"I cried that day because I couldn't go," Perkins said. Even then he knew he was missing a major battle in the civil rights movement. But Perkins, now 47, is a symbol of the accomplishments of that movement. Last October he became the first black mayor of Selma.

"The dust is settling and I think we're in good shape," Perkins told Conference News Daily. "We had not had an opportunity to change government in 36 years."

In his third attempt, Perkins defeated the white incumbent, Joseph T. Smitherman, a former segregationist who had been mayor since 1964. Perkins won 57 percent of the vote in a run-off election that was sharply divided along racial lines. Selma has 20,000 residents, two-thirds of them black and one-third white. Only 200 whites reportedly voted for Perkins. But that's not something he dwells on as he goes about doing his job.

"I am the mayor of all Selma," Perkins said. "There's not a single decision that a leader in my situation could make that would satisfy 100 percent of the constituents."

Of all decisions Perkins makes, none are more closely watched than those relating to the city's economy. The unemployment rate rose to 20 percent in June, four times the state average. Perkins' main challenge as mayor is to create jobs by attracting businesses to the area. And that means making the city itself more attractive, he said.

"We have a lot of abandoned homes, dilapidated properties," Perkins said. "We have not done a very good job in code enforcement. A lot of good laws on the books simply have not been enforced. That is changing."

Considering the mayor's visions of change and his place in history, any reporter would be tempted to describe Perkins as a leader of the New South.

But that's a label he resists. Outsiders, he said, often exaggerate the meaning of "new."

"I would venture to say that we lived together and worked together for the common good of our community before we became the so-called New South," he said. "It's just that there was not a lot of fairness and equity and opportunities in the process."

The mayor's point about equity is evident on the vestibule wall inside the doors of city hall, which displays pictures of Selma's mayors since the mid-1800s. All white men. It has taken 35 years since blacks in the South won the right to vote, but that wall will finally have some color.