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The Voice of North Grenville
Vol. 3, No. 19
May 13, 2015
Witnesses to history meet after fifty years
The North Grenville Times is Locally Owned and Operated
Peter Laux and Lynn Ball meet at the Selma 1965 Exhibit at Canal Gallery in Merrickville by David Shanahan It was a long and winding road that brought two men from an historic civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to a gallery in Merrrickville, Ontario, in 2015. In March, 1965, Peter Laux was 19 years old, in his second year of studies at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York when he heard about the Bloody Sunday attack, when the Alabama State Police faced a few hundred silent marchers on the road from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, seeking to implement their constitutional right to vote. The police, and some civilian vigilantes on horseback, attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas, beating people unconscious. Eight
people had to be taken to hospital. Martin Luther King asked the faith community around the US to travel to Selma to complete the march to Montgomery, and Peter Laux was one of thirty-three students from Canisius who took a bus south. Lynn Ball was another young man drawn to Selma that day. As a freelance photographer, he had already covered important events and was developing a “nose” for sensing the right place to be with his camera. “I knew of the civil unrest in the southern states, and when Martin Luther King Jr. announced he would lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, I was in. I knew it would be an historic event.” Taking time off work, Lynn drove for twenty-
five hours non-stop to get to Selma, and, over the next three days, caught on film some of the most powerful images of that historic march. One of those photographs was of the students from Canisius College, with Peter Laux among them, gathered behind their banner which read: “Canisius College, Buffalo New York Marches for Freedom”. Peter had been involved in civil rights activities in Buffalo, but he says the students who went to Selma were shocked by the depth of feeling they encountered there. A large number of white residents of Selma were also out protesting, furious that people were coming to town to support the civil rights movement. Peter remembers: “I don’t think we realised the
Photo by Ted Hitsman magnitude of the animosity against people coming from outside”. Although they were in a large group and felt relatively safe, protected as they were by armed troops lining the route of the march, Peter believes “it could have been a bloodbath”. Lynn agrees. There was no problem with the police, but the white population yelled and waved signs at the “outsiders”, calling them “agitators”, and shouting “Go home Yankee” at Lynn as he photographed them. In fact, when he got back to Toronto, Lynn couldn’t get many of his pictures published and he thinks it was because of what was written on the signs held by the anticontinued on page 2
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