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N0KFQ > TODAY 21.03.12 17:39l 92 Lines 4503 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Mar 21
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Sent: 120321/1520Z 19401@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.49
Mar 21, 1965:
Selma to Montgomery march begins
In the name of African-American voting rights, 3,200 civil rights
demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic
march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery.
Federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and FBI agents were on
hand to provide safe passage for the march, which twice had been
turned back by Alabama state police at Selma's Edmund Pettus
Bridge.
In 1965, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) decided to make the small town of Selma the focus of their
drive to win voting rights for African Americans in the South.
Alabama's governor, George Wallace, was a vocal opponent of the
African-American civil rights movement, and local authorities in
Selma had consistently thwarted efforts by the Dallas County
Voters League and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) to register local blacks. In spite of repeated
registration campaigns, only 2 percent of eligible blacks were on
the voter rolls. Furthermore, the local sheriff was notoriously
brutal, and so seemed sure to respond in so galling a way as to
attract national attention.
King had won the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace, and the world's eyes
turned to Selma after his arrival there in January 1965. He
launched a series of peaceful protests, and by mid-February
thousands of protesters in the Selma area had spent time in jail,
including King himself.
On February 18, a group of white segregationists attacked some
peaceful marchers in the nearby town of Marion. Jimmie Lee
Jackson, a young African American, was shot by a state trooper in
the melee. After he died, King and the SCLC planned a massive
march from Selma to Montgomery. Although Governor Wallace
promised to prevent it from going forward, on March 7 some 500
demonstrators, led by SCLC leader Hosea Williams and SNCC leader
John Lewis, began the 54-mile march to the state capital. After
crossing Pettus Bridge, they were met by Alabama state troopers
and posse men who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas, and
whips after they refused to turn back. Several of the protesters
were severely beaten, and others ran for their lives. The
incident was captured on national television and outraged many
Americans. Hundreds of ministers, priests, and rabbis headed to
Selma to join the voting rights campaign. King, who was in
Atlanta at the time, promised to return to Selma immediately and
lead another attempt.
On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, black and white,
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked
again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in
prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside. King then turned
the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to
create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal
injunction prohibiting the march. This decision led to criticism
from some marchers who called King cowardly. In Selma that night,
James Reeb, a white minister from Boston, was fatally beaten by a
group of segregationists.
Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon Johnson went on
national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters
and call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was
introducing in Congress. "There is no Negro problem. There is no
Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an
American problem," he said, "...Their cause must be our cause
too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us,
who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome."
On March 21, U.S. Army troops and federalized Alabama National
Guardsmen escorted the marchers across Edmund Pettus Bridge and
down Highway 80. When the highway narrowed to two lanes, only 300
marchers were permitted, but thousands more rejoined the Alabama
Freedom March as it came into Montgomery on March 25. On the
steps of the Alabama State Capitol, King addressed live
television cameras and a crowd of 25,000, just a few hundred feet
from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where he got his start as
a minister in 1954. That August, President Johnson signed the
Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed African Americans the right
to vote.
Between the passing of the act and the May 1966 primary, 122,000
blacks registered to vote in the state. This represented a
quarter of Alabama's voters.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
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