Selma is Stronger than MAGA

On Loving Your Country

Sherrilyn Ifill

Mar 09, 2025

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“You’re teaching young people to love America.”

-Justice Anthony Kennedy to President Donald Trump, March 4, 2025

“What… is…right? If we keep our hearts and minds constantly focused on that single question, and if we act on the answer with courage and commitment, we will overcome all that stands between us and... a truly Beloved Community.”

-John Lewis (1998)

This weekend marks the 60^th anniversary of the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama that ended in a violent attack on peaceful marchers by Alabama state troopers, operating at the urging of segregationist Governor George Wallace. That day, which has come to be known as “Bloody Sunday” proved to be a turning point in the century-long struggle of Black people to be recognized as full citizens after the Civil War. The images of the beating on that bridge – of horse-mounted state troopers running over Black men and women peaceably marching - shook the nation.

By the spring of 1965, this country was almost ten years into what became known as the Civil Rights Movement. White people across the country had seen images of the violent response of white racists to civil rights marches and demonstrations in the South. They had seen images from Birmingham, from Freedom Summer and from the Freedom Rides. But something about the film reel that Americans saw on their televisions on the night of March 7, 1965, when ABC interrupted the first network showing of the film Judgment at Nuremburg, with breaking news about the attack on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, shifted the atmosphere.

Perhaps it was that white Americans could see in the news reels from Selma the reality of white supremacist violence in our country in more or less real time. Maybe watching the film Judgement at Nuremburg with its stark and powerfully moving accounts of the Holocaust had primed the viewing audience to understand the implications of racism on our own shores. Perhaps it was hearing one of the troopers yell “Get those goddamn niggers!” in the film, or seeing voting rights activist Amelia Boynton, still dressed in her church coat and gloves, lying unconscious on the bridge. Whatever the reason, “something about that day in Selma touched a nerve deeper than anything that had come before, “John Lewis, the civil rights icon who was beaten brutally on the bridge later observed.[i]

President Johnson felt it. White people from northern cities felt it, and many impetuously got in their cars and drove to Alabama in the subsequent days, determined to join the march that would be taken up and completed. Jim Letherer, a white man from Saginaw, Michigan who had lost a leg to childhood cancer, came and marched the full 50 miles from Sema to Montgomery when the march was resumed two weeks later. [ii]

Lewis recalls that when members of the march thanked Letherer for attending the March he would reply over and over “I believe in you…. I believe in democracy.”[iii]

Images like these in documentaries and news programs that I watched as a young girl at the urging of my father shaped my belief in democracy, and in this country. The image of a one-legged man marching alongside Dr. King, or of attorney Constance Baker Motley walking next to a tense James Meredith as they entered the courtroom where they fought for his admission to the University of Mississippi. Of the poise and beauty of Vivian Malone entering the University of Alabama in 1963. Of Stokely Carmichael, and Julian Bond, and Fannie Lou Hamer – speaking with passion and eloquent demand for the first-class citizenship of Black people – these are the people and images that made me believe in democracy and that encouraged me to fight for this country.

I was taught how to navigate a complicated relationship with my country and its founding documents by Rep. Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South who, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearing of President Richard Nixon, declared in rich, stentorian, and authoritative tones her allegiance to the Constitution. “My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total,” she said. “And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”[iv]

From Jordan’s woman’s words and demeanor, from her nobility, her power to hold an entire overflow room of white men and women and millions like me watching on TV, immobile and in thrall to her every intonation, I learned that we have the right, the obligation, the authority to assert, with absolute conviction that those who lead our country are bound to respect the rule of law.

It was from my elementary school teachers who taught us songs like “Freedom Isn’t Free” (“you’ve got to pay the price, you’ve got to sacrifice, for your liberty”), and from my father who spoke every day about politics and civil rights, that I came to believe that there was a role for me to play in improving my country.

From accompanying my father and stepmother to P.S. 123 on the cold and dark nights of November to vote every year, I learned about the responsibility of citizenship. And there were other lessons too. From the murder of 10-year-old Clifford Glover in 1973 by a NYPD officer. I learned about police violence against unarmed Black people. And when the officer who killed Clifford was acquitted, I learned about injustice in our country.

It was all these experiences and exposures, and many more, that encouraged me to want to fight for my people and for my country. The accumulated lessons of this curriculum taught me about my country’s imperfections, and about my responsibility to work for its improvement.

I thought of all of this when I heard retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy say to President Trump last week as the president shook hands with the justices who attended his joint address to Congress, “you are teaching young people to love America.” [v]

Like many observers of Trump’s interaction with the justices, I had focused on Trump’s mob boss “thank you” to Chief Justice Roberts [ostensibly for the immunity decision?]. Patting the Chief’s arm as he passed, Trump added “I won’t forget it.” Ugh. The implication that he would do the Chief “a solid” as an expression of his thanks hung in the air. A disgraceful display that I am certain even embarrassed the Chief Justice.

So I had missed Justice Kennedy’s exchange with Trump until it was highlighted by Jay Willis on social media.[vi] I replayed it 4 or 5 times. It could not be. Did a jurist who actively served on the Supreme Court for 40 years, a justice who although no liberal, had written decisions upholding marriage equality, holding California to account for inhuman conditions in its state prisons, who had saved the disparate impact standard of the Fair Housing Act, and who had voted to uphold affirmative action, say that Trump was teaching American children to love their country?

