Voza Rivers / New Heritage Theatre Group and the Loire Valley Theatre Festival, are pleased to invite you to join the gala celebration of Lynda Blackmon Lowery, Sunday, March 21st at 6pm.
Please join us for our special event, Honoring Lynda Blackmon Lowery's birthday, and the anniversary of the day, 56 years ago, when she set out on the historic voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, across the Edumud Pettus Bridge. She was the youngest of the official participants who walked the whole 54 miles.
Two weeks earlier, Lynda, who was only 14 years old, received 37 stitches on her face and the back of her head after being beaten unconscious by Dallas County Sheriff's Deputies, yet she was determined to finish what she and her friends and neighbors from the George Washington Carver Homes in Selma had started -- to convince the Governor of Alabama, the President of the United States, and the US Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that guaranteed African Americans the right to vote.
Lynda was inspired to join the movement by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at Brown Chapel AME Church, across the street from the housing project where she lived. Lynda remembers Dr. King's telling the congregation that you could convince anyone to do anything with "Steady, Loving, Confrontation." These words became her mission, both as a young activist being led by John Lewis and Amelia Boynton and others, and as a lifelong crusader for better healthcare for women.
