AATC Keynote Address—The Marcella Kysilka Lecture: Schoolhouse Activists: Disrupting Narratives About African American Educators’ Involvement in the Alabama Civil Rights Movement

The Marcella Kysilka Lecture to the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum (AATC) Annual Conference October 4, 2019, Birmingham, Alabama

On January 22, 1965, an unheralded group of protestors marched through Selma, Alabama, to fight for their voting rights (Freedman, 2014; Reese, 1985). Led by the Reverend Frederick D. Reese, a science and mathematics teacher who headed the Selma City Teachers Association and the Dallas County Voters League, a cadre of 105 Black teachers marched from Clark Elementary School to the Dallas County Courthouse resolute on registering to vote. These teachers marched while under the threat of being fired by their school board. In fact, the White superintendent of the Selma City Schools was reportedly inside the courthouse but never made a public appearance during the protest. Dallas County sheriff Jim Clark shouted his characteristically combative command: “Get off my steps!” The teachers made three attempts to enter the courthouse. Reese endured violent assaults from Clark as he tried to walk into the courthouse to register. Sheriff Clark poked Reese’s fellow teacher, Lawrence Huggins, in the stomach with his nightstick. Although Reese and the teachers were pressed to divert their march toward Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, their brave protest spurred other groups of Black professionals to organize to support voting rights in Alabama. Reese, who was fired from his teaching position but later reinstated with honor, would later laud this teacher-led demonstration as the first of its kind during the civil rights movement (Reese, 1985).