Marie Foster, 85; Helped Spur Voting Rights Act With ’65 Protest Marches

Marie Foster, a civil rights activist who helped launch the Selma, Ala., voting rights movement and was brutally beaten by state troopers in an infamous attack during a 1965 march to Montgomery, has died. She was 85.

Foster entered a Selma hospital Friday and died Saturday. The cause of death was not released.

Close friends and colleagues of Foster noted that although she was in failing health, she continued to be an active participant in social welfare issues in Selma and the state. For example, Foster campaigned vigorously in support of Gov. Bob Riley’s $1.2-billion tax package, which was rejected Tuesday by state voters.

“Even in her old age, she could still outwork the young activists of today,” said Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. “The death of Marie Foster leaves an irreplaceable void within our community.”

Foster also was one of the founders of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma and actively worked on exhibitions reflecting the history of the voting rights struggle.

But it was the events of March 7, 1965, that secured Foster’s place in the history of the civil rights movement.

On that day, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” Foster was among the hundreds of voting rights marchers who were beaten and turned back by sheriff’s deputies and state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The marchers had dared to defy Gov. George C. Wallace’s ban on any voter-registration protest marches from Selma to his offices in Montgomery.

“It was a trooper who hit me,” Foster later said. “I just lay on the pavement with my eyes closed. I didn’t move. I stood my ground.”

The beatings, which were shown on nationwide television news broadcasts and covered widely in the print media, turned the focus of the civil rights movement toward Selma.

Despite knees that were swollen from the beating, Foster took part 10 days later in the 54-mile trek to Montgomery led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

This time the marchers were protected by the National Guard, which had been federalized by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In its wake, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, removing obstacles set up by white segregationists to deny the ballot to many blacks.

The vest that Foster wore during the march was autographed by many leaders of the civil rights movement and is on display at the Voting Rights Museum.

Before the march, Foster took an active role in trying to register blacks in Selma to vote. She took aim at the tests that blacks were required to take to show their fitness to vote. She taught literacy and citizenship classes to those trying to register.

Foster, who was rejected eight times before she successfully registered to vote, got copies of old tests to use as study guides and launched her “citizenship classes.”

“We needed to give the people the motivation to go to the courthouse and get registered,” Foster wrote. “They had been deprived of their right for so long, it was not an easy transition to make. It was at these classes that we taught people how to get registered to vote and how to make their vote count.”

Born in rural Alabama, Foster was raised in Selma and lived there throughout her life. She married, dropped out of high school and bore three children. Widowed early in her life, she raised her children and returned to school to get her diploma. She later attended junior college and became a certified dental technician.

In an oral history for the Voting Rights Museum, she noted that she became involved in the civil rights movement because race relations in Selma were so bad.

“I had a vision that we could do something about the bias conditions in Selma, the state and someday the world.”

To that end, she continued her work to promote literacy in Selma throughout her life, colleagues said.

She built a small classroom on the property next to her home and conducted reading classes for underprivileged children in her neighborhood. She named the building for Coretta Scott King, widow of the civil rights leader.

Foster is survived by a son, a daughter and several grandchildren.

Funeral services are scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma.

The family suggests that memorial donations be made in her name to the Voting Rights Museum, 1012 Water Ave., Selma, AL 36702-2516