That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the right to vote (first awarded by the 15th Amendment) to all African Americans. On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting. “No tide of racism can stop us,” King proclaimed from the building’s steps, as viewers from around the world watched the historic moment on television. Nearly 50,000 supporters-Black and white-met the marchers in Montgomery, where they gathered in front of the state capitol to hear King and other speakers including Ralph Bunche (winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize) address the crowd. After walking some 12 hours a day and sleeping in fields along the way, they reached Montgomery on March 25. Army troops and Alabama National Guard forces that Johnson had ordered under federal control. Some 2,000 people set out from Selma on March 21, protected by U.S. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. There is only an American problem,” Johnson said, “Their cause must be our cause too. Johnson went on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and to call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress. Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon B. district court judge ordered them to permit it. Alabama state officials (led by Wallace) tried to prevent the march from going forward, but a U.S. That night, a group of segregationists attacked another protester the young white minister James Reeb, beating him to death. This decision led to criticism from some marchers, who called King cowardly. King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside. On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, Black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. Hundreds of ministers, priests, rabbis and social activists soon headed to Selma to join the voting rights march. The brutal scene was captured on television, enraging many Americans and drawing civil rights and religious leaders of all faiths to Selma in protest. The marchers didn’t get far before Alabama state troopers wielding whips, nightsticks and tear gas rushed the group at the Edmund Pettis Bridge and beat them back to Selma. A group of 600 people, including activists John Lewis and Hosea Williams, set out from Selma on Sunday, Maa day that would come to be known as “ Bloody Sunday,” In response to Jackson’s death, King and the SCLC planned a massive protest march from Selma to the state capitol of Montgomery, 54 miles away. In the ensuing chaos, an Alabama state trooper fatally shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American demonstrator. On February 18, white segregationists attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators in the town of Marion, Alabama. King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and his profile would help draw international attention to the events that followed.Īlabama Governor George Wallace was a notorious opponent of desegregation, and the local county sheriff in Dallas County had led a steadfast opposition to Black voter registration drives.Īs a result, only 2 percent of Selma’s eligible Black voters (about 300 out of 15,000) had managed to register to vote.ĭid you know? Ralph Bunche, who participated in the Selma to Montgomery March with Martin Luther King Jr., won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine a year earlier. and the SCLC decided to make Selma, located in Dallas County, Alabama, the focus of a Black voter registration campaign. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in voting on the basis of race, efforts by civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) to register Black voters met with fierce resistance in southern states such as Alabama.īut the civil rights movement was not easily deterred.
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