His raspy, rapid-fire voice is a dead giveaway.

“It’s Craig,” he says before the person on the other end of line has a chance to finish their hello.

Thounga Craig is a man that has no time for fooling around. Like a steady stream of water

carving

a canyon through the rock, Craig’s fight to win back his East Selma neighborhood is wearing his opponents down.

“More people should be as concerned about the neighborhood as (Craig) is,” said councilwoman Jannie Venter. “I appreciate his work, because we’ve got to have someone to speak out in the community. I’m proud of him and what he has done. He’s a great man.”

Craig is omnipresent at city council meetings, never letting officials forget about loud noise disrupting his Plant Street home.

Because his crusade draws their attention, the teens and young adults- he calls them baby boomers for their loud stereos- harass him.

They stop in front of his home and blast the music at window-rattling levels.

Current law states police can’t arrest or fine anyone for noise violations unless they are around to hear it, leading Craig to demand more patrols around his neighborhood.

His work just may pay off.

At a recent council meeting, many members, including Venter, requested more police information and involvement when it comes to noise violations.

Though this battle has been a long one for Craig, it’s not the toughest he’s faced.

“From Klansmen, Nazis to State Rights groups, I’ve seen it all,” Craig said. “What we need now is to do something to get more peace and harmony in the community.”

Craig and his wife, Willie Dean, became involved with civil activism in the 1960’s, when they joined the Voting Rights Movement.

“I felt like the right to vote was so important,” Craig said. “We went to mass meetings every night. When the sheriff banned mass meetings, we still went.”

At these mass meetings, often held at Tabernacle Baptist or Brown Chapel AME Church, people would be asked to join in marches and other non-violent protests in an effort to gain the right to vote.

The Craig’s often attended mass meetings lead by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

“We never missed a mass meeting when Dr. King was there,” Craig said. “I was very impressed with him. It was like lights flashing and thunder rolling when he talked. I would get up and march anywhere when he got through speaking.”

Mrs. Craig said she and her husband were arrested several times for participating in these marches.

“I would stay in jail all night. It wasn’t no fun,” Mrs. Craig said. “When we got out, we’d have to go gather up our three children, who usually stayed at my sister’s house.”

Craig said he lost three jobs in a row because he refused to stop marching in protest for not being allowed to vote.

“That wasn’t easy, because I had a wife and three kids who weren’t even in school yet,” he said. “But I was determined to march to get a right to vote and be treated as a first-class citizen.”

Craig and his wife both participated in the March 7, 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge that later became known has “Bloody Sunday.”

It was a violent day that neither of them would ever forget.

“We went to praying before we reached the bridge,” Craig said. “The deputies and state troopers had megaphones and told us we were marching illegally and gave us so many minutes to disburse. Next thing, there was tear gas everywhere and horses trampling over people and people screaming.”

Craig said he felt fear on the bridge that day, but his determination to have a right to vote allowed him to ignore that fear.

“Martin Luther King said anything not worth dying for is not worth living for.

Ain’t nothing a man got to fear. It made you want to stand up and be a man,” Craig said. “So many sacrifices were made. We put our lives on a limb. It makes you wonder how much of that is being appreciated today.”

Craig said some of today’s black youth do not use their right to vote and show little respect for each other.

“We need a revolution to deal with the hatred,” he said. “We need to try and stop the violence and murder.”

Craig said his fight for justice and is something he will continue to be a part of until his final breath.

“I wanted to be a registered voter. I wanted to see that we have a better day. Now we need each other-black and white-to be together. We have come a long way, but we still have a distance to go.”