Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold

Threshold: a level or point at which something would happen, would cease to happen, or would take effect or become true.

(Three images) As the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement approaches, these images of my son’s 5th grade trip through Selma, Montgomery, serve well as an example of threshold. Part of this civil rights tour through Alabama and Georgia included the group walking over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the threshold of the Civil Rights Act. On March 7, 1965, this bridge was the event known as “Bloody Sunday” (a brutal black-eye on the history of the United States), where 600 civil rights marchers, heading east out of Selma, made it only to the bridge six blocks away, met by local and state police who attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas, forcing them back into Selma.

The photographs and film of “Bloody Sunday” that were released to the public proved to be a turning point for the nation. “They forced viewers to see with their own eyes what African-Americans experienced if they wanted to exercise a basic right that was routinely available to white Americans.”

It was so important for the children to walk over this bridge, especially after having talked to Annie Pearl Avery, who was 16-years old when she joined the Civil Rights Movement. She joined other marchers and protesters, fighting for equal rights, and Annie endured being jailed and beaten over a dozen times. She shared her story with us, and this experience was invaluable. So I share with you today, the threshold the 2012-2013 5th grade class at Cornerstone Learning Community stepping over and retracing the footsteps of those civil rights marchers who fought for freedom.

This image shows Alabama officers waiting for demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. (Wikipedia)

To see other interpretations of threshold, visit the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge here.