I was in Selma recently, to see the Edmund Pettus Bridge where John Lewis and his foot soldiers began their march to Montgomery. Not only is the bridge named after a grand dragon of the KKK, but the town is boarded up, the museum & store at the park memorializing the event look abandoned (even though they’re not) and aren’t reliably open, and the park is falling apart and overgrown.

This is one of the most iconic events in civil rights history and that’s the state of its memorial. We saw carloads of black folks from all over the south roll up, try the doors, look at the memorial, and leave. They can barely experience their own history here, where such a powerful event happened.

Selma itself is much like the town in this article, overwhelming majority black, but no money in the black community, and a small, wealthy, powerful white population. The memorial has to be run by volunteers. The white folks won’t contribute. They’ll put up confederate monuments with private money if you ask them to.