Selma-Montgomery Reflections - April 2025

SELMA-MONTGOMERY REFLECTIONS – April 2025

Last month, some fifteen Nikkei Progressives members, friends and relatives traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to attend the 60th Anniversary of the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 9th. While in Montgomery, we visited the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum, National Monument for Peace and Justice (National Lynching Memorial) and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park and Michelle Browder’s Mothers of Gynecology.

Here are some reflections on the trip by some of the travelers:

Back to Montgomery, Alabama - Jean Hibino

The last time I saw Montgomery was the summer of 2022. In the rearview mirror, heading west toward the Mother Road. Returning for the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma was comfortable in an uncomfortable way. The unrelenting reminders of white supremacy. The Great Seal of the City of Montgomery has a star with a huge “Cradle of the Confederacy” in dead center with a smaller, grudging, ring around it, “Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.” The state flag is a thinly disguised homage to the Confederacy. The statue of the traitor Jefferson Davis and the monument to Confederate heroes on the Statehouse lawn. Directly across from the “First White House of the Confederacy.” Yeah, we get it, keep folks in their place.

Bryan Stevenson is taking over and remaking Montgomery. It is no longer a quick afternoon stop on a civil rights tour, past Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and Rosa Park’s bus stop. Visiting the Equal Justice Initiative’s three Legacy sites was the highlight for me. The museum, lynching memorial, and the new sculpture garden are extraordinary. The sites draw a straight line from slavery to convict leasing to Jim Crow, lynchings, and mass incarceration. A placard in the museum explains that visitors will be uncomfortable. Someone said to me, “Geez, Bryan Stevenson constantly hits you over the head about slavery, mass incarceration, civil rights.” I realized later it’s because HE HAS TO. Blunt force is necessary. Now more than ever. 

The “comfortable” part of my return was to visit friends made during my post-retirement years in Alabama. They are the folks born and raised there. And whether or not by choice, they stay. It is home. They continue to fight and organize and get into good trouble. They, like Mr. Stevenson, are the real heroes.

The People United – Mia Barnett

A group of Nikkei Progressives members and supporters traveled to Alabama over the weekend of March 8th & 9th to attend a commemorative march marking the 60th anniversary since Bloody Sunday. It was my first time traveling to the Deep South. To prepare for the trip, I decided to brush up on my civil rights history and watched Ava DuVernay’s Selma and the PBS series Eyes on the Prize. While the landmark moments and famous quotes jogged my memory from history class, I realized I had never actually learned about the movement itself—the people. In school, the civil rights movement had always been painted as a victorious time in American history, where the courts decided to allow integration in schools and the government decided to expand voting rights to Black people. And while it was certainly victorious, change came about not because of the government, but because of the people who worked together, who strategized, who struggled, and who gave their lives for a better future. 

As we visited The Legacy Museum, toured Montgomery with Stephen Browder, and walked across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, I was struck by the stories of the people who had lived the history. I was moved by the narratives of enslaved people who faced horrific violence with profound faith and immense courage. I was moved by the people of the civil rights era, from children to seniors, who faced horrible brutality and constant discrimination yet still vowed to march another day. Getting to know the people of the movement gave real-life context to what I’d read in textbooks and watched in films, and their stories of resistance provide a blueprint for the movements that continue today. 

I’ve been reflecting on what the Nikkei community has learned and can still learn from the civil rights movement. While the struggles we face today aren’t the same, familiar dynamics are at play. An overreaching government is creating laws and stoking fear to keep people small and powerless. But just as the people came together for what some thought was an impossible feat of organizing during the civil rights movement, the people will come together once again. We are the ones who make the world we want to live in, and it would be an incredible disservice to the relentless activists of the civil rights era if we don’t continue the fight. We must continue the fight. 

Much Work To Do – Kimiko Roberts Griffin 

When I think on my reflections of our Montgomery, AL trip, all I know is I'm angry and I'm pissed. I'm really not sure if it's because my blackness felt so personally offended while revisiting the history of assaults on my "blood," or because the current climate of our government's attack on all my countrymen's promised liberty.

 I find myself working hard every day just to love people and not blow shit up at every contemptuous exchange or micro aggressive attack on me or my husband, or my children. I'm Japanese American, but I'm also a Black American, and my husband and kids present even more phenotypically African American than me. I deal with the memory of the lynchings, whippings, rapes, drownings beatings of my relatives whenever I am excluded or devalued at work or in the supermarket. 

I'm consciously grateful for all the heroic and painstaking effort that was made to create the Legacy sites. Bryan Stevenson's work is miraculous and invaluable for all people. The results therein are completely beautiful and a tribute to my cherished ancestors. However, for me to say it's difficult for me to intertwine reflections of our Alabama trip, which included the downtown Montgomery tour, and the Commemoration of the [crossing of the] Edmund Pettus Bridge with all these combustible feelings is a big understatement. 

