Selma Forever.

Today in 1994--- 25 years ago, The New York Times published a front page article reporting that "everything and nothing" had changed in Selma since the Civil Rights Movement:

"The schools here are generally still segregated, with the old white public schools virtually all black and the whites -- working class as well as wealthy -- in private academies. The racial violence of the past is largely gone, replaced by a flood of drug-related, black-on-black crime that dwarfs the violence of Jim Crow. The civil rights leaders of the 1960's are now the entrenched political class, but the state-mandated tax code still protects the interests of the white landowners who preceded them. The median family income of $18,349 is about half the national average and $10,000 below the state average, in a state that is one of the poorest.

Perhaps worst of all, it is a place where blacks and whites, like punch-drunk boxers, are still fighting the same old battles of race."

That was written by the Times 25 years ago! 

Could it not have also been written this morning---50 years after the era? Why is Selma unchanged? Is it unchangeable? What is the news out of Selma this month? 

• The city has closed the Parks and Recreation Department. 
• The School Board President says they have trouble hiring teachers:  “There’s an issue. Not many people really want to come to Selma. They’re commuting from Montgomery to here and sometimes you tend to get the people you may not want.”*
• The Holly True Value hardware store is closing after 50 years.

*quote from the Selma Times-Journal
 
Is this 2019? Or 1969? 

 Selma was a center of the Civil Rights Movement.

It was the starting point of the voting rights Selma-to-Montgomery March.








What will Selma be like in 2045, 75 years after the movement that put it on the map?