Dr. Halcyon Sadberry Watkins was a coed at Texas Southern University when she helped integrate the lunch counter at Houston's old Weingarten's store on Almeda.
Fueled by that, years later when she was in vet school at Tuskegee, she felt compelled to go to Selma to join the march of the young minister named Martin. She did not make it.
"There were some roadblocks leading out from Tuskegee," Watkins said.
So she turned around, missing the march that became known as Bloody Sunday.
March 7, 1965, demonstrators were beaten back by police on the bridge before ever leaving Selma.
A couple of weeks later, the march from Selma finally took place. Watkins was waiting for the activists on the steps of the state capitol when they arrived in Montgomery, Ala. They celebrated a major victory in the battle for voting rights and equality for African-Americans.
"It was like, 'We've won this part of the battle but it's a lot more to do,'" Watkins said, who now lives in Hempstead.
She is a retired TSU and Prairie View A&M professor who is still a practicing veterinarian. She tutors students in her home and was glad to hear them say they regularly vote.
Still she is concerned.
"We have forgotten that we have another generation behind us. We're just complacent now. We're satisfied that we've made it," she said. "I think Dr. (Martin Luther) King would say, 'What happened, folks? What's going on?'"
That's why Watkins keeps mentoring college students, hoping they will become leaders who uphold the rights her generation stood up for through sit-ins, marches, beat downs and worse.
