52nd City

"I Am Here Today Because Yesterday I Voted in St. Louis."

If you are near a television set at noon on February 18, turn on Channel 9. They're screening a documentary produced by Alabama Public Television, "Sisters of Selma: Witness for Change." The film follows the story of a group of St. Louis nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, who went to Selma, Alabama a few days after Bloody Sunday and marched in the streets in opposition to the racist voting laws there. They marched despite a ban on protests; just a few days before they arrived, a Unitarian Minister had been beaten by segregationists.

Last year I was lucky enough to talk to two of the sisters that had been in the march. One of the sisters told me that the nuns were in front and they marched along with people who still had bandaged heads and teeth missing, and that policemen on horseback rode right up to them with billy clubs at the ready, and that she didn't doubt they would have used them if they'd marched much further. She also mentioned that Sister Mary Antona Ebo, an African-American nun in the Sisters of St. Joseph order, was accused of being "dressed up" in clerical clothing as a stunt. When the nuns flew back home, they landed at the airport to find media from all over the world waiting for them; they appeared on KMOX for two hours, which was extended to 4 because the calls kept pouring in. With the exception of one or two calls, people said to them: "I wish I had done what you have just done." But still, as a precaution, when they took a break, they were taken home in a police car - with the sirens off - to avoid attracting attention.

What broke my heart (even though the way she phrased it cracked me up) was that one of the nuns added, "If someone had told me that 40 years later we would have made so little progress, I would have told you that you were smoking pot!"

Whether or not it inspires you to take up a cause (Sister Antona Ebo, who went on to found the National Black Sisters' Conference, is still an activist at the age of 80; she says she worries these days about "the loss of civil liberties, the erosion of affirmative action and the culture of violence") it's still a powerful documentary that spotlights an amazing piece of St. Louis history.