Selma’s Silent Storytellers

March 7, 1965 was unseasonably cold for Selma. The sky was gray, despite the sun trying to peek through the clouds. The wind gusts rustled through the trees at the George Washington Carver homes, the city’s largest public housing project, and moved the damp air around, making the 40-degree day seem even brisker.

Down the street, just outside Brown Chapel, a mass of 600 activists huddled under blankets lining Sylvan Street. Their plan was to walk across the nearby Edmund Pettus Bridge in protest of the cruel treatment of Black people and denial of their basic civil rights. The indelible images that came later that day, which became known as Bloody Sunday, documented both heroic bravery and unspeakable brutality – shocking the world and focusing national attention on the rampant injustice and racism faced by millions of Black Americans.

Longleaf pine trees surrounded the marchers that day and lined the routes where they walked in protest, bearing witness to the determination of everyday people, the viciousness that they faced fighting for their freedoms, and ultimately, their triumphs.

Many of the trees along the march routes have since died or been cut down. Others were planted after 1965, but on the Foot Soldiers Park & Education Center site, there is a canopy of trees that were there in March of 1965 and remain today.

Foot Soldiers Park considers both sets of trees as witnesses to Selma’s past, present and future. They are being incorporated into the design of the Park & Education Center, framing the open public space at the center of the campus and surrounding the memorial that will commemorate the marches. The “witness trees” will serve as landmarks and testament to the history made through the series of marches, observers of the present, and bearers of hope for the future.

Interestingly, longleaf pine forests used to cover vast expanses of Alabama, but are currently endangered due to a federal policy of fire suppression. The trees need regular fire to thrive, but by the 1920s most were gone. Before that, they played a key role in the growth and development of the early US economy. Enslaved Black people harvested turpentine from the pines and cut the forests for lumber. Legendary for its strength, durability, and usefulness, the lumber was considered the “King’s Wood” and used for shipbuilding when America was first colonized. It was also used for building large homes in cities in the South. But similar to Selma, the forests benefited others outside of the region more than within it. The trees were in high demand in the Northeast, used for flooring, joists, house paneling, and timber for the construction of warehouses, railroad cars, bridges and wharves. Today, less than 5% of the forests remain in the South.

True to Foot Soldiers Park’s approach of solving intersectional challenges and maximizing resources, the organization is considering building a nursery of the pines on the Park & Education Center campus for multiple purposes. The trees would serve as a nature-based solution for storing carbon, a driver of revenue and jobs through the sale of new trees to current restoration sites across the country, and/or producer of the long needles of the pines commonly used for “Longleaf Pine straw” mulch, a multi-million dollar wholesale industry.