It’s an honor to live in Selma.

A friend of mine in Jackson, Miss., talks about hosting a Japanese exchange student one year a decade or so ago. When time came for the Japanese student to go home, my friend drove him to Atlanta to fly out of the country. They dipped down to Selma just for the drive; so the student could see more of the South.

My friend said he drove down Broad Street. As the car approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the student became very excited.

“It’s the civil rights bridge! I know that,” the student exclaimed.

My friend’s jaw dropped. Nothing had been mentioned about the bridge. The child hadn’t studied anything about the movement that year as an exchange student because he had taken world history at the school.

“It’s internationally known,” my friend said. “I would have never thought someone from Japan would have known about the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”

I hope that student has the opportunity to return some day and see what else is in store for him — the Selma Interpretive Center.

On Wednesday, we celebrated a soft opening of the center. The event was well attended. Everyone cooed over the inside of the structure, which once was a bank. The colors selected by Karen Weir went very well with the photographs and oral histories provided by the National Park Service.

While the opening of this gorgeous building on the corner of Broad Street and Water Avenue provided a sense of accomplishment and wellbeing, it also left a bittersweet taste.

After all, the celebration of Jubilee is a celebration of overcoming the nadir of voting rights in this nation. People bled, cried and ached for the simple act of having the responsibility to mark an x on a ballot.

Yes, and some died at the hands of massive resistance that fought to keep life as they had known it.

There’s a softness around the happy edges, then of this weekend — a tender place, much like an old wound that gets a touch of arthritis when the rains come and the temperatures turn cooler.

While it is good we can celebrate the overcoming of massive resistance; it is also proper to remember the lives given and blood shed so that all men, women and children may live free.