Civil Rights Movement: The Selma March

1965: 1 + Reed, Roy. “Rights Marchers Push Into Region Called Hostile.” New York Times. 23 Mar. 1965: 1+ Sobel, Lester A. “Vote Campaign in Selma.” Civil Rights 1960-66.

Marching for Freedom On a grey Sunday morning in March of 1965, Alabama State Troopers at the orders of Governor George Wallace advanced on a group of African-Americans leading a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Using bull-whips, Billy clubs and tear gas, the armed troopers made short work of the defenseless protestors, injuring 57 of them while enforcing the strict segregation of the South. The march which was supposed to start in Selma and end at the state capitol in Montgomery was organized by voting rights leaders after a civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, had been killed during a protest. Those who organized the march included chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) John Lewis and Hosea William, an assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Voting rights campaign led by the SNCC had targeted Selma because it had one of the lowest ratios of African-American voters to white voters. Out of an eligible 15,000 Selmans, only 200 were registered to vote.

Bloody Sunday took place on March 7, 1965, there wasn’t just one event that had to do with Bloody Sunday but there were three. The protest had over 600 participants that were marching until the Pettus Bridge which was blocked by many different kinds of policemen, including the Alabama State Police and also the local police force. These police forces used billy clubs and tear gas against all of the protesters to prevent them from crossing the Pettus Bridge. In response to the brutal event, Martin Luther King Jr. organized another protest, and his protest was just like the other protest in the fact that the protesters were supposed to cross the Pettus Bridge (Selma-To-Montgomery March). In addition to “Bloody Sunday” there were two more marches held in or around Selma, Alabama.

The New York Times 5 May 1963: 191. Print. Robert, Gordon. "Waves of Young Negroes March in Birmingham Segregation Protest." The Washington Post, Times Herald 3 May 1963: 11.

Official Program for the March on Washington (1963). n.d. 29 April 2014 . Ross, Schmuel. Infoplease. 2014.

Web. 10 Feb. 2014. . "Selma to Montgomery March." We Shall Overcome. National Parks Service, n.d.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the evening of April 4, 1968 while exiting his hotel room. The news of King’s assassination left the African-American community shocked, disappointed and outraged. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. triggered various responses from the black and white communities. The black community’s main response was widespread violence throughout the United States, resulting in demises and military involvement, while a few decided to hold peaceful protests in King’s memory. Many in the white community celebrated, while others feared for their lives.

The March on Washington - August 28, 1963 One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written, African Americans were still fighting for equal rights in every day life. The first real success of this movement did not come until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 which was followed by many boycotts and protests. The largest of these protests, the March on Washington, was held on August 28, 1963 “for jobs and freedom” (March on Washington 11). An incredible amount of preparation went into the event to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people attending from around the nation and to deal with any potential incidents. According to the march organizers, the march would symbolize their demands of “the passage of the Kennedy Administration Civil Rights Legislation without compromise of filibuster,” integration of all public schools by the end of the year, a federal program to help the unemployed, and a Federal Fair Employment Act which would ban job discrimination (“The March on Washington” 11).

At Boston University, he met Coretta Scott; they were married in 1953. King's rise to national and international prominence began in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. In that year, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to obey a city ordinance that required African Americans to sit or stand at the back of municipal buses. The African American citizens of the city (one of the most thoroughly segregated in the South) organized a bus boycott in protest and asked King to serve as their leader. Thousands boycotted the buses for more than a year, and despite segregationist violence against them, King grounded their protests on his deeply held belief in nonviolence.

Web. 24 May 2014. . "Selma to Montgomery March (1965)." Selma to Montgomery March (1965). N.p., n.d.