Actor Danny Glover attends the Unity Day celebration in Selma

From the West Alabama Newsroom –

In 1963, students at RB Hudson High School in Selma launched a nonviolent march and demonstration in response to the 16th Street Church bombing.

The 60th anniversary of those events was celebrated Friday in Selma.

Student demonstrators were honored at the Unity Day celebrations – and there was also a reenactment of the non-violent student march.

Renowned actor and film producer Danny Glover attended the celebration. He spoke at a breakfast program at RB Hudson. He told the audience, “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”

“That’s why I’m here – to celebrate this 60th anniversary,” Glover said.

“That’s not exactly a short amount of time. It’s a great time, a generation. Movements have taken place and continued – bringing change, extraordinary change, to the world and to this country.”

After learning of the terrorist attack at Birmingham’s 16th Street Church that killed four young black girls, Hudson High students organized a nonviolent march and then staged the city’s first-ever demonstration.

Civil rights attorney and Hudson graduate Charles Bonner was one of the student leaders.

“The children were killed on September 15, a Sunday. Monday morning we stood at that door at Hudson High and told all the kids not to go to class,” Bonner said.

“We decided we would have a demonstration at Carter’s Drug Store. That was the very first demonstration, the very first blood, the beginning of the movement that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965.”

The celebration also included a workshop on nonviolence at the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church.