By Tyra Jackson

The Selma Times-Journal

One man made it his mission to track down the stories of the past to provide an understanding for the future.

Tony Watkins, the author of “Shackled Again?” began collecting stories, photos and documents of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and slavery. “Shackled Again?” highlights the lives of those people, and encourages readers to ask the question: Are we still shackled? In turn, readers might be able to unchain some of the same events that confined Americans long ago.

Seventeen years ago, Watkins found some 150-year-old shackles while digging a hole around an old house.

“You can tell by the last notch on the side, whoever was in those shackles was trying to get out of them because the cut of it is almost as old as the shackles themselves,” Watkins said.

After he uncovered the buried shackles he told his great-grandmother about them. She told him to bury them out of fear of bringing up old history, he said. Those same shackles influenced him to write “Shackled Again?”

“The unsung hero had to keep silent, just to keep living,” he said. “The freedom riders and foot soldiers’ histories are unnoticed because everyone knows about Dr. [Martin Luther] King and Rosa Parks. I’m not taking anything away from them, but the foot soldiers and freedom riders floored the movement of the 60s.”

Watkins has had the opportunity to speak with notable civil rights figures, such as Dick Gregory and Andrew Young. He said Fannie Lou Hamer’s story was one of the most compelling stories he’s focused on.

“Fannie Lou Hamer is one of the unsung heroes, and she’s not getting a lot of recognition due to the fact she wanted to get black people registered to vote,” Watkins said.

His research revealed two inmates beat Hamer in jail at the orders of a sheriff. He said she went through all of that for the right to vote, but many people still don’t vote.

“It has changed now, and those shackles could be anything from economic struggles, student debt and credit card debt,” he said. “It’s all the same thing, but just a different form. If we’re not careful, we can actually repeat that same history.”