A Changing Selma and the Continuing Battle for Civil Rights
- Samantha Siedow
- Mar 31
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 13
By: Samantha Siedow
March 30, 2025
When singer and civil rights activist Bettie Mae Fikes thinks back to her childhood in Selma, Alabama, she remembers nights spent out playing until street lamps came on, a downtown with three theaters and two drive-ins and, most of all, a community that took care of each other.
Today, few businesses remain and buildings stand in states of disrepair, a stark contrast to the city Fikes once knew.
“What do the children today have to look forward to?” Fikes said.
On the last day of the University of Minnesota MLK 3000 immersion experience, students toured Selma, a city known for a series of voting rights marches, and heard from civil rights activists.
Fikes, known as the “Voice of Selma,” said Selma’s decline is an example of the United States moving backward rather than forward.
“We’re going further back than 60 years ago, and with this man in office, he’s taking everything away that we have already fought and died for,” Fikes said. “If we don't stand up today, it's going to be worse for you and the next generation.”
The University of Minnesota is, as of Friday, one of 45 universities under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in educational institutions receiving federal funding.
The university is also one of six accused of awarding “impermissible race-based scholarships.” An unnamed university among the six is also under investigation for allegedly running a program that segregates students by their race.
Education as a Tool for Resistance
Dr. Cynthia Griggs Fleming said she grew up in a generation of firsts. Fleming became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in history from Duke in 1977. She later became one of the first two Black women faculty members in the University of Tennessee's College of Arts and Sciences.
Fleming said education was one of the few things Black people could reasonably expect to attain in segregated America, because it was a way to effectively navigate their place in society.
Education is needed today to navigate widely spread lies and a politically hostile climate toward minorities unusual political hemisphere, according to Fleming.
“I think a lot of Americans, because people no longer take civics, they don't take as many history courses, they don't understand how abnormal what we're now going through is,” Fleming said. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, and we need to raise the alarm”
One way to fight misinformation is by visiting historic sites, as MLK immersion students are doing, Fleming said. Experiencing these locations firsthand creates lasting memories that can’t be erased, she said.
Aya Ali, a 21-year-old third-year global studies, sports management and American studies major from Brooklyn Park, said hearing from people who witnessed historical events was not something she prepared for. Ali, a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, said activists who fought for Black rights in America were just as much part of her immigration story as her parents.
“To actually be with the people that directly at hand were the reason why my dad at 14, my mom at 17 could come to this country and know that they would have a better life here, that they would have these rights and that their children could have these rights, it’s very surreal,” Ali said.
Ali said hearing stories on the trip about activists who died in pursuit of civil rights has been a difficult topic emotionally, but seeing older activists still joyous and learning reassured her that they will guide the younger generation.
“I felt really blessed and honored to be in this space with them, and to still have them with us to learn from them.” Ali said. “Aging is a privilege that many of them in the freedom movement didn't have. So I'm just honored to be around them.”
Ali said hearing activists discuss modern politics made her reflect on how the gap between the initial wave of the Civil Rights Movement and today’s divisions formed. After Black Americans gained freedoms, they paused, while oppressors regrouped, she said.
“I think that's the disconnect of realizing that we were trying to live in a new era. We were trying to rebuild hundreds of years of devastation, while our oppressors were finding new ways to build on their ancestors' ways of oppression,” Ali said.
The Power of Preserving History
Dr. Horace Huntley, a University of Minnesota alum and organizer in the 1969 Morrill Hall occupation, a protest that led to the creation of the MLK Program, among other changes, said he saw hope when he looked at the faces of the MLK immersion students.
“It's encouraging because you want to see that kind of work going forward, and I think that this group is illuminating the necessity of that kind of movement,” Huntley said.
Huntley, a historian specializing in civil rights, labor history, Black history and African-American studies, was among the first University of Minnesota graduates to earn an undergraduate degree in African American studies.
Huntley said studying and documenting history is essential to not repeating it, and it is especially important to record history about the daily lives of working people, not just elites.
“It is obvious that there are people around now, today, who would like to see history ended, particularly when it talks about the history of this country and the history of Black people,” Huntley said. “There is a real need for us to understand from where we've come, so we can actually know where we can go.”
Ogenetejiri Ogbemudje, a 20-year-old third-year developmental psychology and neuroscience major from Plymouth, said people who want to make an impact on society should educate themselves about the history of social movements. Ogbemudje said prioritising education and applying knowledge is power.
“If we don't know how and why these things are happening, they'll always happen,” Ogbemudje said. “It'll be a cyclical continuation of the problems that we see.”
Walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site where police brutally beat voting rights marchers on Bloody Sunday, was a powerful experience for Ogbemudje, who said he often thinks about the people who came before him.
“I'm walking on the same bridge that these historical figures walked down,” Ogbemudje said. “So much history happened here and I'm doing the same thing. My goals in life are aligned with exactly what they were going for.”
Ogbemudje agreed with the activists who spoke to the immersion class that the U.S. has backslid politically and socially. He pointed to recent political and legal decisions like the 2022 overturn of Roe V. Wade, 1973 Supreme Court case that legally protected abortions, as evidence of this regression.
“We're reducing the human experiences on academic matters while we’re debating human civil rights in courts and all these things,” Ogbemudje said. “That makes no sense as the society that we are. If we say that we really are progressive and the best democracy in the world, we shouldn't be going through this in 2025.”
To combat these issues, Ogbemudje said voting—especially in local elections—is crucial.
“You take voting for granted, it's really the most important thing in a democracy,” Ogbemudje said. “Because at the end of the day, these people are working for us. Like, we have them in office to do what we want them to do, not just what they want to do, or what they see is the best for their friends or whatever, like we see in Donald Trump right now.”
According to Ogbemudje, there is now an opportunity for generations to come together and push for change.
“I think we're in the prime position for us to be able to put those two together and learn from the old, incorporate the new, and have this interest convergence where we're actually fighting for the same thing together and not from divided lenses,” Ogbemudje said.