The events in Selma galvanized public opinion and mobilized Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965.
Outrage at “Bloody Sunday” swept the country. For months, the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register Black voters in the county seat of Selma had been thwarted. Although Wallace ordered state troopers “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march,” approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 7. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.”, READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline. Williams and Lewis stood their ground at the front of the line. When Lewis shielded his head with a hand, the trooper hit Lewis again as he tried to get up. Go home or go to your church. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. SNCC leader John Lewis (light coat, center), attempts to ward off the blow as a burly state trooper swings his club at Lewis' head during the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The connection wasn’t lost in Selma, either. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Sympathizers staged sit-ins, traffic blockades and demonstrations in solidarity with the voting rights marchers. “I’ve got nothing further to say to you,” Cloud answered. Edmund Pettus Bridge Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965), Selma, Alabama, 2006. Four days later, they reached Montgomery with the crowd growing to 25,000 by the time they reached the capitol steps. It … King, who had met with President Lyndon Johnson two days earlier to discuss voting rights legislation, remained back in Atlanta with his own congregation and planned to join the marchers en route the following day. On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by … They pushed back Lewis and Williams. Behind them were deputies of county sheriff Jim Clark, some on horseback, and dozens of white spectators waving Confederate flags and giddily anticipating a showdown. “It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,” Major John Cloud called out from his bullhorn. All 34 songs from Selma (2015), with scene descriptions. The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired John Lewis and Generations of Civil Rights Activists. Deputies on horseback charged ahead and chased the gasping men, women and children back over the bridge as they swung clubs, whips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. In response, civil rights leaders planned to take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. The Racist History Behind The Iconic Selma Bridge : Code Switch The Edmund Pettus Bridge is a sacred place in America's civil rights history. Joyce Collins & Johnita Collins. By a coin flip, it was determined that Hosea Williams would represents the SCLC at the head of the march along with Lewis, a SNCC chairman and future U.S. congressman from Georgia. Lewis later testified in court that he was knocked to the ground and a state trooper then hit him in the head with a nightstick. Weeks earlier, King had scolded Life magazine photographer Flip Schulke for trying to assist protestors knocked to the ground by authorities instead of snapping away. Major,” replied Williams, “I would like to have a word, can we have a word?”. He’s rehearsing a solemn line for an award speech, and he’s unhappy about something, which turns out to be his tie—or, rather, his “ascot,” as his wife, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo), calls it.
She adjusts the neckwear. One Morning Soon • Joyce Collins & Johnita Collins. I saw ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ on the Late Show the other night and I thought it fits right in; it’s just like Selma.”. READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired John Lewis and Generations of Civil Rights Activists. They struck them with sticks. This march will not continue.”, “Mr. Once Lewis and Williams reached the crest of the bridge, they saw trouble on the other side. The assault on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama helped lead to the Voting Rights Act. All Rights Reserved. Then the troopers paced quickened. “This is an unlawful assembly. When his store was finally empty of customers, one local shopkeeper confided to Washington Star reporter Haynes Johnson about the city’s institutional racism, “Everybody knows it’s going on, but they try to pretend they don’t see it. After a few moments, the troopers, with gas masks affixed to their faces and clubs at the ready, advanced. The Edmund Pettus Bridge carries U.S. Route 80 Business (US 80 Bus.) Clouds of tear gas mixed with the screams of terrified marchers and the cheers of reveling bystanders. The passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 months earlier had done little in some parts of the state to ensure African Americans of the basic right to vote. The demonstrators marched undisturbed through downtown Selma, where the ghosts of the past constantly permeated the present. Nearly a century after the Confederacy’s guns fell silent, the racial legacies of slavery and Reconstruction continued to reverberate loudly throughout Alabama in 1965. Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images. Law enforcement beat Boynton unconscious, and the media publicized worldwide a picture of her lying wounded on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “The world doesn’t know this happened because you didn’t photograph it,” King told Schulke, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Race Beat. Selma begins with the camera squarely framing Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), as if for a formal portrait. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Perhaps no place was Jim Crow’s grip tighter than in Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half of the population, yet accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters. Listen to the music, ost, score, list of songs and trailers. Peaceful demonstrations in Selma and surrounding communities resulted in the arrests of thousands, including King, who wrote to the New York Times, “This is Selma, Alabama. The immediate effect is ironic. across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama.Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.The bridge is a steel through arch bridge with a central span of 250 feet (76 m). Nearly 50 million Americans who had tuned into the film’s long-awaited television premier couldn’t escape the historical echoes of Nazi storm troopers in the scenes of the rampaging state troopers.