Selma, 1965

“Selma, 1965” is by Gloria Larry House—a writer, social justice activist, and recipient of the 2019 Kresge Eminent Artist award, a prestigious award given each year to an artist who has displayed exceptional artistic talent and who has made lifetime contributions to the cultural community of Detroit. House, who moved to Detroit in 1967, has unwaveringly supported the local community through her activism, poetry, and as a professor at various local universities. As a civil rights and social justice activist, House speaks up for when inequity is evident. In Detroit, she protested police brutality, housing foreclosures and water shutoffs, and other inequalities. Her poetry is steeped in and inspired by the causes she supports, including the Free Speech Movement (which she joined at the University of California, Berkeley), the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement in the deep South (including Selma, Alabama), and the opposition to the Vietnam War.

House, who has been noted as being “on the forefront of a generation that changed America in the ’60s” (Christian, Nichole. A Life Speaks. 2019. The Kresge Foundation.) is not one to stand down. “Selma, 1965” is an example of House’s determination and belief in equal rights. A poem that documents and comments on the series of marches that occurred in the spring of 1965 between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, House includes mentions of slavery, poverty, and injustice to recreate the scene of the marchers departing from Selma. Along with many other poems about this era, “Selma, 1965” functions as a time capsule capturing an iconic historical moment—the moment Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of marchers on a five-day, 54-mile march in the name of equal voting rights. House’s poems are part-art, part-cultural history, documenting the injustices Black Americans faced and continue to face today.

Poet Biography

Gloria Larry House (1941- ) is a poet, human rights activist, essayist, and educator. She was born in Tampa, Florida and grew up abroad with her mother and stepfather, who was in the US Airforce. Discovering poetry very young, House began writing poems as a child and was inspired by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” She studied French as a teenager and, in 1960 when she was 20, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in French Studies. House intended to pursue a career in international relations, but during a year-long study in Paris, she met African students who were political activists, and was inspired by their revolutionary message.

House returned to Berkeley to start a master’s degree in comparative literature. While there, she became involved with the Free Speech Movement—a 1960s campus movement that eventually garnered national attention. This movement was rooted in peace protests like boycotts, and ultimately demanded students be allowed to exercise their political views and rights. In 1965, House left Berkeley to join the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement. She taught at Freedom School in Selma, Alabama, which was set up by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). House supported SNCC for many years and did not complete her master’s thesis until 1969.

In 1967, House moved to Detroit, Michigan. She taught French and composition at a local high school and worked for the Detroit Free Press as a copy editor. Eventually, House received her PhD in American Culture and History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and began her career as a professor at Wayne State University. While teaching, House continued her political activism and in 1996, she founded the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. She’s received many awards for her work in social justice, including the Lifetime Civil Rights Activist Award from the Michigan Coalition of Human Rights.

House, who identifies more as an activist-artist than as a poet, believes the poet’s function is more than writing and sending it out into the world. Taken from Nubia Kai’s book Kuma Malinke Historiography on West African cultures, House finds the following definition of “poet” a better match to her own role: “In traditional African societies, the poet has so many functions—responding to the concerns of the community. I realized I belong to that tradition. I have been living that way of being a poet” (“Gloria House – poet, essayist, human rights activist, and lifelong educator – named Kresge Eminent Artist for 2019.” College For Creative Studies.).

House has written four collections of poetry—Blood River (1983), Rainrituals (1989), Shrines (2003), and Medicine (2017)—all of which have been published under her chosen African name Aneb Kgositsile. In 2019, House was named the Kresge Eminent Artist; this award recognizes professional achievements in art, the artist’s contributions to their cultural community, and their dedication to Detroit. House retired from teaching at Wayne State University in 1998, and from UM-Dearborn in 2014. Currently, she works as a co-editor of Riverwise quarterly magazine and as a senior editor at Broadside Lotus Press.

Poem Text

House, Gloria Larry. “Selma, 1965.” 1965. Civil Rights Movement Archive.

Summary

Recounting protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in March of 1965, “Selma, 1965” begins with the emergence of the civil rights marchers described as “ghosts” (Line 1). The speaker sets the scene of the marchers: “in Selma / in the summer so hot” (Lines 2-3). Children appear, singing in the streets following a warm summer rain. They sing an anti-slavery song: “Before I’d be a slave, / I’d be buried in my grave…” (Lines 6-7). The speaker then notes their own location of observation (“From the freedom school window / we watched them come” [Lines 9-10]) and their attention returns to the marchers introduced in Line 1.

The marchers cross “the lawns of the housing projects” (Line 10). In describing their approach, the speaker highlights the poverty of Selma, indicated by the marchers walking “down the rain-rutted dirt roads” (Line 11) and “through the puddles waiting cool for bare feet” (Line 12). The speaker includes a parenthetical aside in Lines 13-14 where they use an imperative sentence to direct action.

The last section of the poem closely examines the marchers, documenting their “plaits caught at odd angles” (Line 16) and how they’re “standing indignantly” (Line 17). They’re represented as “tattered” (Line 15) and with “grey knees poking through denim frames” (Line 19). These descriptors establish their ghost-like appearance and allude to both slavery and poverty.

The poem concludes with the marchers setting out on their march “Dancing the whole trip” (Line 20). They are making history, “performing their historic drama” (Line 21), which is set against the scene of injustice, represented by the “set of their / wet brick project homes” (Lines 22-23).