Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, Selma, Alabama–600 Black women and men have been crushed bloody by law enforcement officials intent on stopping them from attaining justice and equal rights as Americans, particularly, the appropriate to vote.
Following the police capturing dying of church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson, Scholar Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in coordination with Southern Christian Management Convention (SCLC, and the Dallas Voters League, organized a march from Selma to Montgomery to confront Governor George Wallace about accountability for the police officer who killed Jackson. In addition they deliberate to voice their frustration with the purposely inconvenient and hostile means by which Black people got to register as voters. Regardless of the group’s righteous indignation, the march was peaceable demonstration, nobody was armed and non-violence have been actually the marching orders.
Nonetheless, that didn’t cease a gang of Alabama State Troopers from assembling on the far facet of the Edmund Pettus Bridge the place they’d tear-gas and violently assault the marchers with the batons. Iconic, beloved, and revered congressman John Lewis was the chairman of SNCC on the time, he was a part of the march and suffered a fractured cranium when he struck by an officer’s membership.
At the present time was not the one day {that a} march, a protest, or an act of civil disobedience occurred but it surely does function a reminder that this nation was keen to commit heinous acts of violence to oppress Black our bodies. They have been scared our collective energy then, and they need to nonetheless concern our means to successfully set up, talk, and apply stress till our calls for are met proper now in 2025. To at the present time, Black people like Rep. Al Inexperienced are nonetheless stepping into what Congressman Lewis famously known as “good hassle” to battle to avoid wasting packages and initiatives that assist our communities.
We have now the appropriate to vote as a result of the 600 who walked throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge and hundreds if not tens of millions of others put all of it on the road in hopes for a greater future for folks like us at this second.
What are you keen to do?