HAYNEVILLE, Ala.—When Alabamians marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to demand voting rights for African Americans, Highway 80 became their path toward freedom.
Two weeks after state troopers had violently attacked nonviolent demonstrators on that highway’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabamians took back to the street. Led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., thousands of citizens marched the 54 miles to Montgomery over three days, camping alongside Highway 80 in makeshift camps hosted by residents and business owners.
More than six decades later, residents and civil rights activists are engaged in a new fight on that historic road.
Their battle cry? We don’t want you here.
That was the overwhelming message from those who attended an open house last week deep in the Alabama Black Belt. There, in the aging cafeteria of a recently-shuttered middle school, developers of a proposed hyperscale data center campus had hoped to woo community members who’ve already expressed deep skepticism about their project’s economic, environmental and health impacts.
