On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. led thousands of nonviolent crusaders to the completion of a 54-mile pilgrimage from Selma to Montgomery. The march, which King described as “a shining moment in the conscience of man,” was the culmination of a three-month campaign to eliminate African American disenfranchisement in Alabama. One of the last major demonstrations of the southern struggle, the Selma to Montgomery March made the nation aware of a discriminatory voter registration system and led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In early 1965, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) selected the city of Selma, Alabama, as the base of a campaign against voter discrimination in the state. In Alabama, as in other southern states, a deliberately s low registration process, difficult literacy tests, and other discriminatory practices employed by white registrars effectively denied black residents the right to vote. Out of 15,000 eligible black adults in Selma and the surrounding Dallas County, less than 350 were registered. In addition to challenging Alabama's political repression, the SCLC hoped to draw national attention to the need for federal legislation addressing voting rights.
Working with the Dallas County Voters League and several Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers, SCLC conducted a voter registration drive along with a series of demonstrations in Selma. On 18 February, when state troopers attacked an evening demonstration in the nearby town of Marion, a young man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by police as he attempted to protect his mother from the troopers' blows. He died one week later in a Selma hospital.
In honor of Jackson, activists in Selma and Marion planned a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery on 7 March. King was in Atlanta that Sunday delivering a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Governor George Wallace made clear his intentions to block the march. The marchers, led by Hosea Williams of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC, made their way through Selma's streets and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. On the far side of the bridge, they faced a blockade of state troopers and local lawmen commanded by Major John McCloud. The marchers refused to disperse, and McCloud ordered his men to advance. The troopers attacked the crowd with billy clubs and tear gas. The marchers retreated across the bridge and were pursued by troopers and mounted police.
Television coverage of the assault, which became known as "Bloody Sunday," drew national outrage. In Selma, a second march was called for Tuesday, 9 March. President Lyndon Johnson pressed for quick completion of a voting rights bill being drafted in the Justice Department. The Justice Department also pressured King to postpone the second march until government protection against further attacks could be obtained in federal court. On Tuesday morning, Federal District Judge Frank Johnson issued an order barring any march in advance of a federal hearing.
King was caught between Johnson's order and the Department's requests on one side and by movement supporters in Selma who wanted to immediately respond to Sunday's violent acts. He led the marchers to the site of Sunday's attack, where state troopers again blocked the way to Montgomery. King asked the group to kneel and pray and then turned the march back to Selma. None of the marchers had been advised of King's intention to turn around, and the decision drew heavy criticism, especially from SNCC members who participated in the march.
That evening, James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who had come from Massachusetts to join the protest, was beaten by several white men. His death two days later contributed to the rising national concern over the situation in Alabama. On Saturday, following a meeting with Governor Wallace, President Johnson held his first press conference since "Bloody Sunday." Johnson stated, "We all know how complex and how difficult it is to bring about basic social change in a democracy, but this complexity must not obscure the clear and simple moral issues." He added, "It is wrong to do violence to peaceful citizens in the streets of their town. It is wrong to deny Americans the right to vote. It is wrong to deny any person full equality because of the color of his skin." On Monday, 15 March, in a televised address to a joint session of Congress, Johnson introduced his voting rights legislation and committed his administration to its passage.
After receiving federal court approval, a third march left Selma on 21 March. Protected by 1,800 federalized National Guardsmen, the marchers averaged ten miles a day and arrived in Montgomery on 25 March. Approximately 25,000 people attended the march's concluding rally, held on the steps of the state capitol. "The end we seek," King told the crowd, "is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. . . . I know you are asking today, 'How long will it take?' I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long."
On 6 August, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.