title: Black in Selma: The Uncommon Life of J.L. Chestnut, Jr.
author:  J. L. Chestnut 
description: The infamous 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., put that sleepy segregated town into the national spotlight. An important, though lesser-known, figure in those events was J.L. Chestnut--a fiery, hometown, Howard University-trained lawyer who through intelligence, force of will, and (in many cases) luck managed to change the town's laws and attitudes. <i>Black in Selma</i>, his unpretentious autobiography cowritten by Philadelphia <i>Inquirer</i> reporter Julia Cass, recalls Chestnut's lifelong battles with the brutal segregation enforced by whites, as well as underachievement, classism, miseducation, and Afro-pessimism among local blacks. Throughout the book, Chestnut reveals in ribald and revolutionary tones the complexities and contradictions of simultaneously working with the law and outside it, including a riveting moment alongside future congressman John Lewis as they stood eyeball-to-eyeball with a local sheriff who blocked their enteric into a court building. His encounters with activist organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC, and SNCC further illuminate the philosophical intersections and collisions between various factions of the civil rights movement. Overall, J.L. Chestnut's story is about how a people accustomed to injustice grew to fight for freedom with their lives. "After centuries of ducking and dodging," he writes, "black people have come out of the closet--and they liked the air." <i>--Eugene Holley Jr.</i>
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  # Criss-cross
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  SELMA WHEELOCK sat in her accustomed place beside a front window. She swayed
  gently in her hair-cloth rocker. She leaned her head back and sidewise, and
  gazed out at the prospect with an expression almost absurdly tragic. Tragedy
  did not sit comfortably upon those mild features in that long, sweet face,
  softly curtained with folds of thin, blond hair which had not turned gray,
  although Selma was almost an old woman. However, tragedy, hawk-like,
  unswerving, did look from Selma's blue eyes. She might, from her expression,
  have been gazing at some scene of horror instead of at her own tidy, square
  front yard with its gravel walk bordered with leafless shrubs, with a leafless
  cherry-tree standing stark upon one side, and a leafless horse-chestnut on the
  other. Beyond the front yard with its prim fence was 