Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, but it did not adequately address the problem of voter suppression. In Selma, a judge had stopped the voter registration protests by issuing an injunction prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.
To call attention to the crisis in her city, Amelia Boynton, who was a part of the Dallas County Voters League but who, in this case, was acting with a group of local activists, traveled to Birmingham to invite Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to the city. King had become a household name after the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.
King and other prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference arrived in January to press the voter registration drive. For seven weeks, Black residents tried to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2000 of them for a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.
Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.
Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles-- from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.
On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bull whips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull, and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.
Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.
Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.
On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us… must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.
The marchers remained determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, and when Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them, President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1,900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.
On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”
That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members tailing her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.
On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson recalled “the outrage of Selma” when he said "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."
The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where African Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”
But less than 50 years later, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. Since then, states have made it harder to vote. And now, in the wake of the 2020 election, in which voters handed control of the government to Democrats, legislatures in 43 states are considering sweeping legislation to restrict voting, especially voting by people of color. Among the things Georgia wants to outlaw is giving water to voters as they wait for hours in line to get to the polls.
Today, 56 years after Bloody Sunday, President Biden signed an executive order “to promote voting access and allow all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.” He called on Congress to pass the For the People Act, making it easier to vote, and to restore the Voting Rights Act, now named the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act after the man who went on from his days in the Civil Rights Movement to serve 17 terms as a representative from Georgia, bearing the scars of March 7, 1965, until he died on July 17, 2020.
The fact sheet from the White House announcing the executive order explained: “democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend, strengthen, and renew it.” Or, as Representative Lewis put it: “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
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Notes:
https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/37721510v1p2.pdf
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/selma-montgomery-march
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/25/fight-to-vote-newsletter-voting-rights-act
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/us/politics/churches-black-voters-georgia.html
In 1967 several of my college classmates and I formed a local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter in the community in Pennsylvania where our college was located. Among our first activities was to open an after-school tutoring program for struggling high school students located in the public housing projects near our off-campus apartment complex. We felt we needed a way to connect with the local community in order to politically activate them and helping their kids was a good way to make that connection. In time we commenced conducting voter registration drives and politically activating the community for a number of causes. By the time my class graduated we had even placed several members of the local neighborhood on the school board, City Council, and in several municipal boards and commissions.
That community activism during my college years caused me to become engaged in advocating for voting rights and various social justice causes. Now 50 plus years later I find the same causes for which I advocated then still denied to too many. I cannot believe that we are still engaged in this struggle which to me seems so righteous and just. I find the denial of voting rights to be among the most insidious forms of suppression of basic human rights and dignity. It disgusted me over 50 years ago and angers me today. To think I am still engaged in this struggle without a final victory yet more than 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act saddens me greatly.
I remind myself, though in frustration, that the national activation and mobilization of literally millions of demonstrators in the streets of our nation and our legislative halls have always been required to achieve progress in social justice. We cannot simply depend on our legislators to do the right and moral thing. It seems they must be pushed and pushed again. It is again time to activate and mobilize millions in this cause again, as our legislators once more seem to be ignoring the will of the people. Time to rise up yet and demand the will of the people is represented in our legislatures. Let the peoples' voices be heard.
This is such a powerful and moving piece about this day in history. Our history. A story of Alabama. I wonder how to change this story. Together, we must make a new story.
“You must be the change you would like to see in this world”
This quote is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., drew inspiration from Gandhi, and studied his principles of non-violence. imho, these principles involve all aspects on one’s life, including speech and action, thinking and intention.
I feel I need to bring to the community our speech and intention, with people with whom we disagreeing views.
* I want to apologize to the community and take back my biting words that I have written on this board, about conservatives and people who follow Donald Trump. I feel shame that I have fallen into the violence of the Pettis Bridge, with my own hateful speech. I have long admired Gandhi, King and Rosa Parks, and all who have fought a far greater struggle in life than I, in the journeyfor a kind and gentle heart, let alone peace in their world and the world we share.
How can we ever expect to have a less violent world - and in our own personal life - if we cannot stop the violence that comes from our own pen, and therefore our mind. We simply will not cross the bridge to the world we desire if we cannot accept and welcome the stranger.
In the spirit of free speech, I welcome anyone to express themselves in the manner one chooses. However, there is ample evidence in history that free speech does NOT lead to freedom. Liberation comes from within. I feel this requires courage, and support from others.
I ask you to join me in gently reminding others in our community to reach within for words that welcome, and acknowledge our habitual speech of aggression.
I ask for your support in our journey across our own Pettis bridge.