A symbolic retracing of historic footsteps

Bundled in winter coats, hats, and scarves Saturday, they marched, well, maybe strolled is a better word, through the streets of Coatesville to remind themselves, in a small and peaceful way, of the historic trio of marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

Those marches, in 1965, changed the course of the civil-rights movement. People around the nation saw images of brutal attacks on nonviolent African Americans crossing a bridge into Montgomery, trying to make it possible for blacks to register to vote.

"They beat them 600 folks almost to death," the Rev. Randall Harris told a group of about 30 marchers Saturday as they assembled in Coatesville's East End. The historically black neighborhood dates as far back as 1870 - before Coatesville's rise and fall as a steel-manufacturing center, and before the city's most recent spate of tragic headline-grabbing arsons two years ago.

Saturday's small march - less than a mile - was the first organized by the Minister's Alliance of Coatesville to celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., born Jan. 15, 1929.

King led the third march to Montgomery, a trek of 51 miles. On March 25, 1965, more than 25,000 people made their way to the steps of Alabama's Capitol to hear King speak.

"We don't have to go 51 miles today, praise the Lord," said Harris, pastor at Coatesville's Tabernacle Baptist Church. The group chuckled affably.

But, he said, he wanted the walk to make a point: "What's happening in my eyesight is that we talk about having a holiday, but we don't know why we have a holiday."

The marchers of 1965 paved the way for many freedoms, including the right to vote, that are now taken for granted. "When it comes time to vote," Harris said, "you should not sit on your dusty, crusty . . . . Every vote counts."

Coatesville's East End was settled by African Americans in 1870. By then, the first ironworks - the precursors to Lukens Steel - had been open for decades, according to a history being compiled for a state project.

By the time Coatesville became an industrial powerhouse in 1900, the community was well-established but segregated. Decades passed, but little changed.

Saturday's march, for many, was a march back in time - to remember Coatesville's place in history.

Its participants passed many landmarks, including several churches; the former Masonic hall, now a bikers club; and the former Clement Atkinson Hospital, founded by Whittier C. Atkinson, an African American doctor.

"I was born there," said Nannie A. Lambert, 82, "and so were my nine children and three grandchildren." The hospital is now an apartment building.

At the time of the Selma-Montgomery marches, brothers Calvin and Bill Culclasure were in their late teens, growing up in Coatesville. Now in their 60s, they still live in the city.

The route, only a few square blocks, did not pass the Ash Park playground and pool. That is where the white children swam. The brothers, being African American, swam in another pool.

"And we had to walk past their pool to go to our pool," Bill Culclasure recalled.

In 1960, four black college students ordered coffee at the all-white Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.

In the summer of 1963, the brothers Culclasure and some others decided to swim in the Ash Park pool. "We marched around that pool for four days," Bill Culclasure said.

"When we jumped in the pool, they jumped out," his brother recalled. "They were like fish."

Bill Culclasure said he was sitting at the pool's edge when one of the white boys dove over him, driving his knee into the back of Culclasure's head and pushing him into the pool.

"We ended up working together at Lukens," he said. "We laughed about it, because it had been so long ago. We had gotten over it."