Here's another Montgomery Advertiser story from Sunday, April 21, 2002, reporting from Selma:
FREEDOM WRITERS' GO TO SELMA
BY TODD KLEFFMAN Montgomery Advertiser
SELMA As a busload of old United Press International correspondents pulled out of the parking lot Saturday, Elvin Stanton stood up to make a clever announcement.
³I guess you could call this the Freedom Writers bus tour,² Stanton said, getting laughs from his former colleagues.
Perhaps one had to be there to appreciate Stantonıs play on words. And these guys were there:
When the Freedom Riders stormed through Alabama. When police flailed away at marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When Gov. George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door in defiance of integration. When bombs ripped Birmingham apart. When the Klan breathed fire and hate.
They were there wherever a civil rights story erupted in the South. They reported what they saw, and their accounts were sent around the world by the UPI wire service.
On Saturday, the veteran correspondents were treated like royalty. Sheriffs escorted their bus as it traveled from Montgomery through Lowndes and Dallas counties to Selma. Reporters were interviewing them, recording their thoughts for posterity. Politicians fawned over them. Gov. Don Siegelman and Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright were up at 8 a.m. to welcome them back to town with glowing praise for their efforts in changing the state and the city for the better.
³It was ironic that they had the governor and mayor greet us this morning,² said John Lynch, who covered Bloody Sunday in Selma, among other major stories of the day. ³I know that wouldnıt have happened 37 or 38 years ago.²
When the bus arrived in Selma, the group visited the National Voting Rights Museum, where officials asked them to fill out cards for the ³I Was There Wall² exhibit with the names and comments of those who were part of the struggle to register voters in Dallas County.
Lawrence Higgins, former coach at all-black R.B. Hudson High School, said he marched on Bloody Sunday and in other demonstrations, including one staged by teachers.
³I have a picture of myself that was taken by a UPI photographer and went out all over the world,² Higgins said. ³Iıd like to thank you for making me a world-famous teacher.²
Leon Daniel, who worked for UPI for 37 years and covered Vietnam and the revolution in Iran among other important stories, said he places his work from Selma at the top of his achievements.
³Bloody Sunday was the best story,² said Daniel, who was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when police attacked marchers March 7, 1965, at the outset of their planned trek to Montgomery.
³Good and evil were so clearly defined. The black hats were really black and the white hats were really white. And it had a happy ending. Bloody Sunday spurred the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.²
State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, greeted the guests at the museum and thanked them for their work.
³They played a crucial role as vessels for the news to flow through. Had they not been there, what happened would not have reached out into the world,² Sander said. ³It was dangerous for them. Oppressors always want to black out communication, so they were targets for violence themselves. You had to have a special courage to take the risks they assumed. Itıs fair to say reporters were heroes, too.²
The reporters themselves said they didnıt feel especially heroic and they didnıt sense that the events they were covering were of such historic significance until after they had time to look back and reflect years later.