There is much work to do. 

Selma-Montgomery Bridge Crossing – 50th Anniversary vs the 60th Anniversary - Carrie Morita

Participating in the 50th Anniversary Selma to Montgomery Bridge Crossing had much to do with President Barack Obama. The 2015 Crossing was a celebratory one.

I started with campaigning/phone banking for Barack Obama in 2009, going to Arizona, Nevada, SoCal, door to door to “get out the vote” and madly cheering on election day in Cleveland, Ohio, when he was declared our 44th President. To walk across the Bridge in Selma, Alabama with President Obama who had linked arms with John Lewis, Diane Nash, as well as many other civil rights leaders was an event that 40,000 wanted to join in….including a contingent of us from Los Angeles!

It was the feeling of a cohesive group walking together behind Barack and other leaders, after listening to rousing speeches. We Marched as One.

Fast Forward, 2025… 60th Anniversary of the Bridge Crossing.

No way would our current president (whoever voted for him will regret it soon enough) have attended the 60th crossing.

I decided to make the journey again and cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge 10 years after my first crossing, knowing I most likely won’t make it to the 70th crossing.

I’m not sure if we missed the rousing speeches like what we heard in 2015. Was there even a start to the March? All I know is, folks were already walking. Our group decided rather than walking behind our banner, we would stand off to one side and cheer everyone on. Our banner could be more visible. We received many cheers from the crowd as they passed by!

Yonsei, American. Reflections – L. Misumi

As a Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese American, I’ve found myself at times feeling so very American: feeling so far removed from the immigrant experience, English as my mother tongue, my people’s experience as such a uniquely American experience, while also feeling like whatever the narrative of who is American could never include me. Not with these eyes and this hair and this last name. 

But … why does the Right get to set the narrative of who gets to be American? We are here, we are here on stolen land, and we are living in a world that is the product of genocide and built through the forced labor of enslaved people. These things are true and they are American. My family was incarcerated during WWII, following the signing of Executive Order 9066 by one of the most beloved progressive presidents we’ve ever had. These contradictions are also deeply American, and we cannot learn from them if we refuse or fail to acknowledge them. 

All of these things weighed heavily on my mind when I traveled to Alabama for the 60th Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee and the march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. 

Walking into the EJI Legacy Museum is a visceral experience. The way the museum begins felt like a punch to the gut to me. A reminder of the hundreds and thousands of kidnapped and enslaved Africans who perished in the crossing, their bodies tossed overboard and discarded. Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s installation is a masterpiece, it’s impossible to walk through against the backdrop of ocean waves and not take time to see each individual face of the busts on the floor. I was overwhelmed and devastated knowing the number of faces depicted there pales in comparison to the number of people whose names and stories we’ll never know. 

In a way it reminded me of the visceral experience of visiting the site of the Topaz Relocation Center, where my family was incarcerated. It’s so easy to reduce this history to just written words in a book, (then ban the book…) but it’s hard to deny the experience of standing in a place and confronting it with your own senses.

Different things stand out to me every time I visit the museum. This time, I was struck by the horror 

of family separation. There seems to me to be a direct line … the ability to remove Native American children from their homes to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Threads of that line also run to arresting and imprisoning Japanese American Issei community leaders after Pearl Harbor. The line runs through to mass incarceration today and literal family separation of immigrants seeking a better life.

What is the saying, “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes?” We had the opportunity to hear from EJI’s Deputy Director of Development talk about the origin of EJI and their efforts at seeing the true story told of slavery and racial terror and its impacts on mass incarceration today. She said something along the lines of, “we cannot have reconciliation, there can be no moving forward, without first confronting history and acknowledging the truth of our past.” The dangers of history rhyming, and the wheel of white supremacy continuing to turn, are here. We are living in them. 

The world I want to live in is one where painful histories are regularly confronted, acknowledged, and learned from, where we strive for progress and not perfection. We’ve come so far to go back now. We have so far yet to go, and we have to stay in it for the long haul. There are many things we can and should do to defend democracy and to continue to strive towards the America we want to live in, but if you can, … visit the EJI sites in Montgomery and other historic sites to be confronted, to acknowledge the truth of our past, and to grow.

Selma and Montgomery Highlights – June Hibino

Stephen Browder’s bus and walking tour of Montgomery

Stephen took us to the Montgomery waterfront where ships carrying enslaved people docked on the Alabama River and unloaded their human cargo. He told us to line up and place one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us. He ordered us to march… “faster!” up from the wharf into the dark tunnel leading up onto Commerce Street. The point was driven home:  we were trodding on the exact same path as the enslaved people brought to Montgomery, a major slave center. Chained together in coffles, marched up Commerce St. and held in pens (euphemistically called “warehouses”) until the Slave Auction took place, loved ones were then torn apart and dragged off to plantations far and wide, never to see each other again.

