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| It was March, 1965 in a quite little village called Trickem Fork, off
route 80 between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. Annie Blackman picked cotton
from 6:00 AM unitl 8:00 PM for $1.25 a day. She and her nine children all
lived together in a wood cabin with a brick chimney. The tiny house featured
large windows but no glass, only shutters offered resistance to the cold,
wind and critters from the surrounding woods. Newspapers and magazine pages
covered the walls in a feeble attempt to keep out drafts, bugs and inclimate
weather. Water had to be fetched from a mile away and there was no electricity.
Annie thought there was nothing unusual about her condition. Her lifestyle
represented the very reason for something that was about to take place in
this southern state. Something that would change the way Americans treated
each other from now on. A change was eminent and something was about to happen that would affect the way Americans treated each other in the future. A prominent religious leader and his followers were about to make history by marching along with over 3,000 other protesters to let the world know the Annie Blackmans needed to be freed from the mentality that continued to enslave them even one hundred years after the war against slavery had been won. Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and a crowd that would soon swell to over 25,000 by the time they reached the state capital, were calling for equality and the right to vote for African Americans. 1924 and President Coolidge is signing an act declaring all Native Americans born in the United States to be citizens. For many of the 150 thousand Indians it was too little, too late. Citizenship does not mean full enfranchisement, not unitl 1949 would they be allowed to vote in every state. Anne Sullivan's student, the famous blind and deaf girl graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, the first deaf and blind person to earn a B.A. She died in 1968 at the age of 87. What ever happened to the rest of her story? |