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Highly recommend this podcast on Selma, AL, the civil rights movement, and the murder of white minister James Reeb. It testifies to how forcefully and violently some people have fought (and will fight) to protect white supremacy in America. npr.org/podcasts/51034…
One moment in Episode 2 stood out to me. When a group of white men in Selma were arrested for the murder of Reeb, the county's leading white men bailed the murderers out of jail and began raising funds for their defense. Note how they justified it...
“It is the duty of every white citizen to see that those white citizens have legal help. Selma is fighting almost alone, but Selma is not fighting for itself alone, it is fighting for everything that stands for decency and Western Civilization.”
These are the words that the civic and business leaders of Dallas County Alabama used to explain why they were doing everything possible to help the white men accused of murdering a white minister who came to Alabama to support the civil rights movement.
And it should be noted that the accused white men were hardly upstanding citizens...all had criminal records, one having been arrested over a dozen times for assault. The white elite of the county were not protecting their friends, they were protecting whiteness.
