SELMA, Ala. — On March 7, 1965, Black civil rights activists have been brutally attacked whereas marching for voting rights in what turned often called Bloody Sunday. The violent response to their peaceable protest sparked nationwide outrage and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Now, 60 years later, 1000’s are gathering in Selma for the 2025 Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee to commemorate this historic second. The occasion serves as each a remembrance and a name to motion, highlighting ongoing voting rights challenges and urging the subsequent era to proceed the battle for democracy.
Supply: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Bloody Sunday: A Defining Second in Civil Rights Historical past
On March 7, 1965, greater than 500 Black demonstrators gathered at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma. They deliberate to march 54 miles to Montgomery to demand voting rights and maintain Alabama Gov. George Wallace accountable for the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black church deacon.
CBS 17 states that when the marchers reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, greater than 50 Alabama state troopers and dozens of possemen on horseback blocked their path. Regardless of being unarmed and peaceable, the marchers have been met with tear gasoline, batons, and horse-mounted officers trampling them.
Beforehand reported by BOSSIP, John Lewis, then chairman of the Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was amongst these crushed with a troopers membership, struggling a fractured cranium—at simply 25 years previous on the time. Not less than 17 individuals have been hospitalized, and 40 others required medical therapy.
The assault was broadcast reside on nationwide tv, exposing the brutality of segregationist insurance policies and forcing America to confront its deep racial injustices.
Two weeks later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a federally protected march of greater than 3,000 marchers on a five-day, 54-mile march to Montgomery. That summer time, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into legislation, banning racial discrimination in voting.
They marched so we may vote. They bled so we may have a say. So why, in 2025, are we nonetheless preventing the identical battles?
See checklist of occasions for the Bloody Sunday sixtieth anniversary and the way we will proceed defending voting rights in 2025 after the flip!
