ASHFIELD — In former Ashfield Selectman Bill Perlman’s distant past are his days as a member of the legendary Freedom Singers.
At 18, he was asked by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to become part of the group that lent their voices to the Civil Rights movement at rallies, in concerts and fundraisers throughout the South and beyond.
On Saturday, more than 50 years after the “Bloody Sunday” attack by armed police officers on demonstrators who tried to march on the Alabama state capital to win voting rights, Perlman will receive a Freedom Flame Award.
“A lot people have the view that the Civil Rights movement was in the 1960s, and that was it, that it solved all the problems and went away,” Perlman said in 2015, when he brought The Freedom Singers to Ashfield for a concert to mark the sesquicentennial of the Selma-to-Montgomery March.
“But the Civil Rights movement started in 1619,” he said, “when the first slaves came, and not only is it still going on, it’s also still needed.”
The 70-year-old retired electrical engineer, who was a longtime Franklin Regional Council of Governments Executive Committee member, was invited to take part in the 52nd annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma this weekend to receive the award in honor of his activism as part of the civil rights and voting rights movements. He is the youngest member of the otherwise all-black group that formed in 1962.
The celebration comes as voting rights are once again under attack. On Monday, President Donald Trump’s administration said the federal government no longer plans to challenge a strict voter ID law in Texas.
The Justice Department informed plaintiffs in the case that it will be filing documents to formally drop its opposition to the Texas law, in what the Associated Press called “a stark reversal under new Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Obama White House, which joined a lawsuit against Texas in 2013.”
A federal appeals court last year ruled that the Texas law discriminated against minorities and the poor, and it ordered changes ahead of the November election.
Faya Rose Toure, executive director of Selma Jubilee, wrote to Perlman, “People who come often say the Jubilee is a pilgrimage, as we host people from all over the country and the world to commemorate and celebrate these historical events, as well as to inspire and educate those who attend regarding the pressing issues of the present related to voting rights, civil rights, and human rights.”
Toure added, “Jubilee also serves as an opportunity for all those who value these rights to come together as a community of people for four days of communion and serious discussions, speakers and educational workshops, renewal of old friendships, recognition of those individuals who have made a difference, and to enjoy good food, music, art and entertainment.”
Previous Freedom Flame Award recipients include Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, Jesse Jackson, Rosa Parks, Andrew Young and many others.
When James Forman, executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, invited Perlman to be one of the Freedom Singers after hearing him as a last-minute substitute playing his Martin 00-21 guitar at a 1965 fundraising event, the teen had recently dropped out after a month of community college in Brooklyn.
Each member was paid a $10 weekly wage as SNCC staffers, and the group’s main role was to raise money for the organization, singing, “Which Side Are You On,” “We Shall Overcome” and other songs on Northern college campuses such as Yale, Brandeis and Mount Holyoke. The group also performed at house parties as well as in large concert halls in Boston, New York, Chicago and elsewhere around the North, playing a 28-day tour of eastern Canada.
In rallies in Southern churches, the singers tried to boost morale and bring people together.
Unlike song leaders, who specifically led rallies and marches, Perlman recalled, “The Freedom Singers were performers — entertainers. We came up with interesting, complex harmonies. That was very different than getting hundreds of people singing.”