Blog

When you picture courage, what do you see?

Do you see soldiers charging into battle? Firefighters running into a burning building? Or do you see something quieter—something more unexpected—like a 25-year-old man in a trench coat and backpack, walking calmly toward a wall of state troopers wearing gas masks and carrying billy clubs?

On March 7, 1965, John Lewis was that 25-year-old man. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he was about to lead more than 600 peaceful demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama .

Their goal was simple: walk 54 miles to the state capital of Montgomery to demand voting rights for African Americans. Their method was equally simple: nonviolent protest. They had been trained to turn the other cheek, to absorb blows without striking back, to love their enemies even as those enemies were beating them.

But nothing—not the training, not the preparation, not the prayers—could have prepared them for what happened at the end of that bridge.

Within minutes, John Lewis was on the ground with a fractured skull. Amelia Boynton lay unconscious, her image becoming the defining photograph of the day. More than 50 marchers were hospitalized. And the nation watched it all unfold on television, horrified by what they saw .

This is the story of Bloody Sunday. The march that failed. The violence that shocked the world. And the Voting Rights Act that changed America.

---

Part 1: Selma, Alabama – The Heart of Resistance

To understand Bloody Sunday, you have to understand Selma in 1965.

Dallas County, Alabama, where Selma is located, had a population that was more than half African American. But despite outnumbering white residents, Black Americans accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters .

The reason was not indifference. The reason was terror.

For years, local officials had used every tool available to keep Black citizens from voting: impossible literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, economic retaliation, and physical violence. If you tried to register to vote, you could lose your job, your home, or your life.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had been trying to register Black voters in Selma since 1963. But their efforts were met with increasingly violent resistance from the local sheriff, Jim Clark, and his deputies . By February 1965, at least 2,000 voting-rights demonstrators had been jailed .

Then, in January 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) arrived in Selma to lend their support to the cause . King had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. His presence brought national attention to the struggle in Selma.

King was arrested almost immediately. From his jail cell, he wrote a letter to the New York Times that captured the urgency of the moment:

“This is Selma, Alabama. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.” 

---

Part 2: The Spark – The Killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson

On February 18, 1965, a peaceful night march in the nearby town of Marion turned deadly.

State troopers attacked the demonstrators. In the chaos, a young African American deacon named Jimmie Lee Jackson—just 26 years old—tried to protect his mother from being beaten. A state trooper shot him in the stomach. He died eight days later .

Jackson’s death was a turning point.

James Bevel, one of King’s aides, proposed a radical response: a march from Selma to Montgomery, carrying Jackson’s casket all the way to the steps of the state capitol . The idea was to take the fight directly to Governor George Wallace, the segregationist who had vowed to stop any march “by whatever means necessary” .

The march was scheduled for Sunday, March 7, 1965. King, who had commitments at his church in Atlanta, asked Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC to lead the march .

The night before, Governor Wallace made his position clear: the march would not be allowed. He commanded state troopers to “take whatever means necessary” to prevent it .

The stage was set for a confrontation.

---

Part 3: Bloody Sunday – The March That Shook the Nation

At approximately 2:30 PM on March 7, 1965, between 525 and 600 demonstrators gathered at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma . They were a diverse group: men, women, and children; Black and white; clergy and laypeople. Rosa Parks—the woman whose refusal to give up her bus seat had sparked the Montgomery bus boycott a decade earlier—was among them .

They began walking. Two by two. Calmly. Peacefully.

Their route took them through downtown Selma, past the white spectators who had gathered to jeer. Then they turned onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge—a steel and concrete structure spanning the Alabama River .

The bridge itself carried a bitter irony. It was named for Edmund Winston Pettus, a Confederate general and, later, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan . The marchers were walking across a monument to white supremacy to demand their right to vote.

At the far end of the bridge, they saw what awaited them.

A wall of Alabama state troopers stretched across the highway. Behind them were sheriff’s deputies and deputized civilian “possemen” on horseback, armed with clubs, bullwhips, and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire .

Major John Cloud of the Alabama State Troopers gave the order: the marchers had two minutes to disperse .

