Densho Digital Archive - Mary Blocher Smeltzer Interview (denshovh-smary-01-0014)

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: In the early '60s, Ralph got involved in another major issue, the Civil Rights movement, particularly Selma, Alabama.

MS: Yeah, right. And I guess that's when we were living in Elgin.

RP: Oh, you were in Elgin?

MS: I think we lived there for... I think we were there eighteen years, something like that. And, yeah, he... actually, he went down there. He was working for the Brethren Service Commission, and he was doing social justice stuff. And so he traveled around down in the South to see what kind of projects the Brethren Service Committee ought to be doing. Well, in Selma, I think some of them got out of work because I think they registered to vote or something, and so they lost their jobs, something like that. And so I know Ralph would go by Atlanta and he'd talk to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the ones that I guess Martin Luther King was working with. And he'd go over to Selma and he'd tell 'em what the blacks were going to do (to protest). And then he'd tell the white people what they could do if they didn't want 'em to come (and demonstrate). But they never could get the blacks and the whites and in the same room to talk. And Ralph tried to, but he couldn't. And so, you know, then they had the big march, wasn't it, through Selma to Montgomery or something. And some people got killed and stuff. But Ralph, when he was down there, he never took sides, he was a middle, mediator-like. And he, I think he stayed with a couple usually when he went down there. I don't know if he could have stayed in a hotel or not. But there were certain people down there that he, he knew, 'cause I went to Selma with him afterwards, and I met a couple of these families. But he picked out Selma to work in before Martin Luther King started there. But I think they sent sewing machines, too, someplace down there in Selma, maybe, and the women could make things and sell 'em, and make a living, kind of. I can't recall all those details either, anymore.