The Selma March

What is the Selma March – On the 2nd of January 1965 Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Dallas Country Voters and other local African Activists who were in a voting rights campaign, and they decided to make Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South because there was infamous brutality of law enforcement under Sheriff Jim Clark.

In fear of having many claim equal rights were already in effect, he proceeded to acknowledge “the harsh fact … men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes” (Johnson 2), showing how equal rights were not distributed to all men. Continuing to utilize emotional examples, Johnson addressed the chilling truth about African Americans struggling with “actions and protests, his courage to risk safety, and even to risk his life” to liberate themselves (3). Another key point is how the actions of African Americans are being rejected to vote simply because “the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin” (2) , discovering the ugly truth of the discrimination towards colored people. His ambition for the near future is to make America’s heart yearn for the passing of the bill and change the lives of those who will benefit from it. Johnson has such a strong belief towards the positive changes in which the bill will have because he knows “there is only the struggle for human rights” being seen right under the nose of every American

From the 1930s to the 1950s, African Americans were being severely persecuted and ostracized. The Jim Crow Laws allowed for legal segregation and continued control over blacks in the South. Those laws severely restricted the rights of the African American in the southern half of the United States and essentially continued to restrain them even though the United States Constitution forbid it. The North did not have such laws, but blacks still suffered. When African Americans migrated to the North, they were disillusioned by the fact that they were still not equal. The African Americans were instead delivered a subtler form of the discriminatory actions within the South. African Americans struggled for equality everywhere because of white

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson, this was to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented Africans-Americans from voting under the fifteenth amendment. The VRA gave African-Americans the right to vote and stating that people are not allowed to do anything to the people of different color or race while they are trying to vote, or forcing them to not vote. The fifteenth amendment was to prohibit states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on race, or color; Still people who do not agree with this were trying to prevent African-Americans from voting.

March 7, 1965 about 600 people arrived in downtown Selma, Alabama to walk in the famous march known as Bloody Sunday. The civil rights leaders organized this march because of the blocking of black peoples’ votes. This march wanted to call attention and stress the denial of black’s constitutional right to vote. There were many places that blacks were not allowed to vote, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Dallas, all places that black people had the highest percentage of the population. Before the march, doctors were telling the protesters how to react when there is violence. The protesters were aware that there could be tear gas, clubs, cattle prods, bombs, snipers and even more. Because of the recent death threats, Dr. King was not

The brutality from this event can be summarized by one marcher who was reported saying, “My God, we’re being killed.” This malevolent act sent the entire nation in an uproar, sparking riots in major US cites and even in Toronto. The protests and riots gained so much popular support as to gain the attention of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declared that he “deplored the brutality.” King was also determined to march from Selma to Montgomery in order to present the governor with the proposal for voting rights and to continue fighting the oppression (“Central Point” 24).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after the Civil War, began the reconstruction of the United States. In 1865 the 13th amendment was passed, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except for punishment. With the passing of the 13th amendment all slaves were free, but it did not mean they were equal. African Americans still faced discrimination mainly in the south. The Southern States passed laws specifically limiting what they could do. African Americans were not treated like others, in most States formal education was unattainable to them. There were many inequalities formed by the southerners, because of this many African American civil rights activists arose like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

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 voting rights. King told the assembled crowd: “There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes” (King, Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, 121).

The African American population was hit extremely hard with the Jim Crow laws when they were first began to be enforced upon people. They had to create a new lifestyle and try and not get fined or arrested for everyday events.

Freeing the slaves was the first step of African Americans living in America society equally. Then the government created the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment that granted the citizenship to former slaves and African American men the right to vote. After the civil war ended the nation was finally reunited and the United States finally became one nation again. Even though African American in the south were still treated badly they helped created a better society for the

Even though the marchers faced violent opposition and met with conflict, they continued their protests. The books and the movie displayed conflict throughout. One example is during the first attempt to cross the bridge, when the marchers were met by the Alabama State Troopers. It went very dark, very quick, as the troopers barged towards them, making this day known as “Bloody Sunday”, March 7, 1965. When asked for his comments in the movie by the press after the brutal attack on the marchers, King says “While rageful violence continues towards the unarmed people of Selma, while they are assaulted with tear gas and batons like enemy in a war, no citizen of this country can call themselves blameless, for we all bear a responsibility for our fellow man. I am appealing to men and women of God and goodwill everywhere, white, black and otherwise. If you believe all are created equal, come to Selma. Join us. Join our march against injustice and inhumanity. We need you to stand with us”. The second attempt to cross the bridge on March 9, 1965 brought clergy, men, and women from all over to join. But faced conflict as well, this time between Martin Luther King Jr, and the marchers themselves. However, there was a major difference regarding this attempt to cross, between the books and the movie. In the books, the marchers were met on the bridge by a Federal Official who

Ironically, many Americans fought for equal rights but practiced slavery which took away from the progression of our society as a whole. The intersectionality of race, class, and gender prevented many people from voting even though there were laws stating equal voting rights for all citizens. Race should not forbid African Americans from voting. To remedy injustice, Johnson says that our society as a whole needs to be more open-minded about these social issues to evolve as a progressive country. The Voting Rights Act was intended to end discrimination but since the states each had their own pre-clearance requirements, it undermined the entire reasoning and promise of equality to African Americans. The unfair treatment towards African Americans is embedded in the social system that even though they are given the right to vote, institutional racism comes into play which wholly prevents them from being able to cast their votes.

In Selma, Dr. King continued to organize and motivate blacks to march peacefully until they get the right to vote. On February 10, 1965, a group of students banded together and protested in front the courthouse where they were beaten with clubs, hit by police cars and electric cattle prods and held in jail for several days. Every day, there were marchers and arrests, many people were often beaten by the police. Dr. King announced that a march will be held on March 7, 1965 from Selma to Montgomery to voice their grievances. Marchers gathered at the Brown Chapel and around four in the afternoon, led by SCLC workers, Hosea Williams and John Lewis started their journey. As they approached Edmund Pettus Bridge, there stood Sheriff Clarke and State

In the movie Selma it shows on how the African-American community came together and organized plans to gain their equal voting rights. One of the African-American leader was Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and one of his most famous plans was the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge which lead across a river into Selma. In today’s day and age we still see racial inequality just not on the same level as it was before.

Despite condemning slavery and installing multiple laws in society to assure African Americans be treated comparatively equal residents, this was not the situation in most regions in America particularly the South. Each endeavor by the government to secure the level treatment of the African American were met with difficulties. Companies in society rejected the idea to hire African Americans over a white American even if both had comparable abilities. As a consequence, African Americans could not be advanced in society and remained alternately crushed. This persecution transpired ignited the Civil Rights Movement and comprehensive transformation in American society.