Selma March Veteran, East Cobb Resident, Pens Memoirs

An East Cobb resident has published a book detailing his experiences as a 14-year-old participant in one of the most storied chapters of the American Civil Rights Movement.

According to the Marietta Daily Journal, Rev. Junnus Clay was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, as part of a nonviolent protest march for equal voting rights for blacks on March 7, 1965. Alabama state troopers refused to allow the march to cross the bridge, and soon began entering the crowd and beating protesters.

Clay ran from the main assaults and was not harmed, but one of his classmates needed more than two dozen stitches to her head. Clay, then a Selma resident told the MDJ that the experience was the scariest of his life, but added that the triumph of the Selma to Montgomery march spearheaded by civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped restore his faith in humanity.

The reverend said he came to God while he was working as a defense contractor in Japan in the 1970’s. Ironically enough, it was a white Southern Baptist preacher who helped Clay begin his walk with Christ in Yokohama.

Nearly 50 years after the march, Clay got to revisit the event when Hollywood came to Marietta to shoot scenes for the movie “Selma,” which was released on Jan. 9.

The 64-year-old Clay has written about his experiences in Selma, his religious experiences in Japan, and more of his life’s stories in “Selma to Salvation,” which can be purchased here.