On Sunday March 7, 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma,
Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for
African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie
Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by a state trooper while trying to
protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of
Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were
brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.
When You Pray, Move Your Feet.
African Proverb
“When
You Pray, Move Your Feet.” Charles White(?), photographer, Selma,
Alabama, March 7, 1965. Photo courtesy of Representative John Lewis. John Lewis (on right in trench coat) and Hosea Williams (on the left) lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.One hundred years after the Civil War, in many parts of the nation, the 15th Amendment had been nullified by discriminatory laws, ordinances, intimidation, violence, and fear which kept a majority of African Americans from the polls.
The situation was particularly egregious in the city of Selma, in
Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half
the population yet comprised only about 2 percent of the registered
voters. As far back as 1896, when the U.S. House of Representatives
adjudicated the contested results of a congressional election held in
Dallas County, it was stated on the floor of Congress:
…I need only appeal to the memory of members who have
served in this House for years and who have witnessed the contests that
time and time again have come up from the black belt of Alabama—since
1880 there has not been an honest election in the county of Dallas…
However, by March 1965, the Dallas County Voters League, the Southern
Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were all working for voting rights in
Alabama. John Lewis headed SNCC’s voter registration effort and, on March 7,
he and fellow activist Hosea Williams led the group of silent marchers
from the Brown Chapel AME Church to the foot of the Pettus bridge and
into the event soon known as “Bloody Sunday.” Alabama Police Confront the Selma Marchers. Federal Bureau of Investigation photograph, [Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965]. “We Shall Overcome”: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement. National Park ServiceWhen ABC television interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary, Judgement in Nuremberg,
to show footage of violence in Selma a powerful metaphor was presented
to the nation. Within forty-eight hours, demonstrations in support of
the marchers were held in eighty cities and thousands of religious and
lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King,
flew to Selma. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Pettus
Bridge where they knelt, prayed, and, to the consternation of some,
returned to Brown Chapel. That night a Northern minister, who was in
Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes. Outraged citizens continued to inundate the White House and the
Congress with letters and phone calls. On March 9, for example, Jackie Robinson, the baseball hero, sent a telegram to the President:
“IMPORTANT YOU TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION IN ALABAMA ONE MORE
DAY OF SAVAGE TREATMENT BY LEGALIZED HATCHET MEN COULD LEAD TO OPEN
WARFARE BY AROUSED NEGROES AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD THIS IN 1965”
In Montgomery, Federal Judge Frank Johnson, Jr. temporarily restrained all parties in order to review the case. And, President Lyndon Johnson
addressed the American people before a televised Joint Session of
Congress, saying, “There is no issue of States rights or national
rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…We have already
waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone…” Rev.
Ralph Abernathy walking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as They Lead
Civil Rights Marchers out of Camp to Resume Their March to Montgomery,
Alabama. United Press International, 1965. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. Prints & Photographs DivisionAllowing CBS footage of “Bloody Sunday” as evidence in court,
Judge Johnson ruled on March 17, that the demonstrators be permitted to
march. Under protection of a federalized National Guard, voting rights
advocates left Selma on March 21 and stood 25,000 strong on March 25
before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
guaranteeing every American twenty-one and over the right to register
to vote. During the next four years the number of U.S. blacks eligible
to vote rose from 23 to 61 percent. John Lewis went on to serve as Director of the Voter Education
Project, a program that eventually added nearly four million minorities
to the voter rolls. To mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of “Bloody
Sunday,” on March 7, 2000, Lewis, a U.S. Congressman from Georgia’s 5th District, and Hosea Williams crossed the Pettus Bridge accompanied by President William Clinton,
Coretta Scott King, and others. Asked to contrast this experience with
that of 1965 the Congressman responded, “This time when I looked there
were women’s faces and there were black faces among the troopers. And
this time when we faced them, they saluted.”
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