Man searching for boy from 1965 photo
Published 10:23 pm Saturday, February 14, 2015
By Tyra Jackson
The Selma Times-Journal
A California man who traveled hundreds of miles to participate in the 1965 Voting Rights Movement in Selma is hoping to reconnect with a young boy he met during that time.
John Ballard has carried with him an archived Selma Times-Journal photo, which captured him carrying a young boy on his shoulders. Now, he’s doing everything he can to find that young man.
John Ballard is looking to reconnect with a boy he carried during the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Ballard said the boy rode on his shoulders during the march.
During the time of the photo, 19-year old Ballard and a friend from Harvard University, drove from Boston to Selma, with two women they met through the Southern Leadership Conference.
They made it to Selma in time to participate in Turnaround Tuesday march and stayed in the Queen City for about two weeks.
“We were on the march, and that was dangerous because you had a whole heap of hatred hurled at you,” he said. “[The boy] wanted to see above the crowds. He asked if he could sit upon my shoulders, so I put him on my shoulders and carried him around.”
Ballard said the boy in the photo was among the dozen or so people who stood out to him during the march. Unfortunately, he’s forgotten how he encountered the boy. All he remembers is that there weren’t many children around him that day.
The boy might be able to identify, or at least remember Ballard, because the photo was published the next day. When Ballard got back to set up a campsite in Lowndes County, some people showed him the image in the paper.
“The child’s mother or father probably would’ve seen the picture,” Ballard said.
Along with the boy in the picture, Ballard is also interested in reconnecting with the family he stayed with in Selma during that time.
“We were assigned a house to go to,” he said. “They just treated us like family.
By staying in a home, Ballard said he was one of the lucky ones because others ended up sleeping on church pews.
If the boy and the family who housed Ballard were found, he would travel across the U.S. to meet them and hear about their lives after the march.
“I’d like to know their family made it through that time of pain,” he said. “What was life like afterward for them?”
Anyone with information is asked to call Ballard at (415) 233-2822.
