From Selma to Spokane: Local pastor remembers eventful trip to Alabama with Rev. Jackson

In March 1965, James Burford and Jesse Jackson caravaned together from Chicago south to Selma, Alabama.

With 10 others from the Chicago Theological Seminary, Jackson safely sped his rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair the 700 miles. Burford followed in a Volkswagen bus full of students. They stopped in Kentucky and had a white student move into the driver’s seat, putting Jackson in the backseat, to lessen the odds of getting pulled over by police.

Once in Selma, Jackson, Burford and the rest of the group assembled with hundreds of others at Brown Chapel and marched for change, a block at a time. Since it was spring and warm in Alabama, Burford elected to sleep outside. Jackson, an excellent orator and passionate 23-year-old, quickly drew the attention of and stayed with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , which included Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We might walk a block at most,” Burford said. “Then we were stopped by the police, by the Alabama Highway Patrol, I think it was … We’d sing songs, and Martin Luther King would preach, and we did that kind of thing for a couple of days, only walking a very short distance. Finally, the authorities let the group walk into town. We were in the Black neighborhood, which was across the river from the town of Selma. So we were (eventually) allowed to walk across the Edmund Pettus bridge into town. When we’d kind of done that, we were all done.”

Burford said there was always a concern that violence would break out between authorities and the protesters. Just a week before, on March 7, highway patrolmen and county posse charged a group of 600 protesters, beat them with batons and sprayed them with tear gas . That day became known as Bloody Sunday. Jackson and Burford came down from Chicago, as did hundreds of others, in response to that event.

Today, Burford, a resident of Spokane since 1988 and pastor for numerous churches in the area, fondly recalls the time he went with Jackson down to Selma as a moment he’ll never forget. Jackson died Tuesday at the age of 84.

“For me, I still can’t see, old or new, a Volkswagen van without remembering that trip,” Burford said.

After achieving their goal of crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge, Burford and the nine others belonging to the Chicago Theological Seminary returned to Chicago for an important reason: It was finals week. But Jackson stayed in Selma for an even more important reason.

On March 21, thousands of protesters marched along the 54-mile highway from Selma to Montgomery to demand their constitutional right to vote. Less than five months later, their efforts were rewarded with the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

From that time on, Jackson became a protege of King and was anointed head of SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket upon his return to Chicago. Operation Breadbasket was an organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities across the country.

Having grown up a white kid in California, Burford said he knew little of racism and the burgeoning civil rights movement – at least until he moved.

“We were aware of what was going on, but it didn’t seem to be going on right around where we were,” Burford said.

Upon arriving in Chicago, he immediately noticed how the neighborhoods were divided between White and Black. He became educated and started to pay attention to issues that affected his peers – not just racial injustices, but economic too.

When Burford, 84, read Tuesday morning that Jackson had died from a rare degenerative condition, all he could do was shake his head. Another influential person who championed important causes was dead, Burford said. He saw Jackson as someone to emulate and a crucial reminder to get involved and stay involved in issues that afflict the nation.

In 1989, fresh off suffering another loss in the Democratic presidential primary, Jackson visited Spokane. Burford and his wife had been living in the city for a year at the time and jumped at the opportunity to hear Jackson speak .

On Feb. 16, 1989, a Spokesman-Review article said, “Jackson spotted Burford near the front of the hotel rally crowd and invited him up on stage.”

After the event, Burford and his wife went back to Jackson’s hotel room and visited “outside of the public eye.” The two former students reconnected and caught up .

“I probably was a little surprised that, after all the different people and the millions of people that he would have seen and dealt with over the years, that he would remember somebody from seminary days, in Spokane, of all places,” Burford said.

While Jackson’s message and character had a lasting impact on Burford, he’s not the only one who remembers Jackson as a visionary.

Walter Kendricks, the current pastor of the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in northwest Spokane, was 12 years old when King was assassinated in 1968. He remembers how Jackson was famously at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis when King died. Kendricks praised Jackson for starting the People United to Save Humanity and Rainbow Coalition, which eventually merged into a single entity in 1996.

“I really admired him for having the courage during those times to run for president (in 1984 and 1988),” Kendricks said. “Jesse was one of my heroes. He’s a very decent man. Though I never got a chance to meet him personally, it appears to me that he had a big heart for the people, and obviously, by being a reverend, he loved God.”

Kendricks, 69, had a 35-year career with United Airlines but was called to become a pastor in 2012. He was drawn to Spokane because he said it’s where God called him to serve. He said Jackson was a man who stood for what he believed in, and what he believed in was the truth. Kendricks said the impact of Jackson, the civil rights movement and organizations like PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition can be summed up in three words found in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution: “We the People.”

“It was people coming together with a common cause, recognizing everyone else’s humanity, joining together to make a change,” Kendricks said. “And that (we the people) says it all.”

Right around the time that Burford and Jackson reconnected, in February 1989, a group of white supremacists led by Richard Butler, head of the Aryan Nations, planned a march in Coeur d’Alene. Initially, Jackson was against a counterprotest, because he believed it would add fuel to the parade of skinheads. But as the date of the Aryan Nations protest neared, Jackson changed his mind after gathering more information about racial violence in the Northwest and consulting with local leaders of the Rainbow Coalition. He called for counterprotesters to exercise their First Amendment right, just on the other side of town, away from any potential racist antagonists.

“As we continue as a nation to break through historic barriers of race and religion by finding common ground,” Jackson said in a 1989 Spokesman-Review article, “it is important to speak out against forces who seek to divide us by sowing race hatred and white supremacy.”