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- DictionaryBloody Sunday/blʌdɪˈsʌndeɪ/
- 1. (in Northern Ireland) 30 January 1972, when British troops shot dead thirteen marchers in Londonderry who were protesting against the government's policy of internment.
- 2. (in Britain) 13 November 1887, when police violently broke up a socialist demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, against the British government's Irish policy.
On March 7, 1965, police and a citizen “posse” attacked marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, United States, an event that galvanized the Civil Rights Movement as “Bloody Sunday.”
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Mar 4, 2020 · On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a peaceful 600‑person civil rights demonstration ends in violence when marchers are attacked and beaten by white members of police.
- Missy Sullivan
Mar 7, 2022 · SELMA, Ala. -- March 7, 1965, will forever be etched in American history as "Bloody Sunday." On that fateful day, 600 civil rights activists gathered in Selma, Alabama, to begin a 52-mile...
Jun 14, 2010 · 14 June 2010. Thirteen people were killed after members of the British Army's Parachute Regiment opened fire on a civil rights march in the Bogside area of Derry on 30...
- Overview
- State Troopers Fatally Shoot Black Demonstrator in Marion
- Demonstrators Reach Edmund Pettus Bridge
- HISTORY Vault: Voices of Civil Rights
The assault on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama helped lead to the Voting Rights Act.
Nearly a century after the Confederacy’s guns fell silent, the racial legacies of slavery and Reconstruction continued to reverberate loudly throughout Alabama in 1965.
On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers, footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice.
March from Selma to Montgomery
The passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 months earlier had done little in some parts of the state to ensure African Americans of the basic right to vote. Perhaps no place was Jim Crow’s grip tighter than in Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half of the population, yet accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters.
For months, the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register Black voters in the county seat of Selma had been thwarted. In January 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., came to the city and gave the backing of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to the cause. Peaceful demonstrations in Selma and surrounding communities resulted in the arrests of thousands, including King, who wrote to the New York Times, “This is Selma, Alabama. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.”
The rising racial tensions finally bubbled over into bloodshed in the nearby town of Marion on February 18, 1965, when state troopers clubbed protestors and fatally shot 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, an African American demonstrator trying to protect his mother, who was being struck by police.
In response, civil rights leaders planned to take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. Although Wallace ordered state troopers “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march,” approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 7.
The demonstrators marched undisturbed through downtown Selma, where the ghosts of the past constantly permeated the present. As they began to cross the steel-arched bridge spanning the Alabama River, the marchers who gazed up could see the name of a Confederate general and reputed grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, Edmund Pettus, staring right back at them in big block letters emblazoned across the bridge’s crossbeam.
Once Lewis and Williams reached the crest of the bridge, they saw trouble on the other side. A wall of state troopers, wearing white helmets and slapping billy clubs in their hands, stretched across Route 80 at the base of the span. Behind them were deputies of county sheriff Jim Clark, some on horseback, and dozens of white spectators waving Confederate flags and giddily anticipating a showdown. Knowing a confrontation awaited, the marchers pressed on in a thin column down the bridge’s sidewalk until they stopped about 50 feet away from the authorities.
“It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,” Major John Cloud called out from his bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse, you are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue.”
“Mr. Major,” replied Williams, “I would like to have a word, can we have a word?”
“I’ve got nothing further to say to you,” Cloud answered.
SNCC leader John Lewis (light coat, center), attempts to ward off the blow as a burly state trooper swings his club at Lewis' head during the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965.
A look at one of the defining social movements in U.S. history, told through the personal stories of men, women and children who lived through it.
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Dec 31, 2023 · 1. It’s arguably the most infamous incident of The Troubles. While Bloody Sunday didn’t start The Troubles, it was an early powder keg moment that fuelled Catholic and Irish republican animosity towards the British Army and significantly worsened the conflict. 2. It took place in Derry.
Bloody Sunday was an event that happened during the Selma to Montgomery Marches on March 7th, 1965. This was during the first march and it is remembered as an especially gruesome display of racist violence in the United States.
