Images of Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail – Alabama, taken in June 2024.

The Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail memorializes the 54-mile march along US 80 from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, to include the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation, as well as campsites and churches along the trail.

In 1961, because of intimidation, poll taxes and literacy tests only 156 of Dallas County’s 15,000 voting-age African Americans were registered to vote. These practices, in place since 1901, were backed by county sheriff Jim Clark as well as Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Local activists looked to national organizations, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by the Reverend Martin Luther King, to plan a “non-violent direct action” campaign to effect change.

On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and Hosea Williams led 600 marchers from Selma over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were blocked by Alabama State Troopers who ignored the marchers request to speak to officials and instead advanced on the marchers, running them down and hitting them with nightsticks. Sheriff Clark’s posse on horses moved in next, unleashing clouds of tear gas on the marchers and driving them back over the bridge into Selma. All was recorded by the national and local media and the images and news reels were funneled into homes across the country on the nightly news. The event became known as “Bloody Sunday”.

President Lyndon B. Johnson requested that subsequent marches be protected by the state, but Governor Wallace refused, prompting Johnson to federalize the Alabama national guard and send an additional 2,000 troops to Alabama. On March 21st marchers once again set out over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and five days later arrived at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, where 25,000 people listened to Rev. King speak about voting rights for all.

On August 6th, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, ending poll taxes and literary tests practices. By 1966, the number of registered African American voters in Alabama had quadrupled.

It is imperative that we memorialize events like these, they are a part of our collective history and our growth as a nation. No matter how brutal and hard to accept, we cannot simply ignore them or try to erase them from our history books; as George Santayana wrote in 1905, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.