Where were Barack and Hillary before "Bloody Sunday" observance?

by George E. Curry, NNPA Columnist
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made the requisite pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama over the weekend to pay homage to "Bloody Sunday," the most important chapter in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Each candidate struck the proper chord, acknowledging that without the Voting Rights Act, neither they nor Bill Richardson, the Latino governor of New Mexico, would be viable presidential candidates.

In all the hoopla and political maneuvering, something didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s because I am from Alabama, maybe it’s because I was acutely aware of how the Voting Rights Act changed our lives in Tuscaloosa, or maybe it was because as a high school senior in 1965, I took part in the last leg of the Selma-to-Montgomery March.

The question for them and all presidential candidates is: What have you done throughout your life that would demonstrate a consistent commitment to secure political, economic and social justice for African Americans?

Except for Obama’s limited work with indigent clients after law school--and I underscore after--and Cilnton’s work on behalf of children--also after law school--I have not heard much from them about what they have done to demonstrate a deep and abiding commitment to civil rights.

One reason this remains so fresh in my mind is that I spoke last month at the University of Alabama for Black History Month at the invitation of African American faculty members and administrators. In all the years of speaking at universities around the country, the only time I had been invited to speak at the University of Alabama was when they asked me to come for free. Under those conditions, I declined.

Throughout most of my early life, African Americans were excluded from attending the University of Alabama. Our tax dollars could go there, but we couldn’t.

My stepfather drove a dump truck at the university and that made it doubly painful for me. This is the first and probably last time I’ll ever admit this in print: I attended the University of Alabama for one year before transferring to Knoxville College.

It was the worst year of my life and I’ve deliberately not given the University of Alabama credit for anything positive in my life.

Amid the virulent racism of that era, there were some positives. One was that there were some Southern-born Whites who spoke out against racial segregation. Bill Plott, editor of the "Crimson White," the university newspaper, and his wife, Anne, were among those and were frequent targets of death threats. So was Plott’s successor at the CW, Bill Shamblin.

With Shamblin’s active support and encouragement, I wrote for the "CW" the year I was at the UA. I hadn’t heard from or seen Bill in the intervening years. Not until my speech at the university.

"You don’t remember me, but I am Bill Shamblin," he said after I completed my speech in a building named in honor of Richard Shelby, a conservative U.S. senator from Alabama. "Oh, yes, I do," I quickly interrupted, "I’ll never forget what you did for me."

Astonished, Bill asked, "You remember me?" I replied, "How could I not remember you? You did so much for me during a very difficult time." I gave him a hug and he began crying. He apologized for crying and I told him that he nothing to apologize for. Still crying and embracing me, he said, "I’ve followed your career over the years, I’ve seen you on TV. You were so far ahead of everyone else that I knew you would make it."

I didn’t quite cry, but I was close to it.

Bill Shamblin was one of my few good memories of the University of Alabama. Another one was of David Mathews, who would later become president of the University of Alabama and even later, secretary of the old U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

There were a few other Whites who stood up for fairness during a period that George Wallace stood in the door of Foster Auditorium to block the admission of two Black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. As a result of people such as Shamblin, the University of Alabama is much better today than it was during my childhood.

Although I was in Accra covering the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s independence and had to watch news reports about Selma from afar, I couldn’t help but think about Bill Shamblin and those other courageous Alabamians when I heard soundbites of Obama and Clinton talking about how they were beneficiaries of the Voting Rights struggle.

For me, the question for them and all other candidates remains: What have you done throughout your life that would demonstrate a consistent commitment to securing political, economic and social justice for African Americans?

George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com. To contact Curry or to book him for a speaking engagement, go to his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.