Selma-Montgomery March
Background:
To protest local resistance to black voter registration in Dallas County, Alabama, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a mass march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965. Under the leadership of John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the SCLC's Hosea Williams, a column of five hundred to six hundred demonstrators marched without incident through the streets of Selma until reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they were brutally attacked by state troopers and mounted patrolmen. Television cameramen captured the incident on film, and "Bloody Sunday," as it came to be known, helped marshal nationwide support for the passage of voting rights legislation. Undeterred by the threat of violence, Martin Luther King Jr. led more than three thousand marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge only two weeks later. From there, King's column made the 54-mile trek to the state capital under the watchful protection of the recently federalized Alabama National Guard, arriving in Montgomery four days later.
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Archival Collections and Reference Resources
- Baldy Editorial Cartoons, 1946-1982, 1997: Clifford H. Baldowski Editorial Cartoons at the Richard B. Russell Library. (Digital Library of Georgia)
- Encyclopedia of Alabama (Encyclopedia of Alabama)
- James Karales : 1956-1969 (Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library)
- Powerful Days in Black and White (Eastman Kodak Company)
- Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century (Lyndon Baines Johnson Library)
- Voices of Civil Rights (Library of Congress)
- Aerial view of marchers crossing bridge during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 (Black-and-white photographs)
- A pair of muddy shoes underscore the weariness following the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; state capitol in background (Black-and-white photographs)
- Participants, some carrying American flags, marching in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965 (Black-and-white photographs)