Social activist recalls Selma march with Martin Luther King Jr.

The release of the movie Selma, about Martin Luther King Junior's 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, has a social justice activist from P.E.I. reflecting on her experience.

Mary Boyd was part of that five-day March.

She had been studying in the U.S and then began working at a YMCA in a black neighbourhood in Cincinnati. She was already involved in the civil rights movement and says she jumped at the chance to take part in the historic march. 

Boyd said it was exciting and yet quite tense, with participants being schooled in how to protect themselves. 

She said some of the southern white people she encountered were rude, made violent gestures and showed guns.

"There were two days when the march was going through Lowndes County and that was such a violent county that only a hundred people could go. We stayed in Selma and worked in the offices that day. And then they took us out to join the march."

"And they let us off at a service station where the owner had his hand on his gun telling us to get off before he would shoot us ... And then we looked to the left, and who was coming up the road, just to the left of us in the sunshine, but Martin Luther King and his southern leadership conference. He was leading it. And across the street was Harry Belafonte and Tony Perkins."

Boyd, who was awarded the Order of Canada in 2013, said there have been a lot of changes when it comes to civil rights, but she feels there is still a long way to go.