Alabama State Troopers Attack Voting Rights Marchers on Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, approximately 600 voting rights activists began a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to protest the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the systematic denial of voting rights to Black citizens. Led by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman John Lewis and Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Hosea Williams, the marchers proceeded without interruption until they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the edge of Selma. There, they were met by Alabama State Troopers and local law enforcement who had been ordered to stop the march by any means necessary. What followed became known as “Bloody Sunday”—one of the most brutal episodes of state-sanctioned violence against peaceful protesters in American history.

As the marchers crossed the apex of the bridge, they saw a wall of state troopers blocking their path. Without warning or adequate time to disperse, the troopers attacked with billy clubs and tear gas, then pursued fleeing marchers on horseback, beating them indiscriminately. John Lewis suffered a skull fracture and later said he thought he was going to die that day. Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious. More than 60 marchers were hospitalized with injuries. The attack was methodical and vicious: troopers used tear gas to disorient protesters, then beat them with nightsticks and bullwhips, trampled them with horses, and pursued those who fled back toward the church. Television cameras captured the violence, and that evening ABC interrupted its broadcast of the film “Judgment at Nuremberg” to show footage of the attack, forcing millions of Americans to witness state police brutally beating peaceful citizens seeking voting rights.

The violence of Bloody Sunday, combined with the murder of white Unitarian minister James Reeb two days later on March 9 (he died March 11), resulted in a national outcry and international condemnation. President Lyndon B. Johnson, deeply moved by the attacks, seized the moment and delivered a historic, nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress on March 15, invoking Reeb’s memory and calling for passage of comprehensive voting rights legislation. Johnson’s speech marked a turning point in federal civil rights enforcement, with the president explicitly embracing the civil rights movement’s cause. The Voting Rights Act was introduced to Congress on March 17, 1965, and signed into law on August 6, 1965, banning literacy tests, mandating federal oversight of voter registration in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, and giving the U.S. Attorney General authority to challenge poll taxes. However, Bloody Sunday also exposed the willingness of state governments to deploy maximum violence against citizens exercising constitutional rights, demonstrating that Southern institutions—from governors to state police to local sheriffs—were prepared to use systematic terror to preserve white political supremacy, revealing the authoritarian foundations of voter suppression that would persist in new forms for decades.