw and heard Dr. King speak for the first time, I was 13 years old,” she said. “Dr. King said three words that stuck with me. You can get anybody to do anything with steady, loving, confrontation. And those children proved that today.”
Lowery became involved in civil rights protests before she was even a teenager. She says she promised herself she would change health care for children.
“I made that vow to myself when I was 7,” Lowery said. “I think these children here today are carrying on the legacy that we began when I was a child.”
Megan Holmes, a senior at Gibbs High School, said she felt that it was her job to come and walk Tuesday.
“It was the most exhilarating experience of my life, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
Though more than a dozen were injured during the Selma marches, the footsteps changed the course of history when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, outlawing discriminatory voting practices, and inspiring a generation to carry on the fight for civil rights.
Lowery sees that fight here today.
“These were young people, and they did this,” she continued. “The diversity of this group was much like the diversity of the groups that Dr. King lead across the bridge from Selma to Montgomery.”
And their enthusiasm was as clear as the blue sky over the bridge they marched across.