To the editor:

Congratulations on the mayor securing additional funding for our new Selma Interpretive Center.

This should prove to be a definite asset to our community involving tourism concerning civil rights.

This, however, raises some very serious questions to me about our community.

Will this new center help us to solve any part of our poverty problem?

Will this help us in reducing our high inner city unemployment?

Will this help us to reduce and control our high crime condition?

Will this new center help us to stop the exodus of our tax base caused by relocation outside our city?

Will this help us in accepting the responsibility to fund one of our greatest educational assets, the Selma/Dallas County Public Library?

The statement “using the city’s past as a bridge to the future” is a good vision. However, we must understand that anyone can envision a set of stairs, but unless they take that first step they have done nothing.

Is this the proper first step?

Has our city leadership sat down with our congressman and explained the problems we are experiencing in our city?

Does our leadership understand that the satisfying of basic human needs takes priority over “that would be nice to have in our community” type projects?

Again, congratulations.

We have put the city’s basic human needs on the backburner again.

May God Bless Selma.

Gene Hisel