How Did The Selma March Affect The Civil Rights Movement?

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In 1965, the fight for African-Americans’ right to vote was still in full swing, especially in Selma, Alabama. The SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) had been trying to register black voters since 1963; despite all of their efforts only about 3% of blacks in Selma were registered to vote. In January of 1965, the sheriff of Dallas County, James G. Clark, started arresting blacks trying to register to vote. The conditions for blacks only got worse from there. On February 18, 1965, a young civil rights demonstrator by the name of Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot in the stomach participating in a small, nonviolent march for African-Americans’ voting rights. During his funeral a week later, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered an angry eulogy …show more content…
The march started in the Brown’s Chapel where 600 African-Americans had gathered together. Though Martin Luther King, Jr. was not present other civil rights leaders such as Hosea Williams and John Lewis attended. The Governor of Alabama, George Wallas, had banned the march the previous day but the blacks were not to be swayed. The group marched from Brown’s Chapel to the Edmund Pettus Bridge but then the trouble started. When the African-Americans crossed the bridge they were stopped by 100 state troopers commanded by Major John Cloud. When Hosea Williams tried to talk to the Major he simply said this was no time to talk and that they had two minutes to disappear from the bridge. Well before two minutes was up, he gave the command to strike. “The marchers tried to flee but police pursued them and continued to beat them viciously,”claims Daniel E. Brannen, Jr. a lawyer who has studied civil rights. They hurt the nonviolent demonstrators by hitting them with nightsticks, jabbing them with electric cattle prods, whipping them with chains, and blinding them with tear gas. The attack was broadcast live in millions of televisions
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