Ora Bell Shannon, 93, crosses the Edmund Pettus Bridge for perhaps the last time as grand marshal

Ora Bell Shannon and her family were on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 for the Bloody Sunday march, and they have come back to commemorate that day every year since.

On this Sunday, Selma expects to welcome thousands to mark the 60th anniversary of that day with activities planned around the landmark bridge.

“Before Martin Luther King or any of them came, I was one of the ones that would stay in the line at the courthouse trying to register to vote,” Shannon, 93, said. Shannon said she and others with her “would go there at 8 in the morning and stay there until 4:30 in the afternoon, but we didn’t get to vote.” 

Shannon said she was jailed “many, many times, and they put me in Camp Selma,” which was a prison camp on Highway 80 just outside of Selma. “I stayed there for 12 days,” and there was an injunction on her for 10 years.

There were many nights Shannon said she gathered with other protesters at Brown Chapel AME church. “I was marching at the church at night,” she said. “They had the Berlin Wall they called it. It was a chain link fence that we couldn’t cross, or they would arrest us. But I marched and marched.”

On March 7, 1965, the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, Shannon, her mother Lula Burke Thomas, and her four children, Joyce, Jack, James and Janice, along with other family members, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

When they got to the other side, Jack, who was 10 at the time, said, “We saw smoke and horses and people yelling and screaming. Then we ran.” He added that they were able to get into a car and get to safety.

The reason they ran was the Alabama State Troopers and sheriff deputies and other “posse-men” as they have been called, tried to stop the march using nightsticks, bullwhips and tear gas. Numerous marchers were injured.

The news coverage played across the country sparked outrage and exposed to the world the failings of the government of the United States to allow the right and privilege to vote to all Americans. This led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally gave Black Americans that right. 

For a number of years, Burgess Bailey of North Carolina has been collecting the names of the people who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for voting rights. He said he wants to “acknowledge, honor and remember” all of the Foot Soldiers by posting the names on the side of his motorhome and drive them across the bridge during the Bridge Crossing Jubilee in a special motorcade.

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This year Bailey asked Shannon to be the grand marshal of the motorcade, which this year was March 1, the Saturday a week before the Jubilee. She rode with him from Marion, where the murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson sparked the Civil Rights Movement, all the way through Selma over the bridge, ending at the Lowndes Interpretive Center on Highway 80 in Lowndes County.

Bailey asked Shannon, “Knowing the dangers you and your family could face marching across that bridge, and knowing you could go to jail again, why did you take your kids too?”

Shannon replied, “Not just for me. But I wanted my kids to have equal rights, too.”

Because of the importance of the march across the bridge and the events that followed, Shannon said every year since 1965 her family has commemorated the Bloody Sunday march. All five of her children, 18 grandchildren and 31 great grandchildren get together to remember.

“We celebrated it every year for 60 years,” Shannon said. “All of my grandchildren have crossed the bridge.” 

Jack Shannon said he remembers a time when “it was difficult to just walk down the street sometimes. And depending on the side of the street you walked on determined whether or not you got hassled by somebody, and maybe even get put in jail.”

Jack also said he was happy that society can change and is changing. 

Ora Shannon thanked Bailey for remembering her and her family and for making her the grand marshal of the motorcade. Bailey reminded everyone how great it is to hear history “not from a third person, but directly from someone who was there.”

Ora Bell Shannon will be at the Bridge Crossing Jubilee 60th Commemoration. But at age 93, she is not sure if she will see another one.

“I just thank God to still be alive, and to be around to see the 60th.”