SALEM AND SELMA, TWO AMERICAN CITIES UNITED IN UGLINESS?

Icheoku says never in the history of mankind have two cities, with nearly similar sounding names, spelt exactly with the same number of alphabets and of the same two syllables, co-existed in the same country. The cruel coupling irony of the two cities is that both shared the past ugly exhibition of man at his worst. Both cities represent the height of man's cruelty against fellow man, a situation somewhat comparable to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, admitted on a lower scale. For their infra-dignity,  Salem and Selma are permanently etched in infamy for the atrocities which they visited on a section of their very own populace and will forever be remembered for it. 

Salem is the notorious Massachusetts city, made infamous for its persecution of its citizens who were branded witches; and regardless, once the little girl calls one out as being a witch, the witch must then of course be put to death. So it became a trial by ordeal and sorcery where the accused 'witch' is thrown into a well and whether or not the accused sinks or floats, it does not matter as a witch deserves not to live. A Catch-22 sort of situation wherein if the suspect floats, he or she must be killed for being a witch because good non-witch people do not float in wells. Conversely, if the suspect drowns, then it was mission accomplished because he or she drowned because he or she was a witch. A sort of bloody cleansing to satisfy a naughty child's indulgence and people tolerated that and for too long, costing so many lives. 

Selma on the other hand is an Alabama City made notorious when Martin Luther King led protesters therefrom intending to march to Montgomery to protest the inhuman racists of the deep south America which denied blacks voting rights. but were stopped on the Edmund Pettus bridge. On that day in March 1965, they were met with brutality of the worst kind for merely demanding that they be recognized as full humans beings deserving of some dignity and with rights to vote and be voted for in a democracy.  But Governor George Wallace thought otherwise, unleashed his hound dogs with police dogs, mounted horses, water cannons, horse whips, tear gas, live bullets and all sort of unprintable repression gadgets. At the end of the day, many lay dead, dying and mortally wounded and the march was aborted. This is the only significant thing which any one remembers of Selma.

Icheoku says what is in a name one may ask, especially when that name contains six letters A, E, L, M, S and belong to two cities, both of which turned out to be reprehensible memories of America's not too distant past. But thankfully witchcraft and sorcery was outlawed and so also was racial servitude and superiority of one race over another; as well as the right to vote and be voted for which became instituted. This shows that every freedom of today was purchased with sorrow, tears and blood of men and women who once stood up in the past to say never again. But do today's beneficiaries of such selfless sacrifices appreciate and treasure these past sacrifices, you decide.