Old Ghosts of Racism Return to Haunt Selma : Civil rights: It is the eve of the 25th anniversary of its famous march. And the Alabama town is once more being tormented by anger and mistrust.

At the local visitor-information center, a fuchsia T-shirt makes an ironic point: In white letters, the shirt lists, from top to bottom, London, Paris, Rome, Selma.

“Los Angeles probably is not as well known as Selma, Ala.,” George (Cap) Swift, the center’s vice president, says with a mixture of pride and exasperation.

He may be right. Selma burned its name into history with blood, anger and racial confrontation 25 years ago at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Civil rights marchers trying to cross the bridge were beaten by Alabama state troopers on “Bloody Sunday,” and the national revulsion that followed led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

A celebration of the march’s silver anniversary is due Sunday, but plans for a harmonious event, which could show how far people here have come, are fading. Once again, Selma is a town of anger and racial mistrust.

The school board, six whites and five blacks, voted on strict racial lines not to renew the contract of Norward Roussell, Selma’s first black schools superintendent. The Dec. 21 vote set off a furor among blacks which resulted in schools being closed for five days and leading parents of some 300 students, mostly white, to withdraw their children from public schools. The five black members quit.

Racial Tension Strong

Racial tension now runs strong through this middle Alabama town of 27,000 people, about evenly divided among black and white. Everybody hopes the commemorative march, which begins here and ends 54 miles and five days later in Montgomery, will be peaceful. The events leading up to it have been anything but.

Several black people were arrested for demonstrating at Mayor Joe Smitherman’s office, including an attorney, Rose Sanders, who charged that a police officer roughed her up. A few days ago, a police officer sat guard outside Smitherman’s office, while black protesters held a sit-in on the porch of the two-story brick building and launched a boycott of white businesses.

Many whites express embarrassment, fear, loathing and resentment that the town must relive its past. Defenders of the school board’s white majority say that Roussell’s contract should not have been renewed based on the board’s 1989 evaluation of his performance, which rated him a poor manager and asserted that he intimidates employees and hurts morale.

Roussell denies the charges, as do his supporters.

For some black organizers of the march, the resulting caldron is brewing an opportunity, a chance to recapture the old-time civil rights spirit.

“This could be a positive thing,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who as a leader of the 1965 march was severely beaten by troopers and mounted deputies. “This could be the spark that energizes the people. Most of the people in the black and white communities wanted to see this as a genuine celebration, but now it’s going to be a protest and celebration.”

New Like the Old

Indeed, the new, progressive Selma that Smitherman and other white leaders wanted to show off to the world during the 25th anniversary of the march now seems much like the old Selma.

Over on Small Street, Barbara Johnson, a 40-year-old Selma native, was frustrated and angry, seeing Roussell’s situation as yet another example of Selma’s racist reality. “White people just don’t want no black up over them,” she told a visitor. “You know that.”

Not far away, John Henry, a white man who runs a fruit and vegetable stand, spat tobacco juice and declared: “They’re saying it’s (the school board decision) racial, but white people are the ones put him in there.”

The school battle has precipitated black anger over a lack of political and economic clout which has persisted over the decades.

Minnie Harrison, secretary at the Booker T. Washington Insurance Co., said: “We haven’t advanced too much from 1965. Whites haven’t changed; they’ve just been laying low for a while.”

White people see the situation differently. Many say the only lying low they’ve done has been hiding their identity when they travel.

Glynn Williams, a white man who was just a year old during the 1965 Selma march, recalled how, in his travels over the years, “people would ask me: ‘Where’re you from?’ I’d just say Montgomery. They’d say: ‘Oh, we hear you still have lynch mobs. Does that still go on?’ ”

Williams’ sister, Christy Williams, 21, said that attitude has made her feel that black people “were going to hate me.” Worn out by the resurgence of obvious racial strain, she pleaded: “Let’s just start from now.”

But many black people here say they began the current protest because the now is as bad as the then. Educational inequities, inability to get business loans, and the residual effect of the old at-large voting system all are mentioned as evidence of wrongs by the white power structure.

“When I demonstrated in the ‘60s, I didn’t think I’d have to do that again,” said Jonah Posey, the 46-year-old manager of the Booker T. Washington Insurance Co. “I don’t want my kids to have to do the same thing.”

The area’s depressed economy has aggravated the problem. The county’s 12.2% unemployment rate last year was more than double the nation’s 5.3% rate and far exceeded the state’s 7.1%. Last year’s median family income for the county was $20,100, compared with the national average of $32,400.

William Barnard, chairman of the history department at the University of Alabama, described Selma as a paradox: “both the ultimate achievement of the civil rights movement and an indicator of the limits of that movement.” He said there is an increasing “awareness that as significant as that struggle was, that still doesn’t deal with the economic and structural problems of rural areas like Selma.”

In the middle of the racial storm are two men--Smitherman and Roussell. Ironically, both may be on their way out. Smitherman said in an interview that he will not seek reelection when his seventh term expires in 1992. And Roussell, in a separate interview, said he is seeking another superintendent’s job elsewhere.

No one in this town symbolizes the target of black anger more than Smitherman, who has been mayor for 24 of the last 25 years.

Smitherman’s wood-paneled office, in a building within sight of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a history tour in pictures. On the wall, there’s Smitherman with George Wallace, over there he’s with Bob Hope. Here he is with Jesse Jackson in a newspaper clipping.

“Look, look--me and Jesse,” the mayor tells a visitor, pointing to a picture from the 1988 Democratic convention, a happier time than now.

These days he is forced to defend his past as if it were yesterday. Yes, he was a segregationist. “You had to be a segregationist to run,” but “we’ve moderated, and all that’s behind us.”

Smitherman in recent years has worked hard to cultivate a new image as pragmatist, preaching accommodation and praising Selma for racial progress. Forty percent black fire department, 30% black police department, he said, ticking off racial statistics.

New Image Tarnished

The new image was fine until the Roussell dispute. He does acknowledge wanting Roussell to abide by the school board’s decision to get rid of him, declaring “a contract is a contract. Normally, people abide by a contract.”

As for the black protesters, Smitherman dismissed them as opportunists who are using him as a “straw man” to whip up enthusiasm among black voters.

The mayor, who said that at age 60, he is “tired” and “worn out,” portrayed himself as caught between the two races here. Black protesters march just a few feet from his office. At the same time, Smitherman said, “I get white pressure on me,” adding that “it’s vital you have white support of that (school) system.”

Around the corner, at Roussell’s office, no pictures are on the wall, no plaques--only the nails that held them. The superintendent hastily removed most of his belongings when the board tried last month to fire him immediately.

He came to the 11-school, 6,000-student system, which is 70% black, in 1987 from New Orleans, where he had failed to win the superintendent’s job. He said he found “great disparity” between instructional materials provided black and white students here, asserting that he set about bringing equality to all and dismantling a “leveling” system that unfairly grouped black and poor white children in slow-learner classes.

Roussell disputes the board’s evaluation of his performance, saying that “any black leaders who are assertive (are called) abrasive.”