Effects Of The Selma To Montgomery Marches

According to the National Archives, more than sixty marchers would suffer serious injuries in the hands of Alabama law enforcement officials upon arriving at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” The resulting confrontation between law enforcement and protesting marchers was one of three protests a part of the Selma to Montgomery marches, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement challenging systematic racism within the United States regarding the lack of voting rights for African Americans. While the marchers were seriously injured, the Selma to Montgomery marches persisted in nonviolent resistance against the denial of voting rights for African Americans until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed

For instance, according to Alan Jenkins, a professor from Harvard Law School, the United States lives in an era dominated by movements to which the majority demand transformative racial, social, and economic justice. Likewise, in a journal by Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani of Harvard University, as a result of the American criminal legal system and exceptionally high incarceration rates in the United States, nationwide protests erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. With the dominance of racial justice protest movements in the United States, racially discriminatory laws and practices have remained an issue for the nation and mark parallels with the racial negligence that sparked the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Thus, how can individuals use the principles of moral courage and intelligent disobedience to challenge racially discriminatory laws and policies in the United States? According to Ted Thomas and Ira Chaleff, a critical application of moral courage and intelligent disobedience is knowing when and how to

Additionally, Chenoweth noted that nonviolent campaigns have succeeded less and became smaller than their historical counterparts in a downward trend since the 1990s. On the other hand, Chenoweth indicated that nonviolent confrontations, despite their lessening success rates, outperform violent ones by a four to one margin. As a result, the conflicting findings demonstrate a middle ground between purely nonviolent protests and those who embrace violent aspects of civil disobedience. Thus, for a civil-resistance movement to be effective, discipline plays a pivotal role in maintaining nonviolent principles but because of divergent views on the effectiveness of inhibiting violence in civil disobedience, discipline among movements may only work to an extent. Although some argue that nonviolent confrontations may be ineffective in pressurizing changes in discriminatory laws and policies if purely nonviolent, the addition of violence into a largely nonviolent confrontation lacks adherence to the principles of moral