SELMA, Ala. — People make the pilgrimage annually to walk across the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge, where on March 7, 1965, law officers attacked civil rights activists in an incident that became known as Bloody Sunday.
Rev. Ralph Abernathy, James Forman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Jesse Douglas lead the voting rights march to the Montgomery County Courthouse.
Newly restored photos show the ruin of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma on its 60th anniversary
The late Georgia Congressman John Lewis was one of the leaders of what was supposed to be a march from Selma to Montgomery, motivated by the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black man shot by a state trooper after a civil rights demonstration in nearby Marion, Ala.
…The peaceful marchers, including youth, refused to turn back. They kneeled and prayed. Then troopers and sheriff’s deputies, some on horseback, attacked, beating people with batons and launching tear gas canisters.
Lewis’ head was cracked open. Local activist Amelia Boynton Robinson was bludgeoned. Dozens were injured. And later two white civil rights activists who came to Alabama to support the marchers were killed, the Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/09/nx-s1-5312032/selma-bloody-sunday-60-years-edmund-pettus-bridge