By Jacob Russell\/\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 7, 1965, 16-year-old Joyce O\u2019Neal, had just finished attending a regular Sunday service when she began to hear screaming and the clopping of horses\u2019 hooves on the steps of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When O\u2019Neal ran outside the church doors, she was greeted with unmitigated carnage. \u201cThere were people with gashes in their heads. Some of our classmates were in the streets, trying to pull their clothing off because it was so full of tear-gas,\u201d O\u2019Neal recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Neal spoke in a webinar, \u201cThe Roots and Fruits of the Civil Rights Movement: Voices of Alabama, an Oral History Project,\u201d which was sponsored by Hood\u2019s political science department on Feb. 17. The event was co-sponsored by the Sophia Libman Humanities Colloquium, African American Studies Program and the history department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Neal said she remembers the shock of seeing horses ride up the church steps, with the riders unwaveringly beating her own people with clubs and batons. For O\u2019Neal, Brown Chapel was a sanctuary, a sacred place. She had been baptized, sang, prayed and rejoiced in the very same building that had been turned into a warzone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For every person beaten within inches of their lives, or any individual who bore witness first-hand to the sheer capability for cruelty that people possess, this otherwise ordinary day became known as Bloody Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Neal grew up in an area that became known as the hotbed for the Civil Rights Movement of 1965.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout her life and to this very day, O\u2019Neal has been dedicated to church service. Although she grew up in an age of unmitigated segregation, for many black people churches served as a way of feeling fellowship that breached through the cracks of societal separation. In church, she never felt alone, she never felt like there wasn\u2019t any hope for better days, and she could temporarily forget about the outside world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Bloody Sunday happened, and suddenly church no longer felt disconnected from the violence her people faced. Once the chaos dialed down, O\u2019Neal saw something that gave her a tinge of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople, complete strangers, came to help. They had come at great risk, they couldn\u2019t even park their cars in Selma,\u201d O\u2019Neal said. \u201cSeeing them come into the church to offer their help really warmed my heart. It made me understand that we are not alone, there are others willing to face this fight with us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Neal participated in both civil rights marches in Alabama that happened after Bloody Sunday. She remembers the name-calling and the stares full of hatred. Bloody Sunday ended up serving as one of the key events leading to the eventual passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To this day, O\u2019Neal remains engaged in social justice work and participates in historic retelling events to remind people just how close American society still is to the Jim Crow era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In America\u2019s current political climate, O\u2019Neal says that she sees the past repeating itself, but also extended a message of hope for today\u2019s generation of social justice activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBe committed to the cause,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t be temporary. Everyone has a role to play. Fight, and continue to fight.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"