VIOLENCE IN SELMA LEADS TO VOTING RIGHTS ACT
**In 2014, Dallas County (80% African-American) was the poorest county in the state of Alabama. More than 40% of its residents lived below the poverty line. Ari Berman writes...."In Selma, it feels like everything and nothing has changed."
SOURCE
"Fifty Years After Bloody Sunday in Selma, Everything and Nothing Has Changed," by Ari Berman, The Nation, February 25, 2015, www.thenation.com/
Selma, Alabama (JFK+50) On March 7, 1965, 600 marchers demonstrating for voting rights were brutally attacked with clubs and tear gas by state and local police here in Selma. After crossing Edmund Pettus* Bridge, the group, led by John Lewis of SNCC and Rev. Hosea Williams of SCLC were confronted by authorities.
17 marchers were injured and hospitalized. Leaders of the march said that despite the attacks, more marches would follow. Of the 15,000 blacks in Dallas County** only 130 were registered to vote. Bloody Sunday was a key event leading to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On February 11, 2015, the House of Representatives passed a resolution awarding the Congressional Gold Medal "to the foot soldiers of the 1965 voting rights movement in Selma." Ari Berman writes that in Selma, civil rights history is everywhere. Its streets are named after civil rights activists.
*Edmund Pettus was a general in the Confederate army & leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
**In 2014, Dallas County (80% African-American) was the poorest county in the state of Alabama. More than 40% of its residents lived below the poverty line. Ari Berman writes...."In Selma, it feels like everything and nothing has changed."
SOURCE
"Fifty Years After Bloody Sunday in Selma, Everything and Nothing Has Changed," by Ari Berman, The Nation, February 25, 2015, www.thenation.com/
"Five things to know about Bloody Sunday this weekend," by the editors of USA Today, March 7, 2015, www.usatoday.com/
Bloody Sunday
Selma, Alabama (1965)
By Kevin Saff
at en.wikipedia
