Ground zero for voting rights

1950s-1960s

Voter registration efforts

Long before 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, local Black activists along with the organization Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) in Selma had been campaigning for Black people’s right to vote. Violence, economic intimidation, and racist policies kept the numbers of Black registered voters small. But in the late 1950s to early ‘60s, the DCVL steering committee, who later became known as the “Courageous Eight,” bravely stepped up to lead registration efforts. The Courageous Eight included Ulysses Blackmon, Sr., Amelia Boynton, Ernest Doyle, Marie Foster, James Gildersleeve, Rev. J.D. Hunter, Sr., Rev. Henry Shannon, Sr., and Rev. Frederick Douglas Reese.

1962-1963

DCVL joines forces with SNCC

In 1962, DCVL’s Amelia Boynton started contacting national civil rights organizations, asking them to send activists to Selma to boost the DCVL’s efforts. In early 1963, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), impressed with the strong local base that the DCVL had established, funded the organization and sent organizers to assist with voter registration. By spring, the Selma movement started to gain new momentum as more residents started to participate.

October 7, 1963

Freedom Day

James Forman, executive secretary for the SNCC, organized 350 Black Selma residents at the Dallas County courthouse in an all-out effort to register voters in Selma. Selma Sheriff Jim Clark used brutal force to oppress the protesters, despite the presence of the FBI and lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice. Only a few people were allowed to register, and no one was punished for denying Black citizens their voter registrations.

July 2, 1964

Civil Rights Act becomes law

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The law prohibited discrimination in public places, and provided integration of schools and other public facilities.

July 6, 1964

A surge of hope

Following the signing of the Civil Rights Act, SNCC Chairman John Lewis led 50 Black residents to the Selma courthouse to register as voters, but all 50 were arrested and denied voter applications.

July 9, 1964

Judge bans mass meetings

As a direct result of John Lewis’ efforts to register Black voters, Judge James Hare issued an injunction that forbade three or more people from meeting in public to support civil rights.

November 1964

MLK eyes Selma as national focal point

The Courageous Eight continued to meet secretly despite the court order. They also invited King and the SCLC to come to Selma. Meanwhile, Selma’s profile started to grow nationally as Boynton became the first Black woman to run for a Congressional seat in Alabama. She lost, but earned 10% of the vote. And the SCLC began considering the city as a potential national catalyst to force the country and President Lyndon B. Johnson to confront the ongoing discrimination and violence against Black voters.

January 2, 1965

SCLC joins forces with Selma movement

Despite the Hare injunction, more than 700 people gathered at Brown Chapel to hear Dr. King speak at a rally launching the SCLC Selma campaign. After the rally, Dr. King, local leaders, SCLC, and SNCC staff began meeting at Amelia Boyton’s home to plan regular marches to the courthouse where the voter registration office was located.

January 22, 1965

Local teachers march

For the first time in the South, Black educators marched publicly as teachers in Selma, risking arrests and their jobs. DCVL’s Rev. Frederick Reese and fellow school teacher Margaret Moore mobilized almost every Black teacher in the city asking their colleagues “How can we teach American civics if we ourselves cannot vote?” More than 100 teachers wearing hats, gloves, high heels, and suits marched to the courthouse. Local authorities pushed the teachers down the stairs and beat them with billy clubs, but resisted arresting them for fear of galvanizing an even larger group of protestors.

February 1965

Young people re-energize the movement

By February, the protests to the courthouse became a regular occurrence, as did mass arrests. The sacrifices and suffering began to wear on the Black community, threatening morale.

With many of the SNCC and SCLC staff in jail, school children began organizing their own protests. On February 10, 160 students (some as young as nine-years-old) marched, calling for the release of their parents and the ouster of the Alabama governor. Local authorities quickly herded the young people towards the jail, then forced the students to run, striking them with clubs and burning their clothes with electric cattle prods. Some collapsed and vomited. Others were driven into the nearby bogs. The incident outraged many in the Black community and revived those who were growing weary.

February 18, 1965

Jimmie Lee Jackson’s Death

In nearby Marion, a local farmer Albert Turner and minister Rev. James Dobynes led 400 activists on a night march to protest the recent arrest of a SCLC project director. The group and reporters are savagely attacked by state troopers and Selma law enforcement who are wielding hardwood clubs and ax-handles. 26-year-old activist and military vet Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot in the stomach twice when he tries to protect his grandfather and mother from the beatings. Eight days later, Jackson dies from his injuries, prompting the SCLC decision to plan a march to Montgomery to confront Alabama governor George Wallace.

March 7, 1965

Bloody Sunday

Following Jackson’s death, 600 protesters, led by Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC, attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery. DCVL leaders Boynton and Marie Foster stood behind them with a mix of mostly Black children and teenagers, including an 11-year-old Jo Ann Bland, teachers, maids, laborers, farmers, and a handful of white civil rights workers and supporters.

The group was brutally attacked by state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with tear gas, clubs, bullwhips, ropes, and rubber tubing wrapped with barbed wire. By the end of the day, 100 people required medical attention for fractured skulls, broken teeth and limbs, gas poisoning, and whip lashes. The event became known as “Bloody Sunday” and drew national attention and outrage.

March 9, 1965

Turnaround Tuesday

Following the violence of Bloody Sunday and beatings of mostly young people, middle-aged and elderly Black men and women from Selma and the surrounding Black Belt, and almost a thousand white northerners, joined a second march. Led by Dr. King, 3000 activists met at Brown Chapel and began to march. The group stopped short of crossing the bridge that day, and turned back to the church due to a court order, avoiding a likely attack from state troopers who awaited them at the bridge. This event became known as Turnaround Tuesday.

March 9, 1965

James Reeb’s Death

Reverend James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Kansas, traveled to Selma to support the cause. The evening of Turnaround Tuesday, he was brutally attacked and bludgeoned in the head with baseball bats by four white men. Reeb died two days later. His death captured the nation, surpassing media coverage of the Tuesday march and the death of Jackson. As a result, voting rights demonstrations popped up in cities across the country.

March 15, 1965

White House finally takes action

Under increasing pressure, President Johnson held a televised address presenting the draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. In his speech, he condemned the denial of fundamental rights based on race and the US failure to live up to its principles. A federal court judge finally ruled against the Alabama injunction and required the state to permit the march from Selma to Montgomery. American soldiers were sent to Selma to protect the civil rights activists.

March 21-25, 1965

Selma to Montgomery March

Between 3,000 and 8,000 people, mostly Black Alabamans, joined by supporters from across the U.S., assembled at Brown Chapel with Dr. King to begin the five-day march to Montgomery. This time the marchers were protected by U.S. soldiers. By the time the group had walked the 54 miles to Montgomery, 25,000 young people from across the country had joined the march.

March 25, 1965

Viola Liuzzo’s Murder

Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights activist from Michigan, is murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan while shuttling marchers between Selma and Montgomery. Her death highlighted the dangers faced by those involved in the struggle for civil rights.

August 6, 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965

President Johnson finally signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. The Selma-to-Montgomery marches, coupled with the sacrifices of countless unsung foot soldiers led to this watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement. The VRA was landmark legislation that eliminated discriminatory voting practices and ensured equal voting rights for all citizens.