Tributes

"My first night in Selma, 1965, I slept on a pew in Brown Chapel. The next day, one of Alice & Lonzo West's dozen children (activists all) led me by the hand across the muddy yard to their apartment in the Carver Housing project. There I met Mrs. Alice West, the indomitable matriarch of a Movement family and matron of an unofficial freedom house. Freedom fighters passed through, stayed overnight, and crashed on the floor. At times it seemed like a station on the underground railroad of 1865. For the next couple of weeks I slept atop their side-by-side washer-dryer in my old sleeping bag."

"My parents opened their home to the movement. Freedom fighters passed through. It was the second freedom house. John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, James Orange, Rev. Richard Boone, Rev. James Bevel and his wife Diane Nash and baby Sherilyn — they all stayed upstairs."

"In 1965, after Dr. King, SCLC, and SNCC came to Selma, my husband, my family, and I made our home welcome to all 'outside agitators' as they were called."

"Jon Daniels was a part of my family, we all loved him and trusted him. He taught my family all about the wonders of God's love. His death took a toll on my family as well as all the Black people in Selma, AL."

"We have come a long way. But maybe we can continue to move forward to make this a better world for all people."

"Selma mourns the loss of Alice Martin West, a civil rights activist who helped more than 300 people register to vote and opened her home to movement workers during the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign."

"Others pledge to fight on in her memory."

"A proud Selma native, devoted Catholic, and fearless civil rights activist — Alice Martin West's legacy lives on in the next generation of Selma's young people."