Selma Alabama went from a White power structure in 1965 to a black power structure in 2015, which is to say blacks got what they wanted. Now let’s see if the new Sonic will stay open.
It’s a black city. As the Washington Post notes about 80 percent black Selma in 2015, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new Sonic restaurant is cause for celebration in a city where the Visible Black Hand of Economic has otherwise chased away commercial interests:
..a ribbon-cutting at the local Sonic drive-up restaurant. In the past few months, Selma has lost two of its biggest department stores: J.C. Penney and Goody’s. The restaurant event offered a rare bit of good economic news.
“Technically it’s more of a reopening than an opening,” KimbroughBallard said. “The place looked terrible. Thank God Sonic saw fit to invest thousands of dollars in it instead of picking up and leaving.” The restaurant was festooned with balloons and a big red ribbon.
Today, almost all the top elected officials in Selma and surrounding Dallas County are black. Ballard, who is white, stood next to Mayor George Evans, who was elected in 2008 as the second black mayor in Selma’s history. Also in the ribbon-cutting line was Benny Lee Tucker, a City Council member and one of the heroes of the Bloody Sunday march. The mayor snipped the ribbon, and a Sonic regional marketing executive handed out raspberry and lime sodas.
It’s a black city, dominated by black elected officials and a government seemingly run for black people, of the black people, and by black people. Yet businesses continue to flee across the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge, which attracts a few out-of-towners every March to walk across it like an American version of Hajj.
A holy pilgrimage to bathe in the eternal waters of white guilt pumped continuously by images of “Bloody Sunday” from Selma in 1965…
One day those waters will stop flowing.
Perhaps it will be the day when the celebrated Sonic closes, another business fleeing 80 percent Selma…
Or, perhaps one day it will become illegal for a business to close up shop in 80 percent
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