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On This Day: The Selma-to-Montgomery March Begins
March 21, 2009 02:00 AM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
On March 21, 1965, 3,200 civil rights demonstrators began a march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery to protest the South’s discriminatory voting laws.
Thousands of Protesters March
In early 1965, Reverend James Orange was arrested in southwest Alabama for organizing a voter registration drive.
Charged with disorderly conduct, Orange told Mississippi newspaper The Clarion-Ledger that “rumors had gotten out that I was supposed to be lynched in jail,” The New York Times reports.
The Reverend’s supporters came out to protest his incarceration, but were met with a swift and brutal show of force from the police.
When a protestor named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, where the young man’s body would be left on the steps of the Capitol building.
However, police blocked the group’s first attempt to march on March 7, sending 17 people to the hospital in an incident that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Two hundred police officers confronted the 500 protestors, brandishing tear gas, whips and sticks. But the event did not deter civil rights leaders, who organized a second march two days later, which was also stopped by the police.
Then on Sunday, March 21, the 3,200 protestors left Selma to begin their third and final voting rights march. “By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong,” according to the National Parks Service. The march was the catalyst for the Voting Rights Act, which was passed less than five months later.
And soon after the demonstration, President Lyndon Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act, which prevented Southern states from discriminating against black voters.
Charged with disorderly conduct, Orange told Mississippi newspaper The Clarion-Ledger that “rumors had gotten out that I was supposed to be lynched in jail,” The New York Times reports.
The Reverend’s supporters came out to protest his incarceration, but were met with a swift and brutal show of force from the police.
When a protestor named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, where the young man’s body would be left on the steps of the Capitol building.
However, police blocked the group’s first attempt to march on March 7, sending 17 people to the hospital in an incident that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Two hundred police officers confronted the 500 protestors, brandishing tear gas, whips and sticks. But the event did not deter civil rights leaders, who organized a second march two days later, which was also stopped by the police.
Then on Sunday, March 21, the 3,200 protestors left Selma to begin their third and final voting rights march. “By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong,” according to the National Parks Service. The march was the catalyst for the Voting Rights Act, which was passed less than five months later.
And soon after the demonstration, President Lyndon Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act, which prevented Southern states from discriminating against black voters.
Key Players: Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. James Orange
Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most visible and influential leaders of the Civil Rights movement, was instrumental in the Selma-to-Montgomery march. He also led the earlier march to Edmund Pettus Bridge that commemorated Bloody Sunday and participated in the third and ultimately successful march on the 21st.
Reverend James Orange worked with Dr. King throughout the Civil Rights movement, but it was his arrest while organizing a voter registration drive that was the impetus for the Selma-to-Montgomery march. When State Troopers shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young man protesting Orange’s arrest, King had the idea to bring his body to the state capitol.
Reverend James Orange worked with Dr. King throughout the Civil Rights movement, but it was his arrest while organizing a voter registration drive that was the impetus for the Selma-to-Montgomery march. When State Troopers shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young man protesting Orange’s arrest, King had the idea to bring his body to the state capitol.
Related Topics: The Voting Rights Act and the significance of literacy
The march inspired President Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally enabled African-Americans to overcome the state laws that prevented them from registering to vote. Although the federal government had “intruded in matters previously reserved to the individual states,” according to the Department of Justice, state governments had been employing discriminatory practices in order to sidestep the 15th amendment.
Source: United States Department of Justice
The Alabama Department of Archives and History shows a sample copy of one of the tests administered to potential black voters. The State put numerous tests into circulation that made it extremely difficult to study or practice for the test, especially for illiterate voters. Voting rights advocate Rufus A. Lewis used the sample test featured on the department’s Web site to teach African-Americans how to pass.
Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave previously disenfranchised African-Americans the right to vote, which in turn meant they could be called for jury duty. Time magazine questions the ramifications of utilizing jurors who are unable to read and write, writing that there were various difficulties in the first case of a white man tried by an all-black jury. The foreman of the trial reported that, "some of the men said if we found this white man guilty, the judge would turn him loose, and he would come looking for us."
Source: Time
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