Sixty years ago today, a pivotal moment unfolded in Selma, Alabama, when police assaulted a group of more than 600 determined protesters advocating for Black voting rights.
TV stations across the United States broadcast the harrowing scenes of primarily Black people and their white comrades being beaten and tear-gassed, compelling US President Lyndon B Johnson (1908-73) to sign the Voting Rights Act just five months later.
The march in Selma began on Sunday, 7 March 1965, at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, making its way to Edmund Pettus Bridge. Pettus (1821-1907) was a Confederate general and ‘grand dragon’ of the white-supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan.
Awaiting them were Alabama state troopers. When the marchers refused to retreat from the bridge, the officers on horseback chased and assaulted fleeing men, women and children with whips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. Many required medical attention, including 25-year-old John Lewis (1940-2020), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman and later a congressman, who led the protest.
Just two days later, another march took place in Selma, with the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-68), urging people from all over the US to join in solidarity.
The bravery displayed in Alabama reminds us that we must never forget the struggle for justice in the diaspora.
Sources
https://www.history.com/news/selma-bloody-sunday-attack-civil-rights-movement