Fifty years ago this month, a group of Civil Rights demonstrators, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., marched from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol of Montgomery to demand African Americans have the right to vote.
There were around 2,000 of them and they were protected by Army troops and the recently federalized Alabama National Guard. On Mar. 25, they arrived in Montgomery where they were met by an additional 50,000 supporters. Thousands of people gathered on the steps of the State Capitol to hear speeches by King and Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche.
It was the third time the demonstrators had attempted the march.
On Mar. 7, several hundred people started out from Selma and made it to the Edmund Pettis Bridge where they met Alabama state troopers.
“I thought they were there to protect us and give us the green light,” Robert “Bobby” Talbert, who was among the marchers that day, told The Dispatch on Thursday.
That was when the troopers — armed with nightsticks, attack dogs and tear gas — attacked the demonstrators.
“It seemed like it lasted forever,” Talbert said.
Talbert broke his right arm and left leg trying to shield an elderly woman. It would be three days before he would go to a hospital.
Margaret Block, a civil rights worker involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee, was in Selma at the time, though she did not march. She remembers the bruised and battered people arriving at the church where she was working.
The troopers had been sent by Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationalist who opposed African Americans voting. Though the Civil Rights Act passed the previous year had banned discrimination against voters on the basis of race, only a small percentage of African Americans in Alabama were registered to vote.
Why Selma?
Because so few African Americans could vote in Selma, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma the focus of its voter registration campaign in early 1965, according to the History Channel’s website. The SCLC worked with the SNCC to register voters.
Talbert, who had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement since 1960 and who worked with the SNCC, remembers getting as few as two people a day into the courthouse to vote where African Americans were forced to answer questions like “how many beans are in a jar” before they were allowed to register.
“We had no clout,” said civil rights activist and Indianola resident Charles McLaurin.
The brutal events at Edmund Pettis Bridge was caught on film, and it infuriated many Americans who saw it. Civil rights workers began arriving in Selma to protest.
A Mississippi native who now lives in Cleveland, Mississippi, Block had learned of the marches in Selma at the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Convention in Jackson a few months earlier. Individuals at the convention had said more people were needed in Selma to participate in the marches and register people to vote.
“It was exciting,” she remembered.
Block said hundreds of people arrived in Selma that month from other parts of Alabama, as well as Mississippi and Georgia.
On Mar. 9, King began another march to Montgomery but turned back when the way was again blocked by state troopers. It was not until nearly two weeks later — after a U.S. district court judge had ordered Wallace to let the protesters march and President Johnson had publicly backed the march — that the march took place.
By then, Talbert had a cast on his arm and leg and went along with the march in a car.
“We had protection all the way,” he said.
‘It was beautiful’
The march took several days and involved stops for bathroom breaks and snack breaks, Talbert remembered. People were enjoying themselves on the march.
“It was beautiful,” Talbert said.
Later that year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which literacy tests and other means of denying African Americans the right to vote.
“That was one thing I was proud of,” Talbert said.
“I was happy,” Block said. “It wasn’t just the Selma marches, it was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.”
“We played a big role in getting the Voting Rights Act passed and the Civil Rights Act passed,” she added.
The 50th anniversary of the first march is this weekend. Hundreds of people, including members of Congress and President Barack Obama, will arrive in Selma to commemorate the marchers.
McLaurin says it is important to remember the struggle which African Americans endured to achieve their rights and to educate younger generations, both black and white, about the events of Selma.
“It’s to educate young people so they won’t take for granted all the good things we have today,” he said.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.