Remembering James Reeb
His murder was national news in the civil rights era. Here’s what he means to me.
James Reeb was a white Unitarian minister who, in March of 1965, heeded Martin Luther King’s call for clergy nationwide to join him in Selma, Alabama. The night after turning on the TV news to watch the Bloody Sunday violence against civil rights marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge, Reeb told his children a bedtime story and got on a plane south from Boston.
He would never see his family again.
A day after arriving, Reeb was part of MLK’s second attempt at a nonviolent march across the bridge, the so-called Turnaround Tuesday. This time the marchers simply gathered, kneeled, prayed, and dispersed, avoiding violent confrontation.
That night after dinner, coming out of what was then Walker’s Cafe — a black-owned diner and one of the few restaurants that would serve blacks or their white supporters — Reeb and two fellow clergy were verbally accosted by several white men across the street.
The men followed and caught up to Reeb’s group a half-block up the street just before the Silver Moon Cafe.
