Selma and Bloody Sunday

    There were many day in history that people love to forget. March 9th, 1965 or Bloody Sunday was one of these infamous days. It began with a peaceful march by the Southern Christian Leadership Council, or SCLC, along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. These African American people with the help of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had met with president Lyndon B. Johnson a few days before to discuss his voting rights act was forced to stay in Atlanta where he would meet with the other marchers somewhere along their 54 mile journey from Selma, Alabama to the states capital Montgomery. 

The March took place on March 9th with around 700 people in attendance. Led by Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC, the peaceful participants of the march began to walk up a very famous bridge with the name of a famous confederate and well known Grand Dragon of the KKK, Edmund Pettus. They didn't know that this bridge would be grounds for some of the most horrific history in the history of our nation. This bridge was where Bloody Sunday became a nationwide civil rights event. At the end of this bridge was the mayor and a wall of state troopers holding clubs, whips, and even tubes with barbed wire attached. The protestors stopped about 50 feet from authorities surrounded by white spectators who were awaiting the carnage that was about to unfold. The last thing to be said before the screams and sounds of blows landing was heard, was a small exchange between Major John Cloud and Hosea Williams, "It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march,” Major John Cloud called out from his bullhorn. “This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse, you are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue", To this Hosea responded "Mr. Major I would like to have a word. Can we have a word?" to this the major responded " I have nothing further to say to you". The groups both stood their ground for a moment, but in the following few minutes there was more carnage than had ever been seen before on television. The protestors were beaten, gassed with tear gas, and nearly killed on the Edmund Pettus bridge.

This event changed the course of the civil rights movement because of the impact it had on the rest of the nation. These things had been happening everywhere, but this time the world finally got to see the things that Americans hadn't even known the extent of. Dr. King had spoken to life magazine weeks earlier saying this, " The world doesn't know this happened because you didn't photograph it", but that didn't matter anymore. The beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were seen all across America. The world had finally seen the things that we didn't want to know about ourselves. 

In my opinion, this event needed to happen. I say this because if it didn't then a lot of people in the country at the time would not have known the racial injustice that had been going on for a very long time. People around the nation needed to see the things that were happening to black people. Otherwise it doesn't matter to them. People need to see it to believe it and this event was very hard not to see. This event was necessary to spark others who saw it to take action. That's why this was such an important part of the civil rights movement.

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