-
Voting Targets
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference target Selma and adjacent communities for a major voting rights campaign. -
Voting Rally
Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks in Selma at a rally to kick off the voting rights effort there. -
Dr. King Visits Again
Martin Luther King, Jr. arrives in Selma to encourage organizers at a rally. -
Defiance Against Jim Crow
In hotels and restaurants in Selma, King and others defy Jim Crow laws. Marches in favor of voting rights start, defying orders prohibiting them. Arriving as a "observer" is George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party. The National States Rights Party's James Robinson also shows up and kicks and punches King in the groin. Jim Clark, the county sheriff, takes Robinson into custody (Branch). At a rally in the evening, King speaks. -
President arrests Selma Protesters
Lyndon Johnson is inaugurated as President in Washington. The inauguration is accompanied by integrated celebrations. 226 demonstrators are now in jail in Selma -
"Freedom Day"
In contravention of a court order, marches take place all over the Selma area on this "Freedom Day" (the voter registration counters had to be open on the first day of the month) to highlight the problem of voting rights. More than 700 people are detained, including King and other pupils. In the days that follow, hundreds more are detained in appalling conditions. -
federal judge overturns Selma’s labyrinthine voter registration test
The convoluted Selma voter registration process is overturned by a federal judge, who also instructs the city to expedite the registration of black residents. In a press conference, President Johnson pledges to protect everyone's right to vote. Malcolm X travels to Selma and gives a speech at Brown Chapel AME Church, but only remains for a short time before being assassinated in New York City a few days later. -
Letter from the Selma Jail- Dr.KIng
King posts a bond and is let out of custody. In the days that follow, protests and arrests continue. Coretta Scott King receives a visit from Malcolm X, who want to collaborate more closely with the nonviolent movement. The New York Times publishes King's "Letter from Selma Jail," a SCLC fundraising initiative. -
Idea Sparks for the March
James Bevel proposes a march from Selma to Montgomery in order to achieve voting rights. The march will pass through the notorious Lowndes County, where no Black people are registered to vote despite the fact that 80% of the population is Black. On February 28, Bevel elaborates on the concept in his sermon. -
Dr. Kings Endorsement
King speaks to over one thousand at Jimmie Lee Jackson’s funeral in Marion and endorses the idea of a march from Selma to Montgomery. -
Bloody Sunday
Around 600 civil rights marchers, led by Hosea Williams (SCLC) and John Lewis (SNCC), head east on U.S. Route 80 out of Selma. They only make it as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge's eastern side, six blocks away, where state and local law enforcement, encouraged by cheering white citizens, engage in an attack on them using billy clubs, horses, and tear gas before driving them back across the bridge into Selma. -
Public Support
Nationwide pro-freedom protests break out in support of the Selma struggle. In New York, a large number of people, including Catholic nuns, throng 7th Avenue. In Washington, Fannie Lou Hamer speaks to protesters on Sunday. -
Voting Rights in Legislature
On the second official day of voter registration in Selma, protesters keep up the pressure. At Reeb's memorial ceremony in Selma, King gives a speech. At 5:08 p.m., a 3500-person spontaneous march ends the service. The newly inaugurated President Johnson addresses a joint session of Congress in the evening to make a forceful legislative proposal about voting rights: "We shall prevail! ", he informs the country in the televised speech seen by 70 million people. -
Setting out for Montgomery
About 3,200 marchers, many of them were clergy members from throughout the nation, left Selma for Montgomery while traveling 12 miles each day and camped out in fields. However, since only a symbolic 300 are permitted to complete the entire march per the legal agreement, people frequently enter and exit the procession. Along the way, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, C. Vann Woodward, and John Hope Franklin all take part. This spans across 5 days of protest. -
Voting Rights For All
The Voting Rights Act is passed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.