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Selma to Montgomery marches

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The Selma to Montgomery marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They were the culmination of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by Amelia Boynton and her husband. Boynton brought many prominent leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement to Selma, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel (who initiated and called for the Selma to Montgomery march) and Hosea Williams. "Bloody Sunday" occurred on March 7, 1965, when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. Only the third, and last, march successfully made it into Montgomery, Alabama. The route is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Voting Rights Trail, a U.S. National Historic Trail.

Struggle For the Vote: 1963-1964

Selma is the county seat and major town of Dallas County, Alabama. In 1961, the population of Dallas County was 57% Black, but of the 15,000 Blacks old enough to vote, only 130 were registered (fewer than 1%). At that time, more than 80% of Dallas County Blacks lived below the poverty line, most of them working as sharecroppers, farm hands, maids, janitors, and day-laborers.[1]

Under the leadership of the Boynton family (Amelia, Sam, and son Bruce), Rev. L.L. Anderson, J.L. Chestnut, and Marie Foster, the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) attempted to register black citizens during the late 1950s and early 1960s. But their efforts were blocked by state and local officials, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan who used the literacy test[2], economic pressure, and violence to prevent blacks from voting.

In cooperation with the DCVL, SNCC members Bernard Lafayette and Colia Lafayette began organizing around voter registration in Selma, Dallas County, and the surrounding Black Belt counties in early 1963.[3] After Sam Boynton passed away in May, SNCC and DCVL called for a memorial service in his honor to promote voter registration. Sheriff Jim Clark surrounded Tabernacle Baptist Church with deputies to prevent them from discussing voter registration, but several hundred blacks defied his intimidation to attend.[4]

In mid-June, Bernard Lafayette was beaten and almost killed by Klansmen determined to prevent blacks from voting. When the Lafayettes returned to school in the Fall, SNCC organizers Prathia Hall and Worth Long carried on their work despite arrests, beatings, and death threats. When 32 black school teachers applied to register as voters they were immediately fired by the all-white school board. After the Birmingham church bombing in September, black students in Selma began sit-ins at local lunch counters where they were attacked and arrested. More than 300 were arrested in two weeks of protests, including SNCC Chairman John Lewis.[5]

October 7th, 1963, was one of the two days per month that citizens were allowed to go to the courthouse to apply to register to vote. SNCC and the DCVL mobilized over 300 Dallas County blacks to line up at the voter registration office in what was called a "Freedom Day". Supporting them was author James Baldwin and his brother David, and comedian Dick Gregory and his wife Lillian who was arrested for picketing in support of voting rights. SNCC members who tried to bring water to the blacks waiting on line or held signs saying "Register to Vote" were also arrested. After waiting all day in the hot sun, only a handful of the hundreds in the line were allowed to fill out the voter application, and most of them were denied.[6]

Attempts to integrate Selma eating and entertainment venues were resumed after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made segregation illegal. But, despite the new law, Jim Crow remained in force and blacks who attempted to integrate the movie theater and hamburger stand were beaten and arrested. On July 6th, 1964, John Lewis led 50 blacks to the courthouse on registration day but Sheriff Clark arrested them rather than allow them to apply to vote. On July 9, Judge James Hare issued an injunction forbidding any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of civil rights organizations or leaders. As a practical matter, this injunction made it illegal to even talk to more than two people at a time about civil rights or voter registration in Selma Alabama. This injunction temporarily suppressed public civil rights activity in Selma for 6 months.[7]

First march

With civil rights activity blocked by Judge Hare's injunction, the DCVL requested the assistance of Dr. King and the SCLC. Three of SCLC's main organizers– Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education James Bevel, Diane Nash, and James Orange– had been working on Bevel's Alabama Right-To-Vote Project since late 1963, a project which Dr. King and the executive board of SCLC had not joined. When SCLC officially accepted Amelia Boynton's invitation to bring their organization to Selma, Bevel, Nash, Orange and others in SCLC began working in Selma in December 1964. They also worked in the surrounding counties along with the SNCC staff who had been active there since early 1963.

The Selma Voting Rights Movement officially started on January 2nd, 1965, when Dr. King addressed a mass meeting in Brown Chapel in defiance of the anti-meeting injunction. Over the following weeks SCLC and SNCC activists expanded voter registration drives and protests in Selma and the adjacent Black Belt counties. Marches and other protests in support of voting rights were held in Selma, Perry, Wilcox, Marengo, Greene, and Hale counties.

