Phil Oramous has been on my mind lately. A Louisiana Cajun, his family went back to an ancestor who helped lay out New Orleans. We worked together at the Associated Press in Atlanta then Birmingham. I am grateful to Phil for his friendship, teaching me about New Orleans — his family would vacation there and I would come down on my off days — and for inside information on the Selma to Montgomery march.
It was the third march that made it, the first two ending in violence; the second known as Bloody Sunday is where John Lewis and others were attacked and badly injured. Gov. George Wallace refused to offer protection. On March 21, 1965, the third attempt commenced. President Lyndon Johnson put 1,900 Alabama National Guardsmen under federal command in addition to FBI and federal marshals.
It’s 54 miles, they averaged about 10 miles a day. Several people who would be my colleagues, Rex Thomas of the Montgomery AP office and Phil, then based in Atlanta, walked every mile.
There are some really great inside stories I may share some day.
When the AP transferred me to Seattle, on my last day in Birmingham Phil shook my hand and said “Good Luck.” I was crest fallen, we had been so close in two different operations. We had history. After I got to Seattle a letter arrived from Phil. It said, “I hope you can forgive my abrupt departure, I never was any good at goodbyes.”
I share this because some have asked me if I will be at any of the John Lewis memorials. The answer is no.
When things have settled down, I will go to the cemetery, have a few words for my friend of 40 years, and maybe a prayer and assure him we won’t give up the good fight for equality and justice. We got this.
Then I’ll drive to John Lewis Plaza in Atlanta, a part of Freedom Park where we fought the powers that be to keep a destructive road from tearing beautiful communities apart. We killed the road. The road land became the park.
I was never any good at goodbyes either.
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