The 1965 Civil Rights March That Changed Everything

March 21, 1965

Walter Dobyne intends to make it all the way from Selma to Montgomery this time. The 18-year-old student who was arrested with other voting rights activists in Marion, Alabama, in February and tear-gassed two weeks ago on Bloody Sunday now stands with some 3,600 other would-be marchers outside Selma’s Brown Chapel. This time, they will not be defying a court order when they embark upon the five-day 54-mile journey; Judge Frank M. Johnson, who had previously banned the march, has issued an injunction allowing it to go forward.

In his decision, Judge Johnson blasted Jim Clark, finding the local sheriff, along with his deputies and possemen, had engaged in “an almost continuous pattern of conduct... of harassment, intimidation, coercion, threatening conduct, and, sometimes, brutal mistreatment.” To prevent a recurrence of the Bloody Sunday brutality on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and to ensure safe passage through inhospitable counties, the judge ordered both the State of Alabama and the federal government to provide marchers with protection. One thousand U.S soldiers have been called to Selma. Army helicopters fly overhead.

Read more at The Daily Beast.