Leading from within the Shadow of Doubt: A Servant-Leader's Approach to Conceptualization and Foresight

Abstract

The fifty-four mile march from Selma to Montgomery through rural Alabama holds sacred space both geographically as well as on the list of the most iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Thanks to the ongoing public service of Rep. John Lewis, who as a young man aided in organizing that march, the route is now a National Historic Trail offering interpretive centers and recreation areas for those seeking to learn from the trail blazing leaders of this country’s struggle for equity (National Park Service, 2020). Two marches bookend the trail’s history. The first, better known as "Bloody Sunday," took place on March 7, 1965, when over six-hundred people marched from Selma seeking equitable voting rights for all people, including African-Americans (National Park Service, 2020, para. 5). The group was blocked by state troopers on the Edmond Pettus Bridge and met with tear gas and smoke bombs as well asa posse on horseback armed with bullwhips, ropes, rubber tubing wrapped with barbed wire, and billy clubs that led to seventeen marchers hospitalized and sixty-seven others injured (Wagy, 1979). At the other end of the trail’s history is a completed march punctuated by a rousing Martin Luther King Jr. speech near the capitol building in Montgomery on March 25, 1965 (National Park Service, 2020). Between these two, and overshadowed by them, sits a paradigmatic moment for leaders, a day known as “Turnaround Tuesday” (Lawson, 1987). Tuesday, March 9, 1965 began with Martin Luther King Jr. proclaiming from the steps of Brown Chapel to 2,500 marchers who had gathered from across the country in “Bloody Sunday’s” wake: “I have no alternative but to lead a march from this spot to carry our grievances to the seat of government. I have made my choice. I have got to march” (Wagy, 1979, p. 403). Yet after an intensifying return to the site of that previous Sunday’s tragedy and facing a similar standoff, King turned the protestors around and called off the march. The events of “Turnaround Tuesday” have their own monumental importance as they illuminate the complexities of leading from within the shadow of doubt.