It is no secret that people are leaving Selma and Dallas County.

For some, it is the lack of jobs, and for others, it is the amount of crime that our small town experiences.

Sheila Mixon’s brother, Corey Hardy, was the first homicide of 2018. Mixon spent the year going through the judicial process to get justice for her brother.

Yet she stays in Selma.

Surely it is not easy being in the same place every day that could often remind her of her lost loved one.

She has hope in the community to get better.

Mixon’s message is simple: stop the violence.

“We as a race have to stop killing each other. Guns are not the answer. I’m crying out to the city – think before you pick up a gun, that’s somebody’s child, father, sister or brother,” she said. “These young people have got to find a different way. Violence is not the answer.”

Mixon’s family members refuse to come back to Selma and there are many others who have left swearing to never return.

Yet Mixon has hope, and it is that type of hope that all of us that have remained here need to have.

“It’s going to get better,” she said.