Imgres

March to Selma

By jacobgarland

  • King launches the Selma campaign with a rally at Brown Chapel.

  • 105 black school teachers defy the superintendent and rally at the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma.

  • King and 500 schoolchildren are arrested in Selma

    King and 500 schoolchildren are arrested in Selma; 650 African Americans march in nearby Marion. Unitarian Universalist ministers Ira Blalock and Gordon Gibson arrive in Selma to work with the SCLC. The Rev. Dr. Dana McLean Greeley, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, sends a telegram to King in jail, praising him as a “model of discipline and non-violence.” Greeley urges Johnson and Congress to guarantee voting rights to all citizens.

  • Sheriff Jim Clark sends 165 black teens on a forced run out of town, pursued by patrol cars.

  • Jackson dies. The SCLC announces a protest march to Montgomery at his memorial service.

  • Bloody Sunday

    The march from Selma to Montgomery begins, but state troopers and a sheriff’s posse stop the marchers with clubs and tear gas on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. TV news footage of “Bloody Sunday” interrupts a program about Nazi atrocities. King calls religious leaders to join him in Selma.

  • 450 religious leaders join 2,000 African Americans for a second march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

    After praying at the site of Sunday’s attack, they return to Brown Chapel. That night, Reeb, Olsen, and Miller are attacked outside a whites-only restaurant; Reeb is fatally injured.

  • Reeb dies. Thousands protest outside the White House and in other major cities.

  • 25,000 demonstrators join the marchers when they reach Montgomery for a final rally at the state capitol. That night, Viola Liuzzo is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen as she drives toward Montgomery to pick up a carload of marchers.

  • President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law.

  • The UUA installs a memorial to Jackson, Reeb, and Daniels in Brown Chapel. The UUA also buys a house for Jackson’s mother and establishes a fund for his family, using extra proceeds of more than $100,000 given in Reeb’s memory.