“We’ve always lived in the past in Selma, and we still do,” he said. “But the past has changed on us. It includes a lot of stories it didn’t used to.” As we chatted, the man said he’d served on Selma’s segregationist city council during the civil rights violence of the 1960s. “I was born in 1921 and was raised up with segregation and separate water fountains,” he said. “It was stupid now that I think of it. All these signs saying ‘white’ and ‘colored’ when most people couldn’t even read.” I asked how he felt about the changes since. “You get older and you mellow, I guess,” he said. “The
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