Design Rationale

There are times when we need to stop contemplate and re-think about “how did we get here?”. The questions that do plague us today have been no different from the one that were plaguing various parts of the world in the recent past. I walked 51 miles in the state of Alabama (USA), to learn about the civil rights movement and its implications for Indian subcontinent.

I would like to draw attention to three aspects of the USA that have been less frequently discussed in the past. The first being, the USA has had a racial history, the nation had active form of slave & bondage labour up until 1861, it was revoked by Abraham Lincoln with the declaration of “emancipation proclamation”(1863). [2nd] The people who had bonded labours circumvented the rules to still found ways to segregate the people based on the colour of their skin, specifically in the southern states of the USA. The last being the ability of the weak to rise-up non-violently and challenge these norms and fight against thes injustices and speak truth to power and change their minds and hearts with sheer soul force.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia and he was a Doctorate in Theology and Philosophy, he was also a pastor in various churches in Montgomery and Atlanta during his lifetime. He also visited India in 1959 to learn more about “Satyagraha” and Gandhi.

Before coming to India Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was famous non-violent revolutionary in the US. This is the story of my journey walking in the foot steps of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Sela to Montgomery.

I reached Sema through a kind persons charity, he took me from Tuscaloosa Alabama, to Selma in his car and dropped me at the Brown Chappel in Selma and thus stared my education. There were two attempts prior to this walk, the first one was conducted on Sunday on 7th March 1965, and it was conducted in the absence of many leaders, and the state police force clubbed the revolutionaries. The second march was conducted by Dr. King on Tuesday, but on the assurance from justice department the revolutionaries turned around from the Edmund Pettus Bridge.