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John Lewis (on right in trench coat) and Hosea Williams (on the left) lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, March 7, 1965

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 Robinson and her husband. Robinson brought many prominent leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement to Selma, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Bevel 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 Historic Trail.

Police attack marchers

On March 7, 1965, 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. Discrimination and intimidation had prevented Selma's black population, from registering to vote three weeks earlier. On February 18, 1965, a 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 civil rights demonstration. Jackson died of an infection at Selma's Good Samaritan Hospital eight days later. The marchers hoped to bring attention to the violations of their rights by marching to Montgomery. Dr. King asked for a march from Selma to Montgomery to ask Governor George Wallace to protect black registrants. 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 Robinson 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, along with Thomas Fitzpatrick Jones.

Sign of the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail

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. Rather than abiding by the court order the SCLC decided to hold a partial, "ceremonial," march, taking into consideration that they had gathered hundreds of marchers for the event, but did not want to alienate one of the few southern judges who was often sympathetic to their cause.

On March 9, 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 day, after the second march, James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston who had come for the second march was attacked with a club in front of the Silver Moon Café, a hangout for whites. 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."

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 . . . and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.

^{[citation needed]}

The five-day/four-night event covered a 54-mile route along state Highway 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.^[1]

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.

• Viola Liuzzo
• Sheyann Webb
• James Reeb

1. ^ Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America at the top of the steps and, ever since, every governor of Alabama has likewise taken the oath on the steps. Governor George Wallace did not allow King to speak from the "hallowed" steps of the capitol. Thus, King spoke while standing on a temporary stage, a flatbed truck, at the base of the capitol steps.

• Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement — Images of Selma
• Bloody Sunday and Beyond
• Police attack Alabama marchers (BBC News)
• Alabama Department of Archives & History
• The Selma Times-Journal. March 11, March 12, and March 14, 1965, editions.
• Securing the Right to Vote: The Selma-to-Montgomery Story