Jackson resident shares first-hand account of Civil Rights Movement

MADISON COUNTY, Tenn. — Each week in February in honor of Black History Month, WBBJ is highlighting someone making a significant impact on our community. This week, Mallory Cooke introduces us to a local woman who fought for the right to vote in the 1960s.

“You could feel the tension in the air,” Macye Chatman said.

Chatman, a Jackson resident, attended Tuskegee University in Alabama during the mid 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

“To see hatred in a person’s eyes just because of your skin coloring, that’s an interesting experience, something you never forget,” Chatman said.

Chatman marched at the state capitol in conjunction with the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965.

“I didn’t like the things that I saw — people not being able to vote and the harassment that they were given when they went to vote,” Chatman said.

Chatman says she was arrested and spent her 20th birthday in jail. “It was scary, and then it wasn’t scary because you were there for a purpose,” she said.

In 2015, Chatman went back to Alabama for the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march.

“To see all of the people of all nationalities from all over the world that came to that celebration was just — it’s unexplainable,” Chatman said.

Looking back, Chatman says she never dreamed that the Selma to Montgomery march would be so important decades later. “It changed my life,” she said.