Foot Soldiers Park to be built around concrete slab that launched a movement

Just behind the office of George Washington Carver Homes on Martin Luther King Street in Selma is an old slab of cement. Most people overlook it. But if this unassuming slab of cement could talk, it would tell the story of a group of people that gathered on it on March 7, 1965.                                                                       

That group of men and women, children and teens were the core that became the Foot Soldiers of the Civil Rights movement. And it was from this slab that they left for the Selma to Montgomery March and into history as part of what became known as Bloody Sunday. 

Because the spirit and energy of the Civil Rights movement was born on that cement, Joanne Bland, who grew up in the GWC Homes community, wants to preserve it and build Foot Soldiers Park to memorialize the Foot Soldiers of the movement. It will include a community center, garden, playground, ball fields and more, all named after leaders of the movement.

The Foot Soldiers Park Organization is already working with the Selma Housing Authority and the city of Selma to make the park a reality. An estimate on the cost isn’t completed, and Bland said they are not asking for money from the city or any residents of Selma; this is meant to be a gift to the citizens of Selma. To support it, there is a long list of partners in Alabama and outside the state.

The organization recently hired Selma native Kimberly Smitherman as executive director of Foot Soldiers Park to oversee the day-to-day operations of the organization. Smitherman has worked in other areas to preserve and teach the history of the Voting Rights Movement with a major focus on Selma, including Bland’s Journeys For The Soul tour company of which she is the current Managing Director.

When Bland was a little girl, her grandmother and caregiver, Sylvia Johnson, was part of the movement. “Wherever my grandmother went, we had to go,” Bland said. “So I grew up in the movement. I thought that this is what everyone did, at least people who looked like me.”

After serving in the armed forces, Bland came back to Selma in 1989 and was working at the National Voting Rights Museum when she learned the original cement slab on which the Foot Soldiers gathered was still there. She decided it should be preserved. 

Further inspiration came about 15 years ago. “Charles Mauldin, who was a student leader during the march, started the Foot Soldiers Breakfast as part of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee,” Bland said. “I started helping him with it.” She said this allowed Foot Soldiers to get together and tell their stories, but it occurred to her that there should be a place for the Foot Soldiers to gather and tell their stories year-round. So the idea of a park built around the cement slab – a tangible piece of history – was born.

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Bland runs Journeys for the Soul tours of Selma and already uses the concrete meeting spot as a focal point as she tells the history of the movement. 

“It’s hard to connect children without something tangible,” Bland said. “They feel like this history was a million years ago. So, I make them pick up a rock from the cement and tell them that’s the rock John Lewis stood on. And I have my rock too. I tell them to take that rock and put it someplace where they can see it every day and let it remind them that if they see injustice committed against anyone in the whole rainbow of humanity, no matter who it is, they need to do something." 

Along with a playground and walking paths, Foot Soldiers Park will also be a community education center. Bland said many people are surprised to find out that Foot Soldiers are still alive. She said her dream is for this to be a place where Foot Soldiers can gather to share memories but also tell their stories to younger generations.

“It will be a place where visitors can come and talk to the people who made that history,” she said. And not only tell them the story, but also have them stand on the spot where it happened. Each feature of the park will be named after one of the civil rights leaders who was standing on the slab that day.                                                                                                                

Local organizations and companies are pledging donations to help build the park. Bland said the first local company donation came from Cougar Oil, and she thanked Rex Jones for being such a great supporter of Selma.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

“I would like Selma to be involved,” Bland said. “It’s very dear to me that the kids know the heroes and ‘sheroes’ that look like them. Kids need that. But it’s also good and dear to me that kids that don’t look like me know where we have been as a nation, so we don’t go back there. So I invite Selma to become involved, come and talk to us and see our plans.”  

You can do this by visiting the Food Soldiers Park website at footsoldierspark.org or Facebook page athttps://www.facebook.com/footsoldierspark for information about the plans, the people and organizations supporting the effort and how to donate.