The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park

We arrived by a short boat ride to this new EJI Legacy site. Walking through the Sculpture Park, we came across beautiful, world-class sculptures by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, Alison Saar and other artists. But it’s the massive National Monument to Freedom Wall near the exit, that is awe-inspiring!  The two walls – over 40’ tall and connected in the middle at a slight angle glimmered in the sun. In the center it reads, “The monument is inscribed with 122,000 surnames that formerly enslaved people chose for themselves, as documented in the 1870 census, after being emancipated at the Civil War’s end.”  What one might think was a simple act – choosing one’s surname – in 1870, was a monumental and powerful self-affirmation as human beings!

60th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge 

Cloudy skies and slight drizzle didn’t dampen the spirit of the people!  At times, our NP contingent stepped out of the march to stand and cheer on the sidewalk as the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, the Selma Foot Soldiers and other contingents marched by.  Our colorful NP Banner reading “Peace, Justice & Equality” never fails to draw applause (and a bit of curiosity), especially when held by a chanting group of Asian Americans. A spirit of solidarity prevailed as we joined in chanting, “Fired Up! Ready to Go!”  “Whose Rights? Our Rights!”  The march was an act of determination of “Not Going Back” to a time of racial oppression, erasure and disenfranchisement, current battles that in 2025 – unbelievably -- we are still fighting today.

The Ultimate Form of Resistance – Jan Tokumaru

Throughout our time in Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery, my mind seemed to be a whirlwind of images. So many forms of dehumanization, punishment of body and mind, generations of constant subjection to white supremacy dictates, destruction of families, lynchings …. I now think more about resistance and how much more discomfort there needs to be for the kind of changes necessary to move us toward freedom for all. 

Michelle Browder’s Mothers of Gynecology uplifts the lives of enslaved women who were used for gynecological medical experimentation by a white male doctor – J. Marion Sims, the “Father of Gynecology.”  The massive bronze sculptures of three of these women - Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy - are now embedded in my mind. It is shocking to think of the violence done to enslaved women from the age of puberty, yet they endured and survived to later have their own families to love and raise after enslavement. 

Somewhere I read, or heard that the strongest form of resistance of enslaved Black people was that they were able - against all odds – to survive, and to love.

That was the ultimate form of resistance!

How Could This Still be Happening?  Yasuko Sakamoto

Visiting Alabama for the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Walk was a deeply emotional and eye-opening experience that fulfilled a lifelong wish of mine.  My desire to attend this event was rooted in my studies of African American history during college in Japan, and my passion for social justice since the 1970s.

Driving through Selma and witnessing the lasting signs of poverty and inequality made me realize how little I truly knew about the depth of suffering, excruciating pain and resilience within African American communities.  The visit to the Legacy Museum and other memorials left a lasting impact on me. I kept asking myself, "How could this still be happening?" and came away feeling that one visit is not enough to grasp the magnitude of this history or the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.  Am I the only one who felt this way?  I doubt it.  

I am still digesting my trip and thinking of revisiting there in the near future as I feel 3 days weren't enough for me. It doesn't have to be a bridge crossing anniversary.  I would rather extend my stay to visit the memorials again, meet and get to know the people there. 

The Changing Face of Civil Rights – Ruth Wakabayashi Kondo

I crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge for the first time on March 2025, for the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”  Back in the Spring of 1965, I was a high school student angry at America for unconstitutionally incarcerating my family in a WW2 concentration camp. MLK’s embrace of nonviolence seemed like an unlikely way to achieve equality.  Little did I realize that in the coming years, my grasp of the civil rights struggle would evolve to “intercommunalism,” which includes all communities of the world who are unjustly persecuted and exploited for greed.

While in Montgomery, I paid a visit to the Legacy Museum, an important effort to confront our nation’s history of enslavement and exploitation. Through viewing the exhibit on the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the separation and destruction of family structure, and the victimization of the powerless, I began to see a common thread – the systematic subjugation of poor communities and people of color since the beginning of our history. I empathized with the cries of mothers during slavery trying to find their children. It was much like today’s agonizing experiences of immigrants at our borders. I felt the desperation of the imprisoned, feeling hopeless in their fight for justice.

“Hopelessness is the enemy of justice,” said Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Legacy Museum. “We will remember with hope and courage, because peace requires bravery. Justice is a constant struggle. With faith, we shall overcome” I now realize that each generation has an obligation to address this injustice so that we can find peace.

I learned an invaluable lesson on my crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  I hope you will have the good fortune to do so yourself.