Marie Foster
*Marie Foster was born on this date in 1917. She was a Black educator and a civil rights activist.
She was born Marie Priscilla Martin near Alberta, Alabama. Foster's mother took her to Selma for education against Foster's father's wishes. Foster did not initially complete high school but dropped out, married, and raised three children. After her husband's death, Foster worked low-wage jobs but eventually completed high school, attended a junior college, and became a dental hygienist.
Foster became interested in the American Civil Rights Movement in early 1960 as she tried registering to vote eight times before succeeding. Following her successful registration, Foster began teaching other Blacks how to pass the tests used to bar them. One person attended her first class, where she taught a 70-year-old man how to write his name. Gradually, the classes drew more and more people. Foster became an organizer for the Dallas County area as the Civil Rights Movement grew.
She participated in the March 7, 1965 demonstration known as Bloody Sunday. As the march approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a combined state trooper and police force stopped the march, violently beating many participants. Foster was at the front of one of the lines and was clubbed by a state trooper, leaving her with swollen knees. Despite her injuries, two weeks later, Foster participated in the march that eventually made it to Montgomery, Alabama, successfully walking fifty miles over five days.
"Even in her old age, she could still outwork the young activists of today," said Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. Many civil rights movement leaders autographed the vest Foster wore during the march and is now on display in Selma at the National Voting Rights Institute and Museum. "Mother Marie Foster, through her citizenship classes and her fiery stances at the courthouse, had actually added more Black voters than all the marching and demonstrations together had produced," said J.L. Chestnut Jr., a Black attorney in Selma.
Marie Foster died on September 6, 2003, at a hospital where she had been taken about a week earlier. The cause of death was not released.
