- Associated Press - Saturday, November 29, 2014

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — State and local officials believe the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, which celebrates an event that ushered in a new day for civil rights, could well usher in a new day for Alabama tourism.

Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Department of Tourism and Travel, sees a perfect storm approaching that will rain torrents of publicity on the March 2015 event - publicity he believes may permanently elevate Alabama’s civil rights tourism.

Sentell said the 50th anniversary of such a historic event would attract huge numbers of tourists from throughout the country and beyond on its own, but that next year a number of factors will multiply those numbers.

The Oprah Winfrey/Brad Pitt-produced film “Selma,” which is about the historic march, is scheduled to open in late December in Los Angeles and New York so that it is eligible for the 2014 Oscars, and will open across the country on Jan. 9.

“It’s almost impossible to imagine a more spectacular promotion of the event,” Sentell said.

Dawn Hathcock, vice president of the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce’s Convention & Visitor Bureau, agrees and gives part of the credit to the Alabama Tourism Department. That department also includes the Alabama Film Office, which helped convince Winfrey, who shot much of the film in Atlanta, that parts of it needed to be shot in Selma and Montgomery.

“Knowing that they filmed in Selma and Montgomery will be a big push as far as tourism,” Hathcock said. “It’s not one of these films where it is about events in your city but was filmed in Canada or some other place. In the movie, they will see the real bridge, the real Capitol, that type of thing, and they will want to see those places in person.”

Then there is the possibility of who might show up at the event. There is the hope that Winfrey or Pitt may come, as well as celebrities from the original march, such as Harry Belafonte.

And some of America’s most famous leaders are not just a possibility, but an expectation.

President Barack Obama, when he was just campaigning for the office, took part in the March 2007 bridge-crossing celebration, walking across the bridge just feet away from Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Sentell said he fully expects the White House to be represented at this year’s event.

“All the living presidents have been invited,” Hathcock said. “We don’t know that they will all come, but it being the 50th anniversary, I think you can assume that we may have some very high-level dignitaries here.”

Sandra Taylor with the National Park Service serves as park superintendent for the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site and the Selma-to-Montgomery National Historic Trail.

She will help coordinate any presidential visits, but she said it will be a while before she will know who might attend.

“I’m hoping we may know 30 days in advance, but I’m not sure we will get that much warning,” she said.

She did say she already knows three planeloads of congressmen and their staffers are flying down with Georgia Congressman John Lewis and Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell for the celebrations.

Note that she said “celebrations,” plural - something Sentell said will be one more huge publicity factor.

For there is a Selma march that will also publicize the successful Selma march.

The first attempt to make the march to Montgomery, on March 7, 1965, was met with violent opposition by state and local police, who attacked the peaceful marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. The event became famous as “Bloody Sunday.”

“It will also be the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and there will be enormous press coverage of the Bloody Sunday re-enactment on every network across the country,” Sentell said.

“This will be two weeks before the anniversary of the successful Selma-to-Montgomery march and will only make people want to come to that event even more.”

How many people does Taylor expect to come to the celebrations?

“I don’t have a clue,” she said. “I can’t even estimate a number because we’ve never had anything like this before. We have done some big events but not anything of this magnitude.”

Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said there may be upwards of 30,000 to 40,000 people for the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and if you add in those here for the Bloody Sunday event, there are estimates of crowds greater than 50,000.

“Some will be in Selma, and some may go to Birmingham for the civil rights sites there, and we hope many will come here,” he said. “But with that many people, the entire state will benefit from the events next year.”

With so many churches, schools, civic groups and universities planning activities, Hathcock said one of the best ideas was to create an inclusive website where groups that might not have the money to publicize their events can be included.

“We have created a website, dreammarcheson.com, and what we are doing is including events big and small from not just Montgomery and Selma but wherever the events are being held,” she said.

Groups throughout the state, from the Park Service and city and county groups to Alabama State University and the state Tourism Department have been working for about two years preparing for the opportunity 40,000 to 50,000 tourists can bring.

But it’s not a one-time tourism bonanza that the state is after.

Rosemary Judkins, who works as the group sales manager for the Alabama Tourism Department, said it is looking at the 2015 event to permanently elevate civil rights tourism in the state.

“Of course, we expect this to continue to grow,” she said, “once the word is out and these people go home and start telling others of their experiences and what they saw taking place here.”

She said groups from all over the country are getting in touch with the Tourism Department about the event, and they are trying to make sure they stay in touch.

“Groups are getting in touch with us, and we are passing those contacts on to area visitor centers, and the hope is that they won’t just be one-time contacts, but permanent contacts,” she said.

Strange said that is also Montgomery’s aim.

He said the fact the city is spending a fortune along the civil rights trail, creating streetscapes, planting trees, putting up new fencing, adding new sidewalks, repaving streets, putting up statues and things like that should tell people something.

“We expect the 2015 celebration will have a very positive impact during that time frame, but the reason we are spending big bucks to improve things along the march route is for the next year, and the next year and the next year after that, because once people see what happens during the upcoming march, they are going to want to participate in it, too.”

And for Montgomery, which in May was named in USA Today as the Best Historic City in the country, the opportunities the Selma-to-Montgomery march presents aren’t only about the historic civil rights event.

“Not only do we have the 50th anniversaries of Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery march, but we also have the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December,” Hathcock said.

“And a lot of the groups that we are hosting in 2015 we are encouraging to encompass some of these themes or go to some of the other attractions while they are in town. We absolutely believe there will be return traffic.”

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Information from: Montgomery Advertiser, https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com

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