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Dr. Gwendolyn Tutt, faculty clinician in the Campus Center for Health and Optimum Performance at Life University, may seem like any other practicing chiropractor with a balanced life of family, work and church. Take a minute to scratch beneath the surface, though, and you’ll uncover a spectacular history of courage and faith in the face of daunting odds.

Raised in Selma, Ala., Tutt spent her youth doing the ordinary things … going to school and playing with friends, and extraordinary things such as helping the Civil Rights Movement. Her mother, Margaret Moore, is often referred to as one of the Civil Rights Movement’s Invisible Giants because of her tireless efforts behind the scenes to bring about change for blacks in America.

Tutt recalls her mother’s initial attempts to register to vote with a wry laugh. “She’d go down to the courthouse and they’d tell her she needed to pass a literacy test. The test was ridiculous; they’d ask her nonsense stuff like, ‘How many jellybeans are in this jar?’ She never passed of course, even though she had a master’s degree.” As the daughter of such a dedicated, deeply involved freedom fighter, Tutt’s childhood was peppered with secret meetings, fearless civil rights activists and the occasional brushes with death.

Reflecting on the initial days of the movement in Selma, Tutt recalls, “When the movement came to Selma in the early ’60s, my sister, Harriette, and I quickly joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). One of our tasks was to go door-to-door collecting info and encouraging blacks to register to vote. Bernard LaFayette, a Field Secretary for SNCC, was sent to organize Selma. When others were afraid, my mother, a high school English teacher, opened our home as a place for Bernard to live. My sister and I were in our teens—we thought Bernard was very “cute”—he was 22. Bernard organized mass meetings (designed to inform, teach, energize and organize the black community—the masses). During his stay at our home, my mom held student gatherings after school every day to teach black history and freedom songs.”

Tutt also makes note of the minimal interaction she had with whites at the time. “Living in the South during that time you really were not around whites a lot. We really were totally segregated. My only experience with white people involved shopping at the stores they owned. We weren’t allowed in the restaurants and things like that, so I never really knew whites at all.”

However, there were encounters with whites that were significantly memorable. Tutt recalls the Ku Klux Klan driving through town bellowing death threats with a dead deer strapped to the hood of a car (as a mock example to blacks about what might happen to them if any dared to ask for equal rights). Tutt notes that, “I only knew white people in this way. The first time I went to school with whites was when I enrolled in college.”

“My mom taught us not to be afraid and to stand up for what we believed in. I also remember at the mass meetings we’d have people guarding the doors and watching out for the drive by bomb throwers.” Tutt’s home church was where many of the meetings took place.

“Many pastors were afraid to host meetings because of the possible retaliation by the whites, but our pastor was not worried about that. He had a right to be though. One night I was coming back from one of those meetings when a man pointed his gun at me as we approached his car. I turned around and ran. I hid in the yard of a Catholic church, and I snuck out and went a different way home.”

After Tutt left home for California, things in Selma took a significant turn. On Sunday March 7, 1965, her mother along with nearly 600 others led the march for the right to vote. She explains, “It was our church, The Brown AME Chapel, which John Lewis and Hosea Williams left from on their march across the bridge on that fateful day in order to begin the 54-mile march to the state capitol in Montgomery. Armed state troopers and policemen waited at the foot of the Pettus Bridge, ready to block their path..

The marchers pressed onward only to be brutally beaten and tear gassed in plain sight of the national media. Tutt’s own mother spent several days in the hospital recovering from her injuries. The day came to be known as Bloody Sunday ,and it was pivotal in helping Americans all over the United States understand the need for civil rights legislation.

Many memorials have been erected to honor Tutt’s mother. Her picture rests in the Selma National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, and her name is engraved on the window overlooking the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In an ironic twist of fate, Tutt’s mother died at sea when the ferry she was on capsized on its way to Daufuskie Island. Moore was on her way there as part of a mission trip to help others. That occurred in 1975, long before Moore was able to fully comprehend the significance of her actions as one of the movement’s invisible giants.

In order to commemorate this courageous day each year Tutt’s church and several other churches in Selma host a jubilee. In keeping with her strong ties to the people in Selma, Tutt returns yearly for the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

“Every year, they have special guests for the jubilee. This year, my brother told me Barack Obama was attending. I told him to make sure to get me in the church!”

Tutt invited fellow Life faculty members Dr. Brian Flannery and Cynthia Lund to join her in the ceremony as well. “We saw Obama for a brief minute. We shook his hand as he was passing through, we did speak briefly. They swooped him out right quick, when it was over. John Lewis was there of course and he knew my mother really well,” explains Tutt.

History is a funny thing. A bridge that once witnessed unimaginable hatred and violence all in the pursuit of the right to vote is now a political magnet for anyone who runs for office. For everyone, it serves as a solid reminder of the monumental price of equality and the tremendous struggle required to achieve it.

Reflecting on her turbulent past, Tutt explains with a sigh, “Looking back, I’d have to say I felt more confident than scared. My mom always told people you can be whatever you want to be. She’d always say, ‘If you’re gonna be a ditch digger be the best one you can be.’”

Today Tutt models her life after her mother’s strong leadership. “I try to teach my kids how to make it in the world with all races and all types of people. I’ve tried to put my mark on the world and I try to follow in my mom’s trailblazing footsteps the best way I can: teaching and showing those who have little guidance the correct way to go in life. My mother’s legacy to me is a simple one: Be a strong woman, not just a strong black woman. Don’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe in … put God first and live according to the Golden Rule.”

Aftermath: Under protection of a federalized National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21, 1965 and stood 25,000 strong on March 25 before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American 21 and over the right to register to vote. During the next four years the number of U.S. blacks eligible to vote rose from 23 to 61 percent.

©2006 Today's Chiropractic