Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb answered Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to Selma after the violent shutdown of voting rights protests. While there, Reeb was assaulted by white segregationists and died of head injuries two days later on March 11, 1965. In April, four men were indicted in Dallas County, Alabama for Reeb’s murder; three were acquitted by an all-white jury that December. The fourth man fled to Mississippi and was not returned by the state authorities for trial.
On this the anniversary of his death, we should remember James Reeb’s story.