Selma marches were a series of protests for African American voting rights that took place in Alabama in March 1965. The marches contributed to the United States Congress passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1964, most of the people of Dallas County, Alabama, were Black. However, a number of policies prevented many Black citizens from voting. For example, African Americans were required to pass tests known as literacy tests that were intentionally designed to keep Black people from voting. In addition, African American voter registration was limited to only two days a month. Consequently, most of the voters in the county were white. In 1965, two civil rights groups, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), ran voter registration drives in Alabama. They also led peaceful protests in the state. An all-white police force attacked the SCLC and SNCC activists. On February 18, a state trooper shot a Black protester named Jimmie Lee Jackson.
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, about 600 marchers met in Selma, the Dallas County seat, to protest the voting policies and Jackson’s murder. They hoped to go to the state capital in Montgomery to present the governor with their grievances. The protesters marched only six blocks before local and state authorities stopped them at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and ordered them to disband. The marchers stood their ground. The police then attacked the marchers with clubs, whips, and tear gas. So many people were injured that day that it became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Reports of the event on television news programs helped gain sympathy and political support for the marchers and their cause.
Loading the player...Historical commentary and footage of the Selma civil rights march
On March 9, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., led about 1,500 marchers to the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a prayer service. Three white ministers were beaten by _segregationists—_that is, people who support racial segregation. One of the ministers, James Reeb, died two days later. On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act was designed to establish protections to guarantee African Americans the right to vote.
On March 21, nearly 3,200 protesters gathered with King in Selma to march again. This time, federal troops protected them. By the time the marchers reached the Montgomery State Capitol on March 25, the crowd had grown to 25,000. At the Capitol, King demanded that African Americans be given the right to vote without unjust restrictions. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. The act gave the vote to hundreds of thousands of Southern Black citizens who had never voted. It also led to a large increase in the number of African American elected officials.
