Bloody Sunday Civil Rights March

In December 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC to join forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC has been working on registering voters for months. Selma is a great place to defend the voting rights of African-Americans. Half of the city’s residents are black but only 1% of them are registered on electoral lists, the registrar, which is accessible only two days a month, opened late and suffered lunch breaks to extension.

Sunday, 7 March 1965, 600 civil rights advocates were leaving Selma to try to reach Montgomery, the state capital, to present their grievances through peaceful march. Police and a hostile crowd who push towards them violently with batons and tear gas arrested them after a few miles of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. This day will be known as “Bloody Sunday” and marked a turning point in the struggle for civil rights. Reports on TV showing police violence enable the movement to gain public support and underscore the success of the non-violent Martin Luther King who was not present during this first step, trying to delay it after he meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Two days later, Martin Luther leads a symbolic march to the bridge, an action that he appeared to have negotiated with local authorities and caused a misunderstanding with activists in Selma. The movement then sought judicial protection to accomplish the march and found Federal Court judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr. was in favor of the demonstrators:

“The law is clear on the fact that the right to petition their grievances to the Government may be exercised in a group of high amplitude … and these rights can be exercised by one step, even along a public road. ”

3,200 marchers from Selma finally start out on Sunday 21 March 1965, traveling 20 miles a day and sleeping in the fields. It was during this trip that Willie Ricks developed the term “Black Power”. By the time they reached the capitol in Montgomery on Thursday, March 25, there are over 25 000 walkers. Martin Luther King then delivers the speech “How Long, Not Long”. The Ku Klux Klan while walking back to his car murdered the same day the white militant civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo. Martin Luther attended his funeral and President Johnson directly on television announced the arrest of the culprits.

Less than five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act giving the right to vote without restriction.

Works Cited:

Speeches that Changed the World: The Stories and Transcripts of the Moments that Made History. Quercus.

Baldwin, Lewis V. (1992). To Make the Wounded Whole: The Cultural Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Fortress Press.

Warren, Mervyn A. (2001). King Came Preaching: The Pulpit Power of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. InterVarsity Press.

King, Jr., Martin Luther; Clayborne Carson; Peter Holloran; Ralph Luker; Penny A. Russell (1992). The papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.. University of California Press.

Ling, Peter J. (2002). Martin Luther King, Jr.. Routledge.

Nojeim, Michael J. (2004). Gandhi and King: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance. Greenwood Publishing Group