On this day in 1965, a civil rights march led by SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) member William Hosea and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) member John Lewis, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after a white supremacist leader, and were chased down and beaten by police forces. The filmed event would take the nation by storm, causing American people across the country to take part in civil rights protests.
Since the institution of Jim Crow within the southern states of America, Black Americans were forced out of the political system through white suppression and violence. It seemed this system of Black voter suppression was more prevalent in Dallas County, Alabama, than it was anywhere else in the country. Maintaining a stranglehold on the era of Jim Crow, more than half of Dallas County’s inhabitants were Black Americans and yet less than 2% of the voting population were, themselves, Black. With its pervasive presence of white supremacy, Dallas County and its County seat, the city of Selma, showed themselves to be an arduous obstacle to overcome for civil rights organizations. In January of 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in the city of Selma with the SCLC in order to provide aid to the SNCC who had long attempted to register Black voters, but more often than not, ran into blockades. Immediately, Martin Luther King began to stage peaceful protests throughout the city of Selma, bringing thousands upon thousands to his cause. Though he too, would face the difficulties set in place by the white supremacist institutions at play; within a month, three thousands protestors, Martin Luther King included, would be arrested and placed in jail cells.
Events would only worsen on February 18, when police officers brutally clubbed and then shot 26 year old Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black protestor attempting to defend his mother from a beating by police officers (Jackson would pass away eight days later from his wounds). Recognizing the extremity of the situation and the required action, the SCLC and SNCC worked together and planned a 54 mile march, from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, in order to confront the state governor, George Wallace. George Wallace, in opposition to the civil rights movement, ordered for state and police forces to prevent the march from reaching Montgomery at all costs. On March 7, 1965, 600 protestors led by William Hosea and John Lewis alongside Amelia Boynton (Martin Luther King was still in Atlanta after having met with President Lyndon B. Johnson) set off, prepared to confront the 54 miles that they believed lay ahead.
The march began uncontested through the streets of downtown Selma, they soon arrived at the Edmund Pettus Bridge – a testament to the deeply disturbed and ingrained white supremacy that still held onto the region. As the protestors crossed over the crest of the bridge, a wall of state troopers and police officers on horses stood at the other side. Behind the wall were groups of white spectators, waving Confederate flags and looking on at the eventual violence. Upon being warned to walk no further, John Lewis and William Hosea paused the procession of activists. The Major in charge of the state troops continued, warning the group to turn around and walk back to where they had started. There was a moment of inaction before the troopers charged forward toward the 600 people taking part in the march. What occurred was the most obscene acts of violence. Troopers wielding clubs and sticks – some of them wrapped in barbed wire – chased down and mercilessly beat fleeing protestors. Tear gas was fired into the crowds as officers on horses rode down upon the protestors, striking them with whips and trampling them underfoot. Despite the violence that had come down upon them, protestors did not attempt to fight back, instead trying to escape from the bridge. John Lewis and Amelia Boynton were both struck in the head by officers with clubs and both were knocked unconscious. The events on the bridge, having been filmed by a camera crew, would change America.
‘Bloody Sunday’, as it would come to be referred to, was broadcast to tens of millions of Americans that same evening, bringing to light the dire and staggering brutality that had been put on display. The national public attention would spur large populations of Americans to action, each person looking to fight for the justice that had for so long evaded the Black American population. Two days later, another march along the same root took place, this time with Martin Luther King at the front. They were forced to turn back again at the presence of armed officers, but on March 21, the goal of reaching Montgomery was realized. After being permitted by a federal court, Martin Luther King led an assembly of protestors that numbered more than 25,000 people by the time it reached the steps of the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
The violence that occurred on ‘Bloody Sunday’, an act of white supremacy, would eventually give way to events that served a blow to the longstanding white supremacist institutions of America. After mass national uproar and protest at the abuse and suppression of Black Americans, on August 6, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the ‘Voting Rights Act’ into law. The fight for racial equality had come one step closer to its once inconceivable goal.
Today In History 