Hosea Williams stepped forward. “Mr. Major,” he said, “I would like to have a word. Can we have a word?”

Cloud’s response was cold: “I’ve got nothing further to say to you. You have two minutes to disperse.”

Williams and Lewis stood their ground.

Moments later, Cloud commanded his troopers to advance.

---

Part 4: The Attack – “Horses, Screams, and Tear Gas”

The assault lasted less than two minutes. But its impact would echo for decades.

The New York Times described the scene the next day in vivid, horrifying detail:

“The first 10 or 20 Negroes were swept to the ground screaming, arms and legs flying and packs and bags went skittering across the grassy divider strip and on to the pavement on both sides. Those still on their feet retreated. The troopers continued pushing, using both the force of their bodies and the prodding of their nightsticks.” 

The troopers wore gas masks. They fired tear gas into the crowd. Deputies on horseback charged into the fleeing marchers, swinging clubs and whips .

John Lewis was knocked to the ground. A trooper hit him in the head with a nightstick, fracturing his skull. When Lewis raised his hand to protect himself, the trooper hit him again .

Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious. A photograph of her lying on the bridge, seemingly dead, became the most iconic image of Bloody Sunday . (She survived, but the image—circulated around the world—told the story better than any words could.)

A makeshift hospital was set up in a local church. The New York Times described the scene:

“Negroes lay on the floors and chairs, many weeping and moaning. A girl in red slacks was carried from the house screaming. From the hospital came a report that the victims had suffered fractures of ribs, heads, arms and legs, in addition to cuts and bruises.” 

More than 50 marchers were hospitalized .

But here is what is most remarkable: not a single marcher fought back. They had been trained in nonviolence. They absorbed the blows. They ran. They fell. But they did not strike out.

The news media captured it all. Film footage was flown to New York and broadcast that night on national television. Millions of Americans watched in horror as peaceful demonstrators were savaged by law enforcement officers .

---

Part 5: The Aftermath – A Nation Outraged

Within 48 hours of Bloody Sunday, demonstrations in support of the Selma marchers had taken place in some 80 American cities . Sympathizers staged sit-ins, traffic blockades, and protests across the country .

The national outrage created political pressure that Lyndon Johnson could not ignore.

On March 15, just eight days after Bloody Sunday, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress. He introduced voting rights legislation that would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In one of the most memorable lines of his presidency, he declared:

“We shall overcome.” 

But the struggle in Selma was not over.

---

Part 6: Turnaround Tuesday – The Second March

Two days after Bloody Sunday, on March 9, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. led a second march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge . This time, there were about 2,500 demonstrators .

But there was a complication. Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson had issued a restraining order prohibiting the march pending his ruling on a petition to shield marchers from police interference .

King faced an impossible choice: defy a federal court order or disappoint the marchers who had come to Selma expecting him to lead them across the bridge.

He chose to obey the court.

King led the marchers to the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the same state troopers who had attacked on Bloody Sunday were waiting. King knelt. He prayed. Then he turned around and led the marchers back to Brown Chapel .

Critics called it “Turnaround Tuesday.” Some marchers were furious. But King’s decision was strategic: by obeying the court order, he put the moral weight of the law on his side.

That night, tragedy struck again. A white Unitarian minister from Boston named James Reeb—who had come to Selma to support the marchers—was severely beaten by white segregationists outside a diner. He died two days later .

---

Part 7: The Final March – Victory in Montgomery

On March 17, 1965, Judge Frank M. Johnson issued his ruling. He ordered the state of Alabama to permit the march and to provide protection for the marchers . His decision was a complete vindication of the civil rights movement’s cause.

On March 21, nearly 8,000 people gathered in Selma to begin the 54-mile march to Montgomery . They marched under the protection of federalized National Guard troops.

The journey took five days. They walked through rain and cold. They slept in fields. By the time they reached Montgomery on March 25, the crowd had swelled to 25,000 people .

Before the Alabama State Capitol—the same building where Jefferson Davis had been sworn in as president of the Confederacy—Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what became known as his “How Long, Not Long” speech:

“How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

Five months later, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law . The law outlawed discriminatory voting practices and provided for federal examiners to oversee voter registration in areas with a history of discrimination .

For the first time since Reconstruction, Black Americans in the South had a real chance to vote.

---

Part 8: The Numbers – Measuring the Impact

The Voting Rights Act transformed American democracy.

But the struggle to pass the Act was not easy—and public opinion was not as unified as we sometimes remember.

A Harris Survey published in May 1965 found that only 46 percent of white Americans supported the civil rights groups marching for voting rights. Twenty-one percent sided with Governor George Wallace and the Alabama government .

Even after the violence of Bloody Sunday, America remained deeply divided.

---

Part 9: The Long Battle – What Happened to the Voting Rights Act?

For decades, the Voting Rights Act enjoyed broad bipartisan support. In 2006, when Congress renewed the Act, the vote was overwhelming: 98-0 in the Senate and 390-33 in the House .

Senator Mitch McConnell, then a Kentucky Republican, spoke in favor of the renewal:

“The Voting Rights Act has been renewed periodically… overwhelmingly, and on a bipartisan basis, year after year after year because Members of Congress realize this is a piece of legislation which has worked.” 

But in 2013, the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder. The Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act—the part that contained the formula for determining which jurisdictions needed federal preclearance before changing their voting laws .

The effect was immediate. Within hours of the decision, states that had been covered by the preclearance requirement began implementing new voting restrictions.

As Thelma Dianne Harris, one of the original Bloody Sunday marchers, told FairVote:

“The Voting Rights Act has been tampered with, and it’s like we’re still fighting for our rights. It’s slowly trying to be taken away from us.” 

In 2022, Congress attempted to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, named for the congressman who had his skull fractured on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bill failed to pass the Senate .

The fight for voting rights—the same fight that sent 600 marchers across the bridge in 1965—continues today.

---

Part 10: The Bridge Today – Memory and Meaning

The Edmund Pettus Bridge still stands in Selma, Alabama. It still carries traffic across the Alabama River. And it still bears the name of a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader.

In 2013, the U.S. government designated the bridge a national historic landmark . In recent years, activists have petitioned to have the bridge renamed. Many have proposed that it be renamed after John Lewis, who died in 2020 .

But the bridge is more than its name. It is a symbol.

Every year on March 7, people gather in Selma to reenact the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They walk—two by two, just as the marchers did in 1965—to honor those who bled and those who died.

Congress has awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the marchers who participated in all three Selma-to-Montgomery marches .

And the memory of Bloody Sunday lives on—not just in history books, but in the ongoing struggle to protect the right to vote.

---

Conclusion: 600 Steps That Changed the World

Here is what I want you to take away from this story.

On March 7, 1965, more than 600 people walked across a bridge in Selma, Alabama. They were not soldiers. They were not politicians. They were ordinary people—a 25-year-old civil rights organizer, an elderly woman who had been fighting for voting rights for decades, a bus driver who had once refused to give up her seat.

They walked toward a wall of state troopers. They knew what was coming. They walked anyway.

They were beaten. They were gassed. They were trampled by horses. Fifty of them were hospitalized.

But they did not strike back. They did not retreat—not until they were forced to. And the next day, they came back.

Within a week, President Johnson had introduced voting rights legislation. Within five months, the Voting Rights Act was the law of the land.

John Lewis, who nearly died on that bridge, went on to serve 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Before he died in 2020, he wrote an essay to be published on the day of his funeral. In it, he said:

“Selma was a turning point in my life. It was there that I gave something that I could never get back. I gave a part of myself. But I also received something in return—a sense of purpose, a calling, a commitment to something greater than myself.”

The bridge that bore the name of a Klansman became the bridge where the Voting Rights Act was born. The place of the beating became the place of the victory.

That is the lesson of Selma. That is the lesson of Bloody Sunday.

The arc of the moral universe is long.

But it bends toward justice.

And sometimes, it bends because 600 ordinary people decided to walk across a bridge.

---

Bloody Sunday: Key Facts

---

Timeline: The Selma Marches