Voting Rights Act
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Civil Rights activists campaigned for laws preventing discrimination in education, employment, housing, and voting rights. In 1963, the effort to register voters in Alabama intensified. African-American citizens, who tried to register, encountered great obstacles—poll taxes, literacy tests and lengthy questionnaires. They were subjected to intimidation and threatened with the loss of jobs, bodily harm, and death.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and other national leaders, including Malcolm X, had stopped in Selma, Alabama, as they had in other Deep South communities, to show their support for voter campaigns. Protesters attempted to call national attention to local violations and, in February 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, a protester from Marion, Alabama, was killed. In Jackson's memory, Selma protesters planned a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital.
The march was scheduled for Sunday, March 7, 1965. About 600 marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, spanning the Alabama River. Selma's sheriff and 200 troopers and deputies, some on horseback, were waiting on the other side. When marchers refused to turn back, the officers attacked using tear gas, bullwhips
and clubs. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized on that "Bloody Sunday."
Television brought this event into the living rooms of a shocked nation. In the next few weeks, thousands of people converged on Selma to aid the voter registration drive. On March 21, the Selma-to-Montgomery march began again, this time with federal protection. One historian-activist has said that this march turned out to be "the last traditional, major march of the southern movement." Five months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, the most comprehensive legislation ever to protect every citizen's right to vote.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and other national leaders, including Malcolm X, had stopped in Selma, Alabama, as they had in other Deep South communities, to show their support for voter campaigns. Protesters attempted to call national attention to local violations and, in February 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, a protester from Marion, Alabama, was killed. In Jackson's memory, Selma protesters planned a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital.
The march was scheduled for Sunday, March 7, 1965. About 600 marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, spanning the Alabama River. Selma's sheriff and 200 troopers and deputies, some on horseback, were waiting on the other side. When marchers refused to turn back, the officers attacked using tear gas, bullwhips
and clubs. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized on that "Bloody Sunday."
Television brought this event into the living rooms of a shocked nation. In the next few weeks, thousands of people converged on Selma to aid the voter registration drive. On March 21, the Selma-to-Montgomery march began again, this time with federal protection. One historian-activist has said that this march turned out to be "the last traditional, major march of the southern movement." Five months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, the most comprehensive legislation ever to protect every citizen's right to vote.