Paul Long: 54-mile Selma-to-Montgomery run is Harvey Lewis’ way of celebrating ‘key chapter in nation’s past’

‘Ultrarunner’ Kelly O’Dell took a run after the recent snowstorm. O’Dell will join boyfriend Harvey Lewis on the 54-mile route from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Selma march for voting rights. (Photo provided)

Harvey Lewis likes to run — in the deserts, in the wilderness, in the cities, up and down the sides of mountains and during his travels around the world. He runs to and from work. He runs in the blazing heat of summer and the dead of winter.

So while the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary next month of the march for voting rights that Dr. Martin Luther King led from Selma, Alabama, to the state Capitol Building in Montgomery, Harvey will remember the event in his own way.

Harvey, a coach for the Tri State Running Co. training groups, based in Edgewood, and a social studies teacher at the School for Creative and Performing Arts downtown, is running the 54-mile route with several friends to honor King’s memory and the changes the 1965 march brought to the United States.

“This is not a formal race or event,” Harvey said. “It’s an honorary celebration of a key chapter in our nation’s past that influenced the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and influenced the lives of every American by creating a constitution that more adhered to the principles it was built upon. While America still has distance to cover, our culture and quality of life were dramatically improved by eradicating segregation and the institutions that upheld it.”

Harvey Lewis and Kelly O’Dell (Photo provided)

One of his companions will be his girlfriend, Kelly O’Dell, a race coordinator for Columbus, Ohio, and an ultrarunner.

“When running long distances, I am overcome with the gratitude of how precious life is,” said Kelly, 36. “I feel a connectivity to something much larger than myself. You deplete yourself of almost everything, but still have the power to continue on.”

King and his supporters took five days to make the 54-mile walk from Selma to the capitol Building in Montgomery to agitate for equal voting rights for black citizens. Harvey and his friends plan to participate in some of the celebrations in Selma on March 7, then begin their run in the late morning.

“We are remaining flexible,” Harvey said. “My personal goals are to experience the history and bring it back to my students.

“We will run the 54 miles, leaving sometime between 10 a.m. and noon. We’ll stop at a Civil Rights museum about halfway, at the cotton fields, and at places of historical importance. We plan to finish at the Capitol in Montgomery as a group, carrying Old Glory with the intention of symbolically representing the change our nation has undergone over the last half century. Fifty years ago, people were denied the right to exercise their First Amendment rights. They were beaten on Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965) in their first attempt to march, took a knee the second march to the bridge, and ultimately, (were) protected by the National Guard for the third match that carried all the way to Montgomery.”

Tracey Outlaw, who also volunteers as a coach for Tri State, said he is nervous about the thought of running almost double his previous distance record.

“But I am excited about what will unfold, who we will meet, and the history we will learn throughout the weekend,” he said. “I hope we can share the experience with others through social media. I believe that running the 54 miles is the best way to connect with those who marched it 50 years earlier. There is something very personal in the effort. Each step will be meaningful.”

O’Dell said she expects her personal connection to the past to be strongest at the start of the run, as they cross over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of the Bloody Sunday beating that is now a national landmark.

“The people who stood arm-in-arm and marched over the bridge had to ask themselves ‘what are we doing?’ but they kept doing it anyway — and they changed our world for the better,” she said. “Persistence, dedication, and belief can help overcome the obstacles that are put in front of us by ourselves, by society, or by others. Everyone taps into a reserve of will and power. … The people of Selma did, and they found it through believing so much in their rights that they marched 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery.”

Harvey, 38, first got the idea for his run while teaching African-American history at Taft High School in Cincinnati. He said he was perplexed when he discovered less than a paragraph of information about the seminal event. He and several others started working on a documentary, tentatively titled, “54 Miles to Freedom.” They interviewed key figures of the movement, including Annie Lee Cooper, who was beaten and charged with criminal provocation when she tried to register to vote; Amelia Boynton, who worked closely with King and helped organize the Selma marches; and King associates Andrew Young and Harry Belafonte, among others.

Tracey Outlaw points out a fortuitous find of a mile marker — it’s actually 5.4 miles, but the decimal point is worn away — along the Loveland trail near Mariemont while Outlaw and Harvey Lewis were running and planning the Selma-to-Montgomery 54-mile run. “I committed to the trip at that moment,” Tracey said. “This run is meant to be.” (Photo provided)

The documentary never came to fruition. But the dream never died.

“Since that experience, Selma has always been in the back of my mind,” Harvey said. “I share what I gained with my students, but the people of Selma and Alabama really left an impression on me. I have always in the back of my mind wanted to return to retrace the steps for the 50th anniversary.”

The run from Selma to Montgomery, at 54 miles, won’t be close to Harvey longest historical run. That would be the 241 miles — through pollution, language and religious barriers, traffic, humidity, and 100-degree heat — he undertook in 2009 to retrace Gandhi’s Salt March. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi set out from his ashram, or religious retreat, near Ahmedabad with several dozen followers to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There, Gandhi and his supporters defied British policy by making salt from seawater. The march resulted in the arrest of nearly 60,000 people, including Gandhi.

“Both events created change via peaceful means,” Harvey said. “Both involved human rights and an effort to attain freedom, equality, and the chance for opportunity in life. Both involved an oppressed people. Both involved the risk of arrest and an effort to combat an unjust government with civil disobedience.”

But while both achieved some of their aims, the work is not finished. “The Selma march lead relatively quickly to legislative victories and pushed cultural changes in employment, housing, and education. (But) the outlying area of Selma is still some of the most poverty stricken area of America.

Meanwhile, in India, the Salt March made a tremendous statement to empower the Indian people, but it took another 17 years before the country gained its independence. It remains one of the world’s poorer countries.

For his part, Harvey expects the 54-mile run to be hard, but without the additional complications his run in India had.

“Running 54 miles isn’t easy,” he said. “but running 241 miles alone with just one pair of shoes and a pack is really tough. I had no GPS and followed a rudimentary map. I ran through Hindu and Muslim communities but was welcomed by all.”

The Selma run will be a continuation of Harvey’s racking up the miles — and a particularly busy March. The week after Selma, he’ll pace the Los Angeles Marathon. On March 21, he’s doing a fundraiser for the Mayfield Clinic, in which people will attempt guess the distance as he runs four hours on a treadmill.

On the final weekend in March, he’s involved in the Run the Bluegrass half-marathon in Lexington, in which, among other things, he’ll be the keynote speaker for the pre-race dinner.

And after that? He’s part of the U.S. team that will compete at the 24-Hour World Championship run on April 11-12 in Torino, Italy. In July, he’ll defend his title in the Badwater 135, the world’s toughest foot race.

Paul Long, on the road (Photo by Kris Payler Staverman)

Paul Long writes weekly for the NKyTribune about running and runners. For his daily running stories, follow him at dailymile.com or on Twitter @Pogue57