SELMA, Ala. (CN) — Barbara Walter was at her home of four years, a brick ranch style at 1505 Vine St., peeking out of her living room window, watching the wind blow leaves around as a storm approached on the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 12. Her husband David died in December 2021 and Barbara was thinking about him as Bella, her full-blooded German Shepherd, expressed unease.
“She was whining and pacing … like she knew something bad was about to happen,” Walter recalled in an interview last week.
As the wind increased, a gust toppled a large pecan tree on the intersection of Minter Avenue.
“I thought I would go outside and have a look, but as soon as I opened the door, I was thrown back inside the den,” Walter said. “Bella was screaming so I grabbed her and we huddled next to the couch, praying and crying.”
The dog was being so vocal, Walter joked that she was leading the prayer. Debris that had been swirling outside was now inside her house and within moments Walter heard another crash. This time, a neighbor’s pecan tree landed on her roof.
“I don’t have any large trees in my yard so I thought we were safe,” she reckoned. “Then that one came down and put holes in the kitchen and the den … but it also probably kept the roof from flying off.”
Across Vine Street, a neighbor she only knows as Mr. Troy was not as fortunate. His roof was completely torn off by the EF-2 tornado that swept through Selma, damaging some 6,000 properties across Dallas County.
Houses and apartments were destroyed throughout Walter’s neighborhood, which is still recovering as the community prepares for the annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, a commemoration of the 58th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when mostly Black voting rights activists were beaten by state law enforcement agents as they began a march to Montgomery across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Last week, the White House announced President Joe Biden would attend the bridge crossing ceremony on Sunday. It won’t be his first official visit to town — he attended the 2013 event as vice president and the 2020 ceremonies as a presidential candidate — but the city is different this time, with arguably more suffering than Bloody Sunday.
“Selma hasn’t changed much since 1965. It’s always going to have poor people and rich people,” said Louretta Wimberly, a 90-year-old native and retired teacher who recalls the Jim Crow era vividly, even though she was out of state for Bloody Sunday. “It’s always going to have Black communities and white communities. The thing is people just need to learn to live together and work together."
Wimberly was sitting in a community center Feb. 23 where her former student, Democratic Congresswoman Terri Sewell, had organized a storm recovery resource fair. Her own home was not affected, but Wimberly was seeking assistance for her church, the First Baptist Church of Selma, which lost windows and other architectural features in the storm.
“I think everyone is doing their best to clean up and rebuild, but it will be a shame if they don’t build it better than it was, if it just goes back to what it was before the tornado,” Wimberly said, noting most of the city’s streets, storm water and sewer systems are worn, dysfunctional or substandard.
Dallas County is nearly 70% Black, with a median household income of just $23,370 in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, well below the national average of $67,521. The unemployment rate of 5.3% in December 2022 was three points above the state unemployment rate and two points above the national unemployment rate.
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