His murder was national news in the civil rights era. Here’s why his important American story is personal for me.
The former Walker’s Cafe, where James Reeb had his last meal, in 2015. (Photo by Chris Walton, courtesy of Unitarian Universalist Association)
Author’s note
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James Reeb was a white Unitarian minister who, in March of 1965, heeded Martin Luther King’s call for clergy nationwide to join him in Selma, Alabama. The night after turning on the TV news to watch the Bloody Sunday violence against civil rights marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge, Reeb told his children a bedtime story and got on a plane south from Boston.
He would never see his family again.
A day after arriving, Reeb was part of MLK’s second attempt at a nonviolent march across the bridge, the so-called Turnaround Tuesday. This time the marchers simply gathered, kneeled, prayed, and dispersed, avoiding violent confrontation.
That night after dinner, coming out of what was then Walker’s Cafe — a black-owned diner and one of the few restaurants that would serve blacks or their white supporters — Reeb and two fellow clergy were verbally accosted by several white men across the street.
The men followed and caught up to Reeb’s group a half-block up the street just before the Silver Moon Cafe on Washington Street. Here is the spot:
Silver Moon Cafe, then and now. Washington Street, Selma, AL.
Reeb was hit on the head with a pipe or club of some kind, and others in his group were pummeled. They somehow managed to stagger several blocks to an office serving as the marchers’ headquarters to call an ambulance.
Days later, Reeb died in the hospital at age 38.
That’s the short version of a complex episode in US history. One that was the talk at kitchen tables nationwide at the time, but is slowly fading into obscurity.
Why am I talking about it now?
The former Walker’s Cafe (center). Reeb and his colleagues left the diner and turned right. (Photos from Google Maps)
Directly across the street, where there used to be a row of commercial storefronts, a gang of white men shouted at Reeb’s group, using the n-word, and followed them.
The former Walker’s Cafe is on the far right. The corner building at left and part of the empty lot in the center is where the Silver Moon Cafe used to stand. In front of the lot is a plaque marking where Reeb’s group was attacked as they walked.
With Reeb seriously injured, they walked four long blocks to this building to call an ambulance.
For one thing, as I wrote this from overseas it was March 7th, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. As I first hit publish, it’s the anniversary of Reeb’s death five days later.
But I also have a personal connection to the story.
James Reeb married my parents.
The room where my parents met in the late 1950s.
In 1959, before moving to Boston, Reeb was the young assistant Unitarian pastor that officiated their wedding at Washington DC’s All Souls Church on 16th Street NW. The church where my parents met in the reception hall, the same room where we had my father’s memorial service in 2010.
But there’s more.
Reeb’s murder did not go unnoticed. Quite the opposite, the national outcry was such that it galvanized public support for the Voting Rights Act, which LBJ introduced days after Reeb’s death and signed into law months later on August 6, 1965.
The day I entered this world.
So, without getting into what has become of the Voting Rights Act more recently, you might understand how I have long felt a karmic connection with James Reeb. His quiet example of equanimity, conscience, and courage has often guided and inspired me. My parents told me Reeb’s story, and I tell my biracial daughter about him as a matter of family lore.
For 15 years I was a teacher and would tell my students his story to make the civil rights struggle more tangible through my personal connection. He’s represented in the 2014 movie Selma. We saw the film on a school field trip, sitting in the dark theater I choked up a bit seeing ‘him’ onscreen.
He died trying to help. Like a firefighter running toward, not away from, the flames. He would find out his white skin didn’t make him fireproof.
When discussing Reeb it’s fair to note that it was a white man’s death that was a game-changer at a time when so many blacks were being killed. But in a way that’s the point. To me, it’s an example of what more white people should do.
No, not get killed. But in a white-privilege society, whites need to stand up for what’s right in whatever way they can. You can’t just leave the oppressed to fight their own battles.
While I always had a fuzzy imagining of how his final moments played out, with a bit of research and an assist from Google Maps images, I came up with this virtual visit to the scene of a hate crime that rocked a country already reeling from the atrocities of Bloody Sunday.
The current desolation of the cityscape is striking. I was shocked the cafe still exists. Then Selma was a more bustling place, with evil just under the surface (except when it was on the surface). Now it appears to be just another dying small town, the block where the events happened is almost completely decimated by time. A town haunted, yet propped up somewhat by civil rights tourism. Hard to imagine where Selma goes from here.
Finally, as a footnote, there was never really criminal accountability in the case against Reeb’s attackers, who did stand trial but locals closed ranks around the accused. NPR has an excellent podcast and audio-visual interactive piece with a fuller exploration of Reeb’s death and the aftermath called White Lies, definitely worth checking out.
If you go to All Souls today, it is still a lively, progressive Unitarian congregation dedicated to social justice and voting rights. Photos of Reeb hang on the walls.
[First published March 12, 2024 on Medium. I’m making a tradition of posting this every year on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.]