Trump, whose rise to the presidency has encouraged the most divisive period in this country’s history since the Civil War? Did Justice Kennedy actually believe that Trump’s public lying, demonization of minorities and immigrants, ridicule of the disabled, his corruption and disdain for the rule of law, his attack on teachers, and judges, and public servants, was somehow teaching America’s young people to love our country?

Even now, I am hoping I misheard him.

It is possible that Kennedy has advanced in years to the point that he has lost some discernment. And the power of the Fox News affect has been apparent – especially on elderly people – has been well-documented.

But in a week in which thousands of federal workers were unceremoniously let go, in which a measles outbreak has claimed two lives with no comment from the President, in which Trump has betrayed our alliance with Europe, and consigned Ukraine to likely defeat, in which the President has threatened the sovereignty of our closest ally, disparages the rule of law, dismissed trans soldiers from serving, and has displayed stunning levels of bigotry, Justice Kennedy’s statement seemed to encapsulate the entire upside-down, bizarro nature of this period in which our country has come as close to unraveling as it has in 160 years.

And that is why it seems especially important that this week thousands of people have descended on Selma, Alabama to reaffirm commitment to the work of civil rights and justice, and to honor one of the finest expressions of patriotism this country has ever seen. Even though I cannot be there in person this year, I still treat this commemoration as a spiritual pilgrimage.

When we fix our eyes on Selma, we are reminded that it is not the men in high places – whether Nixon or Trump, Justice Kennedy, or Justice Roberts – who teach us how to love our country. It is ordinary people who risk it all to demand a place in this nation, those who refuse to bend or bow to men in high places who desecrate the promise of this country. It is those who wrestle with the challenging contradictions of this country, those who see the truth of our shortcomings, but also hold on to an unshakeable belief in the possibilities of this nation, who teach us how to commit ourselves to improving our deeply flawed and often perverse nation.

It is Mr. Letherer walking the Selma march with one leg because he “believed in democracy.” It is the resilience of Cager Lee, the grandfather of Jimmie Lee Jackson. The elder Lee was injured when Alabama troopers shot and killed his grandson at a voting rights march the prior month. Mr. Lee chose to participate in the march, putting one foot in front of the other, saying as he marched, “Just got to tramp some more.”[vii]

That is why although there will be political leaders and dignitaries in Selma, as there always are every year on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I am thinking about the ordinary people – the men and women from all over the country who come every year to honor the foot soldiers from that original march, and the men and women who fight for this country every day.

I am thinking about the parents of children killed by gun violence who have experienced the unspeakable but still fight on for common sense gun reforms. I will be focused those federal workers who have devoted decades of service to our government, only to be discarded by the whim of a self-absorbed billionaire. My attention will be trained on those who attempted to resist the efforts of DOGE to access our personal information.

I am thinking about those elderly Americans who have paid into Social Security, who rely on Medicare, and who now face uncertainty at the time of life when they are most vulnerable, but who still press on every day. Who still serve in juries, vote, and volunteer, and give of themselves to their neighbors and friends. I will be thinking of the librarians and teachers, who decades ago allowed a girl like me to escape into a world of books and literature to places where the pain of my mother’s loss and my family’s unraveling could not reach me.

I am thinking about the people who have stood outside government buildings to protest the takeover of our government, and those who have called their representatives and who write letters to those they helped put in office – letters that so often go unanswered. I am thinking about those who speak truth to power, even when it costs them their job or their platform. I am thinking of those who care about their own lives, but also about the lives of children in the Congo, the Sudan and in Gaza. I am thinking of the courage and bravery of Ukranians who have stood up for three years to a power that most predicted would crush them in a matter of months. I am thinking always of my colleagues who work every day to protect us all against racism, antisemitism, gender violence and bigotry in all its forms.

I am thinking of the profound decency, courage, and resilience of Black people in this country, who despite this country’s repeated betrayals and broken promises, demonstrate our “whole, complete and total” commitment to democracy in this country.

We are still here. We are all here, trying to do what is right, and demanding that our country does the same. I do not know – cannot know – what Justice Kennedy could have been thinking when/if he made that statement to President Trump. But I do know that we hold the power to teach our children what love of country looks like. We have the power to model for our children what James Baldwin famously said, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”[viii]

To love one’s country is to work hard to make it better. We show our commitment to our country by working to improve its moral clarity, its compassion, its fiscal, environmental, and educational integrity, and by working to secure a place in it for every citizen to reach their highest potential. You cannot teach your children to love your country, while teaching them to hate groups of people in it. Justice Kennedy should know that. It embarrasses me that he may not.

As for me, I am gonna “keep tramping on” and will work every day to make myself of worthy of those who sacrificed so much. This year especially, the answer is all of us.

[i] John Lewis with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, (Simon & Schuster 1998) at p. 344.

[ii] https://livingwithamplitude.com/jim-letherer-amputee-who-marched-with-martin-luther-king/

[iii] Walking With the Wind at 357.

[iv] https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/impeachment/my-faith-constitution-whole-

it-complete-it-total

[v]