On the road in Alabama
I've just met two extraordinary people.
When Mary Smith was 18, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman. This was in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, and in those days, black people weren't supposed to answer back. She was arrested and hauled off the bus in handcuffs.
You've probably heard of Rosa Parks, who did something similar a few months later, and became a national figure as her legal case became a landmark in the civil rights struggle. But Mary Smith was there first, and as we sat on a reconditioned 1950s bus and retraced that fateful journey of more than half a century ago, she told me her story.
The Rev. F.D. Reese is equally remarkable. He was on the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma in March 1965, at the start of a civil rights march to Montgomery. They were baton-charged and tear-gassed by State troopers following orders from the segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace. "I saw blood flowing that day," Dr Reese told me as he stood again on that bridge. "But now with a black man as President of these United States of America, I know that all our pain and suffering was worth it."
You can hear them both tell their stories on The World Tonight, live from Alabama, on Tuesday, Inauguration Day, at 10pm on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4 or online.
And there are more pictures .
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