SMU Alumnus Shares His Never-Published Photos Of The Selma-to-Montgomery March In 1965

By Nancy George ’79
When SMU student Loy Williams  hurriedly packed his bag before climbing aboard a bus bound to join civil rights protesters in Montgomery, Alabama, he grabbed his Argus C3 camera. Long hours later, he loaded the sturdy camera with Kodachrome film and began snapping photos as he joined 25,000 others marching to the Alabama capitol.
The 22 images have never been published, says Williams, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from SMU in 1963 and a master’s degree in theology from the Perkins School of Theology in 1966. He is now a retired pastor living near Chicago in Geneva, Illinois. And he still has the Argus C3, a hand-me-down from his father.
>See more of Loy Williams’ images from Montgomery, March 25, 1965
Williams captured images of marchers in overcoats gathering on the overcast day and African-American children dressed in their Sunday best, waving as marchers passed their house on an unpaved road. As Williams approached the Montgomery business district, he photographed the angry faces of bystanders in front of the Trustees Loan & Guarantee Company and the Exchange Lounge.
A student at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology in 1965, Williams helped organize SMU protestors after receiving a telegram from Martin Luther King, Jr., urging him to join the third (and ultimately successful) Selma-to-Montgomery march. Students raised nearly $1,700 overnight to charter a bus and pay for traveling expenses to Selma for students traveling by bus and car. Fifty SMU students and faculty members traveled overnight to join the marchers in Montgomery March 25, 1965.
Williams had not told his parents he was treasurer of SMU’s Selma travel fund and did not tell them he was making the dangerous journey to Alabama to participate in the protest. However, he asked his sister, Ruth, an SMU undergraduate, to stay home.
“I didn’t want to take the chance my parents would lose both of us,” he says.
The SMU protestors joined a staging area in Montgomery, where they were serenaded by folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary as they waited to join the marchers.
“We didn’t know what would happen when we reached the capitol,” Williams says. “We were singing the civil rights song, I Am Not Afraid, but, yes, I was afraid.”
Williams snapped photographs when he reached the Alabama statehouse, capturing Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to the crowd from a flatbed sound truck. When the speeches ended peacefully, the SMU marchers re-boarded the bus to return to Dallas, opening box lunches ordered in advance from the bus company. But their lunches delivered an ugly message: The cardboard boxes were filled with garbage.
As students listened to pocket-sized transistor radios on the bus, they learned of the Klu Klux Klan murder of civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo, as she drove marchers back to Selma.
“We were on high alert until we crossed the Alabama state line,” Williams says.

>See more of Loy Williams’ images from Montgomery, March 25, 1965