Katzenbach did concentrate examiners and observers in Selma for the "high-visibility" election between incumbent County Sheriff Jim Clark and Wilson Baker, who had earned the grudging respect of many local residents and activists.Overall, the Justice Department assigned registrars to six of Alabama's 24 Black Belt counties during the late 1960s, and to fewer than one-fifth of all the Southern counties covered by the Act.In 1960, there were a total of 53,336 black voters registered in the state of Alabama; three decades later, there were 537,285,Since 1965, many marches have commemorated the events of Bloody Sunday, usually held on or around the anniversary of the original event, and currently known as the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee.On the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, over 10,000 people, including Lewis, again marched across Edmund Pettus Bridge.In March 2015, on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, U.S. President After John Lewis died in July 2020, he managed to cross the bridge one last time when his casket, which was carried by a horse-drawn caisson, crossed along the same route he walked during the Montgomery was one of four state capitals chosen for a Greening Americas Capitals Grant, a project of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. All of it was televised across the nation and became known as “Bloody Sunday.”At Tuskegee Institute on the eastern side of Alabama’s Black Belt, student activist Meanwhile, a federal judge issued an injunction, preventing further marches until a court hearing could happen. Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of discriminatory requirements and practices that had Finding resistance by white officials to be intractable, even after the The first march took place on March 7, 1965, organized locally by Bevel, The second march took place March 9. On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, saying, “There is no issue of states’ rights or national rights. He called Selma "a turning point in man's unending search for freedom" on a par with the A week after Reeb's death, on Wednesday March 17, Judge Johnson ruled in favor of the protesters, saying their Judge Johnson had sympathized with the protesters for some days, but had withheld his order until he received an iron-clad commitment of enforcement from the White House.

Protected by 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under federal command, and many FBI agents and The route is memorialized as the "Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights Trail", and is designated as a At the turn of the 20th century, the Alabama state legislature passed a new constitution that effectively On October 7, 1963, one of two days during the month when residents were allowed to go to the courthouse to apply to register to vote, SNCC's On July 6, 1964, one of the two registration days that month, John Lewis led 50 black citizens to the courthouse, but With civil rights activity blocked by Judge Hare's injunction, When SCLC officially accepted the invitation from the "Courageous Eight", Bevel, Nash, Orange, and others in SCLC began working in Selma in December 1964.Selma had both moderate and hardline segregationists in its white power structure. SNCC workers in overalls took over organizing the crowd that gathered six blocks from the capitol. "There will be no march between Selma and Montgomery," Wallace said on March 6, 1965, citing concern over traffic violations. “The law is clear,” the judge wrote, “that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups ... and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.” On March 21, protected by federalized National Guard troops, about 3,200 voting rights advocates left Selma and set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. And we shall overcome.Many in the Civil Rights Movement cheered the speech and were emotionally moved that after so long, and so hard a struggle, a President was finally willing to defend voting rights for blacks. It was an affirmation of the movement.Many others in the movement remained skeptical of the White House, believing that Johnson was culpable for having allowed violence against the movement in the early months of the campaign and was not a reliable supporter. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google In Montgomery, U.S. District Court judge Frank Johnson Jr. issued a restraining order barring the march from proceeding while he reviewed the case.