On February 18, 1965, an Alabama State Trooper, Corporal James Bonard Fowler, shot Jimmie Lee Jackson as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather in a café to which they had fled while being attacked by troopers during a nighttime civil rights demonstration in Marion, county seat of Perry County. Jackson died eight days later, of an infection resulting from the gunshot wound, at Selma's Good Samaritan Hospital.[8]

In response, James Bevel called for a march from Selma-to-Montgomery, which occurred on March 7, 1965 when 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80.

Police attack marchers.

Goals of the march

James Bevel's initial plan was to march to Montgomery to ask Governor George Wallace if he had anything to do with ordering the lights turned out and the state troopers to shoot during the march in which Jackson was killed. Bevel called the march in order to focus the anger and pain of the people of Selma, some of whom wanted to address Jackson's death with violence, towards a nonviolent goal. The marchers also hoped to bring attention to the violations of their rights by marching to Montgomery. Dr. King agreed with Bevel's plan, and asked for a march from Selma to Montgomery to ask Governor George Wallace to protect black registrants.

Response to the March

Wallace denounced the march as a threat to public safety and declared he would take all measures necessary to prevent it. In their first march, led by John Lewis and the Reverend Hosea Williams and followed by Bob Mants, they made it only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips.

Police wait for marchers to come across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. civil rights movement. Amelia Boynton was beaten and gassed nearly to death; her photo appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized, leading to the naming of the day "Bloody Sunday". Rosa Parks also marched with them.

Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail sign.

Second march

Immediately after "Bloody Sunday", Martin Luther King Jr., as leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, began organizing a second march to be held on Tuesday, March 9, 1965, calling for people across the country to join him. Hundreds of people responded to his call, shocked by what they had seen on television. About 2,500 people marched from Selma to Montgomery again.

To prevent another outbreak of violence, the marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week.

Knowing that Judge Johnson would lift the restraining order, and abiding by his court order, SCLC decided to hold a partial "ceremonial" march, taking into consideration that they had gathered hundreds of marchers for the event but also that they did not want to alienate one of the few southern judges who was often sympathetic to their cause.

On March 9, Dr. King led the marchers out to the Edmund Pettus Bridge and held a short prayer session before turning the marchers back around, thereby not breaking the court order preventing them from marching all the way to Montgomery. Only the SCLC leaders were told of this plan, causing some consternation in the marchers who had traveled long distances to make the march, but many stayed after King asked the crowd to remain for another attempt at the march.

That evening, after the second march, three white ministers who had come for the march were attacked and beaten with clubs in front of the Silver Moon Café, a hangout for segregationist whites. The worst injured was James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston. Being turned away by the small local hospital in Selma (reported to be full at the time), Reeb's companions were forced to take him to University Hospital in Birmingham, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital with his wife by his side.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spokesman Stokely Carmichael was reported as saying "What you want is the nation to be upset when anybody is killed… but it almost [seems that] for this to be recognized, a white person must be killed."

Third march

A week after Reeb's death, the federal judge ruled in favor of the SCLC, preventing the state from blocking the marchers, weighing the right of mobility against the right to march:

The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . . . These rights may . . . be exercised by marching, even along public highways.

Williams v. Wallace, 240 F. Supp. 100, 106 (M.D. Ala. 1960).

The five-day/four-night event began on March 21, and covered a 54-mile route along U.S. Route 80 through chilling weather and rain. The marchers reached Montgomery on March 24 and camped out at the Catholic complex City of St. Jude. That night, a "Stars for Freedom" rally was held, with singers Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nina Simone all performing. By the next day, Thursday, March 25, their numbers had swelled to 25,000, and King delivered the speech "How Long, Not Long" beside the State Capitol Building.

Within five months of the third march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Amelia Boynton Robinson was present during the ceremony.

References

  1. ^ Selma — Cracking the Wall of Fear ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
  2. ^ Are You "Qualified" to Vote? The Alabama "Literacy Test" ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
  3. ^ Zinn, Howard (1965). SNCC The New Abolitionists. Beacon Press.
  4. ^ Halberstam, David (1998). The Children. Fawcett Books. ISBN 0-449-00439-2.
  5. ^ Freedom Day in Selma ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
  6. ^ Zinn, Howard (1965). SNCC The New Abolitionists. Beacon Press.
  7. ^ The Selma Injunction ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans.
  8. ^ Fleming, John (6 March 2005), "The Death of Jimmy Lee Jackson", The Anniston Star
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