A peaceful march in protest of racial injustice set out from Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, but was met with violent resistance from local law enforcement in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Civil rights demonstrators planned to march to the state capital in Montgomery to bring attention to the legal barriers set up to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote and to police violence following the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon, in Marion.
MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT: WHAT TO KNOW
Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace opposed the march and ordered state troopers to put a stop to it. Law enforcement deployed tear gas and used clubs and to attack the marchers.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking before a crowd of 25,000 civil rights marchers in front of the state capital building on March 25, 1965, in Montgomery, Ala. (Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty Images)
The events of “Bloody Sunday” were captured on television…