Name one event that brings more people to Selma each year than the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Name one event that generates more sales tax and lodging tax revenues in the city of Selma than the Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

We’ll wait while you think of your answer…

 

We’ll help you out. There’s not one.

When it comes to events, there are none bigger when it comes to people attracted, money and national exposure generated than the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

It is sometimes hard for us to imagine the events of Bloody Sunday being turned into a money making venture, but it is. It is potential money making event for those who organize the event each year, it is a money-making event for those vendors who come from all around to share their merchandise and their food and it is a money-making venture for the city of Selma.

The annual Jubilee is just around the corner, scheduled for the first week of March, but it is not this Jubilee we are talking about. We are talking about — and focusing on — March 8, 2015.

It is this date we will mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. And, it is this date, we will very likely welcome a gaggle of dignitaries not seen in a town the size of Selma in quite a long time.

It is not hard to imagine on that weekend, national news networks set up on every corner of downtown, each with a backdrop of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

It is not hard to imagine news networks running features of those who were part of the historically significant events of 1965 and talking to those who now call Selma home.

But what will Selma look like in just a mere 14 months? What will our downtown look like? What will our streets look like, our buildings?

Will we be ready for such national — and international — exposure?

Today, we look at our downtown and know there is a long list of things that need to be done. We look on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and see an area in desperate need of investment.

What will we look like in a mere 14 months?

The answer is simple. We can look like whatever we want to look like. We decide.

We can sit back and wait for the world to come and do nothing, or we can start now making the changes, making the improvements that make Selma and Dallas County the place where the world will want to come visit.

It begins today. What will we look like in a mere 14 months?