The concept of people dying for idea is a difficult one to deal with. "Would you be willing to die?" for this or that cause is, in my view, not really the question. One should ask rather "Why do you want to kill?" to stop this or that from happening. The concept that killing someone is going to prevent an idea from coming into fruition has got to be the most discredited point of view in history. People are not made martyrs to a cause. They are just murdered, and for that there is precious little excuse.
James Reeb, a young Unitarian minister from Boston Massachusetts, born in Wichita, Kansas, went to Selma, Alabama and took part in a march for civil rights. The protest march was from Selma to Montgomery. On the 9th March he was attacked and beaten by a white mob armed with clubs. He suffered massive head injuries and died in a Birmingham Hospital on the 11th March 1965. He was married with four children. He was 38 years old. He surely did not want to die. He looks exactly what he was, a young minister. Central casting could not have done better. He just offered himself up to be counted, to help support a simple idea almost universally accepted. He had no special powers, he was not rich or famous, he had no extraordinary influence, yet his mere presence was sufficient to incite a groupof people to beat him to death. Perhaps because he looked so vulnerable, he was an easy target; but, a target to what end?
The current mayor of the city of Selma is George Patrick Evans, who was 20 years old at the time of the march. He took office on the 4th November 2008. He has a My Space page on which he states:
My election could not have happened without the support of all my volunteers and those who voted for me. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work on moving this great city forward.
I trust he will remember James Reeb who was one of those early volunteers, and indeed all the others who were killed in Alabama and Mississippi.
Another supporting event took place on the 11th March a mere 24 years earlier, in 1941.
United StatesPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11) law into effect. This bill established a program under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied Nations with vast amounts of war material from 1941 to 1945. It effectively ended neutrality although it was not until December of that year that war was officially declared.
A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $759 billion at 2008 prices) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse Lend Lease comprised services (like rent on air bases) that went to the U.S. totaled $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth The terms of the agreement provided that the material was to be used until time for their return or destruction. (Supplies after the termination date were sold to Britain at a discount, for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the U.S.) Canada operated a similar program that sent $4.7 billion in supplies to Britain and the Soviet Union.
In order for the bill to pass, it was referred to as An Act to Promote the Defence of the United States. This video is full of patriotic fervour and is narrated by Walter Huston.
Could the one event have happened without the other? Were not the deaths of so many conflicts throughout history sufficient to prevent the deaths in the American South of 1965 or now in North Africa and the Middle East. Clearly not.
So I ask again, why was James Reeb beaten to death?
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