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At 17, He Was Tear-Gassed at Selma. At 78, He’s Watching Kids Tear-Gassed During Trump’s Deportation Campaign.
Charles Mauldin remembers that his lungs felt like they were imploding when he breathed in tear gas more than 60 years ago. It was Sunday, March 7, 1965, when Mauldin, who was 17, joined hundreds of other demonstrators in a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black Americans.
Mauldin stood near the front of the line — just two rows behind John Lewis, who would go on to become a civil rights icon and U.S. representative — when the march attempted to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Law enforcement officers waited on the other side. They ordered the group to disperse. After about a minute and half, Mauldin said, police began to attack the demonstrators with billy clubs. They also launched tear gas into the crowd, which included teenagers like Mauldin.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” Mauldin recalled. “I was fearful. We had to put ourselves in a place beyond fear.”
Now 78, Mauldin watches the news and sees videos and pictures of children being tear-gassed again — not by local police in 1965, but by federal immigration officers in 2026.
“Having people like ICE treat people the way we were treated 61 years ago, it’s horrible,” Mauldin said. “It’s traumatizing for young kids, and I’m just starting to realize how traumatizing it is for me.”
Mauldin holds a photograph of demonstrators crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. Mauldin is in the third row of people, in the center of the photograph, looking at the camera. Civil rights icon John Lewis is in the first row at the right. Charity Rachelle for ProPublicaPolice advance on the demonstrators. Mauldin is second from the right. “I was fearful. We had to put ourselves in a place beyond fear,” he said. Spider Martin/The Spider Martin Civil Rights CollectionWe reached out to........
© ProPublica
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