Tonight’s annual membership banquet at the Slavery and Civil War Museum at 1410 Water Ave. in Selma is all about education and participation.

The event, interim director Olimatta Taal said, will celebrate the struggles of the past and recruit members of the current generation to show continued support.

“We want to honor some of the foot soldiers from Greene, Dallas and Wilcox counties as well,” she said. “We want to highlight the role they played to preserve voting rights so the whole world can appreciate and understand the courage people showed during the movement.”

The voting rights movement, she said, paved the way for a major turning point in November, 2008.

“We want to highlight how the movement has led us to our first African-American president,” she said. “Without it, this would have never happened. It’s a time to celebrate the foot soldiers who sacrificed their lives to register to vote and educate people.”

The event, which begins at 7 p.m., also serves as a membership drive. The price of admission, $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors and $15 for students, includes a one-year membership, food and entertainment.

The guest speaker will be Dr. Bernard Lafayette. LaFayette, has been a civil rights movement activist, minister, educator, lecturer, and is an authority on the strategy on nonviolent social change.

He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. He was a leader of the Nashville Movement in 1960 and on the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the 1965 Selma Movement.

He also directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, and was appointed National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor Peoples’ Campaign by Martin Luther King, Jr.

LaFayette has served as director of Peace and Justice in Latin America; chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development; director of the PUSH Excel Institute; and minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tuskegee.

Another guest at the event, Angeline Butler, said she saw Lafayette’s movement first hand. The struggle, she said, often posed a danger in the field and miles away.

“We had to be concerned with our safety and back at home,” she said. “There could be people with Klan connections from wherever we were to Mississippi or somewhere like that and they could come after your family.”

In the end, she said, the campaign proved successful.

“The movement brought about constitutional change,” she said. “And it trained another generation to make constitutional change.”