SELMA, Ala. — Brenda Haywood, a former member of Nashville’s Metro Council, was 14 years old in 1965 when civil rights activists were assaulted by Alabama state troopers and police as they attempted to march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery in an effort to call attention to a voting rights drive.
“I actually watched the march then and wanted to come. At the age of 12, I was so inspired by (the Rev.) Martin Luther King and John Lewis and Jesse Jackson,” said Haywood, who also served as deputy mayor to former Nashville Mayor John Cooper.
“All those young men had such a profound legacy and they believed so much in civil rights, and I was always so encouraged and educated (by them),” Haywood said Sunday.
Haywood was one of dozens of Tennesseans — including current and former elected officials — attending the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee to commemorate the 1965 march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge that became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The three-day event featured a training in nonviolent techniques by the Rev. Bernard LaFayette, a graduate of Nashville’s American Baptist College and organizer of the Selma voting rights campaign, and rallies at churches that hosted voting rights events during the 1965 campaign.