Historical Background
“Don’t you think, Sister, that this is a high price to pay for freedom?”
– Jimmie Lee Jackson to Barbara Lum
The Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 emerged from a deep-seated struggle for voting rights for African Americans in the American South, where systemic disenfranchisement persisted despite constitutional guarantees.
While the 15th Amendment (1870) explicitly prohibited denying citizens the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and subsequent legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1964 aimed to enforce these rights, Southern states employed a variety of tactics to circumvent federal law. These included discriminatory practices such as poll taxes, literacy tests administered unfairly to Black applicants, and outright intimidation and violence designed to deter Black voter registration. In Dallas County, Alabama, where Selma is located, these tactics proved particularly effective: less than 2% of eligible Black voters were registered.
This persistent denial of fundamental voting rights, a clear violation of both constitutional amendments and federal statutes, created a climate of frustration and fueled growing activism. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American civil rights activist and deacon at St. James Baptist Church, was brutally murdered by a state trooper during a peaceful voting rights demonstration in nearby Marion in February 1965. Jackson’s murder served as a catalyst, transforming simmering discontent into a resolute call for a direct march to the state capital of Montgomery to demand federal protection of voting rights and an end to the pervasive violence and legal obstruction that had for so long denied Black citizens their fundamental democratic rights.
“Religious News Service Photo”
“Selma, Ala. — Three nuns at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, Ala., comfort one of the scores of persons injured when state troopers used nightsticks, whips and teargas to break up a voter registration march to Montgomery. All members of the Order of St. Joseph, the nuns are from left: Sister Liguor, nursing instructor; Sister St. Joseph, operating room supervisor; and Sister Michael Ann, hospital administrator. The injured person here is Mrs. Stella Davis, who suffered a broken arm in the melee when troopers dispersed the marchers.”
Source: St. Louis Archdiocesan Archives
Four decades later, the memory of this tragedy brings tears to Sister Barbara Lum as she recounts treating those injured during the protests.
Among those under her care at Good Samaritan Hospital in his final days was Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose words about the price of liberty continue to resonate deeply with her.
a call to action
The brutal violence in Selma was captured in shocking photographs and film footage that were broadcast across the nation.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. publicly called upon religious leaders from across the United States to stand in solidarity and join the march to Montgomery.
Cardinal Joseph Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis, responded decisively to Dr. King’s call by immediately mobilizing the St. Louis Human Rights Commission to form a delegation to Selma.
Six Catholic sisters were among the 50 volunteers: two Sisters of Loretto, two Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and two Franciscan Sisters of Mary.
Images of these sisters in full habit would make headlines and spark debate about the public role of women religious in the twentieth century.
On March 18, 1965, King sent this telegram to the Social Action Secretariat at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart (now Maryville University) in New York, calling upon the students to “make their personal witness” in a Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery on March 21.
In 1965, Manhatanville was a Catholic women’s college administered by the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
13 volunteers answer the call.
“They were the real risk takers…”
The participation of Catholic Sisters in the Selma to Montgomery marches marked a significant moment in both religious and civil rights history. This was the first time Catholic Sisters had visibly participated in a Civil Rights protest, and their presence in distinctive religious garb attracted world-wide media attention and sparked debate within the Catholic community. Many at the time questioned the propriety of women religious participating in political movements. However, the Sisters viewed their involvement as a deeply humanitarian and religious act, grounded in the belief that human rights are God-given.
Sister Roberta Schmidt, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Louis, defines her order as risk-takers, a trait demonstrated by their journey from France to the American “frontier” in the 1830s to establish a school for the deaf. And it was this same spirit of risk-taking – coupled with the unshakable conviction that supporting the Civil Rights Movement was the most authentic expression of their charism of serving the “Dear Neighbor”– that ultimately inspired their decision to march.