How Did The Selma To Montgomery March Impact The Civil Rights Movement

The March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 caused important advances in the civil rights movement and had a direct impact on legislation dealing with African-American voting rights. In Alabama, there were still many blockades keeping the African-American population from being able to register to vote. Segregation and “The Jim Crow Laws” were still in place in the South during the 1960s. Many people and groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. played essential roles in the eventual success of protesting for voting rights in Alabama. The Selma to Montgomery Marches not only accomplished their goal of gaining voting rights for African-Americans,

King had organized several civil disobedience protests with an overall goal of making it easier for African-Americans to register to vote in Alabama. At the time, registering to vote as an African-American was so difficult that only 300 of Selma’s population of 14,000 African-Americans had been registered to vote. All of the marches that were organized for voting rights were peaceful, yet in mid-February, one of these peaceful protests turned violent as protestor Jimmy Lee Jackson was shot by a state trooper. He died a couple of days after the protest, providing other protesters with a reason for news coverage and more reason to protest the racism in Alabama. Jimmy’s death sparked a flame, and before long, many new protests were

This event gained lots of press coverage and incited protests from people all over the country who sympathized with the protesters in Alabama. President Lyndon B. Johnson also spoke out against police brutality and announced his intent to pass a voting rights bill because of the events that Sunday. Another protest formed as Dr. King invited people from all over the country to join in on a march to Montgomery two days later on March 9th. It was essential that Dr. King organized the next protest so soon after the events of Bloody Sunday so as to keep the press coverage on the issues in Alabama. The second march proceeded with around 2,000 people, but was also halted at Edmund Pettus Bridge by the Alabama government, although this time there were no casualties or violence during the