Black History in America: March 21, 1965 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., for voting rights.
It took three tries, but on March 21, 1965, several thousand demonstrators led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began a Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery that succeeded in reaching the Alabama state capital. Their first march had ended in violence when state and local police attacked the 600 peaceful marchers on March 7 in Selma, injuring dozens and sending 17 to the hospital, a day of infamy known as “Bloody Sunday.” Television networks interrupted their normally-scheduled programming to show horrified Americans the nauseating images of police brutality, and these pictures were broadcast and printed around the world.Two days later, Dr. King (who had missed the first march) led a second attempt. Like the original march, they were protesting both the police slaying of civil rights worker Jimmie Lee Jackson on Feb. 18, as well as the hostile conditions in Selma and the surrounding area that denied African-Americans their constitutional right to vote. Adding fuel to their passion was the violence they had suffered on Bloody Sunday. However, as soon as the demonstrators crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they had been beaten two days earlier, Dr. King turned the marchers back; they decided to wait until a court order was issued granting them the right to protest without police interference. After receiving that court order, the third march began on March 21 protected by thousands of U.S. Army soldiers, members of the Alabama National Guard, Federal Marshals, and agents from the FBI. After five days the demonstrators reached Montgomery, over 50 miles away. More than 25,000 supporters marched the last leg of the trip together, and listened intently as Dr. King gave his emotional “How Long, Not Long” speech on the steps of the State Capitol Building. Their protest was a success. After Bloody Sunday the nation—and the whole world—was watching. On March 15 President Lyndon Johnson made an important speech to Congress introducing voting rights legislation, and on Aug. 6, 1965, he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
