all right everyone I am in Selma Alabama a city with a lot of history how about if I tell you some of it now Selma was incorporated in 1820 and was an agricultural Town mainly cotton um then the Civil War happened now you may not know this but Alabama has an abundance of the natural resources needed to make steel including iron ore so during the Civil War Selma was the second biggest manufacturer of weapons and ammunition as well as Ironclad ships the CSS tenness was built here that was the flagship have the Ironclad ships used during the Civil War now because of this the Union Army was keen on destroying Selma and then they tried several times and failed Selma had some pretty impressive uh defenses built around it but finally towards the end of the war during the last month um the uh Union was able to break through and they looted and burned pretty much or most of the city to the ground during that time 3 weeks later the Civil War ended and then Selma returned to farming in the 1960s this was a significant place for civil rights black people organized marches from here in Selma to Montgomery to protest the fact that they couldn't vote and well the first March that happened was broken up by local police who would not let him cross this bridge right up here the Edmund Pettis Bridge we'll get to it shortly uh and it they did so violently it's called Bloody Sunday they beat a lot of the protesters the Marchers put a lot of them in the hospital finally they brought in Martin Luther King who had a direct line to the president Lyndon Johnson who supported the um effort and he sent in Federal Protection and so Martin Luther King led the march from here in Selma to Montgomery uh took them 3 days to get there they slept in fields overnight but um they made it to Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery marched to the state capital and it worked a few months later the Voting Act of 1965 was passed now I'm heading into downtown Selma right now here's the Edmund Pettis Bridge a very historic iCal location by the way now um it may surprise you that there are over 1,200 structures and buildings in Selma that are on the national register but most of them are not in good condition the city like I said was is based on agriculture and farming over the years of course Farmers don't need a lot of people to operate their farms and so there's been mass unemployment and the city has struggled a lot of people have moved away in 1960 there were nearly 30,000 people here that was Peak population today 2022 estimates put it at a little over 177,000 incomes are low poverty is high we'll get into those details here shortly but you can see it in the city the condition of it there's just not any tax revenue because of the low incomes and the pretty high unemployment you see a lot of this in the city uh buildings in very poor condition old city is in really poor condition you hate to see it let me give you some numbers I've already given you popular population median age is 39 56% of the town is female 44% male uh 86% of the town I'm sorry 84% of the town let me get that right is black 14% white 1% Asian and the last 1% is mixed yeah just a lot of light it looks like a what was maybe a apartment complex it is setting empty now it looks like I got a Dollar General though there it is an abandoned gas station yeah it's just um there empty buildings everywhere the town looks postapocalypse itic in places wonder what that was median household income 29,700 a year that is $570 a week that's household income that's everybody in the in the household incomes combined less than 600 a week that's not really a lot to live on now given those income numbers it's no surprise that poverty is high 30% overall children 17 and under really bad 43% folks 65 and older it is 16% 39% of the town is led by a female the household that is to say only 9% of the town has a male head of household 29% is married couples only 30% of the town is married wow I'm coming out on Water Street and I cut a left here uh this hotel is real nice St James one of the few places that has been renovated let me see what I can find down here I'm still in downtown believe it or not they've got some interesting stuff uh written on the buildings here for the time will come they will not endure sound Doctrine not wanting to have their ears tickled that's an interesting statement now let me give you some uh crime numbers uh last year 35 incidents per 1,000 people us average is 23 that seems uh I mean it's high but not as high as what you know you read about people saying about the area but from what I understand from what I've read in various message boards and Rit uh from people who live here a lot of crime goes [Music] unreported uh the police are not very good at responding to crimes this is what I've read maybe someone who lives here can fill in with their opinion um unemployment numbers I looked them up unemployment here is 6.5 while that is high that doesn't seem super super high now just a year or two ago it was in double digits I do know that unemployment in Selma is the highest in the state the state of Alabama overall unemployment is uh just over 2% really low uh Selma has the highest unemployment in the state however s is also the poorest city in the state with everything factored in incomes and unemployment and poverty uh so there's all that now this is the brown am church it's where they started the uh marches Romanesque architecture ancient Rome but it's got some Byzantine influences uh you see the domes at the top beautiful building from what I understand the city is trying to revitalize itself as a tourist attraction focusing on its civil rights history its place in civil rights which is pretty significant uh I hope they do a place like this shouldn't be in this kind of condition it just shouldn't be you hate to see it there a lot of empty buildings here downtown empty businesses or buildings that are empty and void of business maybe that's the better way to say it one of the things you notice though this churches they're everywhere you can tell some of these neighborhoods were just amazing at one time they're in various states of disrepair though now you get some in good shape though which is good to see yeah there are some beautiful homes here and areas of town I think uh that is probably getting prepped to be renovated what do you guys think there are some nice houses here though oh it's trying to rain on me guys I uh saw these houses look like shotgun houses don't they and all the bright colors they're all boarded up I can't help but think that they had some significance as far as history is concerned and maybe they should be preserved not sure some over here too the um really look interesting looking homes here anyway uh yeah I got some rain coming I was trying to get her early enough to beat the rain yeah looks like a looks like shotgun houses don't they that is being returned to Nature these are all boarded up this is where we are seeing uh the people moving away population loss looks like a tree is growing in that house you can see the potential of that house um and you'll see houses like these including this one which is just flat out incredible look that beautiful house and just just a door or two down here you've got houses that are in really poor shape well let's not get ourselves unlivable that need to be torn down but again the city just doesn't have the money to uh afford to tear them down so they just sit here empty that's some crazy stuff isn't it that is a beautiful home this looks like an abandoned School uh the homes across the street gorgeous though very good condition but that changes pretty quickly I I guess someone lives there you can see a lot of the glass is broken out ported up maybe they just live on the bottom floor and not the top it's possible uh this house is on the national register I believe May Jones home so uh it is historic but you just get right across the street another boarded up house with the roof is caved in I don't know if you can see that that is some interesting architecture beautiful house there and you got this one John Tyler Morgan house it's got a placard so it must be on the national register but you can see the condition it's in it's not being taken care of but that one is and this one is not that house there has so much potential you can see the roof is falling in back there and parts and then across the street now that house looks like it may be burned down but there it sits I'm over here on the other side of town like a house burn there here's another look at the Edmund Pettis Bridge from uh kind of below it to the side of course that's the Alabama River anyway um okay tell you what guys uh I'm going to end it here just wanted to give you a look at Selma interesting place a little bit sad uh just like to see different things happen here better things but anyway that's the way things are sometimes and uh it's a bummer uh so anyway uh we are heading into Mississippi next so be looking for that is
