Bloody Sunday in Selma: Civil Rights Marches On

A federal judge had cleared the way, and this time, the marchers would not be stopped. Two weeks after state troopers beat 600 peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as Bloody Sunday, Martin Luther King Jr. led 3,200 people out of Selma, Alabama on March 21, 1965, beginning the third and final attempt to march to the state capital in Montgomery. The first march on March 7 had ended in minutes. Alabama state troopers under Colonel Al Lingo, backed by Sheriff Jim Clark's mounted posse, attacked marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Television cameras broadcast the assault into living rooms across America, and the footage galvanized national outrage. A second attempt on March 9, led by King, turned back at the bridge after a brief prayer. President Lyndon Johnson addressed Congress on March 15, declaring "We shall overcome" and demanding passage of voting rights legislation. Federal Judge Frank Johnson ruled that the marchers had a First Amendment right to march, and the president federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect them. Over five days, the column swelled to 25,000 as it covered 54 miles along U.S. Route 80, sleeping in fields and enduring rain and cold. The march delivered its message directly to Governor George Wallace's doorstep. Within five months, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which dismantled the literacy tests and poll taxes that had disenfranchised Black voters across the South for nearly a century. Selma to Montgomery remains the march that turned moral outrage into federal law.