This Saturday, March 7, is the 50th anniversary of the first Selma to Montgomery March and Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama:
Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7, and, led by John Lewis and other SNCC and SCLC activists, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people.
State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (in the foreground), is being beaten by state troopers (Photo: James “Spider” Martin Photographic Archive/Briscoe Center, University of Texas at Austin)
“Bloody Sunday” was televised around the world. Martin Luther King called for civil rights supporters to come to Selma for a second march. When members of Congress pressured him to restrain the march until a court could rule on whether the protesters deserved federal protection, King found himself torn between their requests for patience and demands of the movement activists pouring into Selma. King, still conflicted, led the second protest on March 9 but turned it around at the same bridge.
On March 21, the final successful march began with federal protection.
On August 6, 1965, the federal Voting Rights Act was passed, completing the process that King had hoped for.