Friends Foundation of BPL Wins $2,500 Grant for Spider Martin: Selma to Montgomery March Panel Discussion; Event is Saturday, April 29

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What: Panel Discussion Spider Martin: Selma to Montgomery March 
When: Saturday, April 29, 2023, 1:00 p.m.
Where: The Central Library, 2100 Park Place, Birmingham, AL 35203
Details: BPL will host a panel discussion about Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. Panelists will be University of Alabama Historian Stacy Morgan in conversation with Brown Chapel AME Church Historian Joyce O'Neal, who witnessed Bloody Sunday up close as a teen, and Thelma Dianne Harris, who as a 15-year-old witnessed Bloody Sunday and later participated in the Selma to Montgomery March led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The event will be free and open to the public as well as live-streamed and professionally recorded. The exhibition, Spider Martin—Selma to Montgomery, is on display free for the public during operating hours of the Central Library downtown through April 30, 2023. The exhibit is on loan from ArtsRevive of Selma, Ala., and features historic photographs by James "Spider" Martin selected by Birmingham-based curator, Paul Barrett. The exhibition is sponsored by the Alabama Visual Arts Network.


In conjunction with the exhibit, which opened in February on the first floor of the Central Library and concludes on April 30, 2023,  the Birmingham Public Library (BPL) will host a panel discussion about the national and global significance of Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march at the Central Library at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, 2023. 

The event will feature University of Alabama history professor Dr. Stacy Morgan in conversation with Brown Chapel AME Church historian Joyce O’Neal, who witnessed Bloody Sunday up close as a teen. The event will be free and open to the public. BPL will also live-stream and professionally record the panel discussion. 

Alabama photojournalist James "Spider" Martin, (b. 1939 - 2003) employed at the time as a staff photographer at The Birmingham News, became a household name for images he captured during Bloody Sunday. Exhibition curator Paul Barrett knew Spider Martin and collaborated with his daughter, Tracy Martin, to preserve the legacy of her father's important photographs of historic Civil Rights events in Alabama. 

Joyce O'Neal, panelist who witnessed Bloody Sunday as a teenager.

Panelist Joyce O'Neal lived in Selma during the atrocities of Bloody Sunday depicted in Spider Martin's 1965 photographs currently on display at the Central Library.  On March 7, 1965, O’Neal stood on the steps of her church, the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and watched the violence unfolding along the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. 

While O’Neal was not on the bridge that day, she had participated in many marches supporting African Americans’ right to vote as a teenage foot soldier and member of the student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. At First Baptist, O’Neal learned how to march, what to do if attacked, and about nonviolence. Her mother was among many African-Americans turned away from polls and voter registration desks by local officials. She was a junior in high school when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act giving Blacks the right to vote in response to Bloody Sunday.

 Dianne Harris, panelist, participated in the Selma to Montgomery March as a 15-year-old.

Thelma Dianne Harris was 15-year-old in March 1965 when she and her brother joined the Selma to Montgomery March led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

A longtime Selma civil rights activist,  60 years later she leads Selma Historical Tours by Thelma Dianne Harris, sharing her personal story with visitors.     During her time as a student activist, Dianne and her 13-year-old brother were active in efforts to secure voting rights for African-Americans in Selma. They took part in several marches and were arrested twice.

After high school, Dianne majored in elementary education and went on to teach in the Selma school system for 27 years. Harris told her story about the Selma to Montgomery March and Bloody Sunday in a 2020 interview with The Guardian. 
Panelist Dianne Harris at age 15 participating in the Selma to Montgomery March.


     

Dr. Stacy Morgan, History Professor at University of Alabama and panel moderator.

Moderator Dr. Stacy Morgan teaches courses on Race & Essentialism in American Culture at the University of Alabama and has authored several books on African American art, literature and folklore. Morgan earned his BA from Wesleyan University and his PhD from Emory University. He is winner of the 2021 Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize from the University of Alabama Press Editorial Board for the book manuscript selected as “Most Deserving in Alabama or Southern History and Culture," and the 2018 Wayland D. Hand Prize from the American Folklore Society, awarded biennially for the best book combining historical and folkloristic methods and materials. 

 BPL is partnering with two non-profits, ArtsRevive and the Alabama Visual Arts Network, on this Spider Martin: Selma to Montgomery program. Both organizations also collaborated with BPL to allow the Central Library to host the Spider Martin photo exhibit currently on display. 




ArtsRevive is a membership-based, non-profit organization incorporated in 2003 to promote economic and community redevelopment and spur creative place-making in Selma and Dallas County. Founded in 1968, the Alabama Visual Arts Network is a 501©3 nonprofit working to cultivate understanding, awareness and appreciation of visual art and the role it plays in the economic quality of life of every Alabamian.

 Civil rights photographer Spider Martin's Selma to Montgomery March exhibit remains open during library hours at the Central Library through the end of April 2023.

 Civil rights photographer Spider Martin is best known for his Bloody Sunday photos.


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