Edmund Pettus served as chairman of the state delegation to the Democratic National Convention for more than two decades. In 1877, Pettus was named Grand Dragon of the Alabama
Ku Klux Klan, during the final year of
Reconstruction.]
Fifty years ago, on March 7, 1965, hundreds of people gathered in Selma, Alabama to march to the capital city of Montgomery. They marched to ensure that Blacks could exercise their constitutional right to vote — even in the face of a segregationist system that wanted to make it impossible.
On the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, state troopers and county members violently attacked the marchers, leaving many of them injured and bloodied — and some of them unconscious.
But the marchers didn't stop. Two days later, Dr. Martin Luther King led roughly 2,500 people back to the Pettus Bridge before turning the marchers around — obeying a court order that prevented them from making the full march.
The third march started on March 21, with protection from 1,000 military policemen and 2,000 Army troops. Thousands of people joined along the way to Montgomery, with roughly 25,000 people entering the capital on the final leg of the march. On March 25, the marchers made it to the entrance of the Alabama State Capitol building, with a petition for Gov. George Wallace.
Only a few months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965. The Voting Rights Act was designed to eliminate legal barriers at the state and local level that prevented Blacks from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment — after nearly a century of unconstitutional discrimination.
Look how far we have come with, we, Black Americans is the only group who freed ourselves with no army, no guns, no military, and no war....just the belief and faith that God is still on the throne and injustice any where is a threat to justice everywhere....we are free and if we keep believing one day all people will be equal under the law.
