for Justice - Selma to Montgomery. Despite a
succession of federal court rulings designed to open the polls to
African Americans in the 1960s, black Alabamians in huge numbers were
not registered to vote due to the power of local voter registrars to
erect obstacles. The problem was particularly acute in the Black Belt
of the state, where whites feared losing political control when the
black majority population gained the franchise. Selma, in the heart of
the Black Belt, became a focus for black registration drives in the
early 1960s and, in 1965, was chosen by African American Civil Rights
leaders as the site from which to launch a march on Montgomery, the
state capital, to dramatize the plight of the disfranchised.
The march of a few hundred protesters
began on March 7, 1965. Governor George Wallace ordered local and state
law enforcement personnel to block the march at the Edmund Pettus
Bridge spanning the Alabama River on the way out of Selma. The
resulting spectacle of uniformed law officers attacking peaceful
demonstrators was witnessed by a horrified American public as "Bloody
Sunday" on the nightly news. The "Selma to Montgomery March" was begun
anew on March 21, with the marchers' ranks swelled by supporters from
across the nation, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who had been
involved in the Selma protests since January but had not been there on
"Bloody Sunday." Some 3,200 marchers left Selma on March 21st and as
many as 25,000 took part in the final stretch up Montgomery's Dexter
Avenue to the state Capitol four days later.
Emotions aroused over the events in
Selma galvanized the U.S. Congress to pass, and President Lyndon B.
Johnson to sign, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to supply federal
overseers in the local voter registration process.