A Brief History: Selma to Montgomery March and the Freedom Riders
Selma to MontgomeryMarch The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks--and three events--that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later, on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr.…ruled in favor of the demonstrators. "The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...," said Judge Johnson, "and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways." On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000strong. Less than five months after the last of the three marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965--the best possible redress of grievances. Source: National Park Service, Selma-toMontgomery March: National Historic Trail & All-American Road
“There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes” - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1965 (King, Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March
Freedom Riders “Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but never is fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle.”
13 people, seven blacks and six whites, boarded two buses in Washington, D.C., and headed into the South and onto the pages of history. They were the first of a wave of more than 400 Freedom Riders who would risk their lives challenging the segregation of buses, trains and airplanes from May until December 1961. Although two earlier Supreme Court decisions had declared segregation in interstate travel illegal, state and local officials simply ignored them. Freedom Riders — blacks, whites, northerners, southerners, men and women — set out to nonviolently "test" compliance with the court decisions. The reaction was immediate and violent. Of the two buses that left Washington May 4, one was surrounded by whites in Anniston, Ala., and firebombed. The mob pressed itself up against the door of the bus, screaming racial epithets and "burn them alive." All of the riders, including the future Georgia congressman, John Lewis, escaped with their lives, but suffered from smoke inhalation. When the second bus…arrived in Anniston, the riders refused the driver's order to move to the back of the bus. [Four riders] were beaten by Klansmen and dragged to the back of the bus. The bus rolled on to Birmingham, where another mob waited, abetted by a police department headed by the notorious segregationist Eugene "Bull" Connor. When [the] riders entered the bus station, they were savagely attacked by the St. Louis white mob, some armed with lead pipes. Local MO doctors, fearing reperKY cussions, refused to treat the black riders, Sikeston Nashville [so their] wounds [were] Knoxville dressed by a nurse who Newport TN AK was a member of a local Chattanooga Memphis Baptist church where the Little Rock riders stayed that night. Many Freedom Rides followed that year, and they were front-page news. Five months after they began, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order ending segregation in public transportation.
MS
Anniston
Washington D.C.
Charlottesville Richmond
Roanoke
VA
Greensboro
NC
Raleigh
Charlotte Roch Hill Winnsboro
Wilmington Sumter
SC
Atlanta
Augusta Charleston
Shreveport
Jackson
GA
Savannah
Montgomery
LA McComb
AL
Jacksonville
Tallahassee
Baton Rouge New Orleans
Excerpted from AARP Bulletin, “Charles Person Was on Freedom Riders Bus,” by Kitty Bennett, May 24, 2011
Birmingham
- William H. Hastie, the nation's first black federal judge
Ocala
FL Tampa
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The Fight for Civil Rights in the South combines Selma to Montgomery: Photographs by Spider Martin and Courage Under Fire: The 1961 Burning of the Freedom Riders Bus. They are curated and circulated by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI), with contributions from the City of Birmingham and to BCRI’s Corporate Campaign.