Selma leaders resurrect CDC nonprofit after 20-year hiatus to combat crime

After 20 years of inactivity, the Jonathan Daniels Community Development Corporation has reformed to combat crime and encourage more entrepreneurship in Selma and the Black Belt.

In response to the uptick of violence in the Black Belt, CDC leader Yusuf Salaam last fall resurrected the nonprofit and started recruiting dozens of leaders from a variety of industries to be a part of their new initiative called the John Robert Lewis Black Belt Community Development process.

The new project will focus on ridding the region of crime while nurturing small business ownership. Salaam's team calls it bringing the “suites and the streets together.”

Salaam, a lawyer and a former Selma City Councilman and state representative, said his new initiative will make big changes like it did in East Selma in late 1990s, when the CDC helped clean up a portion of Selma and scored millions of dollars to build Magnolia Gardens, a 48-unit apartment complex.

Salaam held the new group’s initiation meeting last week at Trustmark, where he said they are “dusting off” their nonprofit status and getting to work finding grant money and strategizing how to fight crime as a team.

The strategy is being formed by a leadership team from Troy University along with the CDC’s 21 board members, including Jeff Cothran of United Way as president and Dallas County Commissioner Jan Justice as secretary.

“After six months, now we’re ready; it’s time to go to work,” Salaam said. “No more bunch of meetings. It’s time for our components to work and to get to moving.”

Salaam also brought together a long list of supporters to serve on a steering committee. The committee includes superintendents from both Dallas County school districts, Selma’s fire and police chiefs, Selma City Council members Atkin Jemison and Christi Thomas, Dallas County Commissioner Vivian Rogers, Selma city officials, Selma Dallas County Chamber of Commerce, former Mayor George Evans, SBA officials, community leaders and representatives from the offices of US Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt as well as US Rep. Terri Sewell.

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A faith-based consortium of ministers will help with community outreach, and a business group will promote entrepreneurship and economic development in the Black Belt.

The CDC will assign two people per neighborhood to serve on a joint board that will meet with board members quarterly to communicate what is needed “from the ground up,” Salaam said.

Community leader, minister and Selma native Lonnie Brown said he wants to talk young people out of using guns when facing conflict.

“These young people need to know when they put a bullet out there, it’s gone,” said Brown, who killed a man in self-defense several years ago.

Street evangelist Annie Blue is overseeing efforts to bring together mothers of criminals and victims in Selma to get through to young people who are choosing crime.

“There’s hope for our sons and for our daughters,” she added.

Salaam said the group is now building the infrastructure to give the initiative “a laser-beam focus to impact solving these problems.”