Activist Olsen recalls beating by Klan in Selma

September 27, 2015 at 12:09a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Anyone who witnesses an injustice or unkind act –regardless of how serious or far-reaching – can make a world of difference simply by taking corrective action.

That seemingly straightforward concept carries extra meaning, however, when it comes from the Rev. Clark Olsen.

“I keep saying to people, “Whenever you see something that’s wrong – whether it’s kids on the playground saying nasty things to each other, or politicians trying to rewrite voting laws or other injustices – decide to say something or do something,” the Rev. Mr. Olsen told close to 60 people who attended his presentation Saturday at Tyler Mahoning Valley History Center, 325 W. Federal St., downtown.

Sponsoring the Unitarian minister’s presentation was Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past.

During his one-hour talk, the Asheville, N.C., man recalled his role during the civil-rights movement when he traveled to Selma, Ala., a few days after state troopers attacked nonviolent marchers March 7, 1965, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The event, known as “Bloody Sunday,” occurred as the crowd was preparing to march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery to bring attention to the government’s denial of voting rights. Seventeen people’s injuries were serious enough to require hospitalization, though no one was killed.

After the attack, Mr. Olsen heard on the radio Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal for clergy and others of goodwill to come to the battered city to help. At first he was reluctant, but Mr. Olsen, whose parents were active on behalf of a variety of social issues, decided to heed the call, he said.

When Mr. Olsen reached the city two days later, a federal injunction was in place forbidding such a march, so King opted to lead about 2,000 marchers across most of the bridge, even though many of the same state troopers who had taken part in the “Bloody Sunday” attack again lined up on the other side. This time, King instructed everyone to kneel in prayer and turn back, a day known as “Turnaround Tuesday.”

That evening, after Mr. Olsen and the Revs. Orloff Miller and James J. Reeb had dinner at a local restaurant, a group of Klansmen attacked the three men and struck the Rev. Mr. Reeb in the head with a club shortly after the Unitarian ministers had decided to take a shorter route back to nearby Brown Chapel AME Church, he continued.

“We whispered to each other, ‘Just keep walking, just keep walking,’” Mr. Olsen recalled, adding that Mr. Reeb died about 30 hours later in a Birmingham, Ala., hospital from his injuries.

Mr. Olsen, who grew up in Ottawa Hills, Ohio, and attended Oberlin College and Harvard Divinity School, also vividly detailed the terror he felt en route to the hospital in which their ambulance had a flat tire and a radio that didn’t work. A car carrying four white men followed as they turned back toward Selma to await a second ambulance, he recalled.

The death of Mr. Reeb, at 38, made national news, and thousands of people mourned his death. The killing also was a major catalyst that led to President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mr. Olsen noted, adding that an all-white jury acquitted the three defendants.

Nevertheless, Mr. Olsen has refused to remain bitter and instead uses his experiences of being at the crossroads of history as opportunities to encourage his audiences to speak out against injustices, regardless of how large or small.

Before his presentation, Mr. Olsen showed a film his daughter, Marika Olsen, produced in the late 1990s when she worked for CNN. It chronicles his reactions to having returned to Selma more than 30 years after Mr. Reeb’s death and the three men’s acquittals.

Mr. Olsen has two more local speaking engagements, one each at 11 a.m. today and Monday.