Lynda Blackmon Lowery: Veteran of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March, By Renarda A. Williams (aka Abari Sankofa)

 




Author Lynda Blackmon Lowery

        

NOTE: I submitted the following article — a commemoration of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March in Alabama —  to run in the March/April 2015 issue of Faith and Soul News Magazine of Fayetteville/Atlanta, GA. Its publisher is a client of my Little Rock, AR, media business, The Umoja Network. 

As said magazine issue went unpublished due to unforeseen circumstances, I offer the story here. It is always my pleasure to present historic pieces such as this to the readership of The Empowerment Initiative Online Newsletter Blog. 

Hotep People! 

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Can you imagine, being only 14, marching out of Selma, Ala, for Montgomery on Sunday, March 7, 1965, being brutally attacked by law enforcement officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and surviving the ordeal? This is what happened to Lynda Blackmon Lowery of Selma, who turned 15 several weeks after the day known as "Bloody Sunday" and was the youngest person to complete the subsequent, historic Voting Rights March of 1965. 

Lowery is the author of a fascinating book titled Turning 15  On The Road To Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Voting Rights March, as told by Elspeth Leacok and Susan Buckley and illustrated by PJ Loughran (Dial Books for Young Readers, Jan. 8, 2015, $19,99). This powerful story about Lowery's life is sure to bring chills, and pride, to the young readers toward whom the book is geared. 

Lowery works as a case manager at a mental health center, and still lives in Selma, Ala.

During an interview with Faith & Soul, Lowery said it was an awesome feeling to have helped make history ... but that this wasn't her goal at that time. 

"I was just thinking about making change. And the reason I can say 'change' so readily is because my grandmother used to say, 'Anything worth having is worth changing as needed.'  We were making change and I think that change was history," Lowery noted.

She actually learned about nonviolence at age 13, Lowery said, adding that her grandmother was her biggest inspiration. 

"I had a strong, determined and religious grandmother. [She] brought up my siblings, and [me] to be strong and determined. 

"To add on to that, I ... heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak when I was 13 years old. He talked about the right to vote, and how it would change things for grown people. He said you can get anyone to do anything with steady loving confrontation. To me, the steady loving confrontation was, I guess, what God did in the Bible. He loved us and He won souls over.

"I don't believe in violence, and never believed in violence. I believe in steady loving confrontation."

Lowery said she wants today's young people to know that they, too, can make a difference without fists or guns.

"If you want to make change, you will have to make people believe in you! It does not take fighting all the time," she elaborated. Fighting actually gives you nothing! You need to have a steady heart. Some [young people] may say that you are giving up or being a punk, or whatever they want to call it. You are using your mind ... You do not have to use your fist to encourage people."

Lowery said she was encouraged to write the book by her two friends, Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley both authors of children's history books. They decided that her story was interesting. 

The story was actually written 10 years ago. "In October 2012, we got an agent," Lowery said. "And the agent, by April 2013, got a publisher who was interested ... Penguin Random House." The book was released Jan, 8, 2015.

"I did not know the impact that it would make. I think there is a message in [it] for young people. And it was that they are the future history makers. And [that] if you see something, you can change it — just by wanting to work toward it — and doing it better! History is a journey of change to me. Nobody changes something that is good for you. Everybody would want to change something that is bad for everyone. Pick your battles and see what change is going to make." 

Lowery said the experience of Bloody Sunday left her terrified, but more determined than ever to fight for equality.

When the tear gas was released by law enforcement officers that day, she was down on her knees, as she had been drilled to do beforehand. Like her fellow marchers, she was unable to breathe or see. It was confusing and scary, she recalled; they never encountered tear gas before. 

"I was hit by on the forehead by a sheriff's deputy," Lowery said. "After he hit me, he pushed me and [it was then that] I rolled over and started to run. He came right behind me — hitting me. And I ran into a cloud of tear gas.

"That was a scary, scary thing! It was scary enough to make me [want to] fight back, but not fight back in a physical sense." Instead, Lowery was determined to fight back from a mental sense, letting them know that they'd created the very thing they would later be afraid of: an educated Black female. "I figured white folks were scared of educated Blacks, period! And I was going to be an educated Black person, and they [would] have to deal with me."

At the time, Lowery adds, "I wanted to show the governor that I [was] no threat to him at 14 years old. That's why I wanted to march to Selma."

Lowery said she appreciates it when people call her brave for what she faced. "But I call it being determined, and determination. To be brave, and to be courageous, means that you have to be determined! You have to overcome fear," she said.

"There were others like me who were brave. I was not brave, I was just determined to do something."