On Sunday March 15, special guest Evelyn Knight spoke at the Long Beach Art Theater’s viewing of Selma. At the event the 81 year old Evelyn Knight, a participant in the Selma marches, recounted her experience walking to Montgomery alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Knight, a Long Beach resident, left her home and job to join other activists in the march from Selma to Montgomery, a nonviolent fight for African American voting rights. Having been born and raised in Alabama, Knight shared her experience with segregation in the South and the police brutality she witnessed in Selma. Although Selma marchers fought voting discrimination back in 1965, it is still a pressing issue today. “Under the guise of limiting voting fraud, many people are working hard at restricting voting rights through voter ID laws, restrictions on the types of ID that can be used, and even restrictions on registration and where people can vote. This is scary since it is a certain type of voter: minority, poor, young college students, people who move a lot, et cetera, who are having their rights restricted, and it seems like this battle has already been fought,” event organizer Mr. Adler said. Knight’s experience encourages students to become active in making a positive change. Knight should also be remembered for her activism in helping to organize a program that reunited homeless children with their families. Knight said, “I remember one time I had a caseload of children–very young children, and also older children. The older children had no family and there was never going to be anybody. I looked for and found adoptive families for them.” Adler has additional voter registration awareness events planned for later in the school year.
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