En route to march, a stop with history
In Birmingham, rider recalls how Civil Rights Act changed her life in Texas
Yesterday, reporter Maggie Gordon filed dispatches from the Houston bus to the Women’s March on Washington, a national demonstration set to converge on the National Mall today. For more of her reports — and fresh updates on the March — go to www.houstonchronicle.com/womensmarch.
Friday, 8 a.m. — As the bus rolls down an off-ramp at 7:20 a.m., Mary Smith spots the white-lettered-green sign that reveals the location.
“Birmingham, everybody,” she calls from the front seat. “You all know what happened in Birmingham.”
The southern city is a treasure trove of civil rights history. Some bloody, some triumphant. None of it can be forgotten, says Smith.
“I grew up in the Jim Crow era,” Smith says a few minutes later, after grabbing a breakfast sandwich and something to drink and reboarding the bus.
She remembers the turning points of history.
“As soon as the Civil Rights bill was passed, I was able to go to Perry’s Cafe, and I walked through the front door that day,” she recalls. “This was in Hawkins, Texas. I was 18, I was graduating from high school, and we heard the Civil Rights Bill was passed. And so we anticipated walking to the front door.”
Perry’s was the only café in town, and she’d dreamed of walking through that front door for years as she used the back entrance to visit her aunt while she worked.
“We could go to the café. They always wanted your money,” she said, a halflaugh rolling off her lips. “So you just went to the back and got it. So we would go in the back. They had one table there, and most people would either go and eat at that one table, or they’d take it to go.”
But on that day in 1964, she walked in the front door — and she was greeted “just fine.”
It was more than a way to walk into a building. It was about equality. She thinks about equality a lot.
“This weekend, I want to stand for justice for women. Justice for everybody really. But for women’s rights. For Planned Parenthood Rights. For women to decide on their own futures,” she says. For her, it’s about feeling as though everyone has the same shot.
“I am black. And this is my concern. I didn’t choose this color — not that I would not have — and I know what it means to be disenfranchised, and to live in a segregated world,” she says.
She doesn’t want to see things move back into a place where oppression is the norm. So she packed her bags and hopped the bus.
“I’ll do anything I can do while I’m alive to make a difference, I’m not a couch person. I’m not one to gripe about things. I’m the one to organize marches and do things,” she says. “I am proud to stand for something in life, because if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for nothing.”
At last the bus rolled into motion. With two more hours of Alabama road ahead of them, Smith queued up a movie for everyone. It was “Selma.”