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The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South.
On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, where local African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had been campaigning for ...
- Voter Registration Efforts in Alabama
- Bloody Sunday
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- LBJ Addresses Nation
- Lasting Impact of The March
Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in voting on the basis of race, efforts by civil rights organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register Black voters met with fierce resistance in southern states such as Alabama. But the civil r...
On February 18, white segregationists attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators in the town of Marion, Alabama. In the ensuing chaos, an Alabama state trooper fatally shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American demonstrator. In response to Jackson’s death, King and the SCLC planned a massive protest march from Selma to the state capitol of M...
On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, Black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside. King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that wou...
Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnsonwent on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and to call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress. “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem,” Joh...
On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting. That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1...
The Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail was established by Congress in 1996 to commemorate the events, people, and route of the 1965 Voting Rights March in Alabama. The route is also designated as a National Scenic Byway/All-American Road. Photograph by Mary Schons.
Finally, on March 25 the demonstrators marched through Montgomery itself. They arrived in front of the state capitol building some 25,000 strong. Explore a timeline and maps of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965.
May 8, 2024 · Selma March, political march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, that occurred March 21–25, 1965. The march became a landmark in the American civil rights movement and directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression; they